Yet not all is well in this rather vigorous and virile land. Punjab has a troubled history. After a tragic partition in 1947, it emerged as a prosperous state in India that pioneered the green revolution. After Bangladesh declared independence in 1971 from Pakistan, Islamabad decided it was payback time.

A Troubled Legacy

Pakistan had always fostered trouble in Kashmir. In the 1980s, it also stirred up an insurgency in Punjab. Violent terrorists demanded Khalistan and unleashed a wave of violence against the Indian state. Initially, terrorists killed legislators, policemen and military personnel. Soon, violent attacks extended to innocent civilians. It took over a decade for the Indian government to bring the situation under control.

Much of the world assumed that this reign of terror was India-centric and not exactly a major problem. This assumption persisted despite Khalistani terrorists blowing up an Air India in 1985, killing all 329 people on board. This flight was en route from Toronto to London and blew up mid air over the sea. This was one of the biggest terrorist attacks before the 9/11 attacks.

Khalistani terrorism took thousands of innocent lives. Yet the West never quite took it seriously. Even Encyclopedia Britannica still erroneously the Khalistani movement erroneously as a “violent civil unrest between Sikh and Hindu factions.” This erroneous mischaracterization of a dangerous terrorist movement as ethnic strife in a former colony led to serious misjudgments in Germany, the UK, Australia and Canada in particular.

A Change in Narrative

Recently, this narrative is being questioned for the first time in the West itself. has expressed concern about the “extremist fringe ideology within the pro-Khalistan movement.” As per this review, this ideology has a “negative effect on wider Sikh communities” and the time has come for the British government to counter it.

Khalistanis in the UK threaten and intimidate upstanding members of the Sikh community. They pursue an ethno-nationalist agenda and incite violence within India. The review notes that Khalistanis do not claim any territory in “the part of the Punjab located in Pakistan.” This is noteworthy because the Sikh kingdom of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the lion of Punjab, was largely in modern day Punjab. The great Pakistani city of Lahore was the capital of this magnificent Sikh empire.

In 1947, the Muslim majority of modern day Pakistan followed a policy of ethnic cleansing of Sikhs and Hindus. As a result, there are hardly any Sikhs left in the country. Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith, was born in Nankana Sahib, which is 91 kilometers west of Lahore. The reason Khalistanis ignore ethnic cleansing and fail to claim the territory of their haloed guru is simple: Pakistan has backed them since day one. Khalistanis simply cannot bite the hand that feeds them.

Threat to the West

The Bloom Review is paying heed to an issue that poses serious threats in some countries of the West. Indian Punjab is facing an unemployment and identity crisis. The state voted in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), an upstart that has ousted traditionally dominant national and regional players. The 2022 AAP victory is a political revolution and Punjabis around the world find themselves in social ferment.

Khalistanis have latched on to this ferment and are trying to trigger violence in Punjab. These efforts originate in countries like Canada, Australia, Germany and the UK. Naturally, the violence they seek to export often spills over in their safe havens in the West. In 1985, , the 33rd premier of British Columbia and a Canadian MP, was brutally attacked for refusing to kowtow to Khalistani terrorists. This violence is terrible for any society, especially a multiethnic, multicultural liberal democracy.

India and the West are increasingly interconnected. Indians are in top jobs and key positions in the West. Young people, especially in Punjab, aspire to become the next Sunak and Banga. Similarly, the diaspora strives to influence the land of their origin. An Indian problem is no longer exclusively an Indian one. Very quickly, it can become a headache for the West as The Bloom Review rightly notes. The time has come for the West to address its homegrown Khalistanic problem with focus, energy and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Khalistani Terrorists Now Threaten Both India and the West appeared first on 51�Թ�.

China and India have many similarities. India has been shaped by Hinduism and China by Buddhism. Buddhism originated in India and has a similar to Hinduism. The roots of many systems considered Chinese are actually Indian, including, acupressure and acupuncture. China is also emerging as the new after the US. Logically, India and China should be friends, although China’s ambitions do not allow this.

India is a nuclear state with two nuclear-armed adversaries in China and Pakistan on its borders. China seeks to deepen economic relations with Pakistan via its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It has followed a “string of pearls” strategy to encircle India and makes constant revisionist claims about the India-China border.

Nevertheless, it is important to note that China had not supported Pakistan in the 1999 Kargil conflict. However, China’s assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon and missile programmes, and its BRI investments in Pakistan threaten India. Therefore, India faces the risk of a two-front war.

A Power-Hungry China Seeks to Dominate India

China only respects hard power. Money and military might are the operative metrics. Beijing is seeking to wrest the mantle of global leadership from Washington. India has traditionally played a passive role with China. New Delhi has consistently demonstrated reluctance to confront Beijing or take the initiative of proposing new solutions to sort out its border disputes. Indian foreign policy, influenced by Hindu philosophy, including ahimsa, has traditionally seen leadership as an exercise of soft power, moral pressure, and diplomatic negotiations.

This soft “head-in-the-sand” foreign policy of unending talk and little action is further aggravated by India’s inability to reduce import dependence on Chinese electronics and pharmaceutical intermediates. Thus, China’s authoritarian regime believes that it has a free pass to bully India. The Chinese test this periodically through border skirmishes and aggressive rhetoric in different forums. 

Rising powers attempt to dominate their “” and this reflects clearly in China’s , diplomacy and —uniting with the small to counter the big—strategies. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, came up with five Panchsheel principles, which included the principle of non-aggression. Yet the 1962 India-China War broke out at the height of bhai-bhai.

China has no problem with deception. Through the millennia, the Chinese have been guided by The Art of War, the classic penned by Sun Tzu in the 5^th century BC. He argued that “warfare is a way of” and the 1962 war serves as a good example of the application of this principle. China uses Sun Tzu’s psychological techniques to achieve its political goals. In the case of and Tibetans, China has practiced cultural genocide. China is aggressive, persistent, and unpredictable in its constant attempts to redraw the borders. of border negotiations with India have yielded no results.

China’s BRI initiative through Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) to Gwadar port creates a super link through which military equipment can be moved. China is weaponizing BRI and this is detrimental to India. In a future scenario, Chinese military bases in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Pakistan, acquired through debt trap diplomacy, would jeopardize Indian national security. Beijing is also cosying up with both Nepal and Afghanistan. In Nepal, China has had much success and the country even elected a communist government. In Afghanistan, success has been harder to come by because the Taliban runs a hardline Islamist regime.

India has to respond to Chinese aggression. It will only achieve peace when the country achieves adequate military and economic power. India could also turn to its very own political philosopher known as Chanakya or Kautilya who wrote in 300 BC.

Nuclear Pakistan’s Economic Woes Can Unleash Jihadism

The 1971 India-Pakistan War still scars the Pakistani psyche. India liberated Bangladesh, which until then was East Pakistan. Since then, Pakistan has been obsessed with India. As revenge it sought to “bleed India with a.” It funded and supported insurgencies in India. In Punjab, it led to a campaign of terror for Khalistan. Pakistan has always dreamt of annexing Kashmir and has persistently fomented trouble there since 1947. India and Pakistan have fought three major wars, one minor one and engaged in countless border clashes. So, a Pakistan-China nexus worries India.

India and US in the New World

Pakistan describes its friendship with China as being “higher than the mountains, deeper than the oceans, sweeter than honey.”  Pakistan is the biggest recipient of BRI money. Chinese debt is $30 billion— of its external debt—and continues to grow. Because of this debt, Pakistan has lost its ability to be an independent voice for Muslims. Pakistanis speak about Kashmiris all the time but dare not mention fellow Muslim Uyghurs. So beholden is Islamabad to Beijing that Pakistan would have to follow China’s lead and could lead to a war for India.

After years of military rule and a pseudo-democracy, Pakistan’s economy is in tatters. Both economic mismanagement and have brought the country to its knees. The has increased dramatically. Inflation has spiraled out of control. Thousands of madrassas have churned out tens of thousands of jihadis since the 1980s when Saudi money flooded into the country. Then, the goal was to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Now, jihadis could cause civil war and the implosion of Pakistan. Since Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state, an implosion poses tremendous security risks for India. Fostering a peaceful Jihadi-free Pakistan is in India’s direct security interests.

India Must Heed Kautilya’s Wise Words

Kautilya recommends that states strive for a balance of power and prevent rivals from becoming too powerful. He asks the king to become the most powerful among his peers) to achieve peace and security. He includes conquest, psychological influence, physical domination, seduction and assassination as tools of state policy.

Kautilya also speaks of security alliances as a key tool of foreign policy. The combined of Pakistan and China was $263 billion in 2020. This was nearly 3.6 times India’s defense budget. China alone outspends India by $180 billion. China spends less than 33% on personnel costs, while India spends about 60%. Hence, China can spend much more on modernization with better combat potential. 

Needless to say, the Indian Army needs to focus on technology-driven modernization. Indian foreign policy wonks must deepen the country’s security arrangement with the US and Japan, which has just doubled its military spending.

The Chinese army has an edge over the Indian Army, but India is better prepared in warfare and has more experienced troops. The Chinese air force is stronger than India’s in terms of fleet and strategic inventory, but India has more reliable. China’s navy is the largest in the world. Its naval build-up outscores India’s by almost. The US still has the most advanced navy though. India needs closer naval ties with the US and greater expenditure on its navy.

India’s military spending of is ranked third highest in the world after the US and China. It is one of the largest importers of arms. Indian armed forces are projected to spend around in capital procurement from 2022 to 2027. Such large imports highlight repeated failures in indigenous defense production despite transfers of technology to the public sector companies. India must modernize and privatize this sector to lower its import bill and prepare better for war.

In Dec 2020, the government authorized the armed forces to raise their weapons and ammunition reserves so as to be able to  sustain of high-intensity conflict. Until then, Indian forces could have only sustained such a conflict for ten days. Once, India’s could sustain 40 days of war. This dropped to 20 days in 1999 and further dropped to 10 days. The current 15-day reserves must go back up to the 40-day mark.

In a nutshell, India has to build up its military strength again. It also has to embark on the Kautilyan exercise of developing alliances with countries wary of China. Not only the US and Japan but also Vietnam and Australia are potential partners. Peace will come only through strength, not supplication.

[Here are Part 2 and Part 3 of this three-part series.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Can Kautilya Help Look at India’s War Risk Differently? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Sharif’s statements sparked a plethora of heated debates among the media and the Indian academic community regarding this alleged “olive branch” from Pakistan. However, given Pakistan’s volatile history, India should remain wary of such grandiose statements. 

The Birth of Terrorism 

The radicalization of Islam in Pakistan due to the open preaching of extremist ideologies has made peace extremely difficult. The number of have grown consistently in Pakistan. Even the , formed in the aftermath of the brutal attack perpetrated by Al-Qaeda, recognizes madrassas as “a particular concern”. However, successive governments in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, have to curb this kind of dangerous religious indoctrination.  

Pakistan, just like India, has a with 64% of the population below 30 years of age. However, when the madrassas teachIslamic texts such as hadith, tafsir and fiqh with puritanical interpretation, they turn demographic dividend into a demographic disaster. The majority of the madrassas in Pakistan are Sunni , who trace their origins to the fall of  Mughal Empire, after the first of Indian independence in 1857. 

The seminary, founded in 1866, is the headquarters for Sunni Deobandi belief. It is situated in the western part of the densely populated Indian state of , in the town called Deoband. The Deobandi beliefs have been a source of controversy due to their alleged links to some notoriously extremist organizations. The , an extremist group founded by Mullah Mohammad Omar, also derives its ideological beliefs from the Sunni Deobandi school of thought. 

Although the international community has failed to agree on a singular definition for terrorism, several scholars have detected underlying themes. American Historian Walter Langueur in 2000, “Nationalism is the core essence of religious terrorism and that, as such, can be categorized as ‘Right-wing Terrorism’.” He connected the obfuscated and ambiguous boundaries separating nationalism and religious terrorism. Other scholars attribute the fear tactics surrounding the Islamic belief in the afterlife to the successful recruitment of more men to carry out terrorism. The term perpetuated by terrorist leaders to promote the war on non-Muslims is ‘’ or ‘holy war’.

UN-designated terrorist has evoked the same , calling his followers to, “Marry for jihad, give birth for jihad and earn money only for jihad till the cruelty of America and India ends”. The Islamic State (IS) uses similar methods to recruit more people to wage the global jihad. These religious dictations have been omnipresent in all conflicts, and are consistently used to recruit fighters for terrorism. 

There exists a misplaced perception among historians that the  implementation of nationalism-based religious terrorism was first witnessed in Afghanistan following the Soviet Union’s of 1979. However, a close reading of contemporary conflicts proves otherwise. It was the then Indian state (now union territory) of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) which faced the initial brunt of religious terrorism.

Religiously-imbibed Insurgency

J&K first witnessed religious terrorism during the of 1947-48, also known as the . Pakistan mobilized from frontier areas to capture J&K, including its capital, Srinagar. Pakistanis built the narrative for invasion around the theory that a Muslim majority region can’t be governed under any other religious interpretation. This extremist Islam interpretation is referred to as Dar al-Harb, or  “house of war.”

Dar al-Harb justifies and makes necessary the waging of Islamic holy wars, and the recapture of any territories which Islamic nations had historically controlled. This kind of extremism is the biggest roadblock preventing peace between Islamic and non-Islamic nations. Similarly, the later Indo-Pak war of 1965, code-named , was a military strategy contingent on the expectation that following the invasion of Kashmir,  local Kashmiris would join Pakistani troops and  incite a rebellion against the Indian military. This sagacious plan combined nationalism and religious terrorism, a brew which the Pakistani president, , hoped would fuel a powerful revolt. 

When Khan’s risky hypothesis failed to ignite a revolutionary spark, the Pakistani military changed its approach to the capture of J&K. This novel approach included supporting the of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in 1976, a nationalist insurgent group that fought for Kashmir’s independence from both India and Pakistan. 

By backing the JKLF, Pakistan hoped to instigate violence from within Kashmir by radicalizing the youth. However, the JKLF initially failed to attract enough attention. However, several factors helped the JKLF gradually amass power. These factors included the increase in cross border infiltration, the development of more extremist madrassas in the area, and the unrest following the of 1987.

The resulting insurgency destroyed the syncretic culture of the Kashmir Valley. In 1990, the peaceful minority group known as the , was forced from their homeland and became refugees overnight.. Since then, the environment in the Kashmir Valley has remained tense, as Kashmiri Pandits continue to face from radical forces. Most recently, in February 2023, a Kashmiri Pandit was by terrorists in Pulwama.

On most occasions, these attacks have been led and carried out by local Kashmiri citizens. This antipathy towards Kashmiri Pandits is a result of indoctrination by local clerics, as well as Pakistan’s manipulative meddling in an effort to alter the demographics of J&K to suit its irredentist territorial claims.

The situation across the Line of Control (LOC) is similar, as in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK). As stated previously, many mainstream clerics are spreading ideas of religious terrorism and nationalism in J&K.These clerics, in most cases, enjoy the support of the Pakistani military in return for the clerics’ continued indoctrination of much-needed nationalist fighters to wage religious war in both Kashmir and Afghanistan. Both Shia and Sunni Muslim clerics have participated in this military indoctrination, particularly when it comes to radicalizing the youth.

Why Pakistan Needs Afghanistan

While the Pakistani government denies its support for the Taliban, many are convinced that the Taliban began as a special project for the Pakistani military to achieve strategic depth in Afghanistan. When the US finally from Afghanistan in August 2021, a large number of both Pakistanis and Afghans .The then Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief for Pakistan, Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, Kabul in September 2021 to set the tone for future Pakistan-Taliban engagement. 

Hameed played an active role in the reconciliation of the Haqqani and Baradar groups, the two leading factions of the Taliban’s internal power structure. His support was also instrumental in defeating the resistance groups operating out of . These groups, known as the National Resistance Front (NFR), operate under the command of , former intelligence chief and vice president of Afghanistan. Also commanding the NFR is Ahmad Massoud, son of , the former commander of the who the Taliban assassinated back in 2001. The younger Massoud continues to against Taliban takeover in his late father’s footsteps, alongside Saleh, who is the current “acting president” of Afghanistan.   Both Saleh and Massoud have allegedly fled to Tajikistan.

Pakistan’s military considers geopolitics to be a , and believes that gaining so-called ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan is critical to its goal of confrontingIndia. This approach has led to a decline in Pakistan’s military reputation, as Pakistanis begin to point to the armed forces as a source of many economic and social issues. Excessive military funding has also contributed to the across Pakistan, particularly in the port city of Gwadar, where citizens have lost access to “clean water and other basic facilities”. Pakistan has also contemplated the impacts of the withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan for a long time. To secure its interests in such a strategic space, it has formed a multi-pronged strategy. 

Pakistan’s multi-pronged strategy rests on two intertwined pillars. The first pillar encompasses    the advantages to obtaining control of Afghanistan. By dominating the Afghan geopolitical space, Pakistan intends to divert its resources from frontier areas to J&K. Using Afghan resources and manpower, Pakistan can bolster its campaign for control of the region. This strategic alignment would only heighten tensions betweenIndia and Pakistan, and put pressure on India to grant concessions on J&K. 

The second pillar of Pakistan’s ruthless desire to dominate Afghanistan arises from its economic compulsions. Aligning with Afghanistan would give Pakistan control of the key entry point into the and the economic opportunities of Eastern Europe.  For control of J&K and access to the Heartland, Pakistan would “wage a war for 1,000 years” according to former Pakistani prime minister   in his speech to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) back in 1965.  After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, several oil companies explored the possibility of building an oil and gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to India, via Afghanistan and Pakistan (TAPI). However, the instability in Afghanistan has brought this plan to a halt. If Pakistan gains viable control over Afghanistan, the TAPI pipeline could become a reality, bringing in billions of petrodollars to Pakistan’s depleted state .

Insurgency and Economic Woes

The Taliban has brought medievalism into Afghanistan, has been funded, supported, and sheltered by the Pakistani state for decades. Despite Pakistan’s aid,, the Taliban havealways maintained that they are fighting ‘to free their land from foreign occupation’, including potential occupation by Pakistan. The Taliban refuse to accept the as a border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Instead, it claims the western parts of Pakistan for Afghanistan, including the historic city of , for historical and demographic reasons. 

Now, the Taliban has completely turned against Pakistan, increasing support to an insurgent group known as the (TTP) which seeks to overthrow the “unIslamic” Pakistani government.  Once the government has been dismantled, the TTP hopes to make Pakistan its headquarters for future jihadi operations, an objective first championed by the now Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri.

In this quest to ‘Islamize’ Pakistan, the TTP has vociferously attacked military infrastructure belonging to Pakistani police and military. The group has also taken the responsibility for the in the Shia Mosque of Peshawar, which killed more than 100 Pakistani citizens. Currently, TTP militants are infiltrating Pakistan in massive numbers, due to the nation’s porous borders and presence of Pashtuns, with whom many members of the TTP share an ethnic background. 

In addition to Pakistan’s fight against insurgency, the nation is also drowning in debt. Pakistan has already defaulted on several debt payment promises, but was temporarily using funds from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In a recent , the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) says that its total liquid , as of 24 February, stand at US $9.267 billion while the net forex reserves are only US $3.814 billion, barely sufficient to ensure three weeks of imports. 

This situation is turning worse with forex reserves tanking further with each passing day. The same report says that at the end of fiscal year 2021, the net reserves were US $17.298 billion. These statistics show that while the world is recovering from the economic perils of COVID-19, Pakistan is falling deeper into the abyss. Poor economic management has sent the national rupee into a freefall as inflation rates skyrocket. Even more condemning were the devastating which plagued nearly 15 million Pakistanis, many of whom still do not have access to clean water.Food and water insecurity combined with civil unrest results in the perfect breeding ground jihadi recruits, which will only bring more instability and bloodshed to Pakistan and the region as a whole. 

US Involvement

During the , Pakistan was a key state for the US, acting as a lackey to help contain the Soviet Union while receiving billions in from the western superpower. The Soviet of Afghanistan in 1979 made Pakistan even more critical to the US and its “.” Even today, the US describes Pakistan as important for “.”  

In a recent statement by US State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, the US potential peace negotiations between India and Pakistan. However, if peace is desired by all then how come some of the most dreaded terror organizations are operating in the Subcontinent? Why hasn’t the US  sanctioned Pakistan, for its non functioning democracy and for funding and sustaining several terror organizations, while Myanmar, another dictatorship to India’s East, is sanctioned? The answer signifies that interests triumph over values. Myanmar does not sit on the connecting lines to the heartland while Pakistan does. The strategic location of Pakistan makes it much more ‘important’, as the war in Afghanistan demonstrated. 

On several occasions, former US president expressed for America’s relationship with Pakistan, before going back on his campaign promise to end the war in Afghanistan once and for all. However, since President Joe Biden took office in 2021, the US has revived its efforts to find with Pakistan and build a modern partnership. Biden even provided Pakistan with in aviation equipment to help fortify the Pakistani military in its fight against terrorism. However, Biden’s goodwill towards Pakistan was not well received by those in India, who still consider Pakistan to be an imminent threat.

Even more alarming to India, in October 2022, Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa . Secretary of defense Lloyd J. Austin III welcomed Bajwa to the Pentagon and ceremoniously escorted the general through an honor cordon, a bestowal conventionally reserved for the highest-ranking US officials. 

Many foreign leaders visit the US, but very few receive the hospitality provided to Bajwa. Despite Bajwa’s grand welcome, both nations remained tight-lipped over the agenda of discussion and divulged little to the public. The Department of Defense broadly summarized the encounter, stating that “discussions focused on opportunities to address key mutual defense interests”. 

American citizens, South Asians, and the world at large deserve to know what was actually discussed between the two military officers. Was India a topic of discussion? How do the US and Pakistan plan on containing  the Taliban? These unanswered questions are pertinent to both regional and international security.

Why India Should Not Trust Pakistan

There are three main reasons why India should be dubious of Pakistan’s call for peace.

First, providing aid to Pakistan in the past has made no impact on its geopolitical aim. Pakistan continues to harbor UN-designated terrorists like , and .  Militants of the , , and around 81 other proscribed still currently operate in Pakistan. The madrassas continue to radicalize the young, filling the vessels of their minds with hatred and bigotry. Meanwhile, Pakistan continues to have clandestine with China, allowing Chinese officials and military officers to operate in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and .

Second, the Pakistani government is in a precarious position as deep internal division and civil unrest continue to plague the nation. India cannot rely on the promises of the Pakistani government when so many different separatist groups are still actively trying to dismantle it.

While the Pakistani  military is doing everything it can to ensure the territorial integrity of Pakistan, overstretching, the ambiguity of Pakistan’s national interests and overall political instability are making it very difficult to manage.

Third, at a time when countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are modernizing and incorporating more tolerant values, Pakistan is falling back into medievalism. The of religious places belonging to Ahmadiyyas, a tolerant Muslim sect, are becoming commonplace  in “modern” Pakistan. 

Since the partition of India and its birth as an independent nation, Pakistan has used ‘jihad’ to achieve foreign policy objectives. Since the dictatorship of General , the Pakistani military has succumbed to religious indoctrination and supported religious wars in J&K and Afghanistan. Pakistani media, police and other governmental agencies have also become strongholds of the ‘mullah’ and militantism.

India would be taking a colossal risk if it engages in peace agreements with radioactive Pakistan. Instead, India should focus on its own economic growth and development, rather than investing time and resources in a nation that ultimately appears to be unwilling to reform.

If Pakistan truly desires peace with India, then it should begin by taking concrete actions against terrorism on the ground. A good place to start would be with the destruction of the terrorist that are spreading across the LOC. Before any real negotiations can begin, both India and Pakistan should take heed of this great proverb: Actions speak louder than words.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Truth About Pakistan’s Peace Proposition appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In July of 1994, a man drove an explosive-laden van into the headquarters of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) killing 85 and injuring more than 300 people. The bombing is the deadliest terrorist incident on Argentine soil to date.

In 2006, the Argentine federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman accused Iran’s paramilitary force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of designing the AMIA attack, and its Lebanese proxy force Hezbollah of executing it. However, there have been members within Argentina’s political leadership who have consistently sought to stall any investigation into the case.

More Twists and Turns

Among them was Argentina’s former president  Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, now serving a six-year prison sentence for corruption. When Fernández came to power in 2007, the country signed a memorandum of understanding  withIran.  Together with Interpol, the two governments agreed to form a truth commission.

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Multiple  Jewish community groups in Argentina, including the AMIA, filed a petition denouncing the memorandum as unconstitutional. Their  contention was that the evidence of Iran’s involvement in the bombing  was undeniable, and that it offered no benefit to the victims of the attack or Argentina. .

Nisman also opposed the memorandum, calling it a “wrongful interference of the executive branch” , and accused President Fernández and her government of trying to cover up Iran’s involvement.. 

Nisman  even a 300-page dossier on the Kirchner government’s efforts to cover up the AMIA incident. Butt in January of 2015, before he had a chance to present his findings to  Congress, he was shot dead. Hismurder as well as that of the AMIA bombing are still open.

After Mauricio Macri succeeded Fernández later that same year , his justice ministry immediatelyoided the memorandum. Israel’s former and most likely next prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the move as a “welcome change of direction” for  Argentina and expressed hope that relations with Tel Aviv  would improve.

However, the seizure  of an Iranian-Venezuelan Boeing 747 in Buenos Aires lastJune added  another  twist to an unfolding drama . The plan had a crew of 19 people, 5 were Iranians. Some had clear ties to the IRGC and the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s . It was also discovered that  such flights to Argentina have been a regular occurrence for some time. 

This has raised many questions regarding the extent of Iran’s security and military presence as well as political influence in Argentina. For example, the pilot of the seized plane, Gholamreza Ghasemi, is aranking of the Quds Force, the same security wing  that plotted the AMIA bombing.

Just An Argentine Cover Up?

The opposition and members of the judiciary have accused Macri’s  government of orchestrating a of these  flights of the regime-affiliated Iranian-Venezuelan aircraft to Argentina. Many of the current Argentine government officials are the same people who signed the AMIA memorandum under Fernández.

Last July, a group of US Senate Republicans sent a letter to the Biden administration demanding a rationale for their delay in delivering key information of the Iranian suspects in the Boeing case to Argentine law enforcement officials. e. They believed the administration was aware of the extent of the IRGC’s association in South America but were withholding information in order to not undermine efforts to revive the JCPOA.

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Last August, Argentina arrested four Iranians with fake French passports with possible links to the  Revolutionary Guards. They were arrested at Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires, intending to  fly to Amsterdam. 

The arrest for the four was issued by the Federal Judge Federico Villena, who is also in charge of investigating the Boeing case.

In October, a month after protests in Iran began, Argentina released the Boeing 747 cargo plane and the 5 crew members still detained. The federal judge Federico Villena determined that there was no basis to prosecute the crew. However, the judicial investigation will still remain .

Although the case seems closed at this point, the IRGC’s active presence in South America can be still used to  scuttle the JCPOA for good.  Flight records even show that the same Boeing plane made a brief stop in Moscow before heading to . 

In light of all of these events, Washington should find no reason to appease the theocrats of Tehran with a revised nuclear deal. Hopefully, the JCPOA will finally enter the archives of failed deals with dictators.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How is the AMIA Bombing Linked to the IRGC Aircraft in Argentina? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

While I hadn’t seen the person under investigation for years, my memories of him and of some of the things he’d done scared me. For example, when we were young teens, he threatened to bury me alive over a disagreement. He even dug a hole to demonstrate his intent. I knew that if I were to cooperate with this investigation, my testimony would not be anonymous. As a mother of two children living on an isolated farm, that left me with misgivings.

There was also another consideration. A neighbor, herself a retired police officer, suggested that perhaps the investigation could be focused not just on him, but on me, too. “Maybe it’s because of stuff you’ve written,” she suggested, mentioning my deep involvement in Brown University’s , which I co-founded as a way of dealing with this country’s nightmarish wars of this century.

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Indeed, the American version of the twenty-first century, marked by our government’s devastating decision to respond to the September 11, 2001, attacks with a Global War on Terror — first in Afghanistan, then Iraq, and then in other countries across the — has had its grim effects at home as well.  It’s caused us to turn on one another in confusing ways. After all, terror isn’t a place or a people. You can’t eradicate it with your military.  Instead, as we learned over the last couple of decades, you end up turning those you don’t like into enemies in the bloodiest of counterinsurgency wars.

I’ve researched for years how those wars of ours also helped deepen our domestic inequalities and political divisions, but after all this time, the dynamics still seem mysterious to me. Nonetheless, I hope I can at least share a bit of what I’ve noticed happening in the conservative, privileged community I grew up in, as well as in the military community I married into.

Around the time I co-founded the Costs of War Project in the early 2010s, I fell in love with a career military officer. Our wars were then in full swing. At home, the names of killed by our , ever more off the country’s battlefields, were just seeping into wider public consciousness as was a political backlash against prosecutions of the police. Anti-government extremist militias like the and the , some of whom would storm the Capitol on , to try to violently block the certification of an elected president, were already seething about the supposed of the Obama administration and that Black president’s foreign birth. But back then, those guys all seemed — to me at least — very much a part of America’s fringe. 

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Back then, I also didn’t imagine that men in uniform would emerge as a central part of the leadership and membership of such extremist groups. Sadly, they did. As journalist pointed out recently, of the 897 individuals indicted so far for their involvement in the January 6th violence, 118 had backgrounds in the U.S. military and a number of them had fought in this country’s war on terror abroad. police officers from a dozen different departments around the country similarly attended the rally that preceded the Capitol riot and several faced criminal charges.

What also sends chills down my spine is that federal law enforcement agencies on the warning signs of all this. Had the FBI acted on information that extremist groups were planning violence on January 6th, it might not have happened.

A Nation Rich in Fear

If one thing captured the spirit of the post-9/11 moment for me, in retrospect, it was the creation of a cabinet-level (DHS), which has defined itself as a “whole-of-society endeavor, from every federal department and agency to every American across the nation.” for that new department would total more than $1 trillion from 2002 through 2020, more than six times expenditures for similar activities at various government agencies during the previous 20 years.

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With its hundreds of thousands of workers, DHS often seems susceptible to overusing its authority and ignoring real threats. Case in point: of the approximately 450 politically motivated violent taking place on our soil in the past decade, the majority were perpetrated by far-right, homegrown violent extremists. Yet all too tellingly, the DHS has largely remained on foreign terrorist groups — and homegrown jihadist groups inspired by them — as the main threats to this country.

Thanks to the passage of the in 2001, federal authorities were also empowered to obtain the financial and Internet records of Americans, even if they weren’t part of an authorized investigation. In the process, the government violated the of tens of thousands of citizens and non-citizens. Authorities at government agencies ranging from the FBI to the Pentagon secretly the communications and activities of peace groups like the Quakers and Occupy Wall Street activists. Worse yet, in June 2013, Americans learned that the was collecting telephone records from tens of millions of us based on a secret court order.

Such practices only seemed to legitimize vigilantism on the part of Americans who adopted the DHS’s mantra, “.” Incidents of directed towards people of Muslim and South Asian background spiked early in the post 9/11 war years and again (I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn!) after Donald Trump entered the White House in 2017.

Sometime before that, a relative visiting me noticed a darker-skinned man, a tourist, taking photos of historic buildings in my community, while speaking on his phone in Arabic. To my shame, she began questioning him, based on “a feeling that something was wrong.” In other words, well before “The Donald” put “” in the contemporary American lexicon, feelings and not facts all too often seemed to rule the day.

“Is that the Russia?” or Dangers Near and Far

Terrorism was at once everywhere and nowhere for those who were supposed to be fighting that war on terror, including members of the military. In 2013, when my husband was on a months-long deployment at sea, another wife, whom I had texted about having a party for the crew on their return, texted me back a warning. I had, she claimed, jeopardized the safety of my husband and other crew members on his boat. After all, what if some foreign enemy intercepted our exchange and learned about the boat’s plans?

Four years later, in the shadow of Donald Trump’s presidency, it only got worse. A stressed-out, combat-traumatized commander, who took over the vessel to which my spouse was next assigned, emailed us wives weekly warnings against sending messages just like the one I had dispatched years earlier. He also ordered us not to email our husbands anything that could be imagined as negative, even if it reflected the realities of our lives: sick children, struggles with depression, financial troubles when we had to miss workdays to be a single parent. According to him, to upset our spouses in uniform was to jeopardize the security and wellbeing of the boat and indeed of America. He could read our emails and decide which ones made it to our loved ones. It was an extreme atmosphere to find myself in and I started to wonder: was I an asset or a threat to this country? Could my harmless words endanger lives?

One summer evening toward the end of another long deployment at sea, a fellow spouse tasked with disseminating confidential information about the boat our spouses were on arrived at my home unannounced. I was feeding my older toddler at the time. She whispered to me that our husbands’ boat was returning to port soon and swore me to silence because she didn’t want anyone beyond the command to know about the vessel’s movements. It was, she said, a matter of “operational security.” Then she took a glance out the window as though a foreign spy or terrorist might be listening.

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“Oh! That’s great!” I replied to her news. Later, I tried to explain to my bewildered child what “operational security,” or keeping information about daddy’s whereabouts away from our country’s enemies, meant. He promptly pointed toward that same window and said, “Is it the Russia? Does the Russia live there?” (He’d overheard too many conversations at home about nuclear geopolitics.) The next day, pointing to a mischievous-looking ceramic garden gnome in a neighbor’s yard, he asked again, “Is that the Russia?”

It was not Russia, I assured him. But six years later, in a weary and anxious country that only recently gave The Donald a true body blow, I still wonder about the dangers of our American world in a way I once didn’t.

The 2020s and the Biggest-Loser-in-Chief

Eventually, my family and I settled into what will hopefully be our final stint of military life — an office job for my spouse and a home in rural Maryland. But somehow, in those Trump years, the once-distant dangers of our world seemed ever closer at hand.

This was the time, after all, when the president felt comfortable posting a meme of himself beating up a , while his Homeland Security officials peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon. I soon began to wonder whether returning to something approximating normal civilian life was ever going to happen in this disturbed and disturbing land of ours.

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Motorcyclists sporting confederate flags drove by on the rural highway in front of my house. Blue Lives Matter flags fluttered in a nearby town after the police murdered . Even years after Trump left office, as the polls leading up to the midterm elections seemed to indicate a coming , I wondered if I had been wrong to imagine that our fellow Americans would choose democracy over… well, who knew what?

As part of that election campaign, I wrote nearly 200 letters to Democratic voters in swing states urging them to get to the polls as I was planning to do. Remembering a trend my friends and I had started on social media in 2020, I considered posting a funny photograph of my sweet, excitable rooster, Windy, sitting next to piles of letters, with the caption, “Windy is vigilant about the state of our democracy! Are you?”

Then I thought twice about it, another sign of our times. It occurred to me that if I did participate in an investigation against an angry person in uniform, the one I had once known, I risked retaliation and — yes, I did think this at the time — what better target was there than our strange outdoor pet? On realizing that it was I who was now starting to think like some fear-crazed maniac, I forced myself to dismiss the thought.

Of course, that predicted red wave turned out to be, at worst, a ripple, while election denialism and voter intimidation seemed to collapse in a post-election heap. of the most extreme MAGA candidates running for top election positions in swing states won. Was it possible that Americans had started to see the irony, not to say danger, of voting for public officials who attack the basic tenets of our democracy?

In the end, I told the guy investigating my childhood acquaintance that I couldn’t help him, feeling that I had nothing new to add for a crew with such sweeping powers of surveillance. To my relief, he simply wished me the best. The normal tenor of that conversation changed something in my thinking about the government and this moment of ours.

I found myself returning to an older (perhaps saner) view of our times, as well as the military and law enforcement. Yes, our disastrous wars of this century had brought home too many unnerved, disturbed, and damaged soldiers and small numbers of them became all too extreme, while over-armed police forces did indeed create problems for us.

However, it was also worth remembering that the military and the police are not monoliths. They aren’t “blue lives” or “the troops,” but individuals. They are part of all our lives, as fallible as they are potentially capable of helping us form a more perfect union instead of the chaos and cruelty that Donald Trump exemplifies. Were Americans — all of us from all walks of life — more willing to stand up to bigotry and extremism, we might still help change what’s happening here for the better.

[ first published this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How Terror Came Home and What to Make of It appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Taliban is the product of Pakistan’s proxy wars driven by ideology. Thousands of religious madrassas that have taught millions promote extremism and violence. Their was developed in the 1980s for the mujahideen to unleash violence on Soviet troops. As is well known, the US and Saudi Arabia supported the mujahideen during the Cold War. In fact, hardline Saudi Wahhabi ideology deeply influenced the madrassas, the mujahideen and the Taliban.

When the US decided to withdraw from Afghanistan, the government collapsed and the Pashtun-led Taliban took over. Much of the world was stunned by this speedy takeover. Pakistan was the only major actor prepared for this development. Note that the Taliban  took over on August 15, 2021 and, as early as September 4, Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, the chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),was in . Hameed helped settle the Taliban’s internal disputes and paved the path for a caretaker government.

The same thing but different context

In many ways, the Taliban’s victory is a repetition of Afghanistan’s history. The 2020 US-Taliban deal was consistent with the 1988 Afghanistan-Pakistan Geneva Accords. That deal paved the way for the Soviet withdrawal and, subsequently, the collapse of the Afghan government.  For many Afghanistan experts, the US “peace” negotiation with the Taliban was a “” process.

Afghanistan’s government was excluded from the 2020 deal. The US made a deal with a misogynistic, ethnonationalist, fundamentalist terrorist organization and abandoned the democratically elected government. This led to its speedy collapse.

Once the Taliban took over Kabul, they captured all the institutions of the state that had been built over 20 years since 2001. The previous Taliban regime fell because the US intervened after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Now, the Taliban are back and they have captured billions of dollars worth of US military equipment, which they are using to consolidate their power.

Although there is uncertainty in the region concerning the Taliban’s future, regional players, such as Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and China, have adopted a strategy of .  The Taliban also control all sources of the country’s income, which sustains their forces and protects their regime.

Contrary to the rhetoric and promises of the so-called Taliban 2.0, they have been pursuing the same brutal policies that characterized their reign in the 1990s. Extrajudicial killings, ethnic cleansing, discrimination against women and other oppressive measures are back. They have trampled civil society and lack political legitimacy.

The Talibanization of Afghanistan’s society is proceeding swiftly. They are building thousands of madrassas to promote their radical ideology. They have banned schools for girls, changed the education curriculum and impose their radical interpretations of Islam upon an ethnically diverse nation.

The Taliban have also maintained their relationship with terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. The killing of Aiman al-Zawahiri by the US on July 31, 2022 in Kabul demonstrates that the Taliban is still harboring top leaders of al-Qaeda and is a haven for terrorists.

Brutal repression, little legitimacy

The Taliban have imposed a primitive totalitarian regime on a diverse country. They have failed to create a formal political process or a vision for the country. Instead, the Taliban have used violence, rural Pashtun tribalism and hardline Islamic Sharia law on ethnic groups with very different cultures. They are marginalizing and often killing non-Pashtuns, particularly the Shia Hazaras.

Pashtuns are now in-charge of areas. Naturally, the Hazaras feel their homeland has been occupied. The Taliban have also changed signs in universities from Farsi to Pashto even in Persian-speaking areas such as Balkh in the north. Signs outside ministries are also in . Naturally, non-Pashtuns are not pleased.

The Taliban’s policy toward women is extremely harsh. They have re-instituted their “,” decimating existing women’s rights, such as their right to travel, work, education, and participate in public life. Torture and extra-judicial killings are now common practice.

The Taliban’s highly centralized model of governance does not, cannot and will not function well. Once, Afghanistan’s kings had the mandate to control the country on behalf of a colonial power through a highly centralized system. This history created a highly centralized model of governance and fostered a psychology of ethnic domination within the Pashtun elites. The Taliban are deeply committed to this model.  

This centralized model has taken a hit. Both during the Soviet occupation and the 20-year democratic experiment, concentration of power abated. Unsurprisingly, the anti-Taliban fronts are calling for a decentralized political setup. Centralization is associated with brutality, dysfunction, and a crisis of legitimacy. The current centralization is no different. It is brutal, violent and oppressive.

