Estimates showing the Taliban rapidly taking control of territory across Afghanistan are not an illusion, according to the United States’ top-ranking military official, who admits the coming months will be a “test of will and leadership” for the Afghan government.
 
General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday about 212 of Afghanistan’s district centers — about half — are currently in Taliban hands, and that Taliban forces are advancing on the outskirts of 17 of the country’s 34 provincial capitals.
 
“Strategic momentum sort of appears to be sort of with the Taliban,” Milley told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon.   
 
“What they’re trying to do is isolate the major population centers,” he added. “They’re trying to do the same thing to Kabul, and roughly speaking … a significant amount of territory has been seized.”
 
The admission comes two and a half months after the U.S. and its allies began pulling their last remaining combat forces from Afghanistan, and despite assurances from top U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden, that a Taliban takeover is “highly unlikely.”US Military Mission in Afghanistan Ends August 31, Biden Announces   It is time to look to fight the battles of the next 20 years, says the US president, in remarks after he was briefed on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan But independent trackers, such as one compiled by the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, have raised concerns, noting that the Taliban have nearly tripled the number of districts under their control since the withdrawal officially began on May 1.
 
A number of intelligence agencies have likewise sounded alarms, warning in a United Nations report last month that the Taliban were preparing to take by force what they could not get through negotiations. The report further warned that top Taliban deputies continue to “favor a military solution.”UN Report Warns of Impending Taliban Power Play Assessment issued Thursday says Taliban positioning forces to take by force what they cannot get through negotiations once US, coalition troops leave Even by the Pentagon’s own math, the numbers appear to tell a stark story.
 
Milley testified to U.S. lawmakers in June that at the time, the Taliban held just 81 district centers, meaning they have more than doubled their control in the past month.
 
Milley, however, warned Wednesday that it would be a mistake to buy into the Taliban narrative of Afghan security forces melting away in the face of conflict.
 
“Part of this is their (the Afghan security forces’) giving up district centers in order to consolidate their forces because they’re taking the approach to protect the population, and most of the population lives in the provincial capitals,” he said. “I don’t think the endgame is yet written.”#Afghanistan – “Warfare is not just about numbers” per @thejointstaff’s Gen Milley, asked about appearances of a #Taliban victoryAdmits about half of the districts are in Taliban hands”This is going to be a test of will and leadership” he says of #Afghan’s gvt— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) July 21, 2021U.S