The Taliban rejects elections and rules the countrywithout any formally-defined or system of checks and balances. There are no political processes that establish legitimacy. Most of the Taliban leaders and commanders are not familiar with Afghan society, and they cannot speak Persian, the lingua franca of the country.

The Taliban has also failed to behave like a normal state at the international level. No country has recognized them even when they are compelled to interact with the Taliban. Even did not recognize them unilaterally. Their links with terrorist groups have been an added concern.

It seems unlikely that the Taliban should succeed in the long term. Their Pashtun ethnonationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, violent oppression and extreme centralization does not work in multiethnic Afghanistan. As proxies of Pakistan, the Taliban do not even command legitimacy among all Pashtuns.

More war and the danger of mass atrocities

The situation in Afghanistan is moving towards another round of conflict. The people are finally rising up against the brutal regime. In recent months, an insurrection is in the north. The Taliban is crushing this with its customary savagery. The international community has largely overlooked in the north but resistance is strengthening.

In the online sphere, the “#StopHazaraGenocide” has been tweeted more than 17 million times and sparked protests in cities around the world, which shows that the Taliban failed to provide security. As continue, so do protests. Women are protesting too.  Hundreds of them have taken to the streets in the provinces of Kabul, Balkh, Bamiyan, Herat and Ghazni since the return of the Taliban to power but were repressed by the Taliban.

Given rising protests, the Taliban are likely to find it difficult to rule. To support the people, the international community must systematically monitor and document violence in Afghanistan. The Security Council and the Human Rights Council at the UN have a critical role to play. Overlooking the Taliban’s violence and building relationships with them is a bad idea. It sends a signal that they can continue their repressive rule. The international community must put pressure on the Taliban to to stop human rights violations, recommence girls education, and conduct political dialogue with other ethnicities, groups and stakeholders. If the international community fails to act, there will be even more death and suffering in Afghanistan.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Destiny of Pakistan’s Totalitarian Proxy Regime in Afghanistan appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In particular, the Muslim Brotherhood’s social and economic policies were similar to fascist ones. Furthermore, al-Banna with both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Since the 1960s, some scholars have even argued that the Muslim Brotherhood is inspired more by nationalism and socialism, less by Islam. Manfred Halpern’s iconic , The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa, argues that the Muslim Brotherhood embraced totalitarianism and rejected modernism.  

The MB totalitarian vision

The Muslim Brotherhood’s totalitarian vision was inspired by Islam. It saw modernity and individuality threatening. The organization championed tradition and belonging to a community instead. This community was of pious Egyptian Muslims who would live in an egalitarian society. Traditional Islam, not multiparty democracy, was to act as a guide for the future. This future would only be born after a struggle. As in the case of fascists, violence was a legitimate tool in the Muslim Brotherhood’s struggle. Like all totalitarian ideologies, the Muslim Brotherhood pledged allegiance to al-Banna, its sole leader, and treated his vision as absolute.

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The Muslim Brotherhood’s conception of gender roles was remarkably similar to the Nazis. They encouraged marriage and large families. Women were meant to be mothers and men to be fathers. In this traditional view, men were breadwinners for the family while women were the nurturers of future generations. For this socially conservative organization, promotion of family values was a key goal. Therefore, the Muslim Brotherhood argued for closing down cabarets and dance halls, and censoring plays, films and novels. The organization also suggested improvements in song lyrics to make them more virtuous.

Antisemitism within the Muslim Brotherhood 

Just like the Nazi Party, the Muslim Brotherhood too shared an intense hatred for Jews. For example, , the ideological father of the Muslim Brotherhood, espoused his antisemitism in many of his major works such as the book, Milestones. The book is still considered to be a foundational text for Islamist groups. According to Qutb, the world is divided between the realm of God (Islam) and the realm of Satan (Jews). In Milestones, he writes: “[The Jews’] aim is clearly shown by the Protocols [of the Elders of Zion]. The Jews are behind materialism, animal sexuality, the destruction of the family and the dissolution of society.”

In 1938, seven years before Israel was established, the Muslim Brotherhood led violent demonstrations against Egypt’s Jewish community. That same year, they organized the Parliamentary Conference for the Arab and Muslim Countries in Cairo, where they distributed Arabic translations of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

In his , Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, Jeffrey Herf explores the Nazi Party’s brief but intense efforts to gain support amongst Muslims in the Middle East. He details the prominent role played by Haj Amin al-Husseini, then the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. In 1937, Al-Husseini fled Palestine, evading arrest by the British for instigating the riots that became known as the Arab Revolt. The Grand Mufti had recruited armed militias to attack Jews but his efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.

By 1941, al-Husseini established himself in Nazi Germany and Italy. During the war, he collaborated with the Germans in their efforts to recruit Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen-SS. In 1945, the Grand Mufti was taken into custody by French troops but he escaped and settled in Cairo where he was welcomed with praise. The Muslim Brotherhood’s issued a to Al Misri that is still telling: “One hair of the Mufti’s is worth more than the Jews of the whole… should one hair of the Mufti’s be touched, every Jew in the world would be killed without”

That the Muslim Brotherhood was, and still to this day, inspired by fascism is a history that needs to be examined in greater detail. The Muslim Brotherhood has been able to establish itself as a moral, social and political force because of the guiding influence of the authoritarian ideologies that emerged in Europe during the interwar period. By studying the Muslim Brotherhood’s conception and development, we may come to better understand how such ideologies transcended the borders of Europe. 

[Naveed Ahsan edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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How do Rome and Tagliacozzo come into the picture in an article on Afghanistan?

Well, both places are relevant because my friend Tonino Bettanini is a philosopher, a politician and a Renaissance man with much expertise on Afghanistan. He was presenting his latest book, Bruxelles, Les Pelouses des Anglais (Brussels, the Lawns of the English) at the prestigious 38^th mid-summer international festival of Tagliacozzo. Fortuitously, , a noted Italian diplomat and author was also presenting his book at the same time. Pontecorvo was  NATO’s last senior civilian representative to Afghanistan and served as Italy’s ambassador to Pakistan.

Furthermore, Pontecorvo spent his childhood in the 1960s in Kabul and Islamabad, where his father also served as a diplomat. The  good ambassador was presenting his book, L’ultimo aereo da Kabul (The Last Flight from Kabul), which describes the last few days of NATO’s hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and his own departure on one of the last flights out from Kabul. 

Going to Tagliacozzo did not only give me an hour with one of Italy’s most talented and colorful diplomats, it also gave me Pontecorvo’s point of view on the current situation in Afghanistan. This was a godsend because the US had just killed Ayman al-Zawahiri on July 31. Obviously, Italy’s star diplomat had a lot to say and I have done a lot more thinking on the matter since.

Why kill al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri?

The killing of , the lackluster, pedantic idealogue of Al-Qaeda, brings a strange closure to the US “War on Terror,” which began with 9/11.  Egyptian-born al-Zawahiri, was known to be a confidant of Saudi Osama bin Laden, who was America’s public enemy number one, until he was found and killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, over 10 years ago.

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The world had all but forgotten about al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda. This organization had declined dramatically since the days of bin Laden and was no longer the most dangerous global Islamic terrorist organization. More deadly organizations such as ISIS have taken its place. Islamic terrorism has evolved extensively since bin Laden and al-Zawahiri masterminded the attacks on New York and, before 9/11, on several other US targets. The aging al-Zawahiri neither had the finances nor the sophistication to upgrade to “,” a concept popularized by Adewunmi J. Falode in 2018. Falode argues this terrorism “has two basic and definable characteristics: it is fratricidal and genocidal in nature.”

The killing of al-Zawahiri marks the end of a chapter for the US. However, its timing, significance and collateral results open uncomfortable questions. Since the killing of Osama bin Laden by the Obama administration in which Biden was vice president, al-Zawahiri’s role and importance has been downgraded by intelligence and political analysts. After bin Laden’s death, al-Zawahiri was proclaimed the leader of al-Qaeda. Under his leadership, the organization was unable to launch any significant attack on the West.

After hurriedly abandoning Afghanistan less than a year ago, the Biden administration has steered clear of South Asia. This has allowed China and Russia to increase their influence in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The region is now literally in flames. Myanmar is being ruled by a pro-China military junta that executes democracy activists arbitrarily. The Taliban control Afghanistan. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are at war with the Pakistani establishment despite Pakistan’s close relationship with the Afghan Taliban and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) exercising much control over the Haqqani network. Both Pakistan and Sri Lanka are facing unprecedented economic catastrophes.

As if the mess in South Asia and Ukraine was not enough, Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to fly to Taiwan to fan flames in East Asia too. Curiously, this is precisely the time that the Biden administration authorized a drone strike to kill the most famous face in the US after bin Laden. That al-Zawahiri might never have been that relevant or important an operative is immaterial. It made Americans feel good and took Pelosi as well as Ukraine off the headlines for a day or two.

Not only Indian analysts but also South Asia expert Michael Kugelman, Pakistan might have had a role to play in al-Zawahiri’s killing. The army and the ISI need US support. So does the ragtag coalition government led by who is dealing with “an ailing economy amid political turmoil.” To ride out the crisis, Pakistani bigwigs have done what they always do: go with a begging bowl to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). With US support, Pakistan could get the latest installment of funds from the IMF and avoid defaulting on its debt a la Sri Lanka.

Other analysts that “Mullah Yaqoob, Afghanistan’s defense minister and son of the late Taliban founder Mullah Omar, disclosed al-Zawahiri’s location during his recent visit to Qatar.” Who enabled the killing of al-Zawahiri is neither here nor there. The key question here is simple: what does it achieve?

Justice, Revenge or Convenient Distraction?

One argument for killing al-Zawahiri is it brings this terrorist to justice. A reason to kill is America’s emotional need for revenge, which curiously might not be that different from the Pashtun tradition of . As this author mentioned earlier, the killing might just have been a convenient distraction at an inconvenient time.

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The Russia-Ukraine War is not going terribly well. Boris Johnson and Mario Draghi, two great proponents of war, have been defenestrated. The Russians are making slow but steady and bloody progress. Inflation has ripped through the global economy, putting hundreds of millions at risk of starvation. Biden, Pelosi and their fellow Democrats are increasingly nervous about November’s midterm elections. The word on the street in Washington is that Democrat staffers are now gunning for lobbying positions in anticipation of the defeat of their bosses.

The youthful-looking 82-year-old Pelosi has flown to Taiwan arguably to boost Democrat poll prospects and burnish her legacy. This visit has been an unmitigated disaster. has opined that her “trip to Taiwan highlights America’s incoherent strategy” and that the Biden administration’s foreign policy is a mess.

After al-Zawahiri’s killing, the farce of the has been formalized. The Taliban never observed this agreement. It is fair to say that it paved the way for the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul. After all, al-Zawahiri was living in a building owned by the Haqqanis in a posh Kabul neighborhood. The are infamous and powerful. They hold key positions in the Taliban government. As per the BBC, the Haqqani network is “one of the region’s most powerful and feared militant groups.” With al-Zawahiri’s killing, the US has joined the Taliban in signaling that the Doha agreement is dead and buried six feet under.

The Consequences of Killing an Aging Has-Been

The Biden administration might have scored a big point at home by killing al-Zawahiri. However, this killing will not go down well with the Haqqani network. As per the honor code of the Pashtuns, which is known as Pashtunwali, they are now duty bound to avenge the killing of a guest. After all, al-Zawahiri was under the protection of the Haqqanis and they have now lost face. Honor dictates that they act against the US.

As and when the Haqqani network strikes, Pakistan will find itself in a tight spot. Pakistani elites need to keep Uncle Sam in good humor. Inflation is rising, unemployment is skyrocketing and the state’s coffers are empty. For the 23^rd time since 1958, Pakistan needs from the Washington-based IMF. This is only possible with US blessing. If the ISI-backed Haqqani network strikes American targets, any politician in Washington will find it hard to make a case for Pakistan getting more IMF cash.

There is another fly in the ointment. Pakistan is not only suffering from economic meltdown but also political turmoil. The Afghan Taliban brokered talks between Pakistan and the outlawed TTP. They have ended in . A spike in cross-border terrorist attacks by the TTP have followed. In retaliation, Pakistan has launched airstrikes in Afghanistan targeting the TTP. This has led to a dangerous deterioration in the internal security situation in Pakistan.

The jihadist groups that the still somewhat secular Pakistani military backed to dominate Afghanistan and undermine India are now turning against their masters. It is yet another case of Dr. Victor Frankenstein not being able to control his monster. In Islamabad’s case, it has to deal with too many monsters.

Pakistan’s turn to violence is also because the state has become completely dysfunctional. The populist Imran Khan has been turfed out by Pakistan’s traditional dynasties. Military rule failed the country and now democracy is not delivering either. Kleptocratic elites are packing off their children abroad in droves. It is an open secret that property prices in Dubai go up when IMF money comes into Pakistan. The people are fed up with the system and are turning to jihadis for recourse.

Pakistan’s colonial state has been unable to deliver basic services to its people. This includes elementary education. Religious schools termed madrassas have stepped in to fill the void. These madrassas teach millions of male children the Quran and the teachings of the prophet. Numerous by various intelligence agencies and think tanks chronicle how these schools have increased fanaticism and become breeding grounds for terror. The Taliban are their most illustrious alumni. Even China’s CCTV News, generally not known for its worldliness, has now started making documentaries on .

Reports that Pakistan provided the information that led to al-Zawahiri’s killing will cause many, if not all, of radical Islamist Frankenstein’s monsters to turn on their master. Terror incidents are likely to increase in the country. Even if Pakistan is absolved of blame, the blame may land on Yaqoob. This will pit the faction led by Yaqoob and against the Haqqani network, creating conditions for yet another civil war in Afghanistan.

As Pontecorvo aptly summed up, “When Osama bin Laden flew to Afghanistan in the early 1990s as a guest of Mullah Omar, he started marrying Arab fighters to local women and vice versa. This created over 300 mixed Arab-Pashtun families who were part of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda entourage. Now, many of them are senior members of the Haqqani network, including himself. These families have both Arab and Pashtun blood, making it improbable that al-Qaeda and the faction of the Haqqani network will ever separate.” The killing of al-Zawahiri might set off the Loya Paktia and the Loy Kandahar factions of the Taliban against each other.

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Apart from triggering fratricidal fighting within the Taliban, al-Zawahiri’s killing will cause an upheaval in al-Qaeda itself. A new leadership will take over and might be leaner, meaner, younger, hungrier and bloodier than bin Laden’s sidekick. In fact, the killing might lead to just the sort of CEO change that al-Qaeda needed.

The Biden administration has clearly not thought beyond its nose while killing al-Zawahiri. This White House is proving to be fractious, overstretched and incompetent in its foreign policy decisions. Instead of closure to the trauma of 9/11, al-Zawahiri’s killing has opened a Pandora’s box in one of the most dangerous times since 1945.

This is not only my thinking but also those of my eminent Italian friends with whom I enjoyed an aperitivo in the glorious piazza of Tagliacozzo before driving back home.

(In an era of a global pandemic, social media wars and explosively evolving geopolitics, the human spirit and its expression have suffered the most. With apologies to Edward Morgan Forster, “Rome, with a View” is a view of humanity from an interesting perspective. The author, a third culture kid, gathers from his various perches in the eternal city of Rome — Caput Mundi,  the capital of the ancient world — the whispers of wisdom through the ages imperfectly and perhaps even unwisely.)

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Al-Zawahiri’s Killing Will Increase Global Chaos and Insecurity appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The ICG report details the apparent ease with which small units of ISIS fighters, in groups of four or five, conduct raids on Syrian troops and SDF forces, conduct assassinations and mete out other forms of punishment on those deemed to have “collaborated” with any enemy. The report also details how ISIS runs lucrative smuggling and extortion rackets. These provide the funds to recruit and pay fighters and to equip them with weapons.

Of Prisons and Prisoners

The report points out the vulnerability of the 27 prisons holding ISIS fighters scattered throughout the northeast of the country as well as the holding camps for women and children, the most notorious of which is al-Hol. There, militant hardline women much of the camp. The SDF, already stretched, is charged with policing and holding the prisons, the holding camps as well as IDP camps. “Our ticking time bomb” is how a senior SDF commander, citing a lack of personnel and resources, describes al-Hol where 15 murders were committed in the first three months of this year.

The SDF’s vulnerability was on full display in January when ISIS launched a full-scale attack on Ghowayran Prison in Hasakah:

“The attack showcased the shortcomings of existing security mechanisms. A prison holding thousands of ISIS fighters was guarded by members of unarmed self-defence units who had received minimal training before being deployed.  The inmates quickly overran this under-trained and under-equipped force.”

It took nearly two weeks to bring the attack to an end and it was only achieved with the aid of US and British airstrikes and special forces on the ground. The ICG estimates that 200 SDF soldiers died in the fighting along with hundreds of ISIS fighters and inmates. Hundreds more .

Guerrilla Tactics

That sort of full frontal assault as on Ghowayran Prison has been something of an anomaly. ISIS tactics in Syria by and large are classic guerrilla engagements of the hit and run variety: attacks on checkpoints and convoys by small mobile cells operating independently of a central command.

ISIS conducted an ambush on a bus of Syrian army soldiers in Jabal Bishri, Raqqa, on June 20, killing at least 13 soldiers. The insurgency flourishes in a climate of suspicion, resentment and fear that the Arab population holds for the Kurdish-dominated SDF. Add to that the extreme climate conditions that have significantly damaged harvests as drought conditions and high temperatures prevail and the elements for constant insurgency are all in place.

Details of the severity of the agricultural crisis are available in a from the Turkish-based Operations & Policy Center which notes:

“Since the latter months of 2020, Syria has yet again fallen into a severe drought. This new drought is occurring in a country whose agricultural capacity has already been decimated by decades of  agricultural and water misgovernance, as well as an 11-year war, making it less capable of coping with a drought than at any point in its modern history.”

In such dire conditions, ISIS recruits new fighters easily, especially as its well-organized smuggling infrastructure provides the cash to lure desperate young men to become ISIS foot soldiers.

The ICG sheds light on a sophisticated and well-oiled machine that includes the bribing of elements both in the regime and the SDF:

“The north east has become a pillar of ISIS finances. The SDF-held territory is rich in natural resources, including oil and gas, and has longstanding economic links to other parts of Syria, as well as Iraq. ISIS relies on three primary funding sources: racketeering, taxation and smuggling. With this money ISIS buys weapons and supplies, offers stipends to its members’ families, bribes SDF guards to secure detainees’ release, recruits new fighters and pays the occasional hit man.”

The report continues:

“In many ways, ISIS operates like a mafia, preying on governing institutions and businesses through extortion and blackmail. In some cases, it has recruited local council employees to collect protection money from their colleagues. It also shakes down traders, artisanal oil refinery owners, bakers and smugglers. It is unclear how ISIS determines the amount of money to demand from each target, but SDF officials claim that oil investors and refinery owners pay thousands of dollars per month to avoid ISIS attacks on their businesses.”

The ICF report, though it paints a bleak picture, does not foresee the restoration of a caliphate. Rather it sees an ongoing insurgency, one that harasses and destabilizes, all the while building on the economic miseries that the still-unresolved Syrian civil war  and the drought have unleashed. Integral to any strategy to finally see off ISIS is cooperation between the many factions, both internal and external, that bedevil the conflict. With such cooperation seeming more a pipedream than reality, the ISIS insurgency will remain a constant threat within Syria, neighbouring Iraq and well beyond as it inspires the next generation of jihadist terrorists.

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Recent developments seem undesirable for the Pakistani establishment, which had high hopes for a negotiated settlement between Islamabad and the TTP. After two rounds of official negotiations, Pakistan seems to be opting for a military solution. In April 2022, the Pakistani military carried out a against TTP hideouts in the eastern provinces of Afghanistan. As per the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative, these killed 20 children and 47 civilians. Tweets by the UNICEF representative caused in western capitals because sleeping children died.

It seems that what appeared a victory last year is turning out to be a strategic blunder. Pakistan has empowered the Afghan Taliban and, in the process, the TTP as well. Now, how can Islamabad protect its security interests threatened by the TTP? Can Pakistan counter the strategic insecurity emanating from its western client state led by its protégé, the Taliban?

Peace Talks Do Not Promise Long Term Peace

As per Atul Singh and Tabish Forugh, “the Taliban provide inspiration, ideology, organization, support, and expertise to Islamic fundamentalists from around the world and especially in South Asia.” The TTP is a more extreme version of the Taliban. Inspired by their cousins in Afghanistan, the TTP wants to establish a similar fundamentalist Islamist form of governance in the tribal areas across the border in Pakistan. Recently, it has unleashed attacks on Pakistani cities and towns.

The Taliban-Occupied Afghanistan Threatens Global Security

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This was to be expected. The TTP has the support of the Taliban. The two organizations share the same extremist ideology and have similar long term goals. The TTP has become very active this year. On April 2, it kicked off , an offensive that will include “martyrdom attacks, ambushes, bombings, counter-attacks, targeted attacks, laser and sniper attacks.”

Pakistan has responded both militarily and diplomatically. On May 9, a Pakistani arrived in Kabul to have talks with the TTP leadership. It was the third attempt by Pakistan’s leadership to negotiate with the TTP. The Pakistani side was led by Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed who spoke directly with Noor Wali Mehsood, the TTP chief. These talks were mediated by Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s Acting Interior Minister and the leader of the Haqqani Network. Haqqani has long been a close Pakistani ally.

The talks were a protracted affair. The parties took a break and reconvened. On May 18, they announced a ceasefire. The TTP promised to halt its attacks on Pakistani soil while Islamabad released 30 high-level TTP from its prisons. 

For all these tangible results, most analysts take the view that these talks are unlikely to lead to long term peace. Both sides have such contradictory long term goals that it is just a matter of time before dissolve into conflict.

Implications for the US and India

The US is now focused on Ukraine. It has abandoned Afghanistan and taken its eye off the security situation in South Asia. The Taliban is now supporting terror groups with similar extremist Islamist ideology. One of them is its old ally, . As per the UN Sanction Monitoring Team Report, al-Qaeda operatives have already found safe havens and have started bases in Afghanistan.

The US must recalibrate its Afghanistan policy given the increased terror activity in the region. The TTP and al-Qaeda represent the tip of the iceberg. The Taliban is likely to export terror first to Central and South Asia, and then to Europe and the US itself. 

As a non-Muslim nation, India ranks high as a target for Islamists. A nation of kafirs is always a good target for jihad. For centuries, Pashtun tribesmen swept down from their mountain strongholds to raid the plains for gold and women in wave after wave of jihad. Therefore, India has to form a more robust policy vis-à-vis Afghanistan. Already, there have been in Kabul but India needs to have clarity about its long term strategic goals.

Pakistan now has a client regime in Afghanistan. However, it faces a TTP problem. Also, the Taliban itself is divided. Islamabad does not have it all its own way. Furthermore, the Hazaras face violent persecution, if not ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Tajiks are also being hunted down. Both the US and India can play a major role in supporting persecuted groups and containing the Taliban as well as its extremist jihadi allies.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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N.B. Tony and Tammy are confirming the testimony of retired Swiss colonel and NATO expert, Jacques Baud, who describes events in February in the days preceding the Russian invasion on February 24. Citing “the daily reports of OSCE observers,” he reveals that “since the 16th, the [Ukrainian] artillery shelling of the populations of Donbass has increased dramatically.”

51�Թ�’s running feature Fly on the Wall is a series of imaginary, but believable dialogues intended to use fiction to help us make sense of the world. Each fictional dialogue takes place in a private setting between sometimes real, sometimes imaginary people in the news or behind the production of news. By exploring the motivation and intentions of the characters, these dialogues provide an opportunity to illuminate the shadows lurking in the secret corners of current events.

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In hindsight, this neglect of Afghanistan was unwise. It cost the US much blood and treasure. The Taliban emerged in the 1990s in Pakistan. It took over Afghanistan and ran a barbarous regime, stoning women to death and decapitating people in public. For a while, all these things seemed far away. That changed on 9/11. What happened in Afghanistan did not stay in Afghanistan. Those attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon still haunt the US.

History is repeating itself. Yet again, Europe is in turmoil. Conflict in Ukraine has proved all-absorbing for Washington. After 20 years, the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan. They are battle-hardened, more resourceful and savvier than in their earlier avatar. They are no less dangerous though.

In much of the Islamic world, anti-American and anti-Western sentiment runs high. The Taliban are seen as the David that has brought down a Goliath. In Central and South Asia, the Taliban have particular appeal. A new generation of jihadists are looking to the Taliban for inspiration now that the Islamic State no longer has the same allure as it once did. Even as many countries engage with the Taliban, they present a growing threat to global security just as they did in the 1990s.

The Taliban Inspire Pakistan’s Terror Factories

In the eyes of fundamentalist Islamists, the Pashtun-led Taliban have a new halo. They are seen as successors of the mujahideen that brought the Soviet Union to its knees. Now, the Taliban have humbled none other than mighty Uncle Sam. They are Allah’s chosen soldiers, role models for terror groups around the world and especially in South Asia. 

Already, Pakistan is feeling the pain of creating a Frankenstein’s monster. The (TTP), an alliance of militant networks formed in 2007 and inspired by the Taliban, has been attacking Pakistani soldiers, policemen and civilians for a while. Most recently, they reportedly ambushed a military convoy near the Afghanistan border, killing Pakistani soldiers. In retaliation, the Pakistani military has carried out in eastern Afghanistan on what they deemed to be TTP sanctuaries. Witnesses say dozens of people, including women and children have died. Many more have been injured. Instead of solving the terror problem afflicting Pakistan, this will add fuel to the fire and provide the TTP with fresh recruits.

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Pakistan finds itself in a bind. It has been running with the hares and hunting with the hounds for much too long. During the War on Terror, Pakistan sold itself to Washington as a partner, even if an unreliable one, that would contain terror in both Afghanistan and Pakistan that is often referred to as AfPak region. At the same time, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) kept supporting the Taliban and other anti-India jihadi groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

This double game along with the failure of the Pakistani state to provide basic services such as health and education has fostered a desperation among a fast-growing population. About of the population is under 30. , hardline Islamic schools, have stepped in to fill the void. About 17,000 of them provide free education to nearly two million students with even five-year-olds memorizing and reciting the Quran without understanding Arabic. The 9-11 Commission’s found Pakistani madrassas were “incubators for violent extremism.” 

Graduates of these madrassas have long had their uses for Pakistani elites. From 1947 itself, these elites have been paranoid about the lack of strategic depth vis-à-vis India and ethnic nationalism in its western provinces. When Bangladesh won its independence in 1971, these fears were exacerbated. Since then, Pakistan has doubled down on intolerant political Islam while failing to tackle endemic poverty and endemic corruption. With a misplaced sense of both paranoia and grandeur, Pakistani elites have packed off poor graduates of madrassas to fight jihads even as they have sent their own children to Dubai, London and New York. Now, some of these madrassas graduates are turning against the Pakistani state itself.

Trouble Brews in Rest of South Asia

The Taliban are inspiring many Indian Muslims too. Most people in the West do not realize that the ideology that inspires the Taliban comes from India. When the British crushed the 1857 Indian uprising and abolished Mughal rule in 1858, this caused dismay among many traditional Muslims. Some of them founded the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary in 1866 to the northeast of Delhi. They taught their students that Indian Muslims would be able to resist British rule by returning to core principles of Islam. This puritanical ideology spread in British India and later in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. In reent years, it has outcompeted the tolerant Persianate Sufi tradition of Islam in the subcontinent, which has peacefully coexisted with indigenous Indian spiritual traditions for centuries.

The Pashtun-led Taliban Could Break Apart Both Afghanistan and Pakistan

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In multireligious and multiethnic India, Deobandi clerics are the victory of the Taliban over “the defeat of a superpower such as the US.” They point to the collapse of the more numerous American-trained Afghanistan National Security and Defense Forces (ANDSF) as proof of the special powers of the Taliban. Many Muslims resent India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which believes in reclaiming India’s pre-Islamic heritage. Some BJP leaders use inflammatory anti-Muslim . Some opposition leaders fan the flames of Muslim insecurity to win votes. Loose talk by the likes of Shashi Tharoor who writes about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “” gives great propaganda material for jihadists.

Quickly forgotten is the fact that Modi’s BJP government is sending of wheat to a Taliban-occupied Afghanistan. The reality for Indian Muslims might not be rosy but it is not as grim as Tharoor paints it to be. Being Ahmadi in Pakistan or Hazara in Afghanistan is far more hazardous. The Pakistani parliament decreed that Ahmadis were non-Muslims as early as 1974 and this Islamic sect has faced increasing since. , a Shia ethnic group, have consistently been targeted by the Taliban who are fundamentalist Sunnis. Together, extreme Hindu rhetoric and Tharoor’s scaremongering are strengthening the hands of Islamic fundamentalists inspired by the Taliban. Muslim parents have been over the radicalization of their children, a trend that could accelerate with the victory of the Taliban.

Fundamentalist Islamists are also on the rise in Bangladesh, Maldives, Sri Lanka and even Nepal. Except for Bhutan, Islamic fundamentalism has been a threat to peace and stability of all nations. Bangladesh’s syncretic Muslim tradition has been under threat for decades thanks to the rise of . Maldives is experiencing what has called “an ominous rise of intolerant Islam” thanks to Saudi money flowing into and Salafist ideology taking over its mosques. Once Saudi-funded, the Taliban inspires many in the Maldives.

Sri Lanka’s marginalized Muslim community has proved to be a fertile breeding ground for fundamentalist Islamic . In Nepal, Muslims have become “active in the larger global movement of Sunni revival,” adding greater instability to an already turbulent nation. Such fundamentalist Sunni movements are energized by the Taliban’s victory over the US.

Unfortunately, South Asian states are unprepared for this rising Talibanization of Islam. They even lack critical political and strategic insights into the implications of the victory of the Taliban. Islamic fundamentalists from around the world and especially from South Asia will inevitably come to Afghanistan for the finishing school of terror. This has happened before. In the 1980s, young Arab Sunni ideologues and fighters such as Abdullah Azam, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden came to fight jihad in Afghanistan. 

Then as now, Washington took its eye off the ball in this part of the world. After all, they had to sort out post-Soviet Eastern Europe and the successor states to the Soviet Union itself. The ball though, as the late Congressman Charlie Wilson apocryphally , “keeps on bouncing,” and is likely to hit us in the face before too long.

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Foreign observers the events of August 15^th as “a bloodless coup.” However, for millions in Afghanistan, particularly Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras, the takeover by the Taliban has meant a to “the darkest days.”

A Bloody and Brutal Regime

The Taliban is dominated by Pashtuns. This ethnic group is also referred to as Afghans and Pathans. The Taliban are an ethno-nationalist and Islamo-fascist group who mix tribal and religious beliefs. In the 1990s, they ruled Afghanistan with brutality and barbarity. 

For all their protestations in the media, the Taliban have not changed one bit. They continue to commit atrocities against women, vulnerable social groups and non-Pashtun ethnic groups. Numerous reports have documented their many . The Taliban still impose cruel punishments  such as lashing, amputation, stoning, beheading and other forms of summary executions.

Videos and reports of savagely violent killings, particularly of Tajiks have come to the fore. The Taliban has been engaging in indiscriminate killing in northern Afghanistan, especially in Panjshir and Baghlan provinces.

On March 11, a graphic video was on social media showing the dreadful killing of the 27-year-old Bilal Ahmad, a secondary school teacher in Hesarak district of Panjshir province,  In the 66 seconds of video footage, the Taliban fighters appear to briefly interrogate Bilal, a Persian-speaking Tajik, in Pashto — a language not spoken in Panjshir — and then shoot him. Mohammad Rashed, Bilal’s younger brother, confirmed that the man in the video footage was his brother.

In another 32-second video which went viral on March 13, a Taliban fighter seems to be interrogating a male civilian before shooting him at close range. The was identified as Khairuddin. Observers noted that he was likely killed in Taala wa Barfak district of Baghlan province. Both Bilal and Khairuddin were the breadwinners of their families. Both have left behind their widows and young children.

Numerous other reports of brutal killings have emerged. The Tajiks are finding themselves at the sharp end of a knife or the smoking barrel of a gun.

Why do the Taliban Target the Tajiks?

Since the establishment of the client state of Afghanistan by Abdul Rahman Khan who ruled from 1880 to 1901, the Pashtun ruling class has not reconciled with the  ethnic heterogeneity of Afghanistan.  This class willfully considers Afghanistan’s ethnic diversity a threat to their exclusive rule. They assume that equal participation of non-Pashtuns in national and local political processes  would defuse their grip on power. This underlying fear of fragmentation has been the raison d’etre for creating a highly centralized  governance system that remains dominated by the Pashtuns.

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Before Abdul Rahman Khan’s reign, Pashtun history was steeped in tribal feuds and intra-ethnic conflicts. While Khan fought against fellow Shinwar  Pashtun tribes  in the east, he was able to unite Pashtuns to some degree and channel their aggression against Tajiks and Uzbeks in the north and Hazaras in central Afghanistan.  Despite the repression, Persian-speaking communities have consistently resisted unilateral Pashtun rule. They have always favored  a more decentralized governance system in Afghanistan.

After Khan’s death, the Pashtun ruling class continued its policy of repression. In 1929, Habibullah Kalakani, a Persian Tajik dissident leader – who was given the nickname “Bacha-e-Saqaw [Son of Water Carrier]” by Pashtuns to cast him to an inferior social standing at the time – briefly broke the chain of Pashtun domination by ousting Amanullah Khan, the grandson of Abdul Rahman Khan. In 1992, Ahmad Shah Massoud, a Tajik military genius led his forces into Kabul. Massoud broke another cycle of Pashtun hegemonic domination by defeating the Soviet-backed Afghan communist government. Burhanuddin Rabbani, a Tajik, became president of Afghanistan. This regime was ousted by the Pashtun-led Taliban who later conspired with Al-Qaeda to assassinate Massoud two days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A number of Pashtuns are euphoric on the return of the Taliban. They belong to many ideological persuasions and political camps. Howerer, ethnic nationalism trumps other sentiments and has plunged Afghanistan into yet another cycle of violence.

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A Tale of Tragic Suffering

The Taliban are ruling the country with an iron fist. They have attempted to cut off Afghanistan from the rest of the world by imposing restrictions on local and media. As they rule behind an iron curtain, the Taliban has been arresting and even their opponents, especially those who served in the Afghanistan National Security and Defense Forces.

The Taliban’s behavior does not sit well with the international community. They have cut aid, frozen Afghanistan’s foreign assets and been wary of providing financial assistance to the country. Recently, the international community pledged in humanitarian aid, far less than the $4.4 billion requested by the UN. The World Bank has also four projects worth $600 million.

Because of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, hunger and malnutrition now ravage the land. So, do tragic premature deaths. In the first quarter of 2022, an estimated 13,000 newborn babies have already of malnutrition. In January, the UN estimated that half a million people lost their in the first six months of the Taliban’s rule. The UN has that a staggering 97% of Afghans could plunge into poverty by the middle of this year. The Taliban is unconcerned about saving babies, preserving jobs or alleviating poverty. Instead, it is obsessed only with concentrating power and implementing their fanatical Islamic agenda.

Cultural Genocide and Gender Apartheid

The Taliban has consistently sought to erase longstanding ancient Persian and other native cultures in Afghanistan by deeming them unIslamic. The regime has banned music in public, several musicians, banned soap operas and prohibited celebrations of Nowruz, the Persian new year. For over three millennia, Nowruz has been celebrated in the Persianate world of which modern day Afghanistan has always been a part. The Taliban is severing that umbilical cultural cord between Afghanistan and its Persian roots in the name of Islam.

When it comes to women, the Taliban has unleashed a policy of gender apartheid. They have been in the news for banning girls from returning to secondary and imposing numerous restrictions on women. Under the Taliban, women cannot travel alone, they have to wear what the Taliban prescribe, they cannot work, they are deprived of education and they live in constant fear of the regime’s religious police. More than anyone else, women lead lives of indignity and humiliation.

The Taliban have turned Afghanistan into a de facto open-air prison. estimates that a record-high 53% of Afghans want to leave their country. It is clear that Afghanistan is in crisis but most powerful states in the international community do not see Afghanistan as vital to their strategic interests. Besides, their focus has shifted to Russia’s occupation of Ukraine and they have no bandwidth to deal with Afghanistan. As a result, Afghans suffer under a fanatical and repressive regime with millions trying to jailbreak to freedom and safety.

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Why Now?

The raid comes after IS conducted an attack on al-Sinaa prison in the northeastern city of Hasakah in January in an attempt to break free its fighters. In the assault, several Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters were . According to SDF officials, IS was  for six months. Nevertheless, the US-backed SDF recaptured the prison about a week later. 

Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona suspects that the attack on the prison “was the catalyst that led to the decision to act on what was obviously already known location intelligence on … al-Qurayshi.” Francona, who served as the US military attaché in Syria from 1992 to 1995, notes that “Over the past few months, there has been an increase in ISIS activity — more widespread and bolder in nature. This also comes at a time when Iranian-backed militias have also stepped up attacks on US forces in Syria and Iraq.”

Both Qurayshi and his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, were eliminated in Idlib province, in areas under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Previously, HTS was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, affiliated with al-Qaeda and initially  with IS. In 2013, however, it  from IS and has been with the group since 2014. In 2016, it also  relations with al-Qaeda and  itself as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS). The following year, JFS assumed its current iteration as it  with other groups. 

During much of the past decade, Idlib served as a  for extremists. In 2017, then-US envoy to the coalition fighting the Islamic State, Brett McGurk,  that “Idlib Province is the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.” Following Baghdadi’s elimination in 2019, former US President Donald Trump suggested Baghdadi was in Idlib as part of a plan to rebuild IS. Indeed, it was  to see Qurayshi hiding in Idlib as well. 

According to David Lesch, professor of Middle East History at Trinity University in Texas and author of “Syria: A Modern History,” “it seems strange that al-Baghdadi and al-Qurayshi were killed in [a] province largely controlled by its rival HTS and overseen by Turkey, but on the other hand it is the only area not under the control of the Syrian government and its allies or the US-supported SDF, all of whom are opposed to ISIS.”

“Idlib is now home to thousands of IDPs, therefore it was easier for the two to blend in, live secretively, and not be identified as outsiders since most everyone in certain areas of the province are outsiders,” Lesch explains. “Yet they were still found because despite all this they lived in an area still teaming with enemies who were obviously directly or indirectly assets to US intelligence.”

The recent US operation in Idlib, which was  planned over several months, has been the largest of its kind in the country since the 2019 raid that eliminated Baghdadi. Although Qurayshi was  than Baghdadi, the fact that he was targeted in the US raid confirms his .

It is worth noting that Qurayshi was named as the leader of IS in 2019, following the death of Baghdadi. While IS called on all Muslims to pledge allegiance to Qurayshi as the new “caliph,” it did not provide much information about his . The use of the name “Qurayshi” seemed to be an attempt to  to the Prophet Muhammad. This is a tactic that was  vis-à-vis Baghdadi with the aim of  his leadership role. Qurayshi’s real name is Amir Muhammad Said Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla but he is also known as Hajji Abdullah and Abdullah Qaradash.  

As the US continues to create an impression that it is minimizing its presence in the region, especially following its withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, the raid seems to have been used to demonstrate  to reassure Washington’s partners. It also  as a needed win for Biden at a time when the Ukraine crisis remains unsolved. 

However, while Qurayshi’s elimination is a positive development, it may simply be a “,” as Sean Carberry suggests in The Hill. While the operation against Qurayshi may create internal chaos within IS, ultimately, the terror group is likely to name a new leader and move on, which is what took place following Baghdadi’s assassination. Although IS was militarily defeated, the group has not been eliminated and remains a threat. In fact, there have been increased indications, such as the attack on al-Sinaa prison, suggesting that the group is in a state of resurgence. The militants might also seek to use the recent US raid to encourage revenge attacks. 

US Policy in Syria

The Biden administration’s policy vis-à-vis Syria seems to indicate that the official approach will be “,” as Abdulrahman al-Masri and Reem Salahi suggest. It should not be surprising to learn that Syria does not constitute a top diplomatic priority for President Biden. Yet while the US does not want to remain engaged in endless regional wars, it seems to  that a political settlement in war-torn Syria would only empower President Bashar al-Assad, whom Washington would never back. 

Moreover, the US and the Kurds are partners, and Washington would not want to portray an image that it has abandoned those who have shouldered the fight against the Islamic State. This was the overall perception when Trump announced the withdrawal of US forces from Syria in 2019, and Biden seems keen to remedy that controversial decision. 

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It is worth noting that during President Barack Obama’s tenure, Vice President Biden was one of the  when it came to what the US could achieve in Syria. Nevertheless, it  be taken as a given that as president, Biden may be in favor of removing all US forces from the country. For instance, he criticized Trump’s decision to withdraw forces from Syria,  it granted IS “a new lease on life.” In the same year, Biden also  he supports keeping some forces in eastern Syria for the foreseeable future. 

Middle East expert and former US State Department analyst, Gregory Aftandilian doesn’t see the US leaving Syria anytime soon. Aftandilian, who is also a non-resident fellow at Arab Center Washington DC, thinks “It is doubtful [Biden] will do more than the anti-ISIS campaign and humanitarian aid. In light of the attempted prison break in northeastern Syria he may put pressure on some countries to take back ISIS ��������DzԱ����.”

For the US to play a role in stabilizing Syria, there needs to be a clear strategy. Unfortunately, at the moment, that strategy is largely . While the elimination of Qurayshi is a positive step, much more work needs to be done to stabilize the country.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Is Afghanistan Going to Break Apart?

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As is well chronicled, Afghanistan emerged as a buffer state between the Russian and British empires. Dominated by the Pashtuns, this state remained an inchoate entity of competing ethnic groups, feuding clans and autonomous villages. As Tabish Forugh and one of the authors noted in an earlier article on 51�Թ�, this Pashtun-dominated order crumbled when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The Taliban brought back this order in the 1990s and are establishing Pashtun primacy yet again.

New Life to Old Identities

Modernity has not been kind to Afghanistan. Until the 1970s, this country was a land where hippies showed up to smoke pot and have a good time. Older Pakistani friends reminisce about driving from Peshawar to Kabul to buy videotapes of Bollywood movies and bask in the relatively liberal milieu of Afghanistan. When the Soviets intervened in 1979, this idyllic version of the country disintegrated. For all the efforts of Soviet troops, engineers and administrators, communism failed.

By February 1989, Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan. Later that year, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union itself imploded in 1991. The loosely allied mujahideen turned their guns on each other and a bloody civil war followed. The Tajiks, the Uzbeks and the Pashtuns were at each other’s throats. Eventually, the Pakistani-trained, Islamabad-backed, Pashtun-led Taliban triumphed in 1996. Their rule was cut short by the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which brought American intervention and began a 20-year experiment with democracy.

Sadly, the democratic experiment has failed too. In June 2021, Forugh and one of the authors wrote that President Ashraf Ghani occupied “his fancy palace in Kabul thanks to the barrels of American guns,” and, once the Americans left, he would be toast. Americans established a presidential system based on their own model that was destined to fail in a famously diverse and fractious society. Note that the US leaders after World War II chose parliamentary democracy for Germany and Japan, two industrial societies with a far higher degree of homogeneity. If Washington blundered at the beginning, its decisions were catastrophic at the end. Today, democracy is dead and buried, the fanatical Taliban rule the roost and ethnic identity is replacing fragile multiethnic Afghan nationalism.

The Rise of Ethnic Nationalism

As stated earlier, Afghanistan is where two expanding empires met. The British had digested modern-day Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, then British India. The Russians had taken over an odd assortment of clans and khanates in Central Asia, many of whom were descendants of Genghis Khan and Timur. Just like the boundaries drawn by the British or the French, the Russian ones were arbitrary too. As ethnic nationalism rises in Afghanistan, it will spill over into Central Asia.

As late as February 2020, the US State Department  that “a secure and stable Afghanistan [was] a top priority for the Central Asian governments.” It encouraged these governments to boost economic and trade ties with their Kabul counterparts. American hopes for “stable governance of multi-ethnic, Muslim-majority countries” now lie in tatters. Kazakhstan demonstrates that Russian realpolitik of supporting strongmen has triumphed.

Yet even the Kremlin cannot hold back the tide of ethnic nationalism that is unfolding in Afghanistan and spreading to Central Asia. The Tajiks led by Amrullah Saleh and  have the tacit, if not explicit, support of the Tajikistan government. The Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum  to Uzbekistan when the Taliban took over. As the Pashtuns leave not even scraps at the table for others, it is only natural that minority ethnicities are looking across the border for a better future. Just as in former Yugoslavia, ethnic nationalism is now on the rise in Central Asia.

Pakistan’s Frankenstein Monster’s Problem: Radical Islam

To a large degree, Pakistan has fostered, if not created, the ethnic nationalism now rising in Afghanistan and spilling over into Central Asia. It is an open secret that Pakistan’s military elite created the Taliban. As Ishtiaq Ahmed , “the Garrison State” has always been paranoid about its lack of strategic depth. The loss of East Pakistan that won independence as Bangladesh in 1971 has scarred the Pakistani psyche and made the country’s political elites double down on political Islam. In the 1980s, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq moved Pakistan along a fundamentalist arc. Jihad became the order of the day not only against the Soviets in Afghanistan but also against , which he sought to “bleed through a thousand cuts.”

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Zia was not an exception to Pakistani hostility to India. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the man Zia ousted through a military coup and hung on the gallows,  to wage a “thousand year war against India.” In 1974, Pakistani mobs massacred thousands of Ahmadis and, instead of delivering them protection or justice, Bhutto brought in a constitutional amendment declaring the Ahmadis non-Muslims. The same year, he declared Pakistan would go , claiming “We shall eat grass but have our bomb.” Islamic fundamentalism and Pavlovian anti-India ethos drive Pakistani state policy regardless of whether the country is under civil or military rule. 

Backed by the US and Saudi Arabia, the Pakistan-backed mujahideen brought the Soviet Union to its knees. Against India, Pakistan has followed an asymmetric strategy of championing irregulars, insurgent and terrorists from its very inception. In the first of a three-part series analyzing the fallout of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, Rakesh Kaul points out how Pakistan supported a Pashtun jihad in Kashmir as early as 1947. The marauding tribesmen killed Kaul’s great-grandfather, “tied his dead body to a horse and dragged it through the streets to terrorize the local population into submission.”

Starting from the 1980s, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) unleashed terror as an instrument of state policy against India. First, the ISI backed the violent Sikh insurgency for an independent state of , a strategy that it continues with till today. Second, the ISI supported the insurgency in  that blew up in 1989 and persists till today. Third, the ISI created and supported militant jihadist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed to overwhelm India through multiple terrorist attacks. With a crisis-ridden economy and much smaller military, Pakistan has bet on asymmetric terror tactics and nuclear deterrence to tie India down.

However, Pakistan is discovering that when you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. Like Victor Frankenstein, the Garrison State has created a monster: . Since the 1980s, Pakistan has become intolerant, sectarian and violent. Minorities have faced persecution and suffered ethnic cleansing. The case of the animistic  people in Chitral is a case in point. Many  have recorded how they have faced persistent persecution and forced conversion. As a result, a mere 3,500 Kalash are left and they may not survive for too long.

Radical Islam was meant to be a tool the Pakistani state used against its neighbors. Now, it has spread like cancer throughout all aspects of the country’s life. Instead of Pakistan’s corrupt and inefficient government,  now provide education for refugees and lower-class Pakistanis. Many of them are hardline and churn out jihadis by the thousands. For instance, most of the Afghani Taliban leadership graduated from the madrasa Dur-ul-Uloom Haqqania.

Religious figures can now bring the country over a standstill in an instant. Violent protests repeatedly erupted after French President Emmanuel Macron said that Islam was in crisis. Terror attacks within Pakistan have shot up. Roohafza, a sugary syrupy drink, has replaced whiskey in officer messes. Many officers now sport flowing beards and offer prayer five times a day. In the words of Javed Jabbar, Pakistan has experienced “a steady retreat into showy religiosity and visible piety in the public domain and in most media.” A new law makes it compulsory for every child to learn .

Pakistan finds itself in a bind. It has to direct the thousands of jihadis graduating from madrasas against external enemies to avoid internecine strife. In fact, it is only a question of time before radical Islamists will infiltrate all organs of the Pakistani state. The Taliban’s victory has convinced them that Allah is on their side. The risks of a general like Zia or a cleric like Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini taking over and unleashing nuclear terror or nuclear war are getting higher by the day.

Radical Islam and Pashtun Pride Make an Explosive Cocktail

If radical Islam is dangerous, radical Islam combined with ethnic nationalism is terrifying. After 20 years, the Pashtun-led Taliban is back in power. They are surging with confidence after humbling the world’s superpower. This time, they are battle-hardened, better trained and savvier than their predecessors from the 1990s. The Taliban also have a strong sense of history and look back to the expansionist 18^th-century Ahmed Shah Durrani as a model to follow. 

Durrani was a historic figure who sent troops to Central Asia, defeated the Marathas in the historic 1761 Third Battle of Panipat with assistance of local Muslim rulers and created the modern nation of Afghanistan. Durrani’s young nation soon fell victim to the Great Game and lost much territory to the British. Led by , the British delineated the modern-day border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Till date, many Pashtuns have not accepted this border.

The Taliban are expansionists. In the north, the Tajiks and the Uzbeks will fight a guerilla war, ensuring their eventual retreat. To the west lie Turkmenistan and Iran, two ethnically distinct entities where the Taliban cannot expand. To the south and east lies Pakistan where the Taliban trained and where their Pashtun kin reside. Furthermore, the Pashtuns have a deep memory of raiding and ruling the plains of Indus and the Ganges. When Babur swept down from modern-day Uzbekistan to modern-day Pakistan and India through the Khyber Pass, he defeated a Pashtun sultan who was ruling Delhi.

When Pakistan won independence, Pashtun opinion was divided. Some like  wanted a homeland for Muslim Indians in the shape of Pakistan. Others like , a friend of Mahatma Gandhi, fought for a unified India and then for an autonomous Pashtunistan. Still others wanted reunification with Afghanistan. Worryingly for Pakistan, Pashtun refugees have streamed into the country from Afghanistan since 1979. Encyclopedia  tells us that there were “about 11 million Pashtun in Afghanistan and 25 million in Pakistan in the early 21st century.” Multiple estimates indicate  to be over 15% of Pakistan’s population. In Afghanistan, they comprise about 42% of the population. Once all-out ethnic conflict erupts in Afghanistan, Pashtun identity is only likely to strengthen.

So far, the Punjabi elite running Pakistan has co-opted the Pashtun elite by giving it plum positions in the state apparatus, especially the military. The ruling elite has also used Pashtuns to fight wars and proxy wars in Kashmir since 1947 when both India and Pakistan emerged as two independent entities after the partition of British India. During the 20 years of US presence in Afghanistan, cross-border incursions into and violent incidents in Kashmir declined because Pashtuns were too busy fighting a jihad at home. Now, these jihadis will turn their attention to Kashmir.

Not all jihadis are fixated with Kashmir. Some of them are sworn enemies of the Pakistani state such as the . With the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Pakistan may have achieved its long-cherished strategic depth against India, but it now has the tail of the Pashtun tiger in its hands. Pakistan’s ISI has no option but to deploy Pashtun jihadis against India in Kashmir. Failure on the Kashmir front could trigger Pashtun dissatisfaction against Punjabi leadership.

A tiny wrinkle many forget is that Pashtuns see themselves as a warrior people and the natural leaders of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent. They have successfully beaten back the British, the Soviets and the Americans. Pashtuns see the Punjabis as soft, loud and showy. Like the Balochs, the Sindhis, the Muhajirs and others, Pashtuns resent the Punjabi domination of Pakistan. Furthermore, many Pashtuns regard the banks of the Indus, not the Durand Line, as their natural border.

Blood Borders

Pakistan’s Pashtun problem is a particular example of a more widespread phenomenon. Most of the current borders in Africa, the Middle East and Asia are colonial legacies that do not make sense. In 2006, Ralph Peters published a controversial article in Armed Forces Journal titled “” where he argued for redrawing “arbitrary and distorted borders.” Peters took the view that “significant ‘cheated’ population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia” deserved their own states. He blamed “awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries,” not Islam, for much of the violence in the Middle East and South Asia.

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Since 2006, many analysts have slammed Peters. The US has resolutely upheld the stability of the borders in former British and French colonies even as it has championed the independence of nations once under the Soviet yoke. That policy might be nearing the end of its shelf life. In its moment of triumph in Afghanistan, Pakistan might have set wheels into motion that will lead to its own disintegration.

Today, Pakistan is held together by an anti-India Islamic identity. The different linguistic ethnic groups that comprise Pakistan have long been pulling in different directions. Therefore, Pakistan has fostered a siege mentality among its people and created an identity that looks to Arab, Turkish and Pashtun conquerors of India for inspiration. Pashtun identity is far more cohesive, time-tested and real. After humbling the US, Pashtuns are unlikely to play second fiddle to the Punjabis for much longer. Inevitably, they are bound to take charge of their own destiny as they have done many times in the past.

To add fuel to the fire, Pakistan’s economy is in dire straits. Last year, the International Monetary Fund instituted yet another  and released $6 billion to Islamabad in November. Over the last three years, the Pakistani rupee has  by 30.5% against the US dollar.  and  are running high. In such circumstances, anti-India rhetoric is useful, desirable and essential to keep the country together. 

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has repeatedly condemned India’s “” and claimed that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP’s parent organization, of being Nazi-inspired entities. This puts pressure on Khan’s government and his military backers to act against such a toxic neighbor and evil enemy. The trouble for Khan and his delusional friends in Islamabad is that state coffers have little money to fund conflict with a far more prosperous and numerous India. Khan and co are riling up a mob that they are bound to disappoint. The last-ditch effort to keep Pakistan together would be war with India and, if Islamic radicals were to seize power in Islamabad, the risk of nuclear war would only turn too real.

Whether conflict with India is conventional or nuclear will be determined by circumstances in the future. It is clear that the Taliban have unleashed ethnic nationalism not only in Afghanistan but also in neighboring Central Asian states. Inevitably, the Pashtuns in Pakistan will be infected by that sentiment as well, especially as Islamabad leads the country to economic and military disaster. The scenario Peters conjured of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes reuniting with their Afghan brethren and creating Pashtunistan would then come true. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan would no longer be the same again.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Complex Role of Racism Within the Radical Right

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CVE measures have been criticized for many reasons, but the declared emphasis on preventing political violence has been crucial and justified: The only significant threat that “Islamist” extremism can pose to Western societies has been violence. However, this article is not about jihadist-inspired violent extremism. Instead, as national policymakers subsequently sought to apply their CVE strategies to the rising threat of right-wing extremism, multifaceted threats of far-right movements and challenges have emerged.  

No Thought Police

When in the mid-2010s the far-right threat could no longer be ignored, Western governments expanded their CVE programs to respond to the new threat environment. This response was guided by the conviction of convergences between different forms of extremism and governments’ intentions to avoid accusations of double standards.

However, applying such an ideologically neutral lens has hampered a holistic threat assessment and the development of effective prevention and intervention measures. In particular, the adoption of preexisting CVE terminologies, principles and programs to counter the far right has created blind spots by focusing mainly on violent extremism.

The unprecedented risk of far-right terrorism and political violence cannot be , but how can we move toward a broader threat assessment beyond the focus on violence, which characterizes current P/CVE strategies in several countries, including Australia? Australia’s national CVE program, , for example, was set up to prevent and counter violent extremism, defined as a person’s or group’s willingness “to use violence” or “advocate the use of violence by others to achieve a political, ideological or religious goal.” Similarly, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation recently that it “does not investigate people solely because of their political views.”

From a law enforcement perspective, focusing on violent (or otherwise criminal) acts appears appropriate in a democratic society where dissenting, even radical, political ideas should not be unduly curtailed or criminalized. However, the line between political views and advocating violence is often difficult to draw. This poses a challenge for combating (violent) extremism of any kind, not only but especially on the far-right of the political spectrum where violence against the “enemy” is often an integral element of the political ideologies.

Research on far-right online spaces, from and to alt-tech sites such as , consistently finds not only occasional calls for violence, but also high levels of What Pete Simi and Steven Windisch refer to as “” — messaging that cultivates, normalizes and reinforce hatred, dehumanization and aggressive hostility toward minority groups and the “political enemy.”

While stressing the “important distinction between talking and doing,” Simi and Windisch argue that “Violent talk helps enculturate individuals through socialization processes by communicating values and norms. In turn, these values and norms are part of a process where in-group and out-group boundaries are established, potential targets for violence are identified and dehumanized, violent tactics are shared, and violent individuals and groups are designated as sacred…. In short, violent talk clearly plays an important role in terms of fomenting actual violence.”

Identifying calls for violence linked to real-life plans to commit violent acts and violent talk that advocates violence is both challenging and crucial. However, the focus on violence in countering the far right tends to overlook other threats that are specific to radical or extreme right-wing movements.                   

Community Safety

The 2019 terror attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, by an Australian far-right extremist sent shock waves around the world, but it has had particularly severe and lasting effects on the sense of physical safety among Muslim communities, especially in New Zealand and Australia. For many, it has been a painful reminder that anti-Muslim hatred can lead to violence.

When asked about far-right activities in Australia, Adel Salman, president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, : “Muslims feel threatened. We don’t have to look back to the very tragic events in Christchurch to see what the results of that hatred can be.” A recent large-scale among Australian Muslims confirms these community fears, with 93% of respondents expressing concerns about right-wing terrorism.

While Australia has seen incidents of far-right violence in the past, none of these acts have ever been classified as terrorism. However, the reemergence of radical and extreme right-wing groups and their actions in the 2020s, while mostly non-violent, has nevertheless given rise to significant safety concerns among communities targeted by the far right. This has had tangible effects on these communities.

Our found, for example, that far-right mobilization against a mosque in a regional town of Victoria fueled fear of personal safety among the Muslim communities. Many felt so intimidated that they would no longer leave the house alone or after dark; some even questioned their future in Australia.

Similar public safety concerns exist among many targeted communities. For example, after a series of anti-Semitic incidents, including verbal abuse and swastika symbols displayed near a synagogue, a representative of the Jewish community in Canberra in a 2017 New York Times interview that “For the first time in my life, I don’t feel safe in Australia. I have little children who don’t feel safe playing outside.”  

Such community concerns around public safety are not caused by violence or advocating violence by far-right networks but by public expressions — such as online, graffiti or postering — of exclusivist views of white supremacy, racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism or homo- and transphobia. These community perspectives have hardly been taken into account in the current violence-centered threat assessment of right-wing extremism and radicalism.

Mainstreaming Hatred

When representatives of communities targeted by far-right mobilization speak about these threats, they often do not clearly differentiate between manifestations of hatred such as racism, anti-Semitism or homophobia and deliberate political actions of far-right groups or individuals. For their lived experience, it seems to make little difference as to whether the abuse or threat is perpetrated by someone who is affiliated with a far-right network or not.  

When I interviewed an LGBTIQ+ community representative for a study on far-right local dynamics, for example, she noted experiences of transphobic abuse in the streets and that many in her community would avoid certain public places for fear of being subjected to such aggression. Although the locally active white nationalist group was described as holding particularly aggressive homophobic and transphobic views, the problem was portrayed as a societal one — it was not about the political ideology but the public climate of exclusion and intimidation.

This points to a second underappreciated factor in the current far-right threat assessment: its potential to mainstream exclusivist, hateful and dehumanizing sentiments. A literature review on extremism and community resilience that far-right movements “exert disproportioned levels of agenda-setting power as they manage to attract high media attention through their message of fear and anger.” Christopher Bail  to this as the “fringe effect” in his study of anti-Muslim fringe organizations in the US that, he suggests, “not only permeated the mainstream but also forged vast social networks that consolidated their capacity to create cultural change.”

The potential to spread exclusivist, hateful messages from the fringes into the societal mainstream needs to be considered when assessing far-right threats, even when there is no use or advocacy of violence. The risk of promoting exclusivist sentiments toward minority communities and fueling social division poses a significant threat to a pluralistic society, especially given that significant segments of the population already hold on certain and may, under certain conditions, be receptive to some of these narratives pushed by the far right.

Undermining Democratic Norms

Strengthening commitment to democratic values has been a central piece in some national governments’ strategies to combat right-wing extremism. However, such an emphasis tends to be absent or underdeveloped in national contexts where countering extremism focuses on political violence. Here, the problem of far-right mobilization undermining democratic norms and processes is not a common feature in the public debate.

If it is mentioned at all, it is presented as a process of advocating ideologies that contradict liberal democratic principles of equality. Researchers have , for example, that far-right discourses tend to “challenge the fundamentals of pluralist liberal democracy through exclusivist appeals to race, ethnicity, nation, and gender.”

But far-right actions may also be able to influence democratic decision-making processes. When far-right groups held a series of disruptive street protests against a local mosque application in an Australian suburb, our fieldwork suggests that these protests may have influenced the local council’s decision on the mosque planning permit. The council deferred the case to avoid making a “contentious” decision, as one study participant maintained, adding that a small group of far-right protesters sought to “intimidate” councilors to vote against the mosque.

Another community representative interviewed for our study explained the council’s deferral with a reference to the previous far-right street protests: “You wouldn’t want to say yes [to the mosque application], because that’s when the trouble would start again.” The far-right protesters did not engage in a legitimate form of democratic deliberation about the local mosque; instead, their actions seemed to undermine the democratic process by creating a climate of intimidation.

Beyond Political Violence

The threats that far-right movements can pose to liberal democratic societies are complex and manifold, and they certainly include the of political violence and hate crimes. But the potential of the far right to cause serious harm to communities and the democratic order goes beyond the use or advocacy of violence.

Strategies to prevent and combat right-wing extremism need to acknowledge this complexity. A focus on terrorist acts and violence makes sense in the context of combating jihadist-inspired violent extremism, which has never had the capacity to threaten the stability of democratic principles and institutions, to spread its ideologies into the societal mainstream or to create widespread concerns around safety so that people were too scared to leave their homes.

Without downplaying the threats of any form of violent extremism, there is a need for more nuanced and holistic approaches to assess, prevent and counter right-wing extremism. This would require us to take into account the capacity of far-right mobilization to create fear in many parts of our communities, spread divisive and socially harmful ideologies, and undermine the legitimacy of democratic norms and institutions. There are no quick fixes, and this article is not the place to propose a comprehensive strategy.

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What is clear, though, is that the does not lie in the repression or criminalization of dissenting, radical political views. Instead, preventing and countering the far right should pay more attention to the concerns of targeted communities and take action to support and empower these communities. This is also related to the need for effective anti-racism and anti-homo/transphobia programs, which have been central components of government strategies to prevent the proliferation of right-wing extremism in several Western countries.

Our efforts against far-right ideologies is also a struggle for democracy — a struggle US President Joe Biden recently “the defining challenge of our time.” Given the prevalence of far-right assaults on democratic principles and institutions, strengthening citizens’ commitment to democracy and human rights should be considered a key element in a holistic strategy to counter the far right. This would require a much stronger role of civil society actors in this commitment for a democratic culture as well as a more place-based focus on supporting local pro-democracy community initiatives.

None of these considerations are new. They have all been tried and tested in other countries, such as Germany, where the comprehensive federal program forms a crucial element in the government’s commitment to combating right-wing extremism. Every national context is different, of course, but far-right threats go beyond political violence in all societies.   

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Was the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Mother of All War Crimes?

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So, when on November 30, 2021, a court in Frankfurt, Germany, handed down a life  to an Iraqi man who joined the Islamic State (IS) group for genocide against the Yazidi minority — the first time a former member of IS had been convicted of genocide and the first verdict for genocide against Yazidis — it was celebrated as a landmark case in the fight for justice and accountability. Taha al-Jumailly was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity resulting in death, war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes, and bodily harm resulting in death.

“T�ǻ岹��, ISIS member Taha AJ was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life in prison. This is the first genocide verdict against an ISIS member. This verdict is a win for survivors of genocide, survivors of sexual violence, & the Yazidi community,”  Nadia Murad, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner and a Yazidi survivor of IS enslavement.

Universal Jurisdiction

The trial was also the first in Germany based on the principle of universal jurisdiction addressing crimes under international law committed abroad by a perpetrator who is not a German citizen and was only extradited on the basis of an international arrest warrant. Universal jurisdiction is the principle that some crimes are so serious that states should be allowed to claim jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where they were committed or any other relation with the prosecuting entity. None of the crimes in the Jumailly case were committed in Germany, and neither the victims nor the suspect were German nationals.

Though universal jurisdiction has been practiced in just a few countries in recent years, it has become an increasingly important tool for achieving accountability and justice for the survivors and victims of international crimes. Hundreds of investigations are ongoing and dozens of convictions have been obtained.

The blossoming of universal jurisdiction is attributable to several factors, one of which is that the alternative route to prosecuting international crimes through the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has effectively been closed by geopolitics. The Syrian conflict, for example, has never been appraised by the ICC because Russia backs President Bashar al-Assad.

The Pursuit of Cases

In recent years, there has been a greater capacity and willingness on the part of some domestic authorities to pursue cases involving international crimes, at least in certain circumstances. More and more countries have also passed laws allowing them to conduct the kind of landmark prosecution that took place in Frankfurt. More countries are following the Dutch  in setting up specialized units within the police, prosecution and even immigration services dedicated to identifying perpetrators of international crimes and bringing them to trial.

Another important factor in the power of universal jurisdiction is that victims and their advocates can contribute to investigations and prosecutions, and sometimes even influence the direction they take. In some countries, such as France and Belgium, victims and NGOs can initiate criminal proceedings. Even where this is not possible, victims and their advocates can still drive cases forward in other ways, such as by tracking perpetrators’ movements, sharing information with the authorities and exerting pressure on them to act.

Dutch authorities have even issued  for Syrians in the Netherlands on how to file a criminal complaint against other Syrians relating to violations in Syria. In February, after Germany’s top court  that war crimes committed abroad can be tried in the country, a court in Koblenz became the first court outside of Syria to rule on state-sponsored torture by the Assad regime when it sentenced a former member of the secret police to four and a half years in prison for being an accomplice to crimes against humanity. Another former Syrian intelligence officer is currently on  in Germany for  58 counts of murder and at least 4,000 cases of torture, rape or sexual abuse.

Many Challenges

Despite this recent progress, enormous legal, evidentiary and logistical challenges remain before international criminal cases can be brought to trial. Investigating and prosecuting international crimes in domestic courts is not straightforward, especially in a complex conflict such as the Yemen war where crimes have been committed over many years by different actors.

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Foreign investigators cannot easily gather evidence on the ground, so they have to rely on the cooperation of different parties to the conflict to build cases. UN bodies like the group of eminent experts, international organizations, local NGOs, and organizations such as Airwars assist with investigations.

Even if evidence linking an individual perpetrator to war crimes can be established, the suspect still has to be apprehended. In some countries practicing universal jurisdiction, those accused of committing war crimes do not need to be within reach of authorities for an investigation to be opened, but they need to be physically brought to court before any trial can take place.

Though international cooperation can be used to apprehend and extradite international pariahs like IS militants, pirates and slave traders, war criminals who are still serving members of Arab regimes are not about to be handed over. Only when they set foot in a country practicing universal jurisdiction — whether for work, vacation, claiming asylum or for any other reason — can they be arrested immediately, providing they do not benefit from immunity.

Jumailly’s conviction “sends a clear message,” Natia Navrouzov, a lawyer and member of the NGO Yazda, which gathers evidence of crimes committed by IS against the Yazidis. “It doesn’t matter where the crimes were committed and it doesn’t matter where the perpetrators are, thanks to the universal jurisdiction, they can’t hide and will still be put on trial.”

*[This article was originally published by , a partner of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Financial Sector Needs to Address Whistleblower Retaliation

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An issue that is causing immediate concern amid the increasingly dictatorial reign of the Taliban is the country’s profound financial crisis. Cut off from international financial institutions and with nearly worth of assets frozen, Afghans can’t rely on humanitarian assistance as aid organizations try to navigate their way around the newly-imposed sanctions regime.

The local currency, the afghani, is in ; down nearly 20% since mid-2021, there doesn’t seem to be a stabilization point in the foreseeable future. Jobs have disappeared, and those lucky enough to be employed frequently are months behind in receiving their salaries. The United Nations fears that the Afghan banking system is on the .

Currency Alternatives

With limited funds remaining in the country, lengthy lines form at the banks and ATMs as Afghans seek access to what little is left — many being left with nothing. In addition to having severely constrained access to cash, purchasing power for the average Afghan is falling quickly, placing them in ever more dire straits. 

This perfect financial storm has led many Afghans to look to decentralized finance as an alternative, and has rapidly moved in to fill the void, just as it has done in other countries facing currency crises. Although crypto is still often highly volatile, Afghans see it as a legitimate source for much-needed cash flow and liquidity. They also increasingly view digital wallets as far more stable than their bank accounts.

Even if cryptocurrencies are not truly decentralized, it is possible that Afghans see cryptocurrency as an escape route from at least one aspect of life under an authoritarian regime. Further adding to crypto’s popularity is its ability to promote financial inclusion for people who often have difficulty gaining access to traditional financial services, like women, most of whom weren’t allowed or able to open a bank account in Afghanistan. 

Greater ease of opening accounts, lower documentation requirements and more affordable fee structures make cryptocurrency a viable and attractive alternative to brick-and-mortar banks and hard currency. Given that crypto financial services are intentionally mobile-friendly, they are much more accessible to the average Afghan than the failing internal banking system.

Connecting Scattered Families

According to the UN, as of last year, nearly 5.9 million Afghans , mostly in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. The number has been on the increase since the Taliban takeover as of new refugees seek asylum in countries across the globe. Migration often leaves families separated and in dire need of resources.

Well before the Taliban administration took power, it was common for Afghans living abroad to help support family members back home. According to the World Bank, in 2020, nearly $800 million, or roughly , streamed into the country in the form of remittances. 

As Afghan banks shut down or limited operations and international payment providers like Western Union suspended operations in Afghanistan due to international sanctions, intra-family transfers became increasingly difficult. Moreover, even those banks that remained open typically did not make simple payment systems like Venmo or Zelle available to their customers.

With cryptocurrency-based payment systems, family members have a solution for bypassing the internal financial problems in the country. The result is an acceleration of crypto use, placing Afghanistan among the in the world for adoption rate.

Links Between Crypto and Terrorism

Unfortunately, crypto’s ability to remain outside mainstream financial and regulatory structures has also made it attractive to terrorist organizations. A recent report from the US attorney general’s Cyber Digital Task Force between cryptocurrency and terrorist organizations: “While public data on terrorist use of cryptocurrency is limited, it is clear that terrorist networks have conducted fundraising operations through Internet-based crowdsource platforms in an attempt to evade stopgaps built into the international banking system.” 

Well-known terrorist organizations from Hamas to the Islamic State use cryptocurrency to create funding networks and purchase supplies for their operations. It is remarkably simple for these groups to leverage extensive social media networks to back their fundraising drives.

Ongoing efforts to disrupt such activity have seen some limited success. For example, US anti-terrorism efforts in 2020 led to civil forfeiture cases and the seizure of more than 300 cryptocurrency accounts containing several million dollars.

Can Crypto Help the Taliban Circumvent Sanctions?

As crypto adoption rates skyrocket, concerns are building in the international community that the Taliban itself will turn to cryptocurrency to sidestep sanctions and cloud financial transparency. All of this raises the question of whether crypto adoption in Afghanistan poses a significant security threat for the rest of the world.   

The Taliban continues to seek international recognition and has stated that failure to do so will have significant consequences for the world. However, it does not appear that recognition is forthcoming. Indeed, the US is unlikely to ever officially recognize the Taliban government, with the group still on its list of .

Without formal recognition, the Taliban regime will continue to struggle to access its international accounts or generate international funding to help alleviate its economic woes. While cryptocurrency might seem like a reasonably effective option for the Taliban government, the complexity of the economic situation in the country precludes a single solution. With governments across the world beginning to introduce stricter regulations on cryptocurrency markets and actively working to prevent access by terrorist organizations, things may not be quite so simple for Afghanistan’s new leaders. 

At least one government has explicitly attempted to counteract US sanctions through cryptocurrency in the past. The embattled regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela had teamed with Russian banks to back Evrofinance Mosnarbank, the primary supporter of Venezuela’s proposed national cryptocurrency, the . Maduro claimed that the petro would help Venezuela obtain alternative sources of international financing, despite heavy US sanctions. However, the scheme has not been successful, a sign that similar attempts by the Taliban may be of limited use.

The deteriorating situation in Afghanistan represents an ongoing security threat far beyond its borders. Stability, both political and financial, is certainly in the best interests of the people of Afghanistan and everyone else, including cryptocurrency markets.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Legacy of America’s Failed War on Terror

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In August, President Joe Biden gave a self-serving blaming everyone except the US for the current situation in Afghanistan. His speech does not withstand close scrutiny, though. If anyone is to blame for the Taliban’s dramatic comeback, it is Uncle Sam. Washington demonstrated breathtaking ignorance, arrogance and stupidity in handing Afghanistan from day one.

Failure to Learn From the Past

To handle Afghanistan better, the United States could have done well to dust off some history books and learn from the playbook of the British Empire. At one point, a mere 6,000 British officials 250 million Indians. The key to British success was not military firepower, but an extraordinary understanding of the subcontinent. They wrote gazettes, drafted reports and charted maps that covered every nook and cranny of the landmass. When retired CIA officer Glenn Carle was struggling to find a Pashtun village more than two decades ago, he had to turn to a colleague to pore over imperial maps in London.

In 1800, Lord Wellesley, the elder brother of the Duke of Wellington and then-governor general of India, Fort William College, the first modern institution of learning in the subcontinent. This institution taught British officials Indian languages and prepared them to rule a landmass that the armies of the British East India Company were conquering rapidly. To this day, the best of British diplomatic and intelligence officials strive to learn local languages. The thoughtful who possibly knows Afghanistan like the back of his hand is a direct heir to none other than Lawrence of Arabia. The US has never had a figure like Lawrence or Rory for good reason.

America has long been the promised land for immigrants. However, these immigrants leave their ancestral lands behind. Two oceans separate the US from the rest of the world. This “maintains nearly 800 military bases in over 90 countries,” but it does not have officers who go “native” unlike their British counterparts. In Afghanistan, American troops and administrators almost invariably relied on interpreters. A staggering interpreters have worked for the American military since 2001.

This overreliance on interpreters has proved toxic. Barely 6% of Afghanistan’s population speaks . By relying on this tiny section of Afghan society, the US was cutting itself off from the vast majority of the country, much of which still lives in the remote and rugged countryside. Over time, much of this English-speaking Afghan elite proved to be self-serving and corrupt.

The classic example of this phenomenon is Ashraf Ghani. The high and mighty in Washington backed Ghani in a murky marred by fraud and misconduct. He spoke flawless English, had worked for the World Bank and had taken up American citizenship. Sadly for the Americans, they bet on the wrong horse. When the Taliban rolled into town, President Ghani failed to put up a fight, fleeing with “$169 million from the state coffers.”

Ignorance of Wider World Is a Systemic Weakness

Afghanistan represents a longstanding American weakness. In 1953, the US conducted a coup in Iran for British interests. They had no idea of the lay of the land and this coup spectacularly backfired in 1978-79, The Iranian Revolution haunts the US to this day. The US failure to understand Vietnam has been examined through books, documentaries and countless commentaries. In Afghanistan, the Americans relied on treacherous Pakistan and used interpreters instead of putting in the hard work to truly understand the people and their culture.

At its core, the Taliban was a peasant-supported movement. They shared this similarity with the Vietcong. The Pew Research Center that 99% of Afghans support making sharia the official law. Frighteningly, 67% of Afghans believe “there is only one possible way to understand sharia.” As Stewart observes in his meticulous on Afghanistan, Afghans have always believed in jihad against non-Muslims. Historically, Pashtuns came down the Khyber Pass to raid the plains of Punjab. The more enterprising ones got as far as the Gangetic plains of India. Babur conquered North India in 1526 from the Pashtun Lodi Dynasty. In 1947, Pakistan unleashed Pashtun irregulars against India and, as I pointed out in the previous article, my grandfather paid the price with his life.

Now that the Taliban are in charge of Kabul, Kashmir is its next target. Both the Taliban and Pakistan have persecuted minorities relentlessly. In September 2002, Dr. Iftikhar H. Malik published a damning on Pakistan for Minority Rights Group International. Nearly 20 years ago, he observed how non-Muslims and even many Muslim groups are treated as second-class citizens and pressured to convert to Islam. The Taliban–Pakistan narrative constantly paints India as a land of “Hindu kafirs” that oppresses fellow Muslims in Kashmir.

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Already, the Taliban–Pakistan move against India is in full swing. In November, nine Indian soldiers lost their lives to “” terror groups. Anas Haqqani, the youngest son of the late Jalaluddin Haqqani and the brother of Taliban’s deputy leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, has visited the of Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi. Haqqani called Ghaznavi “a renowned Muslim warrior & Mujahid of the 10th century.” Ghaznavi raided India 17 times, smashing temples, looting gold and taking back hundreds of thousands of male and female slaves with him.

Haqqani’s tweet celebrated this bloodthirsty medieval sultan as the warrior king “who established a strong Muslim rule in the region from Ghazni & smashed the idol of Somnath.” His brother is the interior minister of Afghanistan and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation offers a reward of $10 million for his arrest. The is responsible for some of the deadliest terror attacks in Afghanistan. From their declarations and actions, it is clear that their next target is jihad in Kashmir.

The Americans have long allowed Pakistan to play Pied Piper not only in Afghanistan, but also in Kashmir. Before the attacks of September 11, 2001, the US constantly lectured India on human rights, often at the behest of Pakistan. Washington failed to realize that much of the violence in Kashmir was being perpetrated by Pakistanis and Afghan irregulars. In 1995, the Sufi shrine of was razed to the ground by a Pashtun named Mast Gul who remains scot-free in Pakistan.

Once the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996, they sent jihadi fighters to Kashmir. Retired CIA officers remark that Muzaffarabad, the largest city in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, became the watering hole for the most hardened Islamists on their way to fight jihad against India. To the west of Muzaffarabad lies Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Pashtun-dominated Pakistani province bordering Afghanistan. To its east lie the Kupwara and Baramulla districts of Indian Kashmir.

Because of Kashmir, Indian troops had extensive experience in counterinsurgency against militant jihadists from Afghanistan, which analysts in the US government were as early as 2004. Yet the US neither sought nor heeded Indian advice on Afghanistan. Now that the Taliban are back in power, they will inevitably do what they did in the late 1990s: fight jihad in Kashmir.

Opium Fuels Jihad

Under the Taliban, Afghanistan’s economy has suffered a meltdown. The UN has warned that millions of Afghans might face this winter. Even when American troops were in Afghanistan, there was a in opium poppy production. Now, this production will grow exponentially because the Taliban have no other way to fund the national economy and they cannot afford to alienate local farmers. Europe will not only have to deal with increasing numbers of Afghan refugees, but also skyrocketing heroin imports. The US has absolutely no idea as to how to deal with the Frankenstein’s monster it has unleashed on the world.

For the first time, the world will have to deal with a state whose economy is based on narcotic exports. Globally, 85% of opium is sourced from Afghanistan and the are now running the country. Therefore, it is in the economic interest of the state and its leadership to boost opium production. Pakistan will be a willing ally in the distribution of opium to keep the Taliban regime in power in Afghanistan and avoid more refugees spilling over across the border.

Earlier this year, Zulfikar Majid reported how Kashmir’s drug was worsening. Imports from Afghanistan have been rising so dramatically that even 10-year-olds are falling prey to heroin abuse. Kashmir is now firmly in the crosshairs and the map of Asia might soon be in question. The world has just become a more dangerous place and the US, notwithstanding its retreat from Afghanistan, is no exception.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Reports indicate that the problems facing Afghanistan, particularly economic, have multiplied with the rise of the Taliban. At the same time, no nation in the world has yet recognized the Taliban as the legitimate rulers. The Taliban are known by many Afghans as a group that seized power by military force. It is almost impossible for the people to recognize a group that has committed the worst crimes in recent years, including using car  on civilians. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, they denied girls the right to seek an education. Since returning to power in August this year, they have doing so.

The Legacy of America’s Failed War on Terror

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Despite they would, the Taliban have not formed an inclusive government. What they mean by inclusiveness is a  made up of only men, the clergy and, most importantly, members of the Pashtun community. Notably, the latter are mostly affiliated with the , a militant group that has close ties to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The Taliban cannot even a government that includes all of their members due to the lack of consensus among themselves.

The Taliban will face challenges in gaining political legitimacy, resolving the economic crisis and maintaining public order. In short, they cannot govern. Taliban militants have been trained to carry out suicide attacks and irregular guerrilla warfare. They are not trained to maintain public order and manage government affairs. For this reason, the future of Afghanistan looks bleak.

Mass Hunger

An increase in poverty is inevitable in Afghanistan. The UN Development Programme reports that  of civilians could plunge below the poverty line by mid-2022. According to a of the World Food Program (WFP), 60% of those living in the northern provinces of Afghanistan are currently suffering from hunger and this figure will likely increase in the months ahead. Aid organizations such as Doctors Without Borders have of an “impending humanitarian crisis.”

There is currently a severe economic crisis in the country. Many civilians, including former employees of NGOs and the previous Afghan government, are either unemployed or have no hope of earning a living. The Taliban have not allowed female staff to return to work, which means that these women, many of whom were the sole breadwinners, have no way to make money for their families. The unskilled and manual labor workforce has now minimal or no income at all. Alarmingly, farmers have suffered due to drought, winter is fast approaching and medical supplies are running in the country’s remote provinces. These incidents take place when the price of raw materials has risen . Millions of children are likely to be malnourished as a result of the growing economic crisis.

The all-male Taliban government is not capable of coping with such problems. It expects the international community to resume financial and humanitarian assistance following a freeze on in August amidst the Taliban takeover. The plight of the people and the impending famine seem to be a winning card that the Taliban are using to  with the international community. Given that it is not in their interest to do so, the Taliban are unlikely to address poverty and unemployment themselves. For this reason, with the arrival of winter, a humanitarian catastrophe will occur.

Yet the Afghan crisis is not only about those suffering from hunger. Aside from mass poverty, a new wave of conflict is likely to come.

Sectarian Violence in Afghanistan

With the rise of the Taliban, violence in Afghanistan has not only increased but has also become more complex. The biggest threat to the country is the Islamic State in Khurasan Province (ISKP), which is at odds with the Taliban. ISKP is affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group that swept through Syria and Iraq in 2014, and it has launched deadly attacks on the Hazara and Shia minorities in Afghanistan.

On October 8, an ISKP suicide bomber attacked worshipers at a mosque attended by Hazaras in the northern city of Kunduz, killing at least 100  and injuring more than 150. A week later during Friday prayers, ISKP launched another deadly attack on Shia Afghans, this time in the southern Kandahar province. At least  were killed.

According to , the Russian president, militants “from Iraq, Syria with experience in military operations” are entering Afghanistan. Although militias operating under the aegis of the Taliban do not make the group’s fighters much different from Islamic State jihadists — both groups use similar — the influx of foreign terrorists from the Middle East into Afghanistan heralds a much darker future for the country.

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Jihadists entering Afghanistan have more practical and strategic warfare experience in places like Syria and Iraq. In these countries, IS and al-Qaeda leaders recruited people by igniting sectarian tensions. This strategy has previously been used by , a Jordanian militant who led al-Qaeda in Iraq. In 2005, he declared an  against Iraqi Shias, which brought death and destruction to the country. The violent turmoil of the past decade in the Middle East owes much to this strategy.

It can now be said that there is no real government in Afghanistan to stop foreign jihadists from attacking civilians. With this in mind, the gathering of fighters from across the world and the continued attacks on Afghanistan’s Shia Hazara community will eventually turn the country into a field of sectarian strife. Not only is ISKP threatening Afghan Shias, but the Taliban will also not be safe. Reports indicate that Taliban members have occasionally fallen victim to as well.

A Terrifying Future

Civilians in Afghanistan are now facing one of the worst challenges of their lives. The most devastating threat to them is not even mass poverty. Rather, it is the beginning of a much more violent conflict in a country that is on the verge of a new civil war. Indeed, Afghans have become more economically vulnerable, but not all of their problems are reduced to poverty.

We are currently seeing an Afghanistan where neither the media can operate freely, nor can human rights observers monitor impartially. Most of Afghanistan’s skilled workforce has left the country. With journalists and human rights defenders no longer living there and few job opportunities for those who remain, a terrifying future awaits.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In 2001, a US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan to dismantle al-Qaeda and search for its leader, Osama bin Laden, who were harbored by the Taliban government. The presence of foreign troops sent al-Qaeda militants into hiding and the Taliban were overthrown.

How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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In declaring his war, Bush gave the international community an unequivocal : to either be “with us or against us in the fight against terror.” In 2003, he took this a step further. He leveraged his power and convinced US allies that Iraq was a state sponsor of terror and its president, Saddam Hussein, had developed weapons of mass destruction, which posed an imminent threat. It wasn’t long before the world found out that this narrative was constructed by the White House as the Bush administration was determined to attack Iraq. The results were devastating: hundreds of thousands of Iraqi , the of over 9 million civilians and the political mayhem that continues to this day.

It has been argued that Islam has been conflated with terrorism not only in the media, but also in much of the political discourse. As a direct result of the war on terror, show that an attack by a Muslim perpetrator receives 375% more attention than if the culprit was a non-Muslim.

As these patterns grew with time, countries started to employ their deterrence capacity under the guise of the “war on terror,” only to undermine those who were resisting regimes or seeking self-determination. This was seen in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Even Russian leader Vladimir Putin, in 2001, quickly persuaded Western leaders that his country faced similar threats from Islamists and was dealt a carte blanche to crack down with brute force on insurgents and civilians alike.

The foreign occupation of Afghanistan ended in August 2021. After 20 grueling and miserable years, the US pulled out from Afghanistan amidst a Taliban takeover, setting a range of events into motion. Chaos filled Kabul Airport as scores of people were desperate to leave the country. The IMF Afghanistan’s access to hundreds of millions in emergency funds due to a “lack of clarity within the international community” over recognizing a Taliban government.  

The war led to irreparable damages and hundreds of thousands of Afghans paid with their lives. The US spent over on the conflict and had of its soldiers returned in body bags. Today, starving families in Afghanistan are their babies for money to feed their children and the world only looks on.

To understand how we got here, I spoke to Anas Altikriti, a political analyst, hostage negotiator and the CEO of , an organization aimed at bridging the gap of understanding between the Muslim world and the West. In this interview, we discuss America’s handling of the occupation and examine Afghanistan’s next steps now that the Taliban has assumed authority in the country.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kholoud Khalifa: Joe Biden has received a certain amount of backlash from both sides of the aisle for withdrawing abruptly from Afghanistan. What do you make of his decision?

Anas Altikriti: Looking from an American perspective, I believe Biden had no choice. We tend to forget that the president who actually signed the agreement to leave Afghanistan was Donald Trump and his deadline was May of this year. Technically, you can state that Biden was carrying out a decision made by his predecessor. However, in reality — and I think that this is what’s important — any American president would have found it extremely difficult and utterly senseless to carry on a failed venture. Afghanistan and Iraq were utterly horrendous mistakes. If not at the point of conception and theory, the implementation was horrid.

However, from a purely analytical political point of view, Biden had absolutely no choice. The fact that he was going to come in for so much criticism, and particularly from the American right, is no surprise whatsoever. I would like to assume that Biden’s administration had the capacity to foresee that and to prepare for that, not only in terms of media, but also in terms of trying to argue the political perspective. Although in America today, I don’t think that is really useful.

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So, generally speaking, I’m not surprised by the fact that he got attacked, because ultimately speaking, on paper, this was a defeat to the Americans. It was a defeat to the Americans on the 20^th anniversary of 9/11, the day in which the idea started to crystallize in terms of those who wanted to see American basis spread far and wide, and the whole intermittent 20 years has been nothing but an utter and an abject failure. Thousands of American troops have been killed, but on the other side, probably more than a million of Afghan lives have been absolutely decimated — either killed or having to flee their homes and live as refugees elsewhere. The cost has been absolutely incredible, and for that, I think the Americans can contend with themselves, as history will judge this to be a failed attempt from start to finish.

Khalifa: What are your thoughts on the Taliban as a political actor in today’s geopolitical landscape?

Altikriti: Well, we’ll wait and see. There is no question that from the military point of view, the Taliban won. They achieved the victory, and they managed to expel the Americans and to defeat them not only on the ground, but also at negotiating. For almost the past 12 years, there had been negotiations between the Taliban and the Americans either directly or indirectly, whilst at the same time, the Taliban had been fighting against the American presence in Afghanistan and never conceding for a moment on their objective that they wanted a full and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. That, itself, is something to be taught at political science departments across the world, and it has definitely affected my own curriculum that I teach to students.

Negotiations, as well as being backed by real power, are things that have proven to be extremely beneficial and quite successful in this particular time. Now, that might be easy in comparison to catering to a nation of 40 million that have been devastated for almost three generations — from oppressive regimes to conflicts, to wars, to civil war, to occupation, to absolute and utter devastation to the rise of violence, ideological militancy, to all sorts of issues that have ravaged that nation.

Governing Afghanistan is going to be a totally different kettle of fish. It’s not the same as fighting. You can say that actually fighting a war from mountain tops and caves is relatively easy in comparison with the task ahead. Whether they’re going to be successful or not is something that we wait to see, and I hope for the betterment of the Afghan people that they will be.

The reality is the Taliban have won and in today’s world, they have the right the absolute right to govern. Hopefully, within the foreseeable future, the Afghan people will have the choice to either hold them to account and lay the blame for whatever economic failures, for instance, or otherwise.

This struggle between nations and their regimes is a continuous one. Thankfully, where we live, in the West, that struggle is mostly done on a political plane. So, we fight politically and we hold our politicians accountable through the ballot boxes. That is not present in many, many developing countries. Afghanistan is definitely a country that needs to find its own model as to how to govern and how to create that kind of balance between people and regime. I think it is utterly hypocritical from the West to prejudge them and hold them to ransom via mistakes that happened in the past. Every administration commits mistakes of varying sorts. Our own government in the UK is now being investigated by an independent inquiry staff as to how it dealt with COVID and whether some of its decisions led to the death of thousands of people. So, mistakes can happen.

The West needs to contend with why they left Afghanistan after 20 years of absolute misery and suffering no better than when they came to it in 2001. That’s a question that the West, including the UK, need to ask themselves before passing judgment on to the Taliban.

Khalifa: You mentioned something very interesting. You said we’re waiting to see and we cannot judge them right now. Do we see any hints of change? Has today’s Taliban changed from the Taliban of the pre-US occupation? For example, the Taliban issued a public pardon on Afghan military forces that had tried to eradicate them.

Altikriti: Well, the hints are plenty and the hints are positive. The fact that the Taliban, as you put it, issued that decree that there won’t be any military trials or court marshals being held. The fact that from the very first hours, they said that anyone who wants to leave could leave and they won’t stop them, but that they hope everyone will stay to rebuild Afghanistan. I think from a political and PR point of view, that was a very, very shrewd way to lay out the preface of their coming agenda.

The fact that Taliban leaders spoke openly, and I’ll be honest, in quite impressive narratives and discourses to foreign media — to the BBC, to Sky — and, in fact, took the initiative to actually phoning up the BBC and intervening and carrying out long and extensive interviews. This has never happened before. We could never have imagined that they sit with female correspondents and presenters and spoke freely and openly. Also, the fact that they met with the Shia communities in Afghanistan at the time when they were celebrating Muharram and assured them that everything was going to be fine.

I think a big part of whether Afghanistan succeeds or not lies in the hands of the West. For instance, in the first 24 hours of the Americans leaving in such a chaotic manner, which exemplified the chaos of the Taliban as we know it, the IMF said that funds to Afghanistan would be withheld. Therein begins that kind of Western hegemony, Western colonization that I believe is at the very heart of many problems in what we termed the Third World or the developing world.

The fact that sometimes nations aren’t allowed to progress, they aren’t allowed to rise from the ashes, they aren’t allowed to recover, they aren’t allowed to rebuild, not because of any innate deficiency on their part, but because of the international order that we have today in the world. We have so many restraining legal organizations — from the UN downwards, including the IMF and the World Bank — that hold nations to ransom. Either you behave in a particular way or we’re going to withhold what is essentially yours. It’s an absolute travesty, but unfortunately, this goes across all our radars. There is very little response in terms of saying, hang on, that is neither just nor fair nor democratic.

If you really, really want the betterment of Afghanistan and Afghan people, countries should be piling in, in order to afford help, to afford aid and to make absolutely sure that the Afghan people have everything they need in order to rebuild for the future.

But, unfortunately, the opposite is happening. We’re tying the nation’s hands behind its back and saying, we’re just going to watch and see how you do in that boxing ring, and if you don’t fare well, that will be justification for us to maybe reintervene in one way or another sometime down the line.

Khalifa: After seizing the country, the Taliban promised an inclusive government, with the exception of women. Yet the current government only comprises Taliban members. What are the chances that they deliver on forming an inclusive government?

Altikriti: I’m sort of straddling the line between being an academic and an activist, and I have a foot in both, so it’s sometimes a little bit difficult. However, I would suggest that when the Conservative Party in Britain wins an election, it’s never assumed that they include people from the Labour Party or Liberal Democrats in their next government. The same goes in America: When the Republicans win an election, you can’t reasonably ask or expect of them to include those with incredible minds and capacities from the Democratic Party — you simply don’t.

So, the hope for inclusivity in Afghanistan needs to take that into consideration. The Taliban are the winning party — whether by force or by political negotiations — and therefore, they have the right to absolutely build the kind of government they see fit. For them to then reach out to others would be an incredible gesture.

But I think it’s problematic and hypocritical if the West doesn’t allow the winning party to govern. If after some time it doesn’t manage to, then maybe you’d expect it to reach out to others from outside its own party or from outside its own borders and invite them to come and help out. But that’s not what you expect from day one.

The fact that they haven’t done what many people expected, and I personally have to say I feared would happen, and it hasn’t. So, until we find that media stations closed down, radio stations barricaded and people rounded up — and I hope none of that will happen, but if it does, we hold them to account.

Khalifa: Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, says the international community must engage with the Taliban, avoid isolating Afghanistan and refrain from imposing sanctions. He says the “Taliban are the best bet to get rid of ISIS.” What’s your view on that?

Altikriti: If we’re looking back at their track record, they were the ones who managed to put an end to the civil war that broke out after the liberation from the Soviet Union. I mean, for about five to six years, Afghanistan was ravaged with a civil war, warlords were running the place amok. I remember an American journalist said the only safe haven in Afghanistan was something like a 20-square-meter room in a hotel in the center of Kabul. The Taliban came in and created a sense of normality, once again in terms of putting an end to the civil war. There remained only one or two factions that were still in resistance, but otherwise, the Taliban managed to actually bring Afghanistan to order.

It was only after 9/11 and the US intervention that returned the country back into a state of chaos. So, if we’re going to take their track record into consideration, then it’s only fair to say that they do have the experience, the expertise and the track record that shows that they can bring some semblance of normality and peace.

Now, obviously, we understand that Afghanistan is not disconnected from its regional map and from the regional politics that are at play, including the Pakistani-Indian conflict. It’s no secret that the Taliban were looked after and maintained by the Pakistani intelligence. I understand from the negotiations that were taking place since 2010 that there was almost always a member of the Pakistani intelligence present at the table. So, it’s not a secret that Pakistan saw that in order to quell the so-called factions that represented the mujahideen, the Taliban were its safest bet.

In that sense and from that standpoint, you would suggest that the Taliban are best equipped. Much of what was going on in Afghanistan was based on cultures, traditions and norms that Americans were never ready to embrace, understand or accept. That’s why they fell foul so many times of incidents, which could have been easily appeased with only a little bit of an understanding and of an appreciation of fine cultural or traditional intricacies and nuances. The Taliban wouldn’t have that issue.

So, you would suggest that what Imran Khan said has some ground to stand on. It’s a viable theory. But everything that we’re talking about will be judged by what see is going to happen. But before we do that, we need to allow the Taliban the time, so that when we come to say, listen, they fail, we have grounds and evidence to issue such a judgment.

Khalifa: I want to shift to the US. So we know that there was a US-led coalition, and its presence for over 20 years in Afghanistan and in the Middle East led to very little change in the region. You already alluded to that at the very beginning. The US spent trillions of dollars and incurred the highest death toll out of the coalition members. What has the US learned from this experience?

Altikriti: I think that’s the question we should be focused on. I fear that it has learned virtually nothing and that’s very worrying. Just like we were passing pre-judgments on the Taliban, we need to do the same everywhere. If that’s the kind of ruler that we’re using to judge a straight line, it’s the same ruler we need to judge every straight line.

We heard the statements that emerged from Washington, and to be perfectly honest, very, very few were of any substance. Ninety-nine percent, and this is my own impression, were about America looking back and how they let down the translators and the workers in the alliance government and left them at their own fate. The tears were shed, both in the British Parliament as well as the American Congress, which actually shows that these people didn’t get it. They didn’t get it and that is what worries me the most.

If something as huge as Afghanistan and what happened — this wasn’t a car crash that happened in a split second. This was something that was led over the course of the last 17 years and definitely since President Trump signed the agreement with the Taliban in 2020. This should have been a time for politicians and analysts to actually read the situation and read the map properly. But it seems that they never did and they never bothered to see if there was any need or inclination to take lessons from it.  

I’m yet to come across a decision-maker, a lawmaker, a politician, a senior adviser to come out and say there were horrendous mistakes carried out by the occupation and by the other alliance governments that led to this, and as a result, we need to learn what to do and not do in future. But there is this arrogance and pride that forbids us from doing so, and as such, they’re inclined to make the same mistake time and time and time again.

Khalifa: Given that the so-called war on terror, and more specifically the occupation in Iraq, was an utter failure, what is the probability in your opinion that America will engage in another foreign intervention?

Altikriti: From a purely political view, I find this extremely far-fetched in the foreseeable future. The reasons being that Americans had to endure bruising at every single level and because of the crippling economic crisis. So, it’s extremely difficult to launch an intervention or military intervention in the way that we saw in Iraq, Afghanistan or Panama in the next two to three years. But the thing is, often, American politics is driven by corporate America.

I mean, we talk about the trillions spent, but like someone said in an article I read in The Washington Post, that those trillions were more than made up by American corporations, by American oil, by getting their hands on certain minerals in Afghanistan. Even the drug trade itself, which Britain and America thought they would quell, it was actually the Taliban who brought it under control, who actually went around and burnt the poppy seed farms. The West reinvigorated that tradeline and stabilized it. Therefore, as a friend of a friend tells me, he says many of those who were scrambling for airplanes in Kabul Airport were poppy seed farmers because they knew that they had absolutely no future under the Taliban.

So, once we count the trillions incurred by the taxpayer, we forget that there is another side that you and I probably don’t even know that is gaining riches at the expense of the Afghans.

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The beast now is to try out new weapons. Lockheed Martin and others will always have a vested interest in trying out the new technology, and what’s better than to try it out in real-life situations? If I was to speak to any modern, contemporary, 30-something-year-old military analysts, they’d laugh me off because I’m speaking about a bygone age. We’re talking now about wars where we don’t involve human beings. I mean, in terms of the assailants, they’re flying drones, and there’s an intelligence level to it that I can’t fathom nor understand.

Another aspect that no one is talking about almost is the privatization of militaries. We’re coming now to find brigades, thousands of troops that are mercenaries, people who fight for a wage. Now, this is the new way to fight wars: Why would Britain employ some of its brightest and youngest when it could pay £100 a day to have someone else fight wars on its behalf? And this is now becoming a multibillion-dollar industry. It first started out as a reality in Iraq, when we had the likes of Blackwater who were guarding the airports, presidential palaces and government officials. You’d try to speak to them only to realize they were from Georgia or Mozambique or elsewhere, and they don’t fall under the premise of local law. Therefore, if they kill someone by mistake, you can’t take them to court and that’s the contract you sign. That is where I think the danger lies.

Khalifa: In 2010, you appeared on Al Jazeera’s “Inside Iraq” alongside the late Robert Fisk and Jack Burkman, a Republican strategist. Burkman described Arabs and Muslims as a “bunch of barbarians in the desert” and the Bush administration as the savior bringing change. With its failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, has the US perceptions of Arabs and Muslims changed, and if so, how?

Altikriti: I’d love to have a chat with Jack right now to see what he thinks 11 years on. To answer your question, it saddens me to say that yes, it’s changed, but only because America and American society are so polarized and so divided. It only took Donald Trump to become president or 50% of Americans to defy everything that Trump said. Being anti-Trump meant standing up for Muslims when he issued the Muslim ban for flights. So, people from their standpoint of being anti-Trump said, no, Muslims are welcome. It’s absolutely the wrong way to go on about it. That’s not how we recognize, for instance, that racism is wrong or evil.

However, the fact is that in the past, anti-Muslim sentiments were everywhere and the feelings that Jack Burkman expressed so horribly in that interview were widespread. I personally believe they still remain because 9/11 has become an industry and that industry has many facets to it. Part of it is ideological, part is media, part is educational and obviously part transpires into something that is military or security-based.

We still have Guantanamo. Why is it that the American people aren’t talking about Guantanamo to the extent that they should be? This is something that is on the conscience of every single American citizen — it is paid from their own taxes. Why no one talks about it is simply because no one dares touch the holy grail — the industry of 9/11. It’s a huge, huge problem.

I still believe that those sentiments expressed by Jack back then are still prevalent, but like I said, they were mitigated by the advent of Trump and by his declaration against Arabs and Muslims. This, as well as the highlighting of certain issues by the left in America, such as the gross crimes committed by the Saudi regime and that’s helped in two ways. Firstly, you expose the crimes committed by Saudis, but it’s also cemented that view that Arabs are barbarians.

Khalifa: Afghanistan wasn’t the only country that suffered. Iraq suffered more dire and devastating consequences from the so-called war on terror. What does a future look like for Iraq now that the US has withdrawn?

Altikriti: Oh, very grim, very, very grim. The Americans haven’t withdrawn — they’re less visible. There are current negotiations regarding the next Iraqi government in the aftermath of the elections that we’ve just had, which shows that the Americans are heavily involved.

Iraq is the playground of Iran. So, therefore, any policy of America or Britain or Europe that involves Iran has to have Iraq in the middle.

There are still about three or four American military bases, and from time to time, we hear the news that certain militias targeted this base or that base where Americans lie. Now, the personnel who are there within the bases might carry ID cards as construction workers, advisers, legal experts, bankers or whatever. But ultimately, they’re all there to represent the best interests of the United States. So, America is still there.

However, Iraq is in dire straits. I think the indices that go around every year that show us levels of corruption, levels of transparency, levels of democracy, levels of happiness of people and satisfaction — Iraq is regarded as one of the 10 worst countries on every single level. I think that shows what’s been done to Iraq and what’s been done to the Iraqi people.

The fact is that we have at least 30% of the Iraqi people living as refugees, either within Iraq or outside of Iraq. The fact that in an election only 20% of the people choose to take part.

You have to ask serious questions. You have to say, OK, so when the Americans accused Iran — and I’m a believer that Iran is the worst of all players in Iraq. But you have to ask: So you occupied the country, why did you allow it to happen? So, you can’t just brush it off and say, well, the Iranian militias and its people and its proxy agents in the sun. Well, what were you doing there? So, I think that, again, what has been done to Iraq and to all Iraqis — regardless of their faith, regardless of their sect, regardless of their ethnicity — all of what has happened is a stain. A huge, huge one on the consciousness of everyone in Britain, America, Spain and all the countries that signed up for this and took part in this, everyone has a responsibility to answer.

I mean, obviously, when we spoke about Afghanistan, we didn’t speak about the crimes, the actual crimes that were committed. The one that we come to recognize and know about is the crimes committed by the Australians, where they actually trained the young cadets to shoot at people and kill them to be acknowledged as soldiers. We didn’t talk about that because there are so many of those that were committed. To speak not of Arab and Muslim barbarity, but of Western barbarity — that’s something I think should be discussed.

Khalifa: In Egypt, it was a military coup in 2013 that overthrew a democratically elected government led by the Muslim Brotherhood. In Tunisia, a constitutional change led to the fall of Ennahda, an Islamist party. In Morocco, it was the people who voted out the Justice and Development Party, which ruled the country for 10 years and suffered a massive defeat in September; they went from having 125 seats to only 12. To juxtapose this, in Afghanistan, the Taliban conquered the country overnight from the US, the most powerful country in the world. What message does this send to Islamist parties in the Muslim world?

Altikriti: Only yesterday, I was discussing this with a group of colleagues, and someone repeated a statement that was sent to me by a fellow of Chatham House. He said to me something quite interesting. He said: “Don’t you see that many around the world, particularly young Muslims, will be looking to Afghanistan — and three months ago in Palestine and what happened there — and think to themselves that the way forward is to carry guns.” I said: “Listen, my friend, you’re saying it. I’m not.”

But in reality, it’s unfortunate that many of my own students are saying, “It’s been proven.” I mean, they say, “you academics, you always talk about empirical evidence. Well, here it is: Politics doesn’t work. Democracy doesn’t work. The ballot box does not work. What does work? There you go, you have Taliban, you have the militias. So go figure.” Unfortunately, that is the kind of discussion that I think will dominate the Muslim scene, particularly the political Muslim scene.

For the next few years, I believe, whilst we analyze political Islam and Islamic parties, whether in Egypt, Morocco or Tunisia, that will be the question. Is it a viable argument to say that these parties will have absolutely no chance, either immediately in the short run or in the long run? In Tunisia, they were allowed to run for about 10 years. In Morocco, they were in government for about 10 years. Before that, they were in opposition and they were thriving. But in Egypt, they weren’t allowed to stay for more than a year. So, ultimately, the end is inevitable. So, is it the need to shift and change tactics? It’s going to be quite an interesting and, at times, problematic discussion, but it’s a discussion you need to have.

And last, by the way, on this particular point, the West did not allow democracy, particularly in Egypt and in Tunisia, to exist. We spoke of democracy, we spoke of human rights, we spoke of freedoms, but when they all came to be crushed, the West did absolutely nothing, which told the others well, you know what? They don’t care, there are no consequences, and that is why it is that many, many Muslim youth today will say, well, there’s only one way to go there.

Khalifa: And lastly, what do you believe are the core causes for Islamic extremist groups, i.e., Daesh or al-Qaeda, to still have a foothold in the region, and in your opinion, what is the best way to combat these groups?

Altikriti: Their biggest arguments, and which works well for them, is the fact that democracy failed and that they got nothing from buying into Western values of how to run their societies.

Their biggest argument now will be the Taliban and how they won. So, those are the main standpoints [for] these extremist groups; they lie on people’s frustrations and their feelings that there is no other way out. That’s essentially the argument. I’ve seen it in groups where someone is trying to recruit for that idea. Their bottom line is it doesn’t work. There is no other way — that’s their only argument.

It’s not theological, by the way. People think they are basing it on these Quranic verses or on hadiths [sayings of Prophet Muhammad], but they absolutely do not, because on that particular front, they lose, they have no ground to stand on. [For them,] it’s the fact that, in reality, it doesn’t work — democracy doesn’t work. Human rights doesn’t work. Because ultimately, your human rights mean nothing to those in power. So, killing us is as easy as killing a chicken. It’s nothing. That is their argument.

So, it’s going to be a struggle, it’s going to be a big, big, big struggle for people who want to advocate democracy, want to advocate civil society and diversity. It’s a struggle we can’t afford not to have, we can’t afford not to be in there, because the outcome, the costs will be so hefty on every single part and no one will be excluded.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In 2013, he wrote a tour de force about in his country. Pakistanis, especially in Punjab and Sindh, might have a love for the bottle, but they have to pay obeisance to hardline clerics who have now defined the state. Instead of Scotch, army messes now serve Rooh Afza, a sugary syrup popular across the Indian subcontinent.

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More importantly, the Pakistani army has created a Frankenstein’s monster that is increasingly out of control. In 2013, the identified the growing Islamization of the army as a security threat for the United States. Starting with the first Indo-Pakistani War of 1947-48, Pakistan used militant Islamists to mobilize Pashtun tribesmen against Kashmir.

This began the patron-client relationship between the Pakistani army and militant Islamists that has become deeper with time. The journal correctly predicted that the army “would again support a Taliban takeover of Kabul,” the Afghan capital. Once Kabul fell, the journal took the view that “Afghanistan and Pakistan [would] again become places that jihadis [could] freely roam.”

The Bloody Past of Jihad

My family has vivid memories of the first Pakistan-supported Pashtun jihad in 1947 in Kashmir. My great-grandfather was the first Kashmiri Pandit killed in the town of Varahamula, now known as Baramulla. The Pashtuns tied his dead body to a horse and dragged it through the streets to terrorize the local population into submission.

It was not only Pandits who suffered at the hands of the tribesmen. Fellow Muslim Kashmiris and even Europeans were subjected to murder, robbery and rape. In a haunting account, noted British journalist has documented the massacre at St. Joseph’s Mission in Baramulla during that invasion. 

After 1948, members of my community suffered from growing Islamization in Kashmir aided and abetted by Pakistan and eventually became victims of jihadi ethnic cleansing in . The indigenous Kashmiri Pandits had to flee their homeland to the plains of India after millennia of continuous habitation in the beautiful Himalayan valley. They have now become refugees in their own country and have yet to get justice, reparation or rehabilitation.

Like Kashmiri Pandits, Afghans have also had to flee their ancestral lands. This trend kicked off when the Soviets moved into Afghanistan in 1979. In June 1985, National Geographic published the photograph of , a 12-year-old-refugee from Afghanistan. Her haunting green eyes aroused the compassion of the world. Once described as the Third World’s Mona Lisa, Gula did not go on to have an easy life. In 2016, she was arrested “for using a forged Pakistani identity card—a common practice among the 1 million Afghan refugees who live in the country without legal status.” 

If Gula provided the striking image for Afghanistan during the endgame of the Cold War, the of Taliban fighters standing in front of the iconic painting of Ahmad Khan Abdali with their weapons in full view defines the new era unveiling before our eyes. In that painting, a Sufi saint anoints Abdali as the shah of Afghanistan by touching his forehead with a chaff of wheat. Culturally, the authority and legitimacy of Ahmad Shah Durrani, the founder of the Durrani dynasty, the last of the Afghan empires, came from a Sufi saint.

Today, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has seized power through the barrel of the gun. The Sufi chaff of wheat be damned. With the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, death and devastation will stalk the land, leaving little alternative for the likes of Gula to flee for their lives despite grim prospects across the border.

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In contrast to the divinely ordained shah, an is “a military commander, governor of a province, or a high military official.” The fact that the Taliban have proclaimed Afghanistan to be an emirate demonstrates their nakedly militaristic worldview. Their authority and legitimacy derive from unabated conquest. The Taliban is running a fundamentally anachronistic anti-democratic regime with little regard to the rights of women or minorities, whether ethnic or religious.

The Dangerous Role of Pakistan

The victory of the Taliban is a great boost for Pakistan, a state that has used terror as an instrument of state policy for decades on both its eastern and western fronts. In the early 1990s, some members of the Afghan mujahideen who had fought the Soviets and younger Pashtun tribesmen who studied in Pakistani madrassas came together to the Taliban. From the early days, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a key role in their spectacular success.

In November 1994, the Taliban captured Kandahar and, in September 1996, its fighters seized Kabul. Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Tajik president at the time, fled for his life. Later in 1996, the Taliban declared Afghanistan an Islamic emirate. This time around, they are better trained and better equipped than in the past. They have that executions and amputations will be back. The Taliban have hung bodies in public squares of the historic city of , a little over 120 kilometers from Iran. The Taliban are unleashing a reign of terror in Afghanistan thanks both to the ruthlessness of their fighters and the backing of Pakistan. Intelligence officials from many countries have said that Pakistan has deployed ISI agents, special forces and Chinese-built drones in Panjshir Valley.

Pakistan’s current reputation as the world’s global for jihad is a result of disastrous decisions by both populist and fanatical leaders. In 1974, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto brought in a constitutional amendment that declared the Ahmadiyya community to be non-Muslim. In another 2013 piece, identified this act “as the starting point of what began to mutate into a sectarian and religious monstrosity in the next three decades.”

General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq ousted Bhutto through a military coup and had him hanged on the gallows. The general’s first move as the army chief was to change Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s original army from “Unity, Faith, and Discipline” to “Faith, Piety, and Jihad for the sake of Allah,” a change that has come to define the army today. With more religious lower-middle-class young men joining the officer class, there is not even a hairline separation between elements of the Taliban and the Pakistani army. The Taliban-controlled Afghanistan will not just be Pakistan’s strategic depth but instead its sword arm. 

The Taliban inspire not only Pakistanis but also many Indian Muslims. They are , a Sunni Islamic revivalist movement that was founded in 1866, eight years after the bloody 1857-58 Indian rebellion that shook the British Empire to its core. In 1858, the indirect rule of the British East India Company ended. The Mughal Empire was formally dissolved and the Crown took over. Many Muslims regarded the end of Mughal rule as a catastrophe and some charismatic preachers began the Darul Uloom Islamic seminary in Deoband, a town in the northwestern region of India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh close to Delhi.

In a recent feature article, American journalist of the National Public Radio covers the roots of the Taliban. She notes that Maulana Arshad Madani, the 80-year-old head of Deoband’s Darul Uloom, expressed admiration for the Taliban kicking out the Americans from Afghanistan. She quotes the cleric as saying, “I’m weak and old, but if given the chance, I would go to Afghanistan.” More worryingly, Madani has supported the Taliban policy to completely men and women in educational institutions. He thinks women should wear hijab and not participate in sports. has also warned of another partition if the Hindu right tampers with Indian secularism.

Like Madani, many Pakistanis are by the victory of the Taliban and some see it as a divine sign of God’s will. Religious extremists are already demanding greater Islamization and the imposition of sharia. Already, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has to the mullahs, abandoning the domestic violence and forced conversion bills. Hardline clerics argue that these bills contradict Islamic teachings. Given such a zeitgeist, it is little surprise that many analysts predict that terrorist attacks will increase. 

India fears increased infiltration by Pakistan of Taliban Pashtuns into Kashmir and yet another cycle of violence. What is emboldening the Pakistanis is support from Turkey. , writing for The National Interest, argues that there is already a tacit working relationship between these two countries to establish a borderless Islamic imperium. Khan has championed the superhit Turkish action-adventure series called “” about “Muslim Oghuz Turks fighting invading Mongols, Christian Byzantines and the fanatic Knights Templar Crusaders in Anatolia (now modern-day Turkey) of the 12^th century.” After turning to Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and 1990s, Pakistan is now turning to Turkey for its cultural identity.

It is also important to note that the current Pakistani government is led by a Pashtun and is far more pro-Taliban than its predecessors. This increasing of Pakistan is making intelligence officials worry about Pakistan as a potential source for nuclear proliferation. Marvin Kalb, a nonresident senior fellow at , has just written about “the agonizing problem of Pakistan’s nukes.” The specter of “jihadis taking control of a nuclear weapons arsenal” of about 200 warheads is a very real one. There is also the scenario of mid-level officers conspiring to release or sell warheads to militant groups. 

For the World

The international community has been worrying about the security of nuclear facilities for over a decade. In 2008, Mohamed El Baradei, then head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that “nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of an extremist group in Pakistan or in Afghanistan.” Later that year, , a senior analyst of the EastWest Institute, observed that an increasingly overstretched military and rising Islamic extremism was increasing the risk of Pakistani nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands.

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Over the last 75 years, the steady spread of Islamic extremism in Pakistan and then Afghanistan has left the international community confused at best and paralyzed at worst. Leaders in world capitals have ignored long-term trend lines that began with the use of Pashtun tribesmen to invade Kashmir in 1947. Now, the 20-year war on terror has ended in an ignominious American retreat even more dangerous than Vietnam, giving a shot in the arm to the likes of Madani in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. 

In the light of the debacle in Afghanistan, US senators are seeking an assessment of Pakistan’s in Afghanistan. Some are proposing sanctions. This has caused stock market prices to fall and the Pakistani rupee to drop to a record low. Pakistan’s economic woes are expected to boost radicalization further. Vikram Sood, the former chief of India’s intelligence agency R&AW, has repeatedly warned about Pakistan becoming a center of a new global . He is not alone. US General Mark Milley is worried about rising regional instability along with “the security of Pakistan and its ��������Բ�����.”&�Բ�����;

Many senior American military and intelligence officials estimate that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has not only to the region but also to the US. Europeans are worrying about terror threats and yet another flood of refugees. The world faces a clear, present and unprecedented danger that will only grow with time. A rogue nuclear strike would make the 9/11 attacks of 2001 look like insignificant firecrackers.

Washington’s decades-long fixation with Iran and North Korea has obscured the reality that the Taliban and Pakistan present the greatest global security threat. Therefore, the major powers and the international community must come together to contain both the Taliban and their patron Pakistan before millions of innocents lose their lives.

*[This article is the first of a three-part series analyzing the fallout of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The one issue on which both may have agreed is the growing need for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan. The UN and various international NGOs have alerted the international community to the imminent faced by the Afghan people, especially inadequate health care and food shortages. Many of the 12 million at-risk Afghans are children.

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To complicate matters, with only 2.2 million Afghans prior to the Taliban takeover, COVID-19 infections are on the rise. Starved of resources, hospitals and clinics lack basic medicines, and staff is forced to work without pay. Then there is the country’s fast-approaching, notoriously harsh winter when food and fuel come at a premium.

Aware of the pending crisis, the earlier this week at an emergency meeting called for and hosted by Italy agreed to respond, though no specific pledges were made. Attendees, while aware of the need to coordinate any assistance effort with the Taliban, also expressed concerns over the Taliban’s commitment to fighting terrorism, specifically mentioning the Islamic State’s (IS) Khorasan faction inside Afghanistan, known as ISK.

Where’s Our Money?

Part of the humanitarian problem stems from the inability of the Taliban to access Afghanistan’s international accounts, frozen by most of the Western governments in whose banks the funds had been deposited. The asset freeze was imposed almost immediately after the Taliban took control. Of the estimated $9 billion in frozen accounts, $7-$8 billion are believed held in US banks, and the Taliban want it. They assert that they can’t care for their citizens properly without it.

As reflected in the G20 discussions, the US and other governments don’t necessarily dispute the claim but also know full well that the Taliban may, and likely will use any unfrozen funds for other purposes, some not at all to the liking of those governments, such as weapons, aid to terrorist groups, support for their drug trade, etc.

The US and other governments are also well aware of the Taliban’s egregious mismanagement of the Afghan economy when they previously ran the country from 1996 to 2001. Their gross ineffectiveness brought the economy to its knees and their strong affiliation with al-Qaida put the country off-limits to outside aid.

Today, it is fair to ask whether the Taliban have learned anything about economic management since they were toppled by the US in 2001. Unless they are willing to accept genuine experts from the previous regime without prejudice, it’s difficult to believe that 20 years of fighting their way back into political power has taught them much about finance, monetary policy, macroeconomic planning, budgeting, banking or any of the other responsibilities that are needed of competent governments to responsibly manage an economy for 40 million people.

Show Us the Goods

With winter on the way, the Americans are acutely aware of the need to start humanitarian assistance now. But they have their own list of wants. These include fighting terrorism, adhering to basic human rights norms and respecting the rights of women and girls, including to equal education, health care and employment opportunities.

Additionally, the US has a number of citizens who could not be repatriated in the rushed evacuation effort that followed the Taliban’s capture of Kabul and the fall of the previous government. Thousands of Afghans who had worked for the US during its 20-year presence in Afghanistan were also left behind. The US wants immediate and unhindered departure of these individuals and their families, if they freely elect to leave.

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Following the meeting, a Taliban spokesman announced that the Americans had agreed to provide humanitarian assistance. But there was no official confirmation from the US side, and there likely won’t be until it receives some affirmative responses to its demands from the Taliban.

That holds particularly true for the frozen Afghan assets. Without airtight commitments from the Taliban followed by genuine action, the Americans will continue to withhold the Afghan funds. It’s leverage, and right now, it’s the only means the US has of assuring some of its basic requirements for the Taliban government are met. Needless to say, trust on either side likely hovers around zero. Therefore, it’s all about, “What are you going to do for me?” The fact that the Afghan people may bear the brunt of the suffering for this position is unquestionably tragic.

Stepping Up to Responsibilities

The US demands, as well as those of the rest of the international community, are reasonable, basic and expected of a responsible and competent governing authority in any country. So, the Taliban face their first test of governance. Having prevailed in their two-decade struggle, they now need to demonstrate they can govern. That the fate of millions of innocent Afghans hangs in the balance is an unfortunate consequence. But consider it a yardstick of Taliban goodwill to their own people.

Nevertheless, neither the US nor the rest of the international community will be able to ignore for long the increasing need — soon to be desperation — of the Afghan people. Soon, some interim solution will be necessary whereby international NGOs and UN humanitarian organizations can enter and operate in the country to provide and distribute goods and services to meet basic human needs, starting with essential food items, medicines and health care. The G20, working with the UN, may be the best approach for that.

But such an emergency effort will do little to get the Afghan economy on its feet. Much more is necessary, starting with the release of the frozen assets. That will mean the Taliban stepping up to its responsibilities and likely not before.

The Biden administration — already under some pressure at home over an ambitious domestic economic agenda stalled in Congress and the humiliating manner in which the Afghanistan withdrawal unfolded — isn’t about to complicate matters by releasing those funds without real Taliban action. Joe Biden is no doubt familiar with the opprobrium heaped on President Barak Obama when he released about $30 billion in frozen Iranian assets in 2015 after the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. To quote from many classic American crime shows, it’s “Show me the goods before I show you the money.”

Perhaps the only good that may be claimed after this first meeting is that the two sides have opened a dialog. But considerable territory will need to be covered before any assertion of “a relationship” may be said to exist.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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This is the latest in a string of attempts by Facebook and other technology companies to for the spread of misinformation, violent extremist content and incitements to terror on their platforms.

In response, last month, an was held in Bergen, Norway, to commemorate the 77 victims of the terror attacks in Oslo and Utøya on July 22, 2011. Since then, radical-right extremism has become an increasing transnational threat, with a in the number of global attacks in the last five years.

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At the summit, closed-door workshops, discussions and Q&A sessions facilitated open and robust dialogue among leading global stakeholders committed to fighting radical-right terrorism and extremism. These included representatives from Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Twitter, the British, US, New Zealand and Norwegian governments, the UK’s communication regulator OFCOM, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, the UN, the EU and more.

The “22 July at Ten” organizers published the , outlining five steps for a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach among governments, tech platforms and civil society organizations aimed at helping tackle the spread of violent extremist content and mitigating the rising rates of online radicalization.

Black Box

While many researchers no longer subscribe to the technologically deterministic view that social media is the sole cause of radical-right extremism, there is evidence that it does, in fact, the process. An from 2016 found that 64% of people who joined an extremist group on the platform did so because the company’s algorithm suggested it. This explains why many online communities, including white and male supremacist groups, can act as gateways to more extreme groups and ideologies.

By design, Facebook algorithms prioritize content that gets more clicks, which in turn amplifies inflammatory content and increases the . Apparently, it’s just not in Facebook’s interest to make judgments on the quality of the content shared on the platform, given that its business model is centered on maximizing revenue from adverts. After Facebook’s 2016 report, for example, alterations to the “recommender algorithm” were turned down as they were deemed “.”

The first step of the Bergen Plan of Action calls for a tougher and more comprehensive approach to countering violent extremism through an approach that involves the whole of society, including governments, the corporate sector and civil society organizations.

Sessions with the US Department of State raised valid concerns regarding how this would work in practice, not least given tech companies’ well-documented resistance to publicizing information about their algorithms and transparency in general. The seemingly impenetrable nature of their recommendation engines has been used to relinquish responsibility from their role in spreading extreme content.

While much is yet to be resolved, the Bergen Plan of Action has the potential to provide vital independent, peer-reviewed research, allowing internet users to make better decisions about the information they consume and share online. The fourth step of the Bergen Plan of Action recommends establishing a global network of civil society organizations in order to facilitate sharing methods for tackling all stages of online radicalization. Specialist tools such as Moonshot’s could be used to identify and safeguard vulnerable individuals, directing them toward safer content and trained counselors.

Another important aspect of the global network is to avoid the duplication of research across international counter-terrorism organizations.

Whole of Society

A further focus of the conference was on the role of content moderation. Historically, tech companies have repeatedly abdicated responsibility for removing radical-right content. Social media platforms received after their failure to remove the extremist messaging that helped incite the violence at the US Capitol on January 6.

During the Bergen conference, representatives from Google and Facebook discussed the challenges of creating a global definition of terrorism that does not impinge on the right to free speech, especially the First Amendment to the US Constitution. However, 10 years after the tragic events of July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik’s “2083” terrorist manifesto is still one of Norway’s top Google search results. This alone, argues Matthew Feldman, the director of the Centre for Analysis Radical Right, shows that Google’s approach is inadequate.

The Bergen Plan of Action proposes that an independent body of moderators should be used across all tech companies to better enable transparency and accountability surrounding moderation. Moderators would also be supported with counseling and mental-health resources since the nature of the content they’re exposed to can be immensely distressing.

Likewise, policy decisions would be backed up by transparent, externally verified data to show measurable impacts of each policy. The benefits of this approach are showcased by Twitter’s . Within a week of the former US president being banned, false claims of election rigging from 2.5 million to 688,000 — a 73% decline.

In this plan, moderators would also be trained to recognize terrorist and violent extremist content in a multitude of languages and cultural contexts. This would provide a humanistic approach to deciphering extreme rhetoric and discourse — an obvious improvement on the current, overly-automated process responsible for the majority of .

An independent group of experienced moderators could better navigate more nuanced issues of cancel culture and free speech in marginal or highly-charged cases while also retaining engagement from marginalized users and minimizing polarization.

As expressed by former Pinterest employee , tackling the spread of harmful content online comes down to conviction: “If you want to understand how non-accidental any of this is, think about pornography. How often do you randomly encounter porn on Facebook, or Twitter, or YouTube, or wherever else? Not that often.”

Getting tech companies to endorse the Bergen Plan of Action may well be the biggest challenge to its success. It will require a recentering of Big Tech’s efforts around duty of care to users instead of growth and profit. Yet a whole-of-society approach necessitates their involvement.

Policies that offer social media companies financial incentives have shown promise, as have ones the mete out punishments, such as the Network Enforcement Act in Germany that social media companies up to €50 million ($58.7 million) for failing to quickly remove violent extremist content.

Ultimately, a multi-stakeholder solution — including governments, tech platforms and civil society — that can be meaningfully adopted by each sector is an ambitious but vital task to prevent future events like the Capitol Hill insurrection and radical-right terrorist attacks like the 2011 tragedy in Norway.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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I hesitate to note the vulnerabilities here to avoid facilitating adversarial advances, but I hope that this will lead to further action by the US government to evacuate SIV/P1/P2/P3 applicants in order to avoid this. Failure to do so will lead to torture, interrogation and manipulation of our former allies in an attempt to extract full biographical data and identities of their former co-workers, including sensitive site exploitation as well as digital and document extraction.

This alone will provide a fiesta of data that is the gift that keeps on giving. Each lead will lend itself to another lead, and another, and another.

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Once all elements of the network are completed, the adversarial extraction of information will multiply. The ability to process and analyze this data to make it applicable is unlimited. In short order, the United States’ greatest adversaries will be able to compile details on all US personnel that has ever been stationed in Afghanistan.

This includes all passport and visa information of all US staff — soldiers, diplomats, spooks, etc., who are now at the mercy of the Taliban and whomever they opt to share the data with or sell it to. The Taliban now own all Afghan border information. They have my iris scans, fingerprints and passport data.

They also have all biographical data and personal information of every US staff member connected with Afghan local staff. Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, phone numbers, emails, professional histories, full names, etc. Keep in mind that we are friends with these people and have signed off with personal signatures and contact information on all their paperwork.

The TTPs (tactics, techniques and protocols) for US military bases and the US Embassy access are now also exposed. The people we left behind know the word-by-word polygraph procedures for gaining entry to our military, diplomatic and intelligence facilities. They know our security protocols, applications details and database methods.

This information is not only now available to the Taliban but is up for sale to the highest bidders such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran — not to mention affiliate terrorist groups such as the Haqqani Network, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS).

Information does not stagnate in these circles. It sells, spreads and grows. In short order, it will be in the hands of China. Beijing already has full data on all US individuals with since the early 2000s that it can now cross-reference. Couple this with hacked data available on the open market for a fraction of the cost, including Experian, Marriott and airline data leaks.

There is nothing to stop a letter showing up at my mother’s door threatening her if I do not cease and desist my work. There is nothing to stop me from being pulled into a secondary screening in any number of countries that will soon have access to this data.

There is nothing to stop my closest Afghan allies from being interrogated until they give up my biographical data, personal email, physical description and professional title. This will limit my ability to travel anywhere outside Western Europe, for example.

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Additionally, every single military, diplomatic and intelligence post around the world is now compromised, with the key details now available on how to gain employment while surpassing vetting and investigative procedures.

None of this speaks to the fact that the Taliban reportedly have access to our biometric databases that identify our Afghan partners. To be clear, many of our Afghan partners were embedded within the core of our diplomatic, intelligence and military units. Leaving these people behind is akin to leaving Americans with security clearances being at the mercy of Taliban interrogators.

Afghanistan is not some far-off place with no relevance. Afghanistan is here, in America — at home. It is closer to you than your television. Abandoning our Afghan allies is a grave national security violation that will haunt us for decades to come.

*[This article originally appeared on the author’s page.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Leaving Afghan Allies Behind Is a Threat to US Security appeared first on 51�Թ�.

As if to lend greater somber, the commemoration took place as the US and the world watched America and its allies’ tragic and humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan. No fiction writer could have written a sadder, more unreal denouement to America’s 20-year saga to right the wrongs and assuage the grief of 9/11.

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Many commentators have written that 9/11 was for the millennial generation what the assassination of John F. Kennedy was for the boomers. While identifying with the latter group, I found the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, far more consequential. One can grasp how one deranged madman could target an American president. After all, it wasn’t the first time in US history. But a band of madmen belonging to an extreme, anti-civilizational group of hate-driven madmen attacking in explosively spectacular fashion office buildings filled with innocent human beings, killing nearly 3,000 and forever upending the lives of tens of thousands of other innocents?

Transformative Moment

As a US diplomat assigned to the State Department on that day, I stood in speechless astonishment on the north bank of the Potomac River barely an hour after the attack on the Pentagon on the other bank. My department had been evacuated just moments before, authorities believing that other terrorist-controlled airliners were still headed toward Washington. A surreal chaos whirled about us in America’s capital city. Colleagues and I kept telling ourselves that surely the fire raging across the river with its great billowing clouds of black smoke would soon be extinguished. (It would take days.) But we could never have imagined the impact it would have on our lives and more importantly on the course of a nation.

Countless writers, journalists, experts, pundits and social media junkies have offered up their assessments of how America went from a nation united in confronting that day’s tragedy to one divided at home and defeated abroad. It’s especially noteworthy because on the day the terrorists struck, America stood at the pinnacle of global supremacy, the hyper-power with a dynamic and ever-growing economy and armed forces unparalleled in history. But it wasn’t what the terrorists did that day that brought the country to this point. Americans — and specifically American leaders — did it to themselves.

Consider America’s actions after the attacks that day. Rightly and commendably the country earned the support of virtually every country in the world in going after al-Qaeda. Eliminating it, however, was never a realistic option. As it’s often said, an idea can’t be killed, and the extremist ideology that drove al-Qaeda then persists today within that organization and the many offshoots it has spawned. But diminishing its capabilities in order to severely constrain its ability to threaten the US or other nations was a realistic goal. And it can be said that it has largely been achieved.

Terrorism is a tactic, not a movement. Whether by the Mafia, Irish Republican Army, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (aka FARC), Lenin and Stalin, Mao’s Red Army, or Julius Ceasar and his legions rampaging through Gaul, it has been employed often throughout history and often very successfully. It will likely continue. It can be controlled. But as a tactic, like an idea, it is a permanent element of human conflict.

“Unnatural and Unhealthy”

But it wasn’t what America did to fight and contain terrorism that necessarily diminished its global power and stature, though missteps were made. It was the two misadventures on which it embarked shortly after 9/11, first in Afghanistan and then in 2003 in Iraq. “It’s unnatural and unhealthy for a nation to be engaged in global crusades for some principle or idea while neglecting the needs of its own people.” Had America’s leaders bothered to heed that wisdom of former US Senator J. William Fulbright or to consult the volumes of books, articles and reports of the country’s history in Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s, the lessons would have been starkly clear. Taking on projects to quell or settle internal insurrection or launch nation-building in countries still struggling for a national identity is a fool’s errand.

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The lessons of Vietnam were manifestly obvious in Afghanistan. It was and remains a country historically riven by tribal, ethnic and religious strife. No nation has ever succeeded in bringing it under control, certainly not for very long. Outsiders have constantly interfered there because of the disunity. Warlords moved in and out of power in various parts of the country.

It is easy to say with today’s 20/20 hindsight that 90 days after expelling both al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the US should have withdrawn from Afghanistan and asked the UN Security Council to take charge of organizing a government. As a superpower outsider, the US was exactly the wrong nation to undertake that task. But, as in Vietnam, impelled by ambition, hubris, arrogance, grand visions and considerable self-deception, America plunged ahead.

Despite its rushed and ignominious departure, America and its allies can take credit for some of their successes (really) in Afghanistan. Education levels, especially among girls, are up considerably. Women have many more opportunities and greater freedom today than in 2001. Afghan infrastructure is much improved. Even the standard of living improved for many Afghans.

Unfortunately, because of the abject failure of the political project, it is unclear whether any of that is sustainable. The history of previous Taliban rule would suggest otherwise. On the other hand, we cannot yet know the impact of America’s 20-year Afghanistan enterprise on individual Afghans and their perceptions of themselves and their future, especially women.

Lessons and Lamentations

While Afghanistan may have been seen as a war of necessity at its start, it sadly evolved into one of unachievable expectations. Donald Trump saw it much that way — though with little understanding of its complexities, other than it was far away from America and had little economic value to the US. It was left to Joe Biden to make the painful but inevitable and necessary decision that it was time to leave.

As was done following our Vietnam exit, volumes will now be written about this tragic episode in US history, including by institutions within America’s own government. They will be authored by credible and competent scholars and political and military experts. They will be exhaustively researched. They will give blow-by-blow accounts of decisions made, policies adopted, actions taken, and statements, declarations and promises issued. Charts, graphs, maps and statistics will be presented. They will point out the many errors, lies, self-deception and willful blindness. They will also relate the sacrifices of thousands of Americans, most of whose stories will never be known. They will also cite the pains and loss of so many Afghans. And they will all end up with much the same conclusion. America and its allies withdrew after finally confronting one ineluctable reality.

Those studies will offer invaluable insights to Americans and their leaders. But will they learn? Will Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan finally prove convincingly instructive to prevent the country from undertaking such adventures in the future, however nobly perceived?

To listen to and read the never-ending stream of observations on this pregnant moment in the nation’s history has become a modern-day version of the Book of Lamentations. Indeed, the country’s challenges, internal and external, are manifold and daunting. Heretofore, its democracy held the capacity to absorb, learn, adapt and rebound from its setbacks.

But the question bears repeating if the nation is to move beyond this point in its history. Will it learn?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Houthi rebels based in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, have made advances against pro-government forces in al-Baydha province. They have also pushed southern forces, Salafi factions and al-Islah affiliates out of southern districts. Houthis also claim to have defeated militants belonging to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), who fought alongside tribes, Salafis and pro-government forces.

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These claims come a year after the Houthis said they had cleared northeast al-Baydha of AQAP and Islamic State (IS) militants. These fighters are said to have moved into Abyan and Shebwa provinces. This has increased instability in areas where government troops allied with President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islah face fierce opposition from southern security forces.

Southern Concerns

It has been nearly a year and a half of fighting in the oil-rich province of Mareb between Houthis and pro-government forces. Southerners fear that civilian officials and troops affiliated with al-Islah, a Sunni Islamist party, will withdraw and seek refuge in areas like Shebwa province. In addition, southerners have expressed concern over by AQAP-affiliated from al-Baydha into places like Mudiyah in northern Abyan province, as well as the southwest of Shebwa.

These militants claimed operations against Houthis in and southwest areas of al-Baydha, which border Abyan. The fighting there has subsided, with Houthis claiming control of territory around Homaiqan and areas near Bayhan. Claims of territorial gains by Houthis and have raised the alarm for southern forces, including the Security Belt Units (SBU) in Abyan that fought with pro-government troops. This was particularly the case following the arrest of linked to attacks on the SBU in and Aden.

The Southern Transitional Council (STC), which is part of Hadi’s government today, and other southern allies believe the movement of forces from al-Baydha and Mareb into Abyan or Shebwa violate the and the 2020 for a coalition government. The build-up of troops without coordination under these agreements is a threat to a more comprehensive deal negotiated by Saudi Arabia to focus on the fight against Houthis across northern territories.

The influx of militants into areas like Mudiya, Abyan and new attacks on in places like Bureiqa in Aden worry southerners. The latter see the conflict expanding beyond clashes with military and tribal forces in Abyan loyal to President Hadi and troops under the direction of Vice-President Ali Muhsin and affiliated with al-Islah. Instead, they believe, the fight is now against a growing number of AQAP militants in the area.

Chaos and Refuge

For southerners, an influx of militants and al-Islah’s ambition to control the oil-rich Shebwa province bring back memories of radicalization and recruitment of Yemenis for the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s and the occupation of southern Yemen by northerners after the 1994 civil war. Islah-affiliated forces have increased their presence around the oil fields of Usaylan in northern Shebwa. They are also pushing to take control of the Belhaf LNG Terminal, which is currently protected by Shebwani Elite Forces that are pro-STC.

While the for autonomy remains excluded from UN-led peace talks, the STC is recognized by the Saudi-led coalition as a legitimate representative of southerners and allied forces charged with securing southern territory “under supervision of the coalition.” Since the Riyadh Agreement was signed, operations to stabilize southern provinces like Aden, Abyan and Shebwa have been obstructed by the and the amassment of Islah-affiliated troops east of Shoqra in Abyan.   

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The build-up of government forces in Abyan and Shebwa is a result of both a retreat from al-Baydha and and efforts to reinforce troops inside Abyan province. The movement of forces into Abyan in 2020 violated the Riyadh Agreement. Government reinforcements have also escalated tensions with the SBU, further destabilizing this fragile environment.

Now, the retreat of troops from Mareb into northern Shebwa — some deployed to protect oil infrastructure — is seen as aiming to strengthen the presence of Islah and secure refuge in case Mareb City falls to Houthis. Southern forces have asked why government troops are retreating to Shebwa while Houthis advance through Murad and now .

In Abyan, the province is divided into three. First, the STC holds territory west of Shoqra along the coast to Lower Yafa, the border with al-Baydha and Lahj. Second, tribal forces and military units loyal to Hadi, who hails from Abyan, hold areas in northern Abyan bordering al-Baydha. Third, government troops, led by commanders affiliated with al-Islah and Ali Muhsin, hold territory east of Shoqra and along the border with Shebwa.

Official AQAP wires have claimed a number of operations against . Al-Qaeda has reportedly targeted government troops in , but it has yet to claim operations along the coast west of Shoqra. Without confirming specific links between AQAP militants and government forces, southerners are asking how militants can bypass security checkpoints and travel from western al-Baydha to Mudiya and then western Shebwa.

Misdirection and Refuge

Reports of a resurgence of AQAP in southern Yemen have been met with skepticism. As a consequence of escalating media wars, some observers claim labeling individuals as al-Qaeda militants is merely part of the demonization game between rivals. Yet confirmation via official online wires claimed by AQAP not only allows observers to navigate the media wars, but it also points to asymmetric tactics utilized by rivals to create chaos on the ground.

In recent months, AQAP has claimed a number of operations against Houthis in al-Baydha and southern forces in Abyan and Aden. Some operations have only been claimed or assigned to AQAP via social media and news outlets. Dr. Elizabeth Kendall of Oxford University has the current manifestations of AQAP as active, committed, pragmatic and fake. The origin and intent of the “fake” faction are what worries southerners, who view this as an instrument of misdirection in a battle to secure refuge for groups like al-Islah. This is primarily because many of the operations not claimed by AQAP target southern forces in areas of confrontation with government forces affiliated with al-Islah.

The timing of movement by AQAP militants across Abyan and Shebwa, coupled with increasing operations since the death of SBU counterterrorism chief in 2019, adds credibility to claims that the aim is to create chaos and cause the collapse of the Riyadh Agreement. In doing so, the story goes, confrontation would ensue between al-Islah-affiliated forces and southern factions over control of strategic territory in the south. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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This is a myth of epic proportions. Conflict is not war, though wars are a part of conflict. Although wars are typically made up of many battles, a battle is not a war, and a war is not a conflict. Conflicts go on for decades and centuries and evolve, devolve, merges, morph, fizzle out, flares up, expand and shrink geographically, go from hot to warm to cold, and develop into hybrid forms.

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The most famous US war that is said to be lost, Vietnam, was actually won. It just took  Vietnam is a free-market country for all intents and purposes, a US ally with an extensive population exchange. All the wars that we claimed as victories were never won in the sense of this black-and-white model that we derive from World War II. Not even World War II was won in the sense of its own model.

It was not a clean cut. There were small pockets of resistance afterward. There are still neo-Nazis in Germany, where the US still has troops. Germany still battles the US on various fronts — political, economical and social. Yet no one says that the United States lost the war against Germany.

Conflict has a four-dimensional, never-ending spectrum that is partnered in a dance with peace. It consists of two bipolar points that are constantly in a fluid twirl together like one of those geospatial screen savers on your Compaq computer in 1998.

The Korean War was never won. The Cold War was . The First Gulf War was only won in the sense that Iraqi troops were pushed out of Kuwait. But the First Gulf War was only a battle within a larger conflict. The Second Gulf War — the Iraq War — consists of about four or more wars that all fall under the same umbrella of conflict.

When you speak to Iraqis, they make a distinction between the Invasion in 2003, the sectarian war and the fight against the Islamic State (IS). The fact that Americans insist on viewing the war in Iraq as a singular monolithic war is sadly due to their lack of attention, detail and the narrow-mindedness of the World War II syndrome.

Those that argue that the Afghan War was lost fail to understand the concept of conflict. The war in Afghanistan was never lost because it never began. It has continued in some fashion for centuries. The actors rotated through, changing names and ambitions. The Taliban may currently lay claim to political power and maintain some level of a monopoly of violence, but that is not universal. They maintain this status because we let them.

Make no mistake about it: There was never a moment in time that the US could not have removed the Taliban from the world map. However, moral obligations hindered this, given the massive number of civilian casualties it would have cost. So no, the Taliban and their cohorts at no point “beat” the US military and its NATO allies.

It may be argued that we failed to train the Afghan army. The same could be said of the  faced with IS, but today. Moreover, we did not fail at training the Afghan people. What the Taliban are confronted with, assuming they maintain power, is the same challenge every government or occupier in Afghanistan has always faced. The difference is that this isn’t the same Afghanistan of two decades ago.

For 20 years, we have vaccinated the Afghan population with concepts of freedom, education, work, opportunities, the English language and liberal thought. All the while, the Taliban showed their true colors by killing innocent people as a matter of policy and without remorse. The Afghans know the Taliban. They do not like them. They may not all be the greatest fans of having US or NATO troops in their country, but  definitively prefer a nation not run by the Taliban.

In the end, the US won the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, making it impossible for the Taliban to operate without making extreme concessions, at the very minimum. This is not to say there will be , but good luck to the Taliban ever surpassing the reach of the Afghan government achieved with the backing of the entire world. The Taliban may have the watches, but .

The Taliban, as we knew them pre-August 31, 2021, will never succeed. Like in Vietnam, the will of the people to have access to equality, justice, information, quality of life, connectivity, travel, education and business opportunities is and always will be greater than the violence-forced power of extremists. America always wins its wars because America is not a country — it is an , and you cannot kill an idea.

*[This article originally appeared on the author’s page.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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It was in that the Taliban took over Kabul the last time around. Following a version of extreme Islam, it unleashed a reign of terror in Afghanistan. It also exported terror to India. It sent jihadi fighters in the form of the mujahideen to liberate Kashmir.

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There is one event that is etched in the memory of the region and must surely be indelible in the Indian consciousness. On December 24, 1999, five terrorists a plane from India and forced the pilot to fly it to Kandahar. The Taliban fighters surrounded the plane to prevent Indian military operations to rescue the hostages.

India capitulated to the demands of the Taliban. It released Maulana Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. Azhar went on to found Jaish-e-Mohammed, a deadly terrorist group in Pakistan that is infamous for striking the Indian parliament and conducting the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Sheikh was arrested for abducting and murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl. Zargar has been sending jihadis to Kashmir.

India’s capitulation in 1999 is still a black mark on its reputation. The Taliban sees India as a soft target. It sees India as a land of kafirs who worship idols that need to be smashed. It is important to remember that the Taliban blew up the historic statues of the Buddha at in 2001 despite requests from Buddhist communities all over the world. In the eyes of the Taliban, India is a land of Hindus that oppresses Muslims and must be defeated, if not converted, to Islam.

As in the 1990s, the Taliban is a clear and present danger to India. In August, India the special session of the UN Security Council on Afghanistan. Yet India failed to take a position on the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. No independent statement was forthcoming. 

Can India Afford to Lose Afghanistan to the Taliban and Pakistan? 

It is an open secret that the Taliban have been nurtured by Pakistan. Ever since its birth in 1947, Pakistan has sought strategic depth against India. The great Mughal city of Lahore is merely 24 kilometers from the Indian border. India’s population, economy and manufacturing capabilities dwarf Pakistan’s. Therefore, Islamabad has always sought strategic depth by controlling Afghanistan. In the past, the Taliban have acted as auxiliaries to the Pakistani army and carried out numerous operations against India. The actions of the Taliban and other jihadi fighters have given Islamabad plausible deniability in its war of terror against India.

The victory of the Taliban is a double-edged sword for Pakistan. On the one hand, Islamabad has achieved its objective of strategic depth. This time, the Taliban have even taken over the Panjshir Valley. On the other hand, this victory will fan Pashtun nationalism. Lest we forget, of Pakistan’s population is Pashtun. This community was arbitrarily divided by the Durand Line into Afghanistan and British India in . Pashtun nationalists consider it a humiliating colonial legacy and have never accepted it. As Pashtun power rises, so does the threat to Pakistan’s territorial integrity.

Pakistan’s solution to its Pashtun problem is to use an increasingly extreme version of Islam to tie the country together. In this version of Islam, India is the bogeyman. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has constantly called the Bharatiya Janata Party a Hindu party. He has damned Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for leading a genocidal regime that kills innocent Muslims. This narrative seeks to unify the Pashtuns, the Balochs, the Sindhis, the Punjabis and other Muslim communities of Pakistan against India. The Pashtuns are lionized as the greatest fighters of the region and encouraged to fight a jihad against India for the liberation of fellow Muslims in Kashmir.

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Ajit Doval is India’s national security adviser. In 1999, he negotiated with the Taliban for the release of hostages. He is well aware of their designs. Yet India has adopted a wait-and-see approach to Afghanistan. Presumably, India wants to focus on its China border. Yet it is inevitable that the Taliban and Pakistan will menace India on the west.

India must take a bolder stand against the Taliban now and not wait until the danger is at its door. New Delhi has failed to speak up for a democratically elected legitimate government in Kabul. Instead, it has accepted the takeover by the Taliban as a fait accompli. Like India, Afghanistan is a country with tremendous ethnic and cultural diversity. India is a good model for a future Afghan democracy.

India Can and Must Act

In realpolitik terms, the Taliban is now dominant across Afghanistan. Indian policymakers might think that they can do little to intervene. They do not have the supply lines, military or intelligence wherewithal and political capital to operate in landlocked Afghanistan. So, dealing with the devil now in charge might seem to be the only realistic option.

Yet many Indians forget that their country commands much soft power in Afghanistan. Afghans who do not support the Taliban have always looked up to India, not Pakistan, as a model for their country. So, support for Afghanistan’s democratically elected government would strengthen India’s appeal among millions of Afghans. 

India could also consider supporting Afghanistan’s (NRF) led by Ahmad Massoud. Historically, India has been more comfortable backing Amrullah Saleh, the former vice president who has declared himself as acting president of Afghanistan. However, Saleh is tainted by his association with Ashraf Ghani, the former Afghan president. Ghani has little credibility left after his flight from Kabul. He handed over the capital and the country to the Taliban on a platter without even the pretense of a fight. Ghani’s reputation for corruption, arrogance and incompetence has made him a persona non grata in Afghanistan. The anti-Taliban Afghans have not forgiven Saleh for going along with Ghani, and he has thin support in the country now.

In a clan-based traditional society, Massoud has emerged as the tallest anti-Taliban leader. He is helped by the fact that he is the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud. . trained at the prestigious British military academy Sandhurst. He entered Kabul the day Ghani fled the country. Since then, he has put up a fight against the Taliban and is now leading a guerrilla force in Panjshir Valley. Massoud Jr. has called for a national uprising against the Taliban and is emerging as Afghanistan’s best hope to take on the Taliban.

It is in India’s strategic interest to back Massoud Jr.’s NRF. The Taliban have won many battles so far, but they have yet to win the war for Afghanistan. Ethnic groups like the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Hazaras and others are bound to rally against their harsh, intolerant regime. Many Pashtuns will join them. Massoud Jr. needs backing from powers like India, Britain and the US to carry on the fight against the Taliban. Otherwise, this hardline regime will inevitably export terror to the rest of the world again.

Of all the world powers, India will suffer the most from the Taliban’s terror exports. Islamabad will direct the Taliban against India to preserve Pakistan and to avenge New Delhi’s liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. Even China has entered the fray in Afghanistan. has already hosted leaders of the Taliban and is willing to work with them. Russia is staying very quiet and there are rumors that it has made its own deal with the Taliban. 

With the US pulling out dramatically and chaotically, Afghans who opposed the Taliban for decades need support. Just as India once backed Bangladeshis, they must now assist Afghans fighting the Taliban.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The grave mistakes that the post-9/11 Washington administrations made in Afghanistan and Iraq have contributed to the rupture of American society, ultimately culminating in the cataclysmic events of January 6. It permanently stained America’s global image as the promoter and defender of democracy. One wonders if the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks may have actually succeeded in their mission to undermine America’s democratic ethos.

War on Terror

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration  from Congress the Authorization of Use of Military Force against a wide array of people or groups that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks or harbored such organizations or persons.” Within weeks, the US assembled a global coalition of more than 50 nation-states, initiating Operation Enduring Freedom, which quickly ended the Taliban’s five-year reign.

Then came Colin Powell’s  at the United Nations, in which the Bush administration desperately tried to justify an invasion of Iraq. Having been unable to garner support, Washington initiated its March 2003 campaign unilaterally.

While the initially stated objectives of both invasions were reached — the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq — the vaguely defined global war on terror required the US to maintain a gargantuan military footprint in the wider Middle East region. In 2011, President Barack Obama  the total number of military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq to a massive 100,000.

The relentless US military war machine across the region inadvertently created a ripple effect the implications of which have been felt far and away, in Europe and across the Atlantic: refugees.

In Afghanistan, an estimated  were killed as a direct result of the 20-year war,  of them in US airstrikes. Furthermore,  Afghan paramilitary forces are known to have committed egregious abuses against the local population in the name of the fight against the Taliban. The extreme corruption of the US-backed governments of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani further  and oppressed the Afghan people.   

In Iraq, the US deposing of Saddam Hussein and the subsequent de-Baathification — the removal and exclusion of any military or civilian associated with his regime — initiated fierce sectarian violence where the Shia Arabs, once oppressed by Hussein, began their retribution. Hussein’s generals, in turn, mounted a insurgency, which ultimately morphed into the Islamic State (IS, or Daesh).

In 2015, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who helped Bush invade Iraq,  that “Without the Iraq War, there would be no ISIS.” Daesh made its biggest gains by steamrolling into Syria in 2014. At its peak, the terrorist group  almost a third of Syria and much of central Iraq. Daesh’s push across Iraq and Syria created more refugees.

The US-led coalition then embarked on an extremely destructive military operation in late 2016 to retake Mosul and Raqqa from Daesh. It is estimated that the indiscriminate bombing of those two cities caused the death of more than . Furthermore, the US-backed proxies, particularly the Democratic Union Party, were by Amnesty International of committing ethnic cleansing in Syria.

Anti-Immigrant Tide

All things considered, the US-led war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria has directly or indirectly created refugees and migrants numbering in the , whose last stop is generally the European Union. The world watched in shock as migrants tried to cross the Mediterranean in ; those who were successful found themselves  barbed-wire fences in countries whose borders otherwise allow unhindered travel.

The migrant crisis became particularly severe in 2015. According to the UN, an estimated 800,000 migrants and refugees, fleeing conflict and persecution in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq  on European shores that year.

The growing refugee crisis began to shape the European political scene, giving rise to right-wing and populist politicians, threatening the EU’s liberal and democratic foundations. In Poland, the anti-migrant, xenophobic, Euroskeptic Law and Justice party won the 2015 parliamentary elections by a .

Hungary witnessed the consolidation of power by right-wing Prime Minister Victor Orban around the rhetoric of a . Citing the need to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, parliament granted extraordinary powers to Orban, turning him into a de-facto autocrat who, as many experts believe, has Hungarian democracy.

Most notably, the proponents of Brexit exploited the migrant crisis to scare voters into supporting the bid to leave the European Union. , the leader of the far-right UK Independence Party and an ardent advocate of Brexit, produced a poster showing thousands of refugees crossing the Croatia-Slovenia border in 2015. The words “BREAKING POINT” were emblazoned across the picture, above a line that read: “We must break free of the EU and take back control of our borders.”

Around 75% of the pro-Brexit voters cited as the most important issue the UK faced. In October 2015, the anti-immigration Swiss People’s Party won Switzerland’s parliamentary elections by a landslide, swinging the country to the right. Many other across Europe considerably increased their votes as well.

It appeared that the 2015 rapidly booming refugee influx constituted a major turning point for much of European politics in terms of the right-wing upsurge. The anti-immigrant tide didn’t spare the United States either. In his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump often pointed to the migrant crisis in Europe to make a case for tough immigration policies along the US-Mexico border and for the need to build a wall.

On April 28, 2016, he : “Look at what’s happening all over Europe. It’s a mess and we don’t need it. … When you look at that migration, you see so many young, strong men. Does anyone notice that? Am I the only one? Young, strong men. And you’re almost like, ‘Why aren’t they fighting?’ You don’t see that many women and children.” According to Pew Research Center, around 65% of Trump supporters immigration as a “very big problem” for the United States.

America threw a boomerang at the greater Middle East at the turn of the century. It struck Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya, , causing death and devastation. A decade later, it moved on to Europe, leading to the gradual revival of the “menace” the Europeans have tried to bury for so long, that of right-wing ultranationalism.

Ultimately, the returning boomerang arrived on US shores, propelling Trump to the White House. As a result, the American public has never been so divided, not since the Civil War. On January 6, the boomerang finally returned to Congress, revealing the ever-growing weakness of American democracy.

The abrupt and disastrous withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in August is  to produce even more refugees, creating a crisis that will hit Europe even harder than the one in 2015. This alone indicates that the policymakers in Washington have failed to learn lessons from the last two decades.

As China is fast ascending toward global hegemony, the West in general and the US in particular are facing tremendous challenges. The questions yet to be answered are whether past mistakes constitute a lesson for the future. What has America learned from the tragedy of 9/11?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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For many discerning readers of news, attentive to The Times’ influence over not only the general public but especially an elite class of political and economic decision-makers, the prestigious paper can also prove to be exasperatingly unreliable. Given the importance of the topics the newspaper covers and its capacity to shape historical events, its critics are justified when they perceive this all too variable reliability as potentially dangerous. The Daily Devil’s Dictionary has repeatedly taken The Times to task for its tendency to present tendentious interpretations of crucial events as established fact or to promote the conclusions it draws from those events as infallibly logical.

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Too often, The Times’ indulgently and uncritically presents official explanations pleasing to the US defense establishment and the interests of a military-industrial complex, including Wall Street, as fact. Nevertheless, the paper encourages its reporters to demonstrate their independence and dig deeper when the opportunity arises, even when it means unearthing stories that may embarrass their habitual allies. This week provided a of such an original investigation.

In an article published last Friday, a team of four reporters led by Matthieu Aikins dared to dramatically contradict and expose as a lie the Pentagon’s official account of the August 29 drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 people, including seven children. The team produced a powerful presenting the documentary evidence it investigated. It includes a graphic reconstruction of the events on the ground that day from the point of view of the man that US intelligence identified as the suspected terrorist. They were mistaken. Zemari Ahmadi was in fact “a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group.”

On the day of the strike, The Times began an article relating to the official of the event with this sentence: “A U.S. drone strike on Sunday destroyed an explosives-laden vehicle that the Pentagon said posed an imminent threat to Afghanistan’s main airport.” To the extent that the Pentagon is cited as the source, this is honest reporting. Not only did it leave appropriate doubt in the reader’s mind, but it also opened the path for a team of Times reporters to challenge the veracity of the military’s account.

Immediately following the strike, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark A. Milley, explained why the military was confident they had eliminated a terrorist. “Because there were secondary explosions, there is a reasonable conclusion to be made that there was explosives in that vehicle.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Secondary explosion:

1. One of a number of the military’s creative explanations designed to establish the guilt of an innocent victim to hide its own guilt

2. The collateral effect of official lies once they are investigated and reported to the public

Contextual Note

After sifting through the evidence, the only credible case for a “secondary explosion” might be the explosive article The Times’ itself published nearly two weeks later, exposing the Pentagon’s lie. The original article asserted that “the U.S. military said it was investigating the assertions.” In fact, the military did nothing. The Times’ journalists stepped in to unveil the truth.

At a joint press on September 1, General Milley had promised to act. “As we always do with these things,” he explained, “we initiate an investigation.” He claimed to have had “very good intelligence that [Islamic State in Khorasan Province] was preparing a specific type vehicle.” As The Times team eventually revealed, the supposed terrorist had a white Toyota. So did Ahmadi, the US aid worker who lost his life. Right car, wrong victim.

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At their press briefing, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and General Milley on the traditional theme used to explain atrocities, that “war is hell.” The secretary even uttered the pleonasm that “missile hell is hell, period.” General Milley added, “War is hard, it’s vicious, it’s brutal, it’s unforgiving.” These clichés served to write off 20 years of unabated state-sponsored terror.

One journalist asked the two men about the “pain and anger” they felt. General Milley replied that “when we see what has unfolded over the last 20 years, and over the last 20 days, that creates pain and anger. Mine comes from 242 of my soldiers killed in action over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Recently, The Independent the figure of “363,000 civilians killed during the War on Terror.” Those civilian deaths at the hands of the US compared to a couple of hundred American military deaths evoke neither pain nor anger from the general.

Historical Note

The New York Times deserves the public’s applause for this brave and timely reporting on the death of Zemari Ahmadi and the seven children who crowded around his car to greet him when he came back home that evening. The Times can live up to its reputation of great journalism. But does this redeem its ethical failure on other occasions?

The shining — which is to say most egregious — example of The Times’ journalistic irresponsibility in recent years was the newspaper’s coverage of the build-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Because of the alacrity of its journalists and editors to funnel the fearmongering lies of George W. Bush’s White House into its front-page coverage of the “global war on terror” over a period of weeks and months, its critics hold The Times has accountable for betraying the interest of the public it claims to serve.

The Gray Lady values its privileged access to US government sources, particularly to those in defense and national security. The defense establishment knows that it can count on The Times to print any new message it wishes to diffuse. That relationship describes how an effective system of propaganda functions most of the time.

The Times’ stunning reporting on the final act of aggression perpetrated by the US military in Afghanistan contains a bitter irony. A campaign that in 2001 began with lies, leading to wanton destruction, ended with an act of wanton destruction followed by a lie. It may well have been a “mistake” or a judgment error of intelligence to track and then kill Ahmadi. But asserting that “there were secondary explosions” with absolutely no evidence to support it was nothing more than a lie compounded by the surreal assertion that imaginary explosions could lead to “a reasonable conclusion,” when General Mark A. Milley claimed that there were “explosives in that vehicle.”

A highly unreasonable war thus terminated with false affirmations of reaching a “reasonable conclusion” based on an outright lie. The war in Afghanistan began by treating a patent criminal act conducted by a shadowy group of terrorists as an act of war by another nation. That was the first unreasonable conclusion based on a lie. It led to an undeclared but brutally conducted war against a nation and a people who were indeed governed by a truly fanatical regime. But that very regime assumed power in 1996 only as a result of a series of previous actions by Western powers seeking, since 1978, to overthrow a progressive government with a strong human rights agenda.

Even in 2001, the Taliban posed no direct threat to the United States or the West. It played no role in provoking the events of 9/11. The planning and plotting of those events took place in Germany and in the US, not in Kabul, even though Osama bin Laden had a training camp inside Afghanistan.

A year and a half later, a new lie amplified by The New York Times led to the invasion of Iraq. Twenty years after 9/11, the world is left wondering what the next lie will be.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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After 20 years of the doctrine in action, which saw the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq that further ignited regional instability, President Joe Biden has withdrawn US troops from Afghanistan and is determined to end the in Iraq by the end of the year. Without concluding whether two decades of aggression succeeded in defeating terrorism, it can be said that the war on terror opened a new area of influence for one of the axis of evil, namely Iran in Iraq.

Opening the Gates

Thanks to its Shia population, Iraq has been a significant target of Iranian foreign policy since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Due to both geographic and sectarian proximity, Iran, which sees Washington as an enemy and a source of instability in the region, was suspicious of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

Deeming Baathist Iraq as a major threat to its national security, the regime in Tehran has meddled in its neighbor’s internal politics and strategic tendencies ever since coming to power. With the US toppling of Saddam Hussein, however, Iran succeeded in courting Iraq’s Shia population by taking advantage of its shared border and cultural, religious and economic ties.

The fact that significant Shia figures opposed to the Iraqi regime took refuge in Iran in the early 1980s strengthened Tehran’s relations with these groups in the post-invasion period. During this time, the Shia population has become influential in the Iraqi state and society. For example, Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Organization militia, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the recently deceased vice president of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), count among some of the most prominent pro-Iranian figures in the current Iraqi political and military establishments.

The Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shia resistance group headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim hoping to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime, was established in Iran in 1982. It became a pioneer organization for various Shia militias and political groups with connections to Tehran, incorporating the Badr Organization, then known as the Badr Brigades.

While Iran benefitted from the support of Iraqi militias during the inconclusive war with Iraq in the 1980s, Tehran redirected this mobilization against the US forces following the 2003 invasion. The Iraqi militia group Kataib Hezbollah was in early 2007, followed by Asaib Ahl al-Haq, as part of the campaign by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force against US forces.

Iran’s presence in Iraq came to light when the Americans several Iranian operatives in 2006 and 2007, among them of the IRGC. Asaib Ahl al-Haq kidnapped and killed five US soldiers in January 2007, but two months later, captured the militia’s leader, Qais al-Khazali, alongside an operative of Hezbollah, Tehran’s proxy in Lebanon, Ali Musa Daqduq. It is well known that the Jaish al-Mahdi militias led by Muqtada al-Sadr, who still has distant dealings with Iran, received intensive Iranian support to fight against the United States.

The disbanding the Iraqi army and establishing the interim government by the US after 2003 provided Iran with new opportunities to secure many significant positions in the bureaucracy. In this process, many members of the Badr Brigades were integrated into the new army and police forces, their political connections winning many rapid promotions. Today, Badr is still one of the most active groups within the police, the army and the Ministry of Interior.

Consolidation of Iranian Power

The Baghdad government was formed along ethnic and sectarian quotas. As per the country’s 2005 constitution, the presidency was allocated to the Kurds, the prime minister’s office to the Shia and the position of parliament’s speaker to the Sunnis. The allocation of the executive position to Shia leaders strengthened Iran’s elbow room in Iraqi politics.

The sectarian policies of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who held office between 2006 and 2014, the Sunni society further. In addition to the fact that the Shia occupied a central position in the administrative system, the American inability to understand Sunni expectations has marginalized Sunni society. Radicalization led to the resurgence of al-Qaeda and later the formation of the even more extreme Islamic State (IS) group in the Sunni regions of Iraq.

After capturing Mosul in June 2014, IS has taken control of almost a third of Iraqi territory. All Shia groups fighting against the new threat were under the banner of the Popular Mobilization Units — an umbrella organization controlled mainly by pro-Iran armed groups — after Iraq’s top Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called for all those able to carry a weapon to take up arms.

The PMU militias were provided with American and Iranian-made weapons during their fight against IS. Pro-Iranian militias such as the Badr Organization, Kataib Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq dominated the PMU. Active support by the IRGC provided to Iraqi militias and the presence of Qassem Soleimani, a Quds Force commander, at the front lines pointed to Iran’s effectiveness in the field.

Integrating the PMU as a of the Iraqi security mechanism in 2016 further legitimized Iranian influence in the political and military establishments. For instance, almost $1.7 billion was to the PMU, which consists of some 100,000 militants, from the $90-billion Iraqi budget in 2021.  

Defeating the Islamic State

After the declaration of victory against IS in 2017, tensions between Iran and the US, placed on the back burner during the campaign, reignited. While US officials argued that the PMU completed their mission and should be , pro-Iranian groups reassumed their anti-American tone.

Thanks to their active role in the fight against IS, Iran-backed militias secured their position in the military bureaucracy and were able to establish themselves politically. The Fatah Alliance, under the leadership of Hadi al-Amiri and backed by pro-Iranian militias, gained victory in the 2018 election, becoming the second-largest group in the Iraqi parliament. Iran has thus become one of the decision-makers in post-IS Iraq.

Tensions increased in 2018 after President Donald Trump decided to unilaterally withdraw the United States from the nuclear deal with Iran. Pro-Iranian forces began to attack US forces on the ground in Iraq. While Iran seemed to want to punish the US via the Iraqi militias, these attacks also aimed at forcing Americans to withdraw from Iraq. The situation has come to an apogee with the killing of Soleimani and Muhandis in the in Baghdad on January 3, 2020.

The assassinations shifted the tensions to the political arena. On January 5, under the leadership of pro-Iranian groups, a was passed in Iraq’s parliament to call on the government to expel foreign troops from the country. In addition to political pressures, as a result of ongoing attacks by pro-Iranian militias on American bases and soldiers in Iraq, the US many of its bases in the country. As a result of strategic dialogue negotiations with Baghdad, Washington decided to withdraw its combat forces and retain only consultant support. To a large degree, Iran managed to get what it wanted — to drive the US out and reassert its own influence in the region.

Pro-Iranian militias, already active in the Shia regions, started to show their presence in Sunni-dominated areas such as Mosul, Anbar and Saladin after the defeat of IS. Furthermore, Iran-backed groups pursue a long-term strategy to seize control of disputed areas between the central government and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Iran-backed groups, including the Badr Organization, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Kataib Imam Ali, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada and Saraya al-Khorasani, have been active in the disputed territories since 2014.

At the same time, these militias under the PMU umbrella reject control by Baghdad and threaten the central government. So much so that Abu Ali Askari, a spokesman for Kataib Hezbollah, was that “the time is appropriate to cut his ears as the ears of a goat are cut,” referring to Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, while militias were able to against the government in the streets of Baghdad amid tensions leading up to the anniversary of Soleimani’s assassination.

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Aiming to limit US influence, Iran has been gradually reshaping Iraq‘s internal and security policy since 2003. While millions are still paying the price of the war on terror in Iraq, which resulted in the collapse of the political and economic systems followed by a campaign of terror by the Islamic State, Iran continues to consolidate its power, both in military and political spheres.

After an 18-year-long story of invasion and with the US poised to withdraw its combat forces, Iran’s hegemony over Iraq will inevitably come to fruition. The sectarian and ethnic emphasis within the framework of the government quota system not only prevents the formation of independent Iraqi identity but also keeps fragile social fault lines dynamic, an opportunity that Iran will, without doubt, continue to exploit.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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That was the story that grabbed headlines at the beginning of August. Hardly a week later, everything had changed. Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban and soon the 20-year war would be declared over.

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Though few paid attention to the phenomenon, this also meant that the significance of a commemoration of the attacks, would be radically different. For 19 years, the commemoration served to reinforce the will and resolution of the nation to overcome the humiliation of the fallen twin towers and a damaged wing of the Pentagon.

Redefining the Meaning of the Historical Trauma

In the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, politicians quickly learned to exploit the date as a painful reminder of a tragedy that had unified an otherwise chaotically disputatious nation in shared horror and mourning. Ever since that fatal day, politicians have invoked it to reinforce the belief in American exceptionalism.

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The nation is so exceptional in generously providing its people with what President George W. Bush “our freedoms” — and which he identified as the target of the terrorists — that it was logical to suppose that evil people who didn’t possess those freedoms or were prevented from emigrating to the land of the free would do everything in their power to destroy those freedoms. To the degree that Americans are deeply thankful for possessing such an exceptional status, other ill-intentioned people will take exception to that exceptionality and in their unjustified jealousy will threaten to destroy it.

On a less philosophical and far more pragmatic note, the remembrance of the 9/11 attacks has conveniently and consistently served to justify an ever-expanding military budget that no patriotic American, interested in preserving through the force of arms the nation’s exceptional status, should ever oppose. It went without saying, through the three previous presidencies, that the annual commemoration provided an obvious explanation of why the forever war in Afghanistan was lasting forever.

The fall of Kabul on August 15, followed by the panicked retreat of all remaining Americans, caught everyone by surprise. It unexpectedly brought an official end to the war whose unforgettable beginning is traced back to that bright September day in 2001. Though no one has yet had the time to put it all in perspective, the debate in the media has shifted away from glossing the issues surrounding an ongoing war on terror to assessing the blame for its ignominious end. Some may have privately begun to wonder whether the theme being commemorated on this September 11 now concerns the martyrdom of its victims or the humiliation of the most powerful nation in the history of the world. The pace of events since mid-August has meant that the media have been largely silent on this quandary.

So, What About Saudi Arabia?

With the American retreat, the controversy around Biden’s unkept campaign promise concerning Saudi Arabia’s implication in 9/11 provisionally took a backseat to a much more consequent quarrel, one that will have an impact on next year’s midterm elections. Nearly every commentator has been eager to join the fray focusing on the assessment of the wisdom or folly of both Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and his seemingly improvised management of the final chaotic phase.

The human tragedy visible in the nightly news as throngs of people at Kabul airport desperately sought to flee the country easily eclipsed the genteel but politically significant showdown between a group of American citizens demanding the truth and a government committed to protecting the reputations of friends and allies, especially ones from oil-rich nations.

The official excuse turns around the criterion that has become a magic formula: national security. But the relatives of victims are justified in wondering which nation’s security is being prioritized. They have a sneaking suspicion that some people in Washington have confused their own nation’s security with Saudi Arabia’s. Just as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt not long ago that plenty of people within the Beltway continue to confuse US foreign policy with Israel’s, the families may be justified in suspecting that Saudi Arabia’s interest in hiding the truth trumps American citizens’ right to know the truth.

To appease the families of 9/11 victims and permit his unimpeded participation in the commemorations, Biden offered to release some of the documents. It was a clever move, since the new, less-redacted version will only become available well after the commemoration. This gesture seems to have accomplished its goal of preventing an embarrassing showdown at the commemoration ceremonies. But it certainly will not be enough to satisfy the demands of the families, who apparently remain focused on obtaining that staple of the US criminal justice system: “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, may have shown the way concerning the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Like MBS, the White House prefers finding a way to release some of the truth rather than the whole truth — just the amount that doesn’t violate national security or tarnish the reputations of any key people. Those two goals have increasingly become synonymous. If the people knew what actual political personalities were doing, the nation’s security might be endangered, as the people might begin to lose faith in a government that insists on retaining the essential power of deciding how the truth should be told.

Here is how the White House the legal principle behind its commitment to unveiling a little more truth than is currently available. “Although the indiscriminate release of classified information could jeopardize the national security — including the United States Government’s efforts to protect against future acts of terrorism — information should not remain classified when the public interest in disclosure outweighs any damage to the national security that might reasonably be expected from disclosure.”

The White House has thus formulated an innovative legal principle brilliantly designed to justify concealing enough of the naked truth to avoid offending public morals by revealing its stark nakedness. Legal scholars of the future may refer to it as the “indiscriminate release” principle. Its logical content is worth exploring. It plays on the auxiliary verbs “could” and “should.” “Could” is invoked in such a way as to suggest that, though it is possible, no reasonable person would take the risk of an “indiscriminate release of classified information.” Later in the same sentence, the auxiliary verb “should” serves to speculatively establish the moral character of the principle. It tells us what “should” be the case — that is, what is morally ideal — even if inevitably the final result will be quite different. This allows the White House to display its good intentions while preparing for an outcome that will surely disappoint.

To justify its merely partial exposure of the truth, the White House offers another original moral concept when it promises the maximization of transparency. The full sentence reads: “It is therefore critical to ensure that the United States Government maximizes transparency.”

There is of course an easy way to maximize transparency if that is truly the government’s intention. It can be done simply by revealing everything and hiding nothing within the limits of its physical capability. No one doubts that the government is physically capable of removing all the redactions. But the public should know by now that the value cited as overriding all others — national security — implicitly requires hiding a determined amount of the truth. In other words, it is framed as a trade-off between maximum transparency and minimum concealment. Biden has consistently compared himself to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Perhaps that trade-off between transparency and concealment is what historians will call Biden’s New Deal.

But the White House’s reasoning is not yet complete. The document offers yet another guiding principle to explain why not everything will become visible. “Thus, information collected and generated in the United States Government’s investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks should now be disclosed,” it affirms, “except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise.” Those reasons, the document tells us, will be defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during its “declassification reviews.” This invocation of the “strongest possible reasons” appears to empower the FBI to define or at least apply not only what is “strongest,” but also what is “possible.” That constitutes a pretty broad power.

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The document states very clearly what the government sees as the ultimate criterion for declassification: “Information may remain classified only if it still requires protection in the interest of the national security and disclosure of the information reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security. Information shall not remain classified if there is significant doubt about the need to maintain its classified status.” The families of the victims can simply hope that there will not be too much “significant doubt.” They might be forgiven for doubting that that will be the case.

One September Morning vs. 20 Years of Subsequent Mornings

Twenty years ago, a spectacular crime occurred on the East Coast of the United States that set off two decades of crimes, blunders and judgment errors that, now compounded by COVID-19 and aggravated climate change, have brought the world to a crisis point unique in human history.

The Bush administration, in office for less than eight months at the time of the event, with no certain knowledge of who the perpetrator might have been, chose to classify the attack not as a crime, but as an act of war. When the facts eventually did become clearer after a moment of hesitation in which the administration attempted even to implicate Iraq, the crime became unambiguously attributable, not to a nation but to a politically motivated criminal organization: Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda that back then was operating out of Afghanistan, which was ruled by the Taliban.

The administration’s choice of treating the attack as an act of war not only stands as a crime in itself, but, as history has shown, as the trigger for a series of even more shameless and far more destructive — if not quite as spectacular — crimes that would roll out for the next two decades and even gain momentum over time. Had the 9/11 attacks been treated as crimes rather than acts of war, the question of national security would have had less importance in the investigation. By going to war with Afghanistan, the Bush administration made it more difficult to investigate all the possible complicities. Could this partially explain its precipitation to start a war?

Bin Laden, a Saudi, did not act alone. But he did not act in the name of a state either, which is the fundamental criterion for identifying an act of war. He acted within a state, in the territory of Afghanistan. Though his motive was political and the chosen targets were evocatively symbolic of political power, the act itself was in no way political. No more so, in any case, than the January 6 insurrection this year on Capitol Hill.

Though the facts are still being obscured and the text describing them remains redacted in the report of the 9/11 Commission, reading between the redacted lines reveals that bin Laden did have significant support from powerful personalities in Saudi Arabia, many of them with a direct connection to the government. This foreknowledge would seem to indicate at some level of the state.

On this 20^th anniversary of a moment of horror, the families of the victims quite logically continue to suspect that if a state was involved that might eventually justify a declaration of war by Congress (as required by the US Constitution), the name of that state should not have been Afghanistan, but Saudi Arabia. It is equally clear that the Afghan government at the time was in no way directly complicit.

When the new version of the 9/11 Commission’s report appears with its “maximum transparency,” meaning a bare minimum of redaction, the objections of the victims’ families will no longer be news, and the truth about the deeper complicities around 9/11 will most probably remain obscured. Other dramas, concerning the state of the COVID-19 pandemic, the increasingly obvious consequences of climate change and an upcoming midterm election will probably mean that next year’s 21^st commemoration will be low-keyed and possibly considered unworthy of significant mention in the news.

In 2021, the world has become a decidedly different place than it has been over the past two decades. The end of a forever war simply promises a host of new forever problems to emerge for increasingly unstable democracies to deal with.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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We have been told that the criminal attacks of September 11, 2001, “changed everything.” But what really changed everything was the US government’s disastrous response to them. That response was not preordained or inevitable, but the result of decisions and choices made by politicians, bureaucrats and generals who fueled and exploited our fears, unleashed wars of reprehensible vengeance and built a secretive security state, all thinly disguised behind Orwellian myths of American greatness.  

360° Context: How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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Most Americans believe in democracy and many regard the United States as a democratic country. But the US response to 9/11 laid bare the extent to which American leaders are willing to manipulate the public into accepting illegal wars, torture, the Guantanamo gulag and sweeping civil rights abuses — activities that undermine the very meaning of democracy. 

Former Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz said in a in 2011 that “a democracy can only work if its people are being told the truth.” But America’s leaders exploited the public’s fears in the wake of 9/11 to justify wars that have killed and maimed millions of who had nothing to do with those crimes. Ferencz compared this to the actions of the German leaders he prosecuted at Nuremberg, who also justified their invasions of other countries as “preemptive first strikes.” 

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“You cannot run a country as Hitler did, feeding them a pack of lies to frighten them that they’re being threatened, so it’s justified to kill people you don’t even know,” Ferencz continued. “It’s not logical, it’s not decent, it’s not moral, and it’s not helpful. When an unmanned bomber from a secret American airfield fires rockets into a little Pakistani or Afghan village and thereby kills or maims unknown numbers of innocent people, what is the effect of that? Every victim will hate America forever and will be willing to die killing as many Americans as possible. Where there is no court of justice, wild vengeance is the alternative.” 

“Insurgent Math”

Even the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, talked about “,” conjecturing that, for every innocent person killed, the US created 10 new enemies. Thus, the so-called global war on terror fueled a global explosion of terrorism and armed resistance that will not end unless and until the United States ends the state terrorism that provokes and fuels it. 

By opportunistically exploiting 9/11 to attack countries that had nothing to do with it, like Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen, the US vastly expanded the destructive strategy it used in the 1980s to destabilize Afghanistan, which spawned the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the first place. In and, only 10 years after 9/11, US leaders betrayed every American who lost a loved one on September 11 by recruiting and arming al-Qaeda-led militants to overthrow two of the most secular governments in the Middle East, plunging both countries into years of intractable violence and fueling radicalization throughout the region.

The US response to 9/11 was corrupted by a toxic soup of revenge, imperialist ambitions, war profiteering, systematic brainwashing and sheer stupidity. Lincoln Chafee, the only Republican senator who voted against the war on Iraq, later , “Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment.”

But it wasn’t. Very few of the 263 Republicans or the 110 Democrats who voted in 2002 for the US to invade Iraq paid any political price for their complicity in international aggression, which the judges at Nuremberg explicitly “the supreme international crime.” One of them now sits at the apex of power in the White House. 

Failure in Afghanistan

Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s withdrawal and implicit acceptance of the US defeat in Afghanistan could serve as an important step toward ending the violence and chaos their predecessors unleashed after the 9/11 attacks. But the current debate over next year’s military budget makes it clear that our deluded leaders are still dodging the obvious lessons of 20 years of war. 

Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress with the wisdom and courage to vote against the war resolution in 2001, has introduced a bill to cut US military spending by almost half: per year. With the miserable failure in Afghanistan, a war that will end up costing every US taxpayer $20,000, one would think that Representative Lee’s proposal would be eliciting tremendous support. But the White House, the Pentagon and the Armed Services Committees in the and are instead falling over each other to shovel even more money into the bottomless pit of the military budget.

Politicians’ votes on questions of war, peace and military spending are the most reliable test of their commitment to progressive values and the well-being of their constituents. You cannot call yourself a progressive or a champion of working people if you vote to appropriate more money for weapons and war than for health care, education, green jobs and fighting poverty.

These 20 years of war have revealed to Americans and the world that modern weapons and formidable military forces can only accomplish two things: kill and maim people and destroy homes, infrastructure and entire cities. American promises to rebuild bombed-out cities and “remake” countries it has destroyed have proved worthless, as President Biden has. 

Both and are turning primarily to China for the help they need to start rebuilding and developing economically from the ruin and devastation left by the US and its allies. America destroys, China builds. The contrast could not be more stark or self-evident. No amount of Western propaganda can hide what the whole world can see. 

But the different paths chosen by American and Chinese leaders are not predestined. Despite the intellectual and moral of the US corporate media, the American public has always been wiser and more committed to cooperative diplomacy than their country’s political and executive class. It has been that many of the endless crises in US foreign policy could have been avoided if America’s leaders had just listened to the people.

Weapons and More Weapons

The perennial handicap that has dogged US diplomacy since World War II is precisely our investment in weapons and military forces, including nuclear weapons that threaten our very existence. It is trite but true to say that, “when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” 

Other countries don’t have the option of deploying overwhelming military force to confront international problems, so they have had to be smarter and more nimble in their diplomacy and more prudent and selective in their more limited uses of military force. 

The rote declarations of US leaders that “all options are on the table” are a euphemism for precisely the “threat or use of force” that the explicitly prohibits, and they stymie the US development of expertise in nonviolent forms of conflict resolution. The bumbling and of America’s leaders in international arenas stand in sharp contrast to the skillful diplomacy and clear language we often hear from top, and diplomats, even when they are speaking in English, their second or third language.

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By contrast, US leaders rely on threats, coups, sanctions and war to project power around the world. They promise Americans that these coercive methods will maintain US “leadership” or dominance indefinitely into the future, as if that is America’s rightful place in the world: sitting atop the globe like a cowboy on a bucking bronco. 

A “new American century” and “Pax Americana” are Orwellian versions of Adolf Hitler’s “thousand-year Reich” but are no more realistic. No empire has lasted forever, and there is historical evidence that even the most successful empires have a lifespan of no more than, by which time their rulers have enjoyed so much wealth and power that decadence and decline inevitably set in. This describes the United States today.  

America’s economic dominance is waning. Its once productive economy has been gutted and, and most countries in the world now do more trade with China and/or the European Union than with the United States. Where America’s military once kicked open doors for American capital to “follow the flag” and open up new markets, today’s US war machine is just a bull in the global china shop, wielding purely destructive power.    

Time to Get Serious

But we are not condemned to passively follow the suicidal path of militarism and hostility. Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan could be a down payment on a transition to a more peaceful post-imperial economy — if the American public starts to actively demand peace, diplomacy and disarmament and find ways to make our voices heard. 

First, we must get serious about demanding cuts in the Pentagon budget. None of our other problems will be solved as long as we keep allowing our leaders to flush the majority of federal down the same military toilet as the $2.26 trillion they wasted on the war in Afghanistan. We must oppose politicians who refuse to cut the Pentagon budget, regardless of which party they belong to and where they stand on other issues.

Second, we must not let ourselves or our family members be recruited into the US war machine. Instead, we must challenge our leaders’ absurd claims that the imperial forces deployed across the world to threaten other countries are somehow, by some convoluted logic, defending America. As a translator Voltaire, “Whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”  

Third, we must expose the ugly, destructive reality behind our country’s myths of “defending” US vital interests, humanitarian intervention, the war on terror and the latest absurdity, the ill-defined “rules-based order” — whose rules only apply to others but never to the United States. 

Finally, we must oppose the corrupt power of the arms industry, including US weapons sales to the world’s most repressive regimes, and an unwinnable arms race that risks a potentially world-ending conflict with China and Russia. 

Our only hope for the future is to abandon the futile quest for hegemony and instead commit to peace, cooperative diplomacy, international law and disarmament. After 20 years of war and militarism that has only left the world a more dangerous place and accelerated America’s decline, we must choose the path of peace.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Will the US Wake Up From Its Post-9/11 Nightmare? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Osama bin Laden understood that American power was vulnerable when overextended. He knew that the greatest military power in the history of the world, deranged by a desire for vengeance, could be lured into taking a cakewalk into a quagmire. With the attacks on September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda turned ordinary American airplanes into weapons to attack American targets. In the larger sense, bin Laden used the entire American army to destroy the foundations of American empire.

360° Context: How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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The commentary on this 20^th anniversary of 9/11 has been predictably shallow: how the attacks changed , , the  in general. Consider this week’s Washington Post magazine section in which 28 contributors reflect on the ways that the attacks changed the world.

“The attack would alter the lives of U.S. troops and their families, and millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq,” the editors . “It would set the course of political parties and help to decide who would lead our country. In short, 9/11 changed the world in demonstrable, massive and heartbreaking ways. But the ripple effects altered our lives in subtle, often-overlooked ways as well.”

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The subsequent entries on art, fashion, architecture, policing, journalism and so on attempt to describe these subtler effects. Yet it’s difficult to read this special issue without concluding that 9/11, in fact, didn’t change the world much at all.

The demonization of American Muslims? That began long before the fateful day, cresting after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The paranoid retrenchment in American architecture? US embassies were  not in response to 9/11, but the embassy bombings in Beirut in 1983-84 and Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

The impact of 9/11 on the arts can be traced through a handful of works like Spike Lee’s “25^th Hour” or the TV series “24” or Don DeLillo’s “Falling Man,” but it didn’t produce a new artistic movement like Dada in the wake of World War I or cli-fi in response to the climate crisis. Even the experience of flying hasn’t changed that much beyond beefed-up security measures. At this point, the introduction of personal in-flight entertainment systems has arguably altered the flying experience more profoundly.

And isn’t the assertion that 9/11 changed everything exceptionally America-centric? Americans were deeply affected, as were the places invaded by US troops. But how much has life in Japan or Zimbabwe or Chile truly changed as a result of 9/11? Of course, Americans have always believed that, as the song goes, “we are the world.”

More Than a Mistake

In a more thoughtful Post consideration of 9/11, Carlos Lozado  many of the books that have come out in the last 20 years on what went wrong. In his summary, US policy proceeds like a cascade of falling dominos, each one a mistake that follows from the previous and sets into motion the next.

Successive administrations underestimated al-Qaeda and failed to see signs of preparation for the 9/11 attacks. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the Bush administration mistakenly followed the example of numerous empires in thinking that it could subdue Afghanistan and remake it in the image of the colonial overlord. It then compounded that error by invading Iraq in 2003 with the justification that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with al-Qaeda, was building up a nuclear program, or was otherwise part of an alliance of nations determined to take advantage of an America still reeling from the 9/11 attacks. Subsequent administrations made the mistake of doubling down in Afghanistan, expanding the war on terror to other battlefields and failing to end US operations at propitious moments like the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Lozado concludes by pointing out that Donald Trump is in many ways a product of the war on terror that followed 9/11. “Absent the war on terror, it is harder to imagine a presidential candidate decrying a sitting commander in chief as foreign, Muslim, illegitimate—and using that lie as a successful political platform,” he writes. “Absent the war on terror, it is harder to imagine a travel ban against people from Muslim-majority countries. Absent the war on terror, it is harder to imagine American protesters labeled terrorists, or a secretary of defense describing the nation’s urban streets as a ‘battle space’ to be dominated.”

But to understand the rise of Trump, it’s necessary to see 9/11 and its aftermath as more than just the product of a series of errors of perception and judgment. Implicit in Lozado’s review is the notion that America somehow lost its way, that an otherwise robust intelligence community screwed the pooch, that some opportunistic politicians used the attacks to short-circuit democracy, public oversight and even military logic. But this assumes that the war on terror represents a substantial rift in the American fabric. The 9/11 attacks were a surprise. The response wasn’t.

The United States had already launched a war against Iraq in 1991. It had already mistakenly identified Iran, Hamas and jihadist forces like al-Qaeda as enemies linked by their broad religious identity. It had built a worldwide arsenal of bases and kept up extraordinarily high levels of military spending to maintain full-spectrum dominance. Few American politicians questioned the necessity of this hegemony, though liberals tended to prefer that US allies shoulder some of the burden and neoconservatives favored a more aggressive effort to roll back the influence of Russia, China and other regional hegemons.

The “war on terror” effectively began in 1979 when the United States established its “state sponsors of terrorism” list. The Reagan administration used “counterterrorism” as an organizing principle of US foreign policy throughout the 1980s. In the post-Cold War era, the Clinton administration attempted to demonstrate its hawk credentials by launching counterterrorism strikes in Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq.

What changed after 9/11 is that neoconservatives could push their regime-change agenda more successfully because the attacks had temporarily suppressed the Vietnam syndrome, a response to the negative consequences of extended overseas military engagements. Every liberal in Congress, except for the indomitable Barbara Lee, supported the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, as if they’d been born just the day before. That just happens to be one of those side-effects of empire listed in fine print on the label: periodic and profound amnesia.

In this sense, Trump is not a product of the war on terror. His views on US foreign policy have ranged across the spectrum from jingoistic to non-interventionist. His attitude toward protesters was positively Nixonian. And his recourse to conspiracy theories derived from his legendary disregard for truth. Regardless of 9/11, Trump’s ego would have propelled him toward the White House.

The surge of popular support that placed him in the Oval Office, on the other hand, can only be understood in the post-9/11 context. Cyberspace was full of all sorts of nonsense prior to 9/11 (remember the Y2K predictions?). But the attacks gave birth to a new variety of “truthers” who insisted, against all contrary evidence, that nefarious forces had constructed a self-serving reality. The attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon were “inside jobs.” The Newtown shootings had been staged by “crisis actors.” Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

The shock of the United States being so dramatically and improbably attacked by a couple dozen foreigners was so great that some Americans, uncoupled from their bedrock assumptions about their own national security, were now willing to believe anything. Ultimately, they were even willing to believe someone who lied more consistently and more frequently than any other politician in US history.

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Trump effectively promised to erase 9/11 from the American consciousness and rewind the clock back to the golden moment of unipolar US power. In offering such selective memory loss, Trump was a quintessentially imperial president.

The Real Legacy of 9/11

Even after the British formally began to withdraw from the empire business after World War II, they couldn’t help but continue to act as if the sun didn’t set on their domains. It was the British who masterminded the  that deposed Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. It was the British at the head of the invasion of Egypt in 1956 to  of the Suez Canal. Between 1949 and 1970, Britain launched 34 military  in all.

The UK apparently never received the memo that it was no longer a dominant military power. It’s hard for empires to retire gracefully. Just ask the French.

The final US withdrawal from Afghanistan last month was in many ways a courageous and successful action by the Biden administration, though it’s hard to come to that conclusion by reading the media accounts. President Joe Biden made the difficult political decision to stick to the terms that his predecessor negotiated with the Taliban last year. Despite being caught by surprise by the Taliban’s rapid seizure of power over the summer, the administration was able to evacuate around 120,000 people, a number that virtually no one would have expected prior to the fall of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Sure, the administration should have been better prepared. Sure, it should have committed to evacuating more Afghans who fear for their lives under the Taliban. But it made the right move to finally end the US presence in Afghanistan.

Biden has made clear that US counterterrorism strikes in Afghanistan will continue, that the war on terror in the region is not over. Yet, US operations in the Middle East now have the feel of those British interventions in the . America is retreating, slowly but surely and sometimes under a protective hail of bullets. The Islamic State group and its various incarnations have become the problem of the Taliban — and the Syrian state, the Iraq state, the Libyan state (such that it is) and so on.

Meanwhile, the United States turns its attention toward China. But this is no Soviet Union. China is a powerhouse economy with a government that has skillfully used nationalism to bolster domestic support. With trade and investment, Beijing has recreated a Sinocentric tributary system in Asia. America really doesn’t have the capabilities to roll back Chinese influence in its own backyard.

So that, in the end, is what 9/11 has changed. The impact on culture, on the daily lives of those not touched directly by the tragedies, has been minimal. The deeper changes — on perceptions of Muslims, on the war on terror — had been set in motion before the attacks happened.

But America’s place in the world? In 2000, the United States was still riding high in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War. Today, despite the strains of MAGA that can be heard throughout America’s political culture, the United States has become one major power among many. It can’t dictate policy down the barrel of a gun. Economically it must reckon with China. In geopolitics, it has become the .

Even in our profound narcissism, Americans are slowly realizing, like the Brits so many years ago, that the imperial game is up.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Now that the war the Bush and Blair team enthusiastically launched in 2001 has been officially lost, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) was to hear what the former leader might have to say. Would Blair offer some insider perspective on an episode of history now judged to have been a vainglorious attempt to punish a spectacular criminal act by mounting a military campaign that turned out to be more spectacular, equally criminal, much more costly and far more self-destructive of the civilization that was presumably defending itself? Would he apologize for his own mistakes? Would he coldly analyze the political and ideological sources of those mistakes?

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Blair did that “maybe my generation of leaders were naive in thinking countries could be remade.” That was neither a confession nor an apology, especially as he immediately followed up by implicitly critiquing President Joe Biden’s precipitated withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, adding that “maybe the remaking needed to last longer.” He then used the now obligatory example of the plight of Afghan women to assert that “we mustn’t forget … that our values are still those which free people choose.”

Instead of confessing and clarifying, the monologue he delivered resembled a self-parody of the reasoning that drove his error-ridden decision-making in 2001. “Islamism,” he proclaimed, “both the ideology and the violence, is a first order security threat… COVID-19 has taught us about deadly pathogens. Bio-terror possibilities may seem like the realm of science fiction, but we would be wise now to prepare for their potential use by non-state actors.” In short, once again, we need to be afraid, very afraid.

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Potential use:

A term used by politicians to describe an unlikely event that usefully inspires fear in the public’s mind to justify aggressive efforts labeled “defense,” but which objectively appear to take the form of offensive assault against other nations and peoples

Contextual Note

In such moments, Blair can appear as if he is vying to become a stand-up comedian, a kind of one-man Monty Python, satirizing his nation’s historical institutions. Unfortunately, despite Blair’s notoriety, they are not in the same league. The Flying Circus boys came together initially as irreverent university wits, who targeted post-colonial British culture and the pompous establishment’s status quo. As the former living symbol of that pompous establishment, Blair’s comic ambition is fraught with insurmountable obstacles. Even when his discourse manages to sound as surreally unhinged as that of any of the characters invented by the Python, Blair will never break free from his former identity as the real-life representative of the establishment’s fake wisdom and pseudo-sanity.

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In the later years of his reign as the young and glamorous prime minister, even before the devastating findings of the Chilcot on the UK’s involvement in the Iraq War, many politically aware Brits were already tempted to change the spelling of his name from Blair to Bliar, to highlight his habit of solemnly lying his way into disastrous wars, alongside his buddy, President Bush. Together, those two men led an enterprise that some observers assess as a complex and long-enduring war crime.

That both of those men should still be welcomed on the world stage, treated as sages and counted on to deliver wise commentary on current events should shock only those who are unaware of how today’s media works. It systematically honors those who have been the boldest in committing crimes, so long as such crimes are committed in the name of national security. That rationale has become so fundamental and so obsessively inculcated by those who exercise any form of political or economic power that committing extreme violence in the name of “national security” will always be lauded in the media as proof of a politician’s courage to go beyond the call of duty. 

Historical Note

Tony Blair’s comedy appears to be based on a simple premise. His onstage character assumes the stance of taking seriously the startling idea in 1989 by Francis Fukuyama, as the Cold War was ending. According to the young political scientist, a golden age governed by the principles of Western liberalism was dawning. Fukuyama claimed that “we are witnessing… the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

Fukuyama himself eventually abandoned that thesis or at least corrected our of what he meant by it. Blair thinks we can return to 1992, a year in which the book, “The End of History and the Last Man” was published and the Soviet Union only existed in the past tense. In his secular , Blair maintains the faith in the triumph of liberal values. “Recovering confidence in our values and in their universal application,” he affirmed, “is a necessary part of ensuring we stand up for them and are prepared to defend them.”

Blair’s forward-looking aims at new battlegrounds. “Britain should work more closely with European countries on how best to develop capacity to tackle the threat in areas such as Africa’s Sahel region,” he said. This stands as a scintillating demonstration of how the neocolonialist mind works. It seeks a region of interest and then invents the threat. 

Why is Blair singling out the Sahel? The answer should be obvious. It is the logic used by 19^th-century European colonialist powers, who opportunistically looked for occasions to exploit the weakness of their rivals to dominate a particular part of the world. France is currently retreating from its futile engagement in the Sahel, an area it dominated to a large extent as a colonial power and in which it has been active as a neocolonial defender in the “global war on terror.”

Blair’s plan reads like a comic book version of traditional British imperialism. “We need some boots on the ground,” he . “Naturally our preference is for the boots to be local, but that will not always be possible.” Let the natives die as we secure our rule. It is already laughable to suggest that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit Britain might “work more closely with European countries” on its relations with the African continent.

Blair is obviously thinking of a tandem with France, whose citizens have lost all patience with their nation’s inept military operation across the Sahel region. He imagines France and Britain together renewing the glory formerly achieved by the US-UK duo in the Middle East. Together they will ensure that the “remaking” lasts longer. France’s Jupiterian president, Emmanuel Macron, humiliated by the current pressure to withdraw troops, would clearly welcome the chance of participating in such an alliance, even if the French people are reticent.

For Blair, it isn’t about power and money, though he is clearly attracted to both, especially the latter, which he has shown a talent for . No, it’s about universal values, Blair’s own singularly enlightened values. That’s a language dear to the president of the French Republic, a nation that has tirelessly sought to exercise its “mission civilisatrice” across the globe for the last three centuries. Blair, the stand-up comedian, will “stand up for” those values and be “prepared to defend them.”

“Be prepared” is the Boy Scouts’ motto. In the final act of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” the young prince of Denmark declared to his friend Horatio that “the readiness is all.” Unlike Blair, however, Hamlet wasn’t interested in magnifying real or imaginary threats to his well-being. Instead, he was affirming a certain equanimity and trust in his own capacities. No need to invest in his training before what turned out to be a rigged fencing match. Hamlet refused to let fear be his guide.

From the beginning of Shakespeare’s play, Denmark was in a state of war, feverishly building its armaments to defend itself from a “hot and full” Norwegian prince, Fortinbras. But it was Denmark’s own criminal king who brought the country down, leaving bodies strewn across the stage just as the young Fortinbras is about to arrive, survey the damage and take control of the state.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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It was on this day that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) was founded. One of its founding members was a man named Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It was the latest in a long list of parties catering to a religiously devout and socially conservative constituency in Turkey. All the previous ones had been banned.

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What makes August 14, 2001, so significant is the simple fact that the AKP was never banned. Despite the party’s daring to tread on secularist principles that few others had dared, this time, the country, with strong European Union support, had no appetite for military-backed bans.

Turkey Says No

Just as September 11 didn’t really come out of a clear blue sky for anyone observing the tide of Islamist militancy, so too the success of the AKP in Turkey did not come unannounced. It was a long time in the making, but its assumption of power, so soon after 9/11, has been defining for the country.

By 2003, when George W. Bush’s war on terror was swinging into action in Iraq, the AKP took control of Turkey‘s government. Despite repeated attempts to shutter the party and even a failed 2016 coup, the AKP remains in power. As perhaps the most successful Islamist party in the Middle East, its relationship to both the events of 9/11 and the ensuing war on terror has always been a strained one. The Turkey of the 20^th century would have been an unquestioning supporter of US policy. The new Turkey was not.

I was in Turkey on 9/11 and I saw the immediate reaction of ordinary people to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the hours after the towers fell, there were wild, yet in retrospect on-the-mark rumors that the US was about to bomb Afghanistan. The mood among ordinary Turks was not one of support.

Visceral anger and anti-American sentiment were clearly palpable. While not outright cheering al-Qaeda, it was obvious that most people wouldn’t take the US side in a fight. This mood was reflected when Washington eventually went to war with Iraq and hoped to use the airbase at Incirlik in southeastern Turkey.

The parliamentary vote that vetoed the use of the base for flights into Iraq was a pivotal one. It was the first strong sign of demonstrable national action in reflection of a national mood. In the post-Cold War world, Turkey’s Islamist government was ready to plow its own furrow.

Who Defines Terrorism?

The years that have followed have seen an ambiguous and often highly contorted relationship with the war on terror. Sometimes, Turkey has used the anti-terrorism concept to its own ends, as have many other US allies. At other times, it has turned a blind eye to activity that surely fell under the banner of terrorism.

The Arab Spring of 2010 offered Islamists across the Middle East their big moment. Secular autocrats, long propped up by the West, tottered. Turkey’s Islamist government was one of the most vocal and active in attempting to ride this wave that they hoped would bring Islamist governments to a swathe of countries.

Initially, the signs were good. The Muslim Brotherhood won the first free and fair elections in Egypt. Meanwhile, in neighboring Syria, the long-suppressed Islamist movement threatened to overwhelm the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. For a time, Turkey became a beacon of hope and a model for how the rest of the Middle East might evolve.

Turkish flags were being waved by demonstrators in Syria, and President Erdogan became the most popular leader in the region, loved by people far beyond his own nation. Then the Egyptian coup destroyed the Brotherhood, and Russia and Iran stepped in to save Assad’s regime in Syria. The mood soured for Turkey.

In an attempt to rescue something in the Syrian conflict and in response to the collapse of domestic peace talks between the government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Turkey’s border became a very porous route for jihadists entering into Syria. In time, these jihadists named themselves the Islamic State and declared a caliphate. This audacious move severely upped the stakes on al-Qaeda’s attempts of 2001, with an even more brutal brand of terrorism. Turkey’s ambiguous attitude to these developments was hardly a war on terror.

Yet by this stage, the concept behind the war on terror had become so nebulous and the AKP’s relations to the US so strained by Washington’s support for the Kurds in Syria, that it was a case of realpolitik all the way. To any accusation of soft-handedness toward terrorists, Turkey pointed to US attitudes vis-à-vis Kurdish militants.

President Erdogan has, over time, began to carve a space for himself as an anti-Western champion, a leader of some kind of latter-day non-aligned movement, a spokesman for Muslim rights worldwide. This political and cultural position has made Turkey’s place in a liberal, democratic world order highly questionable.

What seems clear in retrospect is that both 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror were never Turkey’s fights. Due to the longstanding Turkish alliance with the US and NATO, these have been constantly recurring themes in Turkish politics. But the events that have been so central to US policymaking for the past two decades have generally been used to advance Ankara’s own strategic goals in light of the assumption of power and entrenched hegemony of the Islamist movement in Turkey’s contemporary politics.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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At 8:45 am Eastern time, an American Airlines flight had crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Within minutes, CNBC stopped discussing stocks and started covering the incident, which, at that moment, no one knew if it was an anomalous accident or an attack of some kind.

360° Context: How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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Three minutes after 9 am Eastern, as I watched incredulously at the events unfolding, I saw a United Airlines passenger aircraft fly right into the south tower of the twin towers. In under an hour, the south tower collapsed, resulting in a massive cloud of dust and smoke. By now, there was no doubt that America was under attack.

 “We will remember the moment the news came, where we were and what we were doing,” said President George W. Bush in an  to Congress on September 20. Images from that Tuesday morning are still etched in my memory, happening, as it were, just nine days after my second child was born.

In all, 2,996 people of 78 nationalities lost their lives in four coordinated attacks conducted by al-Qaeda using hijacked commercial, civilian airliners as their weapons, making  the second-biggest attack on American soil — second only to the genocidal assault on Native Americans committed by the nation’s immigrant settlers.

Operation Enduring Freedom: America’s War on Terror

Addressing the nation the following day, Bush  the attacks “more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.” He promised that “the United States of America will use all our resources to conquer this enemy.” The president went on to assure Americans that this “battle will take time and resolve, but make no mistake about it, we will win.”

Twenty years later, the US has left Afghanistan and Iraq in a chaotic mess. The question remains: Did the United States win the war on terror the Bush administration launched in 2001? This was a war that has  more than $6.4 trillion and over 801,000 lives, according to Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

In October 2001, the US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban government that had harbored al-Qaeda. Soon after, al-Qaeda militants had been driven into hiding. Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attack and leader of al-Qaeda, was killed 10 years later in a raid conducted by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

In a shrewd move, Bush had left himself room to take down Iraq and its president, Saddam Hussein, using an overarching definition for the war on terror. In his  to Congress on September 20, Bush also stated: “Our war on terror begins with Al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

True to his words, in 2003, the United States and its allies invaded Iraq under the premise that it possessed weapons of mass destruction. Bush settled his score with Hussein, ensuring he was captured, shamed and subsequently executed in 2006.

Despite reducing al-Qaeda to nothing and killing bin Laden, despite wrecking Iraq and having its leader executed, it is impossible to say that the US has won the war on terror. All that Washington has managed to do is to trade the Islamic State (IS) group that swept through Syria and Iraq in 2014 for al-Qaeda, giving a new identity to an old enemy. Following the US and NATO pullout from Afghanistan last month, the Taliban, whom America drove out of power in 2001, are back in the saddle. In fact, the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan has been so swift, so precise and so comprehensive that the international community is in a shock, questioning the timing and prudence of the withdrawal of troops.

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Setting an expectation for how long the war or terror was likely to last, the secretary of defense under the Bush administration, Donald Rumsfeld,  in September 2001 that “it is not going to be over in five minutes or five months, it’ll take years.” Rumsfeld, who christened the campaign Operation Enduring Freedom, was prescient, as the war enters its third decade in a never-ending fight against terrorism.

The Winners and Losers

Ironically, Operation Enduring Freedom has only resulted in an enduring loss of American freedom, one step at a time. I still remember that I had walked up to the jet bridge and received my wife as she deplaned from a flight in 1991. Another time, when she was traveling to Boston from San Francisco, I was allowed to enter the aircraft and help her get settled with her luggage, along with our 1-year-old. It is inconceivable to be allowed to do such a thing today, and I would not be surprised if readers question the veracity of my personal experience. In many ways, al-Qaeda has succeeded in stripping Americans of the sense of freedom they have always enjoyed.

More than Americans, the biggest losers in this tragic war are Iraqis and Afghans, particularly the women. Afghan women, who had a brief respite from persecution under the Taliban’s strict Islamic laws and human rights abuses, are back to square one and justifiably terrified of their future under the new regime. The heart-wrenching scenes from Kabul airport of people trying to flee the country tell us about how Afghans view the quality of life under the Taliban and the uncertainty that the future holds. 

To its east, the delicate balance of peace — if one could characterize the situation between India and Pakistan as peaceful — is likely to be put to the test as violence from Afghanistan spreads. To its north in Tajikistan, there isn’t much love lost between Tajiks and the Taliban. Tajikistan’s president, Emomali Rahmon, has  to recognize the Taliban government, and Tajiks have  to join anti-Taliban militia groups, paving the way for continued unrest and violence in Central Asia.

If History Could be Rewritten

In 2001, referring to Islamist terrorists, Bush asked the rhetorical question, “Why do they hate us?” He tried to answer it in a  to Congress: “They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”

Islamic fundamentalists couldn’t give two hoots about a form of government or a people’s way of life thousands of miles away. The real answer to Bush’s question lies deeply buried in US foreign policy. America’s steadfast support of Israel and its refusal to recognize the state of Palestine is the number one reason for it to become the target of groups like al-Qaeda and IS.

America’s ill-conceived response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 during the Cold War led to the creation of al-Qaeda. It was with US funds and support that the anti-Soviet mujahideen fought America’s proxy war with the Soviets. Without US interference, al-Qaeda may never have come into existence.

During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the US bolstered Saddam Hussein by backing his regime against the Iranians. When Hussein became too ambitious for America’s comfort and invaded Kuwait in 1990, George H.W. Bush engaged Iraq in the Persian Gulf War. The US motive at that time was primarily to protect its oil interests in Kuwait.

The US created its own nemesis in Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and spent $6 trillion to kill them. In the process, US leaders have reduced Iraq and Afghanistan to shambles and created a new monster in the Islamic State.

Sadly, history can never be rewritten. The US has proved time and again that its involvement in the Middle East and Muslim world is aimed at advancing its own political interests. The only question that remains is: Can the US adopt a policy that would not aggravate the situation and, over time, deescalate it, without creating yet another Hussein or bin Laden? Without a radically different approach, Operation Enduring Freedom is doomed to endure forever, costing trillions of dollars each decade.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The attacks not only shocked the world, but the  of planes crashing into the World Trade Center came to define a generation. In a speech on October 11, 2001, then-President George W. Bush spoke of “an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world” and declared “war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter them.” This was the start of the global war on terror.

The Story of the 9/11 Attacks and Retaliation

Osama bin Laden, the Saudi leader of al-Qaeda, inspired the 9/11 attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani Islamist terrorist and the nephew of the truck driver convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center , masterminded the operation. The described al-Qaeda as “sophisticated, patient, disciplined and lethal.” It held that the enemy rallied “broad support in the Arab and Muslim world.” The report concluded that al-Qaeda’s hostility to the US and its values was limitless.

The report went on to say that the enemy aimed “to rid the world of religious and political pluralism, the plebiscite, and equal rights for women,” and observed that it made no distinction between military and civilian targets. The goal going forward was “to attack terrorists and prevent their ranks from swelling while at the same time protecting [the US] against future attacks.”

To prosecute the war on terror, the US built a worldwide coalition: 136 countries offered military assistance, and 46 multilateral organizations declared support. Washington began by launching a financial war on terror, freezing assets and disrupting fundraising pipelines. In the first 100 days, the Bush administration set aside $20 billion for homeland security.

On October 7, 2001, the US inaugurated the war on terror with Operation Enduring Freedom. An international coalition that included Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, the UK and other countries, with the help of the Northern Alliance comprising various mujahedeen militias, overthrew the Taliban, which was sheltering al-Qaeda fighters, and took over Afghanistan.

The war on terror that began in Afghanistan soon took on a global focus. In 2003, the Bush administration invaded Iraq despite the lack of a UN mandate. Washington made the argument that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, represented a threat to world peace, and harbored and succored al-Qaeda and other Islamic jihadists. None of this proved to be true. Hussein’s regime fell as speedily as Mullah Omar’s Taliban.

Victory, however, was short-lived. Soon, returned. In Afghanistan, suicide attacks quintupled from 27 in 2005 to 139 in 2006. Globally, the war on terror saw a “” rise in jihadist activity, with just over 32,000 fighters split among 13 Islamist groups in 2001 burgeoning to 100,000 across 44 outfits in 2015. Terrorist attacks went up from an estimated 1,880 in 2001 to 14,806 in 2015, claiming 38,422 lives that year alone — a 397% increase on 2001.

Boosted by the US invasion of Iraq, al-Qaeda spawned affiliates across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, a decentralized structure that remained intact even after the US assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011 dealt al-Qaeda a severe blow. One of its Iraqi offshoots morphed into what became the Islamic State (IS) group following the withdrawal of most US from Iraq under President Barack Obama in 2011.

After declaring a caliphate in 2014, IS launched a global terrorist campaign that, within a year, over 140 attacks in 29 countries beyond Syria and Iraq, according to one estimate. Islamic State acolytes went on to claim nearly lives across the Middle East, Europe, the United States, Asia and Africa, controlling vast amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria, before suffering defeat by local forces in 2019.

In Afghanistan, despite the war’s estimated price tag, on August 15 the Taliban have taken control of the capital Kabul amid a chaotic US withdrawal, raising fears of al-Qaeda’s comeback. Last year, the Global Terrorism Index that deaths from terrorism were still double the number recorded in 2001, with Afghanistan claiming a disproportionately large share of over 40% in 2019.

Why Do 9/11 and the War on Terror Matter?

While the failures and successes of the war on terror will remain subject to heated debate for years to come, what remains uncontested is the fact that the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing war on terror have forged the world we live in today.

First, they have caused tremendous loss of blood and treasure. Brown University’s project places an $8-trillion price tag on the US war on terror. It estimates that about 900,000 people “were killed as a direct result of war, whether by bombs, bullets or fire,” a number that does not include indirect deaths “caused by way of disease, displacement and loss of access to food or clean drinking water.”

Second, numerous countries, including liberal democracies such as the US and the UK, have eroded their own civil liberties and democratic institutions with the avowed goal of improving security. Boarding airplanes or entering public buildings now invariably involves elaborate security checks. Mass surveillance has become par for the course. The US continues to keep alleged terror suspects in indefinite detention without trial in Guantanamo Bay.

Third, many analysts argue that the attacks and the response have coarsened the US. After World War II, Americans drew a line in the sand against torture. They put Germans and Japanese on trial for war crimes that included . In the post-9/11 world, torture became part of the . Airstrikes and drone strikes have caused high collateral , killing a disputed number of innocents and losing the battle for the hearts and minds of local populations.

These strikes raise significant issues of legality and the changing nature of warfare. There is a question as to the standing of “counterterrorism” operations in international and national law. However, such issues have garnered relatively little public attention. 

Fourth, the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing war on terror have coincided with the spectacular rise of China. On December 11, 2001, the Middle Kingdom joined the World Trade Organization, which enabled the Chinese economy to grow at a speed and scale unprecedented in history. Analysts believe that distraction with the war on terror hindered the US response to the revolution occurring in global international relations and power dynamics. 

Under Barack Obama, the US initiated an explicit that sought to shift focus from the war on terror and manage the rise of China. Under Donald Trump, Washington unleashed a trade war on Beijing and concluded a with the Taliban. Joe Biden has believed that, since the early days of the war on terror, US priorities have been too skewed toward terrorism and that Afghanistan is a secondary strategic issue, leading to a decision to withdraw troops to mark the 20^th anniversary of 9/11.

Biden has that the US has degraded al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and eliminated bin Laden. Despite worrying echoes of George W. Bush declaring the “mission accomplished” in Iraq in 2003, from now on, Biden wants the US to remain “narrowly focused on counterterrorism — not counterinsurgency or nation building.”

While the terrorist threat still consumes US resources, Washington is now shifting its strategic attention and resources to China, Russia and Iran. The Biden administration has deemed these three authoritarian powers to be the biggest challenge for the postwar liberal and democratic order. The 20-year war on terror seems to be over — at least for now.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Bebernes distinguishes between what he calls optimists, who “say the U.S. has enormous leverage to hold the Taliban to their commitments,” and the pessimists, who apparently believe that the interests of the two countries have so little in common that it isn’t worth bothering about the concerns of such savage people. In other words, as Donnie Brasco would , “Forget about it!”

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The optimists typically cite the weakness of the Afghan economy and the problems the Taliban will face without US cooperation. Others think that a common concern with fanatical terrorist groups may create an opportunity for mutual understanding. Bebernes suggests that the Taliban government is likely to “seek support in combating its own terror threat from groups like [the Islamic State in Khorasan Province], which some experts believe will create another point of leverage for the U.S.”

One of the pessimists appears to believe that, as in the Cold War, there may become what General Turgidson in “” would have called a “leverage gap” between the US and Russia or China. “Other world powers could undercut America’s leverage.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Leverage:

The measure of the power of a state with imperial ambitions over the life and death of populations beyond its borders

Contextual Note

The trauma Americans experienced after Saigon, nearly half a century ago, and Kabul today has provoked what might be called the first “leverage crisis” in US history. For more than two centuries, the United States has carved out, largely unimpeded, its areas of influence in various parts of the world. Areas of influence eventually evolved into “spheres of influence.”

Following World War II, American strategists realized they could conquer, economically if not politically, the great sphere itself, the earthly globe. The globalization of what was originally the US version of Europe’s capitalist economy, along with a reinforced ideology thanks to thinkers from the University of Chicago, led every strategist within Washington’s Beltway to assume that the globe itself could become America’s hegemonic domain.

Exercising geopolitical and economic hegemony required two things: physical presence — provided essentially by multinational firms and American military bases — and a toolbox of influence, which could take the form alternatively of overt and covert military action or economic sanctions. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US State Department has wielded those tools with a sense of ever-increasing impunity as it proceeded to intimidate both its allies and nations that refused to acknowledge their tributary status with regard to US influence. For the past four decades, the US has relied on either warfare — invasion, occupation and bombing campaigns, unlimited in time and scope — or increasingly severe economic sanctions to reaffirm what was officially formulated as influence, but exercised with a spirit of hegemonic control.

The debacle in Afghanistan reveals a deeper trouble at the core of strategic decision-making in Washington. The new emphasis on the concept of leverage can be read as an admission that the toolbox to manage a sphere of influence has lost much of its efficacy. For decades, the idea of applying and reinforcing influence dominated Washington’s strategic thinking. It is now being replaced by the much more fragile idea of exercising leverage. Both the State Department and the media pundits appear puzzled about what that might mean.

The concept of leverage comes from the field of mechanics. It describes the of a lever. “Levers convert a small force applied over a long distance to a large force applied over a small distance.” Twenty years of yet another futile, expensive and demonstrably stupid war appears to have taught Washington that it no longer has the control over distance that it formerly believed it had. Its wasteful actions have also diminished its force.

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Making leverage work in mechanics requires some careful analysis, preparation and effective execution. These are efforts the strategists, planners and decision-makers, convinced of the indomitable force of their influence, have consistently failed to carry out in a competent way. Could it be too late for them to learn the art of leverage? Or is the very fact that they are now obliged to think in terms of leverage rather than influence so humiliating an experience that they will fail to engage?

This may be the occasion for US President Joe Biden to leverage the vaunted “power of our example” rather than the “example of our power” that he so regularly in his speeches. That would require some real geopolitical creativity. And does he really believe that the US could live up to that standard? Few commentators have remarked that Biden, true to his own tradition, plagiarized that line from, J.D., who originally used it in 2005 to condemn the Iraq war that Biden had so forcefully promoted as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Historical Note

In 1823, President James Monroe promulgated the Monroe Doctrine that continues to this day to dominate US relations with the entire American continent. It became a permanent feature of the mindset of US strategists, who without a trace of tragic irony routinely consider Latin America in its entirety, right down to the Tierra del Fuego, as Washington’s “backyard.” Peter Hakim, a senior fellow of the Inter-American Dialogue, in a in 2007 article with the title, “Is Washington Losing Latin America?” dared to express the feelings not only of the US political class, but also those of the USA’s neighbors. “Perhaps what most troubles Latin Americans is the sense that Washington just does not take the region seriously and still considers it to be its own backyard,” he wrote.

In 1823, Latin America’s population consisted of three broad socio-cultural and ethnic components: indigenous people who occupied most of the mountainous interior; descendants of Iberian Europeans (Spanish and Portuguese) who, following their 15^th and 16^th-century conquests, dominated the political and economic structures; and imported African slaves (primarily in Brazil). All three were as distant from the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture of the US as anyone could imagine. These were the populations President Monroe wanted to “protect” from hostile action by European powers. 

Through its own expansion justified in the name of “manifest destiny,” the US had demonstrated how it would deal with indigenous Americans. Primarily through genocidal warfare. It demonstrated its attitude toward Africans, deemed useful purely for economic exploitation as slaves. As for the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking populations who created the culture that prevailed across all the coastal regions of Latin America, they belonged at best to the category of second-class Europeans. The fact that the majority were mestizos (mixed-race) defined them irrevocably as third-class. At least they could thank their hybrid status for being spared the fate of the true indigenous, who could at any moment, even in recent times, be subjected to genocidal treatment.

In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt refined the Monroe Doctrine by adding the. It “stated that in cases of flagrant and chronic wrongdoing by a Latin American country, the United States could intervene in that country’s internal affairs.” If during the 19^th the Monroe Doctrine functioned mainly as a barrier to European incursion, by the beginning of the 20^th century, the US had come to understand the value for its burgeoning capitalist economy of controlling what came to become a continental sphere of influence. Controlling meant having the power to organize the economy of the countries under its influence.

Following the Second World War and the collapse of nearly all the vestiges of European colonization, the US discovered that the entire globe could potentially become its sphere of influence. Some have called the period of the Cold War the Pax Americana, simply because the standoff with the Soviet Union never became a hot war between the two massively armed superpowers. But throughout the period there were proxy wars, clandestine operations and regime change campaigns galore that meant the heat was never really turned down.

What a comedown it must be today to have to debate how to exercise leverage.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Ben John’s crime consisted of downloading exactly that appeal to right-wing terrorists. Call it downloading with intent to read. According to the BBC, “He was arrested in January 2020 and later charged with offenses under the Terrorism Act, including possessing documents on combat, homemade weapons and explosives.” To be clear, he didn’t actually possess weapons and explosives, merely documents about them. According to John’s attorney, even the prosecution didn’t believe he was planning a terrorist attack. 

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Understanding the diminished nature of the threat, alongside the fact that he technically did violate a modern law that some complain encourages , the judge gave this account of John’s taste in downloading: “It is repellent, this content, to any right-thinking person. This material is largely relating to Nazi, fascist and Adolf Hitler-inspired ideology.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Right-thinking person:

Someone who understands the importance of limiting their thinking not only to approved topics but also to approved takes on those topics while accepting to make a concerted effort not to let their thinking wander into unsavory areas

Contextual Note

Britain is a nation and a culture that lives and breathes through its awareness of its centuries-old traditions. The idea of “right-thinking” cannot be defined by any law, but instead of being discarded, as it would be in the US, thanks to the British perception of the weight of its inherited culture, the concept can be credibly invoked in a courtroom and even figure in a verdict. Judge Spencer apparently believes the key to becoming a right-thinking citizen is to practice being a right-reading citizen. A clear-headed judge in the US applying the same logic would impose reading the law, not works of fiction.

Judge Spencer understands that knowing the law isn’t enough. Thinking like a good Englishman requires familiarity with great English writers of the past. And it must be the past. In his list there is no Martin Amis, Ali Smith, Ian MacEwan or even 20^th modernists such as Virginia Woolf, Joyce Cary or D.H. Lawrence. Right-thinking English society reached its pinnacle more than a century ago.

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It stopped evolving at the beginning of the 20^th century, by which time all British citizens were expected to understand at least that part of a dying empire’s heritage. This judgment reveals that the nostalgia for a society of the queen’s right-thinking subjects remains a powerful cultural force in British society.

John’s lawyer described his client’s character as “a young man who struggled with emotions; however, he is plainly an intelligent young man and now has a greater insight.” Perhaps the judge expects that John’s reading of great works from the past will inspire him to become a writer himself, making him not only right-thinking but even an active contributor to the perpetuation of the literary tradition that defines the nation’s greatness. John may even be inspired to take up writing his own dramatic story. Instead of engaging in the crime of downloading with intent, he may start uploading with creative ambition. 

This legal episode may leave the reader of the article with the impression that the judge regrets not having pursued a vocation in academia and is using the opportunity to hone his skills as a literature teacher. On that score, Judge Spencer may risk falling into the trap of the great British tradition of imitating a cast of despotic, if not sadistic headmasters and superintendents, on the model of Dickens’ Thomas Gradgrind in “Hard Times.”

There is a hint of Dickensian severity in Spencer’s formulation of the young man’s sentence: “On 4 January you will tell me what you have read and I will test you on it. I will test you and if I think you are [lying to] me you will suffer.” But unlike Gradgrind — who condemned “fancy” (“You are never to fancy”) and promoted “fact, fact, fact” — by imposing fiction, Spencer may even be encouraging the development of John’s fancy, so long as it stays close to what right-thinking people fancy.

John’s barrister, Harry Bentley, reassured the judge: “He is by no means a lost cause and is capable of living a normal, pro-social life.” The term “pro-social” should be taken as a synonym of “right-thinking,” which means not “Nazi, fascist and Adolf Hitler-inspired.”

Historical Note

The judge mentioned some specific titles of works that John will be expected to read, all of them works that belong to the prestigious history of English literature. Judge Spencer gave this specific instruction: “Start with Pride and Prejudice and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Think about Hardy. Think about Trollope.” Apart from Shakespeare, these are all 19^th-century writers. In their works, they describe the material, social and economic conflicts that concerned people living in a world that has little in common with today’s reality.

These novels reflect in different ways the impact of the momentous change as a formerly rural society was overturned by industrialization. Is it reasonable to think a young extremist of the 21^st century will be able to learn from such examples?

We are left wondering at what the chosen titles mean for the judge himself and what impact he expects them to have on the man accused of terrorist tendencies. Will the preoccupations of a destitute gentry in the early 19^th century in “Pride and Prejudice” provoke some epiphany for the young man? Will the absurdly melodramatic pseudo-political events Dickens situates during the French Revolution in “The Tale of Two Cities” clarify his ideas about radical politics?

Does the judge expect that the subtle confusion about a twin playing at reversing her gender role in Shakespeare’s sublime comedy will effectively educate John on the subtleties of sexual identity and help him to nuance his opinions on homosexuality?

Depending on how he conducts the discussion sessions around the convicted man’s readings, the magistrate may be creating a precedent that is worth imitating in other cases of individuals with terrorist inclinations. Calling great writers of the past as witnesses of what right-thinking people believe will at least rob such individuals of the time they would dedicate to reading downloaded extremist literature. It’s a question not of fighting fire with fire, but with comforting warmth. 

There is a problem, however. Understanding what Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens and others had to say requires delving into the history of their times and the modes of thought that accompanied those times. We might even wonder how right-thinking these authors were. Shakespeare in particular left hints that he wasn’t very fond of the oppressive order he was living under. His form of protest was not to download instructions provided by Guy Fawkes (who did attempt to blow up Parliament), but the texts of his tragedies that indirectly express his doubts about the existing political order.

For Shakespeare, something was rotten in England as well as Denmark, and the time was clearly out of joint. He carefully avoided appearing too subversive from fear of the temporal power that would inevitably accuse him under the Elizabethan version of the Terror Act.

Judge Spencer has nevertheless defined a noble course of action in this particular case. Let us hope that he is up to the task as a teacher. If he does succeed, we should recommend his example for handling future cases of intelligent individuals so disturbed by the reigning hypocrisy that they become ready to embrace ideas pointing in the direction of terrorism. Given the constant degradation of our political culture and of the trust people are willing to put in our political leaders and the justice system itself, such examples in the near future are likely to be legion. 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Right Think: Jane Austen Against Terrorism appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Now, with the final withdrawal of US and NATO forces, nearly 38 million Afghans have been handed over to a group that has conducted suicide attacks, oppressed women and massacred minorities.

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Chaotically, people packed their bags and hurried to Kabul International Airport, apparently the only way left to get out of the country. Some did not even have visas and passports, without knowing their destination. The only thing they wanted was to get as far away from Afghanistan as possible. Some Afghans boarded planes, but others were unable to get on and desperately clung to an American aircraft that was about to take off. While some managed to safely arrive in other countries, others from the plane. This included a 19-year-old Afghan national footballer who his life.

In a matter of weeks, the Taliban have managed to dismantle an army built by the United States over the past two decades. Officially, the Afghan forces were at least four times the size of the Taliban and had greater combat capabilities. This failure was unpredictable for the Afghan people and anyone involved in Afghanistan. How is it possible for such a costly army to kneel before a relatively irregular terrorist group after receiving training from the world’s most powerful military?

Why Did the Afghan Army Kneel?

There are many possible  for this catastrophic defeat. This includes the lack of NATO air support for Afghan troops, low morale and faith in resisting the Taliban, widespread corruption in the army and among politicians,  deals and mass desertions. Reports indicate that some  and corps of the army had not a war against the Taliban in some provinces. This meant local forces who took up arms were on the front lines in key cities were without support from the Afghan army. Soldiers in the  in Mazar-e-Sharif left their base without informing their allies. The local commanders in this strategic province later the army’s withdrawal a betrayal and .

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Over the years, Afghanistan’s defense and security institutions have become increasingly corrupt and inefficient due to the interference of politicians. This is according to , the former deputy defense minister. In an interview with , she claimed that decisions at all levels of the army were illegally taken from the Ministry of Defense and assigned to the office of Hamdullah Mohib, the national security adviser. These included critical decisions over war, intelligence, the appointment of officials, training and personnel matters. Therefore, “the Ministry of Defense had no role in the war,” she said, “and all commanders, from district commanders to commanders of corps, had to be close to Hamadullah Mohib.”

An “Unpatriotic” Fugitive

Ashraf Ghani, the now-former president, made the national army an incapable institution by unnecessarily dismissing and appointing personnel during his rule. The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), as the military was officially known as, was not disintegrated by the Taliban, but by the mismanagement of Afghan politicians. Ghani used his position to marginalize non-Pashtun actors from the government. When the Taliban began their  of seizing districts, large cities and then the capital, commanders of corps and divisions  one after another without putting up a fight.

In an interview with , General Yasin Zia, the head of the joint chiefs of staff in the Afghan government, said that Ghani had betrayed the soldiers by making wrong decisions and fleeing the country during a war. , the former security adviser, also told the broadcaster that the president was the main culprit in the defeat of ANDSF. For the past seven years, Mohaqiq said, Ghani was overwhelmed by the illusion of power, made wrong decisions and, upon witnessing Taliban fighters reaching Kabul, fled the country with in cash. 

Ghani’s presidency will be remembered as one of the worst points in Afghan history. Thanks to his mismanagement and the crimes that took place during his rule, Afghans have accused Ghani of committing  against national interests. His political opponents have long him as one of the biggest  to peace. 

In particular, the president did not back down when US politicians, almost all members of the Afghan High Peace Council and even Taliban leaders gathered in Qatar and called for an interim government. In early March, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote a  to Ghani, saying the threats are too high and that a UN-led peace agreement with the Taliban should be signed. If this was not done, Blinken warned, the security situation in Afghanistan would spiral out of control. Shortly thereafter, several high-level US delegations, including , visited Afghanistan to speak to Ghani about reaching an agreement with the Taliban. The warnings went unheeded. 

Can the Taliban be Trusted?

Since seizing power, the Taliban have announced a general amnesty for all people in Afghanistan, including employees of foreign institutions. According to this, everyone has immunity. As per Taliban leaders, women can return to work by observing Islamic law. Media outlets can also operate freely, as long as they follow Islamic principles. Nevertheless, it cannot simply be concluded that the Taliban are trustworthy. In the coming weeks, it will become clearer if they are tolerant toward women, minorities and activists. 

In 1996, the Taliban an amnesty as they entered Kabul and took control of Afghanistan; they ruled the country until the US-led invasion in 2001. Yet soon after, the Taliban launched a retaliatory campaign. The worst crimes against humanity took place during the Taliban’s rule. In August 1998, thousands of Hazaras, an Afghan minority, were massacred in Mazar-e-Sharif. Pakistani writer Ahmed Rashid  the killing as “genocidal in its ferocity.” 

Taliban leaders who have appeared in the media portray a more moderate regime. They speak of forming an inclusive government, tolerance toward minorities and respecting women’s rights. But this is far from the reality.

Taliban militants are still committed to the group’s . Their fighters follow extremist thought, such as the school and , one of the most basic principles of which is intolerance toward other Islamic sects. There have been reports of jihadists from and other fighting the Taliban. According to the United Nations, there are between 8,000 and 10,000  in Afghanistan who are either affiliated with the Taliban, al-Qaeda or the Islamic State in Khurasan Province (IS-KP).

Afghans Are Left at the Mercy of the Taliban

The Taliban have so far worked closely with terrorist groups operating in Central Asia and South Asia. Needless to say, this cooperation is likely to continue in the future. The Taliban’s view of religious principles is at  with human dignity and civil rights. In particular, the Taliban’s definition of women’s rights and freedom does not apply to Afghan society.

The group’s fighters have no faith in democracy and elections, and they are suspicious of women and minorities. Taliban leaders try to portray the group as tolerant in the media and talk about women’s rights to gain international support. In practice, their fighters on the ground that “women are mindless in general knowledge and religion.” 

The Taliban do not have a development-oriented mindset. They do not have a plan or even skilled followers to govern, and they certainly cannot manage the country’s shattered economy. A Taliban government would presumably be accompanied by widespread opium cultivation, drug trafficking and human rights violations. 

The theory that the Taliban have changed is just an illusion. The Taliban have already begun house-to-house inspections searching for Afghans who worked with US and NATO forces. There are also reports indicating that people, despite a general amnesty, have been  publicly. Four former Afghan and a relative of a  have reportedly been killed by Taliban fighters.

The Taliban have not treated ethnic and religious minorities well either. Just one night after their takeover, the Taliban’s unbridled fighters  a statue of Abdul Ali Mazari, a Hazara religious and national leader, in Bamiyan province where the Taliban demolished two 1,600-year-old  in 2001. According to , the Taliban brutally massacred nine Hazaras in July this year after seizing the rural village of Mundarakht in the Malistan district of Ghazni province. Six of them were allegedly shot dead and three were tortured to death by Taliban fighters.

The Taliban have no suitable personnel and capacity to run a country, and their only means of maintaining power is carrying out large-scale violence and ruling through fear. Under the Taliban, media will be censored and civilians will be forced to live like people in the dark ages. With the Taliban taking power, poverty, violence and organized repression will rage in the country. During their rule, civil rights advocates have no chance of survival.

Afghan civilians have been left defenseless and helpless at the mercy of one of the world’s most notorious terrorist groups.    

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Fading Horizon of US Middle East Politics

US foreign policy has always sought effective metaphors intended to express the nation’s exceptional virtues, often framed in terms of vision, resolution, industriousness or simply noble intentions. The Afghan war was baptized, “Operation Enduring Freedom.” The war in Iraq gave us “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and “Operation New Dawn.” 

Ever since Woodrow Wilson’s promise to “make the world safe for democracy” expressed America’s aptitude for entering wars, securing privileged access to resources, engaging in economic colonialism and intimidating uncooperative nations, slogans have served to clarify the direction of US policy. In recent years, the public has periodically learned about a “reset,” a “rebalance” or a “pivot” that announces a creative shift of perspective or intent.

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Faced with the quandary of military withdrawal from the “forever wars” inherited from the three previous administrations, the Biden team has crafted a new metaphor intended to reassure a concerned public. Following the definitive overthrow of the US-supported Afghan government and the definitive withdrawal of foreign troops, President Joe Biden made the solemn “to retain an over-the-horizon capacity” as the appropriate response to any attempts by the Taliban government to threaten US interests. Biden defines this as the capacity “to take them out, surgically.”

Over the horizon:

Belonging to an imaginary domain where everything is perfectly coordinated and clearly efficient, an update of the “over the rainbow” capacity of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz

The Context

As Oliver Knox out in The Washington Post, that “phrase has been a staple of Biden’s rhetoric on the troop withdrawal.” If all human efforts fail, whether with soldiers or diplomats, Americans tend to believe that their superior technology will respond to every need. The same reasoning has been consistently applied to the climate crisis, which, in the interest of economic growth, will continue to worsen because at the end of the day a technology fix will miraculously ride into the frame of the movie from over the horizon to save the enterprising pioneers in the wagon train.

What if the Taliban Were to Keep Their Promises?

With the sudden collapse of the Afghan government, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem declared that the war that began 20 years ago was now “over.” In its initial reaction, The New York Times , summing up the event with the headline: “Kabul’s Sudden Fall to Taliban Ends U.S. Era in Afghanistan.” This calm description more appropriate to a report on a thrilling chess match made it sound as if a noble chapter of history has now been closed.

The drama that ensued led even The Times to change its tone. For the Afghans or at least the Taliban, the invader has finally been defeated. For the US, a dolorous reckoning is taking place. And while, among the confusion, the level of fear and anguish has never been higher, especially for those Afghans who cooperated with the US and the fallen government, coldly reasoning Americans (if such creatures exist) should take comfort from the the Taliban have made to “allow Afghans to resume daily activities and do nothing to scare civilians.”

Naeem sought to reassure the US about Taliban 2.0. Even members of the 2001 Bush administration should be impressed, those who justified the war against Afghanistan on the grounds that the country was “harboring terrorists.” “We will not allow anyone,” Naeem insisted, “to use our lands to target anyone, and we do not want to harm others.”

Target:

In the domain of foreign relations, a polite synonym of kill, torture, injure and oppress with a sense of total impunity

The Context

What more could Americans ask for? Mission finally accomplished. If the Afghans no longer allow anyone to use their lands to target anyone else (for example, tall buildings in New York), all will be well with the world. Lower Manhattan’s traders can carry on their business in total tranquility. The Taliban leaders have even promised to improve the lives of Afghan women, as well as hinting they will tone down at least some of their traditional fanaticism. So, why is everyone so upset?

Could it be that Americans feel destabilized by the realization, nearly half a century after the fall of Saigon, of the utter futility of building such a powerful military machine that, no matter where it is deployed, will accomplish nothing other than intimidate its own allies while producing monumental profits for the defense industry? Who doesn’t remember George W. Bush about the most powerful military in the history of mankind that was “supported by the collective will of the world?”  

Now, it is the Taliban who have seized the pen that writes the rules in Afghanistan. Despite the official promise to go easy on collaborators, US have expressed “growing doubts about that pledge.” It leaves the impression that critics of the US withdrawal would be disappointed if no spectacular reprisals were to occur. Americans need their enemies to live up to the image they have created of them. The Times predicts that the “Taliban may indeed engage in reprisal killings, as they did when they took over in Afghanistan more than 20 years ago.” If the US defined the rules of the game through its own violence, ineptness and prevarication over two decades, the Taliban could at least demonstrate their own ability to play by those rules. Stick to the script, guys! We need your cooperation.

There are legitimate reasons to fear the worst from a group defined by its religious fundamentalism seeking control of a chaotically divided nation of warlords and competing ethnic groups in which the idea of getting revenge on the invader and occupier motivates a lot of people. But the today, as expressed by Abdul Qahar Balkhi from the Taliban’s Cultural Commission, is clearly different from the Taliban’s historical past. 

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In another , The Times mocks the very idea of the Taliban’s effort to “make nice.” This too reads like a case of futuristic schadenfreude sending the implicit message: Let’s hope they don’t succeed in making nice because our nation and its people need to remain convinced that the Taliban are evil enough to make our 20-year war on them appear justified.

The State Department’s Philosophy of Trickle-down Sharing

In February, Biden made a point of the nation’s European allies, who during the four years of Donald Trump’s tragicomic reign had begun to have doubts about the solidity of promises made by an American president. “Let me erase any lingering doubt,” Biden insisted, “the United States will work closely with our European Union partners and capitals across the continent, from Rome to Riga, to meet the shared challenges we face.”

It didn’t take long for the first of such challenges to appear.

Shared challenge:

A crisis created by a powerful nation such as the United States, who generously offers other friendly nations the opportunity to accompany it in the experience of responding to the crisis, which will last as long as it serves the initiator’s interests, while at the same time avoiding bothering the partners with the annoyance of trying to work out collegially an appropriate and honorable solution

The Context

Since the end of World War II, the United States has assumed the noble responsibility of managing the foreign affairs of its largely docile allies, while at the same time finding multiple ways of disrupting the foreign affairs of rogue nations that irresponsibly refuse to have their affairs managed from Washington. In the intervening decades, this has worked quite well. It has enabled an enduring system called a “rules-based order,” whose efficiency depended on one nation having the exclusive right not just to define the rules, but also to enforce them.

With the chaos surrounding the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the first signs are appearing that the vaunted efficiency of the rules-based order has become counterproductive. Yahoo cites Dave Keating, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, who explains that Europeans are angry “that they weren’t consulted about the withdrawal plan and were treated as an afterthought even though this was supposed to be a NATO joint endeavor.” Everyone — Americans and Europeans alike — has suddenly become aware of “the tremendous loss of money and lives spent on the NATO mission in Afghanistan over the past two decades that now seems very difficult to justify.”

Some observers pointed out in late 2001 that waging an open and easily extendible war to counter a specific crime by a small group of people might be “difficult to justify.” But in the rule-based order, at a time of exaggerated emotions, a firm and resolute decision by the drafter of the rules was as good as formal law and much better than moral law in redefining the rules and having everyone abide by them.

Credibility Ratings Are the Diplomatic Equivalent of Credit Ratings

The Washington Post understands the imperatives associated with the task of maintaining the image of an imperial power and the sacrifices it requires. Last week, following the debacle of Kabul, The Post’s editorial board how feasible it would have been for the US not to shamelessly abandon Afghanistan: “A small U.S. and allied military presence — capable of working with Afghan forces to deny power to the Taliban and its al-Qaeda terrorist allies, while diplomats and nongovernmental organizations nurtured a fledgling civil society — not only would have been affordable but also could have paid for itself in U.S. security and global credibility.”

Global credibility:

The impression retained by other nations and peoples that a superpower is ready, willing and able to subjugate any other group of people through the use of military might, technology, economic sanctions and any other appropriate means it possesses that sets it apart from the rest of humanity

The Context

The Post routinely supports establishment Democrats such as Biden, especially in opposition to dangerous progressives within the same party. But in this case, Jeff Bezos’ paper dared not only to criticize its hero, but even to accuse him of relying on clichés to support his reasoning. “Contrary to his and others’ cliches about ‘endless war,’ though, U.S. troops had not been in major ground operations, and had endured very modest casualties, since 2014,” The Post reports.

The Trojan War left traumatic traces on ancient Greek civilization because it lasted what felt to its contemporaries like an eternity: 10 years. To expiate the guilt associated with that enduring drama, Odysseus was condemned to another 10 years of wandering. At least, that’s how the editorial board that produced the Iliad and Odyssey seemed to see things. For the Greeks, 20 years of testing their manliness in war and Odysseus’ forced peregrination provided the matter that would define who they were as a civilization. A few centuries later, they offered the world the philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the drama of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and the Aphrodite of Praxiteles, as well as the radically unarmed Venus de Milo.

The key to the liberating Greek civilization from what Homer consistently described as a permanent manipulation of human heroes by capricious, undisciplined gods was the fact that a seemingly endless war did end. Once Odysseus, after a decade of wandering, had cleared his home of the crowd of suitors that had assembled coveting his neglected wife, the nation as a whole could settle down to producing a civilization in which art and intellect flourished (punctuated by an occasional war against Persians or even civil war between rival cities, just to keep everyone alert).

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The Greeks understood that some seemingly endless things actually do need to end. The Washington Post — but more fundamentally, the deeply militarized economy of the US that The Post is wont to defend and promote — haven’t yet learned that lesson.

With Global Warming Confirmed, Israeli Settlers Need Their Ice Cream More Than Ever

Like Lebron James and the late Kobe Bryant, two basketball legends, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are so famous that only their first names are needed to identify them. This is true, in any case, so long as the two names are paired together, since the first names Ben and Jerry lack the uniqueness of Lebron and Kobe. The two men from Merrick, New York, launched what became the most famous ice cream brand in the United States more than 30 years ago. They became celebrities thanks to the quality of their products but even more so to their marketing skills, which included a dose of sincere social concern and political awareness, something most successful businesses usually seek to avoid. Unlike the many brands that suddenly discovered their love for Black Lives Matter after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, their commitment to causes never reflected pure marketing opportunism.

The two Jewish boys no longer run the business, but they have imprinted on it its dimension of social awareness. Consistently with the company’s moral conscience, the company Ben & Jerry’s decided to sales in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories. Consistently with a certain style of propaganda designed to legitimate policies and actions even more openly racist and oppressive than police brutality in the United States against blacks, the state of Israel itself and numerous organizations have accused Ben and Jerry’s of anti-Semitism.

The Times of Israel on demonstrations in front of a Ben & Jerry’s in New York by militant Zionists who “led chants of ‘Shame on you, Ben & Jerry’s,’ ‘Everyone deserves ice cream’ and ‘From the river to the sea, Israel will always be.’”

Deserve:

Enjoy one of the rights essential to one’s well-being within a human community, a category that includes abstract notions such as the right to vote in a democracy and, more recently, following the logic of the consumer society, the right to purchase any commercial commodity

The Context

In the latest news, to The Hill, Florida Senator Rick Scott is “calling for a federal investigation into Ben & Jerry’s over its decision to stop selling ice cream in occupied Palestinian territory.” This moment may appear as the most telling sign of the irreversible decline of a great democracy that once at least pretended to set standards for the rest of the world.

In its famous 2010 Citizens United , the Supreme Court pushed the idea of freedom of speech to the point of authorizing corporations to undermine democratic processes by calling their use of money to influence elections “free speech.” Now, the idea that American citizens and corporations might use the feeble force of their refusal to consume products originating in a foreign country deemed virulently anti-democratic for its treatment of the populations living within its borders has already been condemned as unpatriotic and anti-Semitic. Florida and many other have passed anti-BDS laws punishing efforts to boycott Israel, a country that practices policies similar to South Africa’s notorious apartheid system.

Ben & Jerry’s isn’t even proposing a boycott, which is the refusal to buy goods from a particular source. Ben & Jerry’s sell; they don’t buy. They aren’t even aiming at Israel as a nation, but will only refuse to sell in those parts that have been identified by the United Nations as illegally colonized. Scott, a Republican senator, wants the company investigated, condemned and presumably sanctioned for failing to blindly endorse an apartheid-style occupation conducted by a foreign country. He appears to think that the US Constitution’s First Amendment protects the right of Americans to speak out against the policies of one’s own country but not those of Israel.

The key word is of course anti-Semitism, now considered to be identical with any form of criticism of Israel and a shortcut for letting original forms of white supremacy off the hook. The word has become a magic wand of the right in many Western countries. A conservative or even a liberal establishment politician can wave it in the air with appropriate gestures to shame anyone who dares to spout progressive themes about oppressed peoples and expect the media to respond.

It’s curious that so few people who follow the media will stop to think about how paradoxical it may appear that a company founded by two Jewish guys, who remain the source of the firm’s social conscience, are labeled anti-Semitic by a US senator defending the right of another nation to practice an aggressive form of apartheid, one of the most extreme historical examples of white supremacy.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The fall of the US-backed Afghan government led by President Ashraf Ghani will shelve if not kill Indian support for the Iranian port of Chabahar, which was intended to facilitate Indian trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia. Chabahar was also viewed by India as a counterweight to the Chinese-supported Pakistani port of Gwadar, a crown jewel of Beijing’s transportation, telecommunications and energy-driven Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

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The United States facilitated Indian investment in Chabahar by  the port from harsh sanctions against Iran. The exemption was intended to “support the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan.” However, due to stalled negotiations with Iran about a revival of the 2015 nuclear agreement, the US in July — together with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan — plans to create a platform that would foster regional trade, business ties and connectivity.

The connectivity end of the plan resembled an effort to cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face. It would have circumvented Iran and weakened Chabahar but potentially strengthened China’s Gwadar alongside the port of Karachi. That has become a moot point with the plans certain to be shelved as the Taliban take over Afghanistan and form a government that would be denied recognition by at least the democratic parts of the international community.

China

Like other Afghan neighbors, neither Pakistan, Uzbekistan nor China are likely to join a boycott of the Taliban. On the contrary, China last month made a point of giving a visiting Taliban delegation a welcome. Yet recognition by Iran, Central Asian states and China of a Taliban government is unlikely to be enough to salvage the Chabahar project. “Changed circumstances and alternative connectivity routes are being conjured up by other countries to make Chabahar irrelevant,” an Iranian source told , a Delhi-based publication.

The Taliban have sought to reassure China, Iran, Uzbekistan and other Afghan neighbors that they will not allow Afghanistan to become an operational base for jihadist groups. This includes al-Qaeda and Uighur of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP). The Taliban have positioned themselves as solely concerned with creating an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan and having no inclination to operate beyond the country’s borders. But they have been consistent in their to expel al-Qaeda, even if the group is a shadow of what it was when it launched the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

The TIP has occasionally issued  documenting its presence in Afghanistan. But it has, by and large, kept a low profile and refrained from attacking Chinese targets in Afghanistan or across the border in Xinjiang, the northwestern Chinese province in which authorities have brutally cracked down on ethnic Turkic Uighurs. As a result, the Taliban reassurance was insufficient to stop China from  advising its citizens to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible. “Currently, the security situation in Afghanistan has further deteriorated … If Chinese citizens insist on staying in Afghanistan, they will face extremely high-security risks, and all the consequences will be borne by themselves,” the Chinese foreign ministry said.

Pakistan

The fallout of the Taliban’s sweep across Afghanistan is likely to affect China beyond Afghan borders, perhaps no more so than in Pakistan, a major focus of Beijing’s single largest BRI-related investment. This has made China a target for attacks by militants, primarily Baloch nationalists. In July, nine Chinese nationals were killed in an explosion on a bus transporting Chinese workers to the construction site of a dam in the northern mountains of Pakistan, a region prone to attacks by religious militants. This incident raises the specter of jihadists also targeting China. It was the highest loss of life of Chinese citizens in recent years in Pakistan.

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The attack occurred amid fears that the Taliban will bolster ultra-conservative religious sentiment in Pakistan that celebrates the group as heroes, whose success enhances the chances for austere religious rule. “Our jihadis will be emboldened. They will say that ‘if America can be beaten, what is the Pakistan army to stand in our way?’” a senior Pakistani official. Indicating its concern, China has  the signing of a framework agreement on industrial cooperation, which would have accelerated the implementation of projects that are part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Kamran Bokhari, for The Wall Street Journal, explained: “Regime change is a terribly messy process. Weak regimes can be toppled; replacing them is the hard part. It is only a matter of time before the Afghan state collapses, unleashing chaos that will spill beyond its borders. All of Afghanistan’s neighbors will be affected to varying degrees, but Pakistan and China have the most to lose.”

The demise of Chabahar and/or the targeting by the Taliban of Hazara Shia Muslims in Afghanistan could potentially turn Iran into a significant loser too.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Beirushima: What Lebanon Needs to Survive

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An  from October last year (seen by Reuters at the end of July) concluded that the amount of ammonium nitrate left in the port warehouse by the time of the explosion constituted just one-fifth of the 2,754 tons seized by the authorities in 2013. The question the FBI did not ask was where the bulk of that shipment had gone. Arab Digest’s own from July 20 suggests the likely destination: the regime forces of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. Sources claim that Assad’s ally Hezbollah moved the ammonium nitrate into Syria over the years.

Buttressing our analysis is the fact that no insurance claim has ever emerged from the supposed destination, Mozambique, for the undelivered fertilizer. The Israelis, we postulate, in hitting a Hezbollah weapons cache in the harbor, unintentionally triggered the blast.

No Concrete Evidence

A new  published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) links to over 100 documents related to the Rhosus and its cargo, some of which have not been previously published. Once again, more questions than answers are forthcoming, including over such key issues as whether the ammonium nitrate was really ever, as has been  intended for Mozambique:

“The widely reported narrative regarding the arrival of the Rhosus, a Moldovan-flagged ship, in the port of Beirut in November 2013 carrying 2,750 tonnes of high-density ammonium nitrate is as follows: the ship’s cargo was ultimately bound for Mozambique; it entered Beirut’s port to load seismic equipment it was then meant to deliver to Jordan before traveling onward to Mozambique; the ship’s owner was a Russian national, Igor Grechushkin; and the owner of the ammonium nitrate on board, Savaro Limited, was a chemical trading company in the United Kingdom. Upon examination, however, it is not clear that any of these assertions are true.”

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The HRW report goes on to mention three possible reasons for the blast: that the explosion was caused when welding sparks caused a fire in hangar 12, igniting the ammonium nitrate; that the explosion was caused by an Israeli airstrike; or that the explosion was an intentional act by Hezbollah. The hypothesis that the explosion might have been caused by an Israeli attack that was not an airstrike is not one that is under official consideration, although in June, investigative judge Tarek Bitar  that he was “80 percent certain” that the blast was not caused by an Israeli missile.

In July, we described how an Arab Digest member recalled the events of that day:

“Shortly after 6 pm, we heard a jet flying at low level from the west and an explosion from the direction of the port. A couple of minutes later came the deeper sound of a surface-to-surface missile followed by another explosion. The ground then shook violently — this turned out later to be the ammonium nitrate detonating — and we watched in disbelief the plume of smoke and debris soaring into the sky. The blast reached us a few seconds later, throwing us off our feet from the terrace into the flat and blowing in all the glass.”

For our member, it was a fortunate escape: bruised and cut, and astonished to find that, in the midst of the badly damaged flat, the internet was still working.

Inconclusive Conclusion

Now, a year on, there are still pressing questions about what caused the blast and who is responsible, questions that the suffering people of Lebanon deserve to have answers to. The second, and by far the most destructive explosion, occurred when a warehouse containing ammonium nitrate caught fire. A common explanation put about at the time was that the explosion had been caused by careless workers. But no concrete evidence has been brought forward to support that claim.

France had declared that it would conduct a major investigation. However, a  French judge could  conclusively “whether the explosion was the result of an intentional security operation or whether it was the result of negligence in storing the ammonium nitrate and shortcomings that led to the devastating explosion.” According to Reuters, the FBI had arrived at the same inconclusive conclusion.

The French report raised the possibility of an attack — “an intentional security operation” — together with the claim that the explosion was an accident caused by negligence. The equivocation and failure to find answers didn’t prevent the French from patronizingly . As the French ambassador in Beirut put it, “To all this country’s leaders, I want to say that your individual and collective responsibility is considerable, be brave enough to take action, and France will help you.”

The first Lebanese judge investigating the blast was  in mid-February after he had attempted to charge cabinet ministers and the prime minister in office at the time of the explosion. A second judge has made virtually no headway against entrenched political elites whose central goal is to protect themselves and their fiefdoms while evading responsibility and the truth.

On July 14,  called for the removal of immunity for senior politicians as well as government and military personnel: “The protesters’ demand is simple: let justice take its course. We stand with these families in calling on Lebanese authorities to immediately lift all immunities granted to officials, regardless of their role or position. Any failure to do so is an obstruction of justice, and violates the rights of victims and families to truth, justice and reparations.”

Despite pleas and protests by the families of the victims, justice is unlikely to be allowed to take its course. The judiciary itself is deeply compromised and beholden to numerous sectarian, business and political factions, a malignant legacy of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war. As an article on  forensically elucidates, “the corruptibility of the judicial system is no accident. Instead, the convoluted structure of the judiciary complements the structure of the rest of the political system — in that it facilitates impunity at the highest levels and protects those who have retained power in the aftermath of Lebanon’s civil war.”

Speculations Abound

In the absence of an independent investigation, with all the foot-dragging and obfuscation it entails, speculation abounds about what caused the explosion. There are those, including our member, who believe that what happened on August 4, 2020, was the unintended consequence of an Israeli attack on a Hezbollah weapons dump in the port. The cache was located adjacent to the warehouse holding the ammonium nitrate. The first blast, with its eerie resemblance to fireworks going off, set off the fire that caused the major blast which leveled the port and damaged much of Beirut.

The Arab Digest member, who is familiar with both the Israeli air force tactics and their consequences, is convinced it was a missile strike: “We compared notes with a friend who had observed the jet banking away from the attack and another friend who actually saw the surface-to-surface missile flash past her office window.” The member says that, according to detailed work done by Lebanese citizen activists in the wake of the attack, the ammonium nitrate aboard the Rhosus had landed in Beirut under a cover story in 2013. 

The shipment was subsequently seized by port authorities. The supposition put forward by the activists is that it was then trucked to Syria by Hezbollah to provide the regime forces of Bashar al-Assad with the raw material for the improvised barrel bombs they began dropping on opposition-held cities having run short of conventional ammunition. The member quoted expert sources who estimated that over several years, the original 2,750 tons had been reduced to about 400 tons at the time of the blast, which is in line with the FBI’s findings.

Richard Silverstein, who describes himself as a writer who “focusses on the excesses of the Israeli national security state,” wrote in his , Tikun Olam, just after the blast:

“A confidential highly-informed Israeli source has told me that Israel caused the massive explosion at the Beirut port earlier today which killed over 100 and injured thousands. … The source received this information from an Israeli official having special knowledge concerning the matter.

Israel targeted a Hezbollah weapons depot at the port and planned to destroy it with an explosive device. Tragically, Israeli intelligence did not perform due diligence on its target. Thus they did not know (or if they did know, they didn’t care) that there were 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a next-door warehouse.”

Tikun Olam referred to of then-President Donald Trump who, in a hastily arranged press conference, said he had met with some of his “great generals” and “they seem to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind.” His comments caused consternation at the Pentagon, with Silverstein arguing that Trump had let slip “highly classified information,” i.e., that the Israelis had informed Washington that they were going to carry out an attack on a Hezbollah weapons cache.

Silverstein, though a , is viewed by some experts as a useful source on Israeli defense information that would otherwise be censored by the authorities. When contacted by Arab Digest, Silverstein thought it “not likely” that the Israelis would have used a fighter jet to carry out the alleged strike. He thought it too obvious and reckless. He pointed to the modus operandi used against Iranian targets where explosives were placed and then detonated remotely as a more likely approach. He said his source had not mentioned anything about using a fighter jet. “It might have been triggered by a drone,” Silverstein suggested.

But Silverstein was certain of the attack itself: It was carried out by the Israelis. His source, he said, had been contacted by a cabinet minister in the Netanyahu government (the “Israeli official having special knowledge”) shortly after the explosion. Silverstein told Arab Digest that he was “totally confident about the source.”

True Narrative

Should this version, or variations on it, be the true narrative, it is understandable why Hezbollah and Israel would not want it to see the light of day. Less understandable and puzzling is why major news outlets have not touched the story when it was presented to them by reputable sources. Part of the answer may lie in the fact that the sources, either for professional or personal security concerns, have not wanted to go on the record.

A truly independent investigation might answer the questions and uncover the truth. But for the Lebanese people, battered by an economic crisis and stalked by the COVID-19 pandemic, finding out what happened that terrible day in Beirut must join a disheartening queue. In a country that has for too long been abused by its political elites and used by foreign powers for their own purposes, seeking answers is a long and arduous task with little hope at its end that justice will be served.

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Evangelical Blues, or How Supporting Trump Discredits Christianity

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That is of course with good reason: On 9/11, nearly 3,000 people were brutally murdered by violent jihadi Islamists in the worst sub-state terrorist attack in history. But there is something that has long vexed me, in keeping with the New Testament injunction to take the “log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” I have referred to this phenomenon for but have never had the opportunity to properly delineate what I think is again becoming an urgent subject matter, namely Christianism.

Perversion of Christianity

As I have earlier, “Whereas religious politics, in a banal sense at least, may be observed wherever clerics become directly involved in politics, the term ‘Christianism’ is intended to denote a more radical, revolutionary approach to secular politics.” Christianism may have Christian connotations and indeed draw upon Christian language but, like Islamism, it is essentially appropriative. It allows an entirely secular Anders Behring Breivik (now known as Fjotolf Hansen) who murdered 77 in Norway on July 22, 2011, to term himself a “cultural Christian” — not on account of any metaphysical belief, but because he believed it was a useful framework with which to attack Muslims and Europe and, using an anti-Semitic dog whistle, “cultural Marxists.”

Christianism, therefore, is a secular doctrine that is different from, alternatively, evangelicalism, political Christianity and fundamentalism. Joas Wagemakers makes a similar claim about the distinction of Islamism from types of religious fundamentalism such as Salafism. This is a political ideology appropriating religion, not the other way around. But I would go further than Wagemakers does in Islamism as “a political application of Islam.” Instead, I would suggest that both violent and non-violent forms of Islamism, in their very nature, reject pluralism and advance a doctrine of supremacy that is the hallmark of extremism — whether ethnic, national or religious.

Moreover, it is precisely the political violence exemplified by the horrors unleashed by Breivik that Christianism is intended to denote. In short, this is a distinct, ideological perversion of Christianity that is, at the same time, distinct from older and more familiar forms of Christian nationalism and even from the theologically-based exclusion or persecution that has marred Christianity no less than other monotheistic faiths. One need not be a Christian to be a Christianist, nor is Christianism driven by the same impulse as the regrettably all too familiar instances of tribalism in Christian history.

It scarcely should need saying, but Islamism is an extremist perversion of one of our world’s leading faiths. As a revolutionary ideology born of the 20^th century, it can be directly from the interwar Muslim Brotherhood under Hasan al-Banna, for example, and the doctrines of Sayyid Qutb in postwar Egypt to the quasi-state terrorism of the Islamist death cult, Daesh. For all of its supposed medievalism, then, Islamism is a product, and not merely a rejection, of modernity.

A similar perspective can be taken on Christianism. So, first, a banal point: Believers have politics, just as do non-believers. For this reason, I am wary of constructions like “political Christianity” or “political Islam” for the same reason I’m only marginally less wary of constructions like “apolitical Christianity” or “apolitical Islam,” though I accept, of course, that different forms of hermeticism stretch across most faith traditions.

Thus, Christianism doesn’t refer to a form of Christian nationalism that is evident in the contemporary US (although not only there). One might observe the heart-breaking scenes in early April of Protestant loyalists rioting in Belfast with the frightening implications for the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, or indeed the conflict acting as the midwife for the long struggle over the six counties, the Great War. Throughout that conflict, scholars have that both Protestant and Catholic confessions anointed or, better, armed their nations with justifications of a holy war. Christian churches’ injunctions to fight for God and nation is but one example of Christian nationalism, and there are countless others like it in the Christian tradition as there are in other faith traditions. It is far from new.

Sacrazlied Politics

This particular sense of Christian nationalism, likewise, has been extensively in the American context, with particular focus on white evangelicalism. In the compelling empirical account, “Taking America Back for God,” Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry that “those who embrace Christian nationalism insist that the Christian God formed, favors and sustains the United States over and above the other nations in the world.” It is in this sense that Rogers Brubaker refers to adherents of Christianism in a 2017 , whereby “Christianity is increasingly seen as their civilizational matrix, and as the matrix of a whole series of more specific ideas, attitudes, and practices, including human rights, tolerance, gender equality, and support for gay rights.”

Yet here too we may be seeing a case of old wine in new bottles, whereby reactionary and even tribal expressions of a faith — in this case Christianity — which seem to belong to a tradition that, in American terms, stretches from John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” to the televangelists of our day. Even cast in such civilizational terms, these forms of Christian tribalism are of a different stamp than the tradition I’d like to indicate. It is first and foremost ideological and emerged between the two world wars to afflict all three principal confessions in Europe: Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

To take but one example of from each of these confessions, consider first the Romanian Orthodox ideologue, Ion Moţa, a key leader of militant fascist mystics, the Legion of Archangel Michael. Just before he was killed by Republicans in what he understood as a holy war in Civil War Spain, Moţa : “No force, no love exists which is higher than that of the race (and can only be realized in the race), except for the force of Christ and love of him. We are defending Christianity in a foreign land, we are defending a force which wells up from the force of our people, and, spurred on by our love for the Cross, we are obeying here in Spain our love for the Romanian people.”

Underscoring that his views were scarcely marginal, a mortuary train carried Moţa’s body from the Spanish battlefield across Europe in winter 1937 into Bucharest, where he was received by hundreds of thousands of devotees, helping to nearly the mystical fascist party — the Romanian Iron Guard — membership to 272,000 by the end of that year. No doubt many of these supporters later took part in the earliest massacres during the wartime Holocaust, murdering more than in pogroms across Romania in 1940.

This form of sacralized politics was not limited either to the laity or to Orthodox fascists. In Nazi Germany, the regime initially supported the mistitled German Christians as an expression of what was termed “Positive Christianity” in the NSDAP program. Under Reichsbishop Heinrich Müller, the German Christians promoted the ��ü������������Գ����� in the country’s Protestant churches, aiming for complete coordination between a totalitarian state and a totalitarian church.

A picture of what this looked like can be glimpsed from these selections of Muller’s 1934 of Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount”. Thus, “Blessed are the meek” becomes “Benevolence to him who bears his suffering manfully,” while “Blessed are the peacemakers” is mongered into “Benevolence to those who maintain peace with the members of the Volk.” Most sacrilegiously, the categorical “turning the other cheek” is turned to the following:  “I say to you: it is better, so to live with other members of your Volk that you get along with each other. Volk community is a high and sacred trust for which you must make sacrifice. Therefore come out to meet your opponent as far as you can before you completely fall out with him. If in his excitement your comrade hits you in the face, it is not always correct to hit him back.”

So far did this heresy go that the German Christians even the “liberation from the Old Testament with its cheap Jewish morality” by attempting to simply expunge it from the Bible. The genocidal analogue of this attempted erasure was the Holocaust, which was powered by what Saul Friedlander has aptly “redemptive antisemitism.”

Clerical Fascism

Yet fighting a holy war against socialists in Spain or advocating genocide from the pulpit was not Christianist enough for the Independent State of Croatia, the Catholic wartime ally of Nazi Germany under the rule of the Ustasa, as “the most brutal and most sanguinary satellite regime in the Axis sphere of influence.” The Ustasa methods of killing were so sadistic that even the Nazi plenipotentiary based in Croatia recoiled. For instance, consider the of Dionizije Juričev, the head of State Direction for Renewal, from October 22, 1941:

“In this country only Croats may live from now on, because it is a Croatian country. We know precisely what we will do with the people who do not convert. I have purged the whole surrounding area, from babies to seniors. If it is necessary, I will do that here, too, because today it is not a sin to kill even a seven-year-old child, if it is standing in the way of our Ustaša movement … Do not believe that I could not take a machine gun in hand just because I wear priest’s vestments. If it is necessary, I will eradicate everyone who is against the Ustaša.”

These words were targeted not only at the demonized victims of Nazism such as Jews, Roma and Sinti Travelers, but also at the Orthodox Serbs who were the largest victims of the Ustasa “” — kill one-third, expel one-third and forcibly convert one-third of their enemies. This sacrilege culminated in the only extermination center not directly run by the Nazi SS — the Jasenvocac camp, less than 100 miles from the Croatian capital Zagreb.

Jasenovac, where some 100,000 ethnic or religious victims were brutally murdered, was commanded by Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, a serving priest. Though he was later defrocked and ultimately hanged in 1946, both his wartime actions and the escape of so many of his allies on the Catholic “ratline” to South America, including the Ustasa leader, Ante Pavelic — who spent more than a dozen years hidden in Argentina after the war — suggests that, in much the same way that fascism could appeal to seduced conservatives, Christianism could also appeal to Christian tribalists.

The case of such priests during the fascist era led to the useful term “clerical fascism,” characterized as a hybrid between the Christian faith and fascism. Yet in a manner inverse to Christian nationalism, which can be entirely secular, clerical fascism suggests a phenomenon from, and within, Christian churches. With respect to Christianism in our (arguably) secularizing world, this would exclude self-described “cultural Christians” like Anders Breivik, whose 775,000-word manifesto is clear on his secular appropriation of Christianity for the purposes of attacking cultural Marxism.

So too with the civilizational frame adopted by conspiracist proponents of the “great replacement,” which alleges a Muslim plot to destroy Christian civilizations from within. The convicted terrorist Brenton Tarrant, the murderer of 51 Muslim worshippers at Friday prayers in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, was aimed at countering this so-called “white genocide,” itself a neo-Nazi term coined by the convicted race murderer David Lane (also notorious for popularizing the “14 words”: “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”). Like Breivik, Tarrant’s 74-page manifesto, “The Great Replacement,” specifically addresses itself to Christians:

“Let the fire of our repentance raise up the Holy War and the love of our brethren lead us into combat. Let our lives be stronger than

death to fight against the enemies of the Christian people.

ASK YOURSELF, WHAT WOULD POPE URBAN II DO?”

Pope Urban declared the First Crusade in 1095, opening one of the darkest chapters in Christian history.

Although modern and revolutionary, Christianism need not be defined as a theological stance. One can be agnostic on the issue of faith and still be a Christianist. More important is the Durkheimian religious behavior toward the sacred and the profane, which closely links clerical fascists with cultural Christians of Tarrant and Breivik’s stripe. This leads to the definition of Christianism as a modern, ideological appropriation of Christianity based upon a secular vision of redemption through political violence against perceived enemies.

Relevant Again

While it might be tempting to think that the era of fascism has left Christianism in our bloody past, this construction feels relevant again in the wake of the Capitol Hill insurrection earlier this year in Washington, DC. True, Identity Christians, the Army of God and many similar groups emerged after 1945, but these were tiny and fringe extremist movements. By contrast, what makes Christianism today the elephant in the room is precisely how widespread it appears to be developing in a new guise — and radicalizing.

In the US, for instance, according to reported by The New York Times, nearly “15 percent of Americans say they think that the levers of power are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles, a core belief of QAnon supporters.” That equates to some 50 million Americans. That this ideological crusade is “infecting” Christian churches, indeed conquering them, is borne out by a similar indicating that this virus stretches across confessions: “Hispanic Protestants (26%) and white evangelical Protestants (25%) were more likely to agree with the QAnon philosophies than other groups. (Black Protestants were 15%, white Catholics were 11% and white mainline Protestants were 10%.)”

We should not delude ourselves that this is, or will always be, a non-violent movement. Already, nearly 80 “” can be laid at the QAnon Christianists’ door — and that’s before ascribing to them a key role in the January 6 insurrection, also partly fomented by then-President Donald Trump. The fusion of QAnon with Christianity — an exemplary case of Christianism — is chillingly evidenced by a professionally shot released this New Year’s Day, just days before the attempted coup in Washington. Even if this ideological call to battle ends with the canonical Lord’s Prayer familiar to Christians, salvation is emphatically this-worldly and focused on a “reborn” US in a manner quite familiar to .

It is for this reason that Christianism is very much the elephant in the room. As such, it needs to be confronted and rejected both politically and theologically — first and foremost by Christians themselves. This repudiation would not simply be for the sake of the self-preservation of the faith in the face of its heretic form and not just for the protection of life that will be an increasing concern in the months and years to come. It is necessary because this is a syndrome not unfamiliar to other faiths but has yet to be named as such among mainstream Christian confessions.

We must not look away from this. Let us not go back to the genocidal years of clerical fascism in Europe, spawned by ideology and bloodlust, and let us stand tall against what is so obviously sacrilege. Both faith and civic duty command it. That is because, put in more familiar terms in William Faulkner’s “Requiem for a Nun,” “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

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Of Hobbits and Tigers: The Unlikely Heroes of Italy’s Radical Right

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Fortunately, the authorities were able to uncover this scheme and purge the Bundeswehr of these anti-democratic elements. In April this year, 12 men accused of planning a series of attacks on asylum seekers, Muslims, Jews and politicians in Stuttgart.

False Flag Tactics

Part of this plan was a false flag operation. A former Bundeswehr officer, identified only as “Franco A.” in the court proceedings, went on trial in Frankfurt in May for planning attacks on German politicians and various prominent individuals. Beginning in 2015, Franco A. sought to create a new identity for himself as a Syrian asylum-seeker. He succeeded in persuading the authorities of his false Muslim identity, at least for a while.

Among other individuals, Franco A. singled out Claudia Roth, a vice president of the German parliament; Heiko Maas, the foreign minister; and Anetta Kahane, a Jewish woman, frequently identified as an outspoken defender of asylum seekers, as . Fortunately, the authorities were able to uncover the scheme and arrest its principal perpetrator before it could be put into operation.

By impersonating a Muslim and carrying out attacks on prominent and individuals largely sympathetic to the cause of integration, Franco A. hoped to exacerbate the backlash against the Muslim community already underway throughout the country. In this way, he hoped to spark a conflict that would shake the foundations of German democracy.

The false flag tactic has a familiar ring to it. It was employed, for example, in the bombing campaign launched by right-wing provocateurs in the lead-up to the 1967 military coup d’état in Greece. But the one place where the tactic was employed most extensively was Italy. The “strategy of tension” was employed by Italian neo-fascists and elements within the state security agencies during the country’s Years of Lead — Anni di piombo — roughly 1968 to 1982.

Strategy of Tension

Northern Italy and Rome during the late 1960s were alive with revolutionary agitation and protest. Wildcat strikes broke out in the plants and factories of Milan, Turin and other cities during the “hot autumn” of 1968. University students throughout much of the country staged mass protests against the Vietnam War, in solidarity with their counterparts in Paris and Berkeley, and the outdated character of Italy’s system of higher education.

In this atmosphere, extra-parliamentary leftist groups formed. With such names as Worker Vanguard, Worker Power and the Continuous Struggle, these militant bands called for violent revolution against the corrupt Italian state and the Christian Democratic Party that dominated it. What would become the country’s most notorious terrorist group, the Red Brigades, emerged from this milieu.

At this point, we should call attention to the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the biggest Marxist bloc in the Western world. By 1968-69, roughly one-third of Italian voters cast their ballots for the PCI, whose leaders, among other things, dominated the country’s largest trade union federation. Many journalists expected the PCI would shortly surpass the Christian Democrats as the number one party in Italy.

PCI’s leaders Enrico Berlinguer and Luigi Longo were at pains to point out that Italian communism was different — that it accepted the democratic rules of the game and aimed to enter a coalition government with the Christian Democrats to provide the country with a stable, democratic regime. Still, in the eyes of many Italians, the PCI was a communist party after all.

Counterrevolutionary Logic

Enter the strategy of tension. The counterrevolutionary logic of this was to launch a series of indiscriminate bombings in public places disguised in such a way that the Italian public would blame the far left for these atrocities and for the breakdown of public order in general. In this way, Italians seeking a restoration of law and order would support, or at least remain indifferent to a seizure of power by the country’s military and security services.

Accordingly, during the summer and fall of 1969, there were a series of bombings in Rome — one in front of an elementary school — and in the north of the country. The police reported these acts were the responsibility of anarchists. A number of individuals with backgrounds in neo-fascism (members of the New Order or the National Vanguard) changed their identities and resurfaced as “revolutionaries.”

Giorgio Almirante, the leader of the Italian Social Movement, a neo-fascist party in parliament, appealed to a “silent majority” of Italians demanding a restoration of law and order, borrowing language from the Nixon administration in Washington. Then, on December 12, there was the bombing of the National Agricultural Bank at Piazza Fontana in Milan that killed 17 customers. The police quickly blamed revolutionary anarchists for the massacre and within days arrested two individuals with the appropriate backgrounds. One of them allegedly committed suicide by jumping out of the fourth floor of the police headquarters. Few believed the official account.

The story unraveled quickly, thanks to investigations carried out by suspicious journalists. It’s a complex tale. But it should suffice to report that it involved a collaboration between Italy’s state security agencies, the state police and key figures in the neo-fascist movement. Arrests followed, but the subsequent court proceedings dragged on for more than a decade.

The chances seem remote that the democratic order in Germany will be challenged as seriously as it was in Italy, now more than 50 years ago. Still, some of the same ingredients for false flag operations appear to have been present in the case of Franco A.

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For the Far Right, the COVID-19 Crisis Is a PR Opportunity

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Some of the groups on the congressperson’s list are familiar names to any observer of transnational radical-right extremism over the last several years: the Nordic Resistance Movement, Blood and Honour, National Action and what Slotkin, a former CIA employee focused on extremism in the Middle East and North Africa, describes collectively as the “Azov Battalion” in Ukraine. Not surprisingly, as someone who has written extensively about the threat of the radical right in Ukraine, the mention of Azov caught my attention. But it wasn’t for the right reasons, and it shows that, when the radical right is concerned, group designations and proscriptions aren’t always the best policy tool.

What’s in a Name?

For one, I’ve seen this play out before. In 2019, another member of US Congress, Max Rose, authored a similar letter demanding that the Azov Battalion be designated as an FTO. Rose’s letter was, ultimately, a complete failure. As I from Ukraine in November 2019, it contained inaccurate information, including the unproven claim that the Christchurch terrorist admitted to training with Azov, and ended up being a propaganda boon to the radical right.

Slotkin’s letter, fortunately, doesn’t make those kinds of sweeping, evidence-free claims. But it’s not without its major flaws. For one, the letter incorrectly refers to the Azov Battalion. The military unit once known as the Azov Battalion, formed in 2014 to combat Russian-backed insurgents in a still-hot war in eastern Ukraine, has been under the auspices of Ukraine’s National Guard and properly known as the Azov Regiment for years. While referring to it as the “Azov Battalion” could be excusable as something a commentator without experience in Ukraine might mention in passing, it’s not so excusable in an official letter demanding that said organization be designated as a terror group. In particular, how can a group be designated if it can’t even be named and identified correctly?

The accurate descriptor would, of course, be the “Azov Movement.” I’ve described the Azov Movement, which grew out of the original battalion and regiment, as a heterogenous radical-right social movement. At its core, the movement encompasses the regiment itself, the National Corps political party, the Centuria (formerly the National Militia) paramilitary organization as well as a number of affiliated subgroups and initiatives including a book club, youth camps, a “leadership school” and a (temporarily closed) three-story social center just off Kyiv’s central Independence Square.

It also encompasses organizations and networks that are clearly led by and are made up of members of the movement who appear to function with some degree of independence, often without any stated relationship to the movement and who are in their rhetoric. There are also smaller radical-right organizations that are nominally independent but still appear to have at least some relationship with the movement and who circle around its orbit.

Superficial Terms

Slotkin’s letter, on the other hand, describes Azov in superficial terms. The movement is referred to solely as “a well-known militia organization in Ukraine [that] uses the internet to recruit new members and then radicalizes them to use violence to pursue its white identity political agenda,” with one sole reference to a relatively recent January 2021 article. Sure, there’s not enough space in a letter like this to discuss the Azov Movement in considerable detail. But there’s no shortage of material in English on the movement’s activities over the past several years (certainly not just from this author), and, what’s more, it is easily accessible and digestible to anyone who chooses to take a few minutes to read beyond a simple Google search.

Having even a cursory understanding of what the Azov Movement actually is and how it functions would reveal just how difficult it would be in practice to designate it as an FTO, and, in fact, how difficult it is to proscribe these kinds of movements in practice. Even as the UK has moved to the violent neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division, reports from suggest that sympathizers are using still-existing networks to rebuild an offshoot of the group there.

The question then turns to who would be designated as an FTO. Would it be the regiment alone, which is itself a member of Ukraine’s National Guard and thus a member of the country’s armed forces? As counter-extremism expert Kacper Rekawek pointed out last week in a for the Counter Extremism Project, the US would surely never designate an official unit of an American ally’s military, whether one likes it or not.

Moreover, and to move further into the morass, would the broader movement be proscribed as an FTO, and if so, whom would that include? One could see it encompassing the National Corps and Centuria, but does that include every single affiliated organization, from sports clubs to youth camps? What would be the legal criteria for determining whether an entity is or isn’t part of the movement? And, moreover, which individuals can even be described as being part of the movement? Trying to parse these questions would be a veritable nightmare.

A Better Way

Even worse, I can easily imagine how affiliated organizations within the movement would worm their way out of being part of the designation, which exposes a serious flaw with going after the radical right through the means of . Daryl Johnson, an American domestic terrorism expert and former senior analyst with the US Department of Homeland Security, a journalist in Canada, my home country, that its government’s efforts to ban groups like the Proud Boys were “more of a symbolic gesture,” and that radical-right organizations facing these kinds of bans could simply just change their names and regroup under a new banner.

Given that, in the Ukrainian context, radical-right organizations and affiliates have a history of changing their names and branding while maintaining the core leadership, one should expect this to continue if an attempt to proscribe the entire movement were to actually happen. If US and Ukraine’s other Western allies are seriously concerned about the Azov Movement — as they should be — there are far more effective means at their disposal than the clumsy if attention-grabbing mechanism of a foreign terrorist organization designation.

They should consider, for one, designating specific individuals, with specific and justified reasons, instead of broader groups and movements. Visa and travel bans for specific prominent individuals, which would also encourage European allies to extend visa-free Schengen Area restrictions to those same individuals, would also be useful. There is also the option of placing pressure, both public and private, on Ukraine’s government and elements in the Ukrainian state to properly acknowledge and tackle the issue of the violent radical right in their country — pressure that could even include making some international funding and financial support contingent on tackling the problem.

These would be much more effective starting points for the US or any other Western country worried about the activities of Ukraine’s Azov Movement than any attempted FTO designation.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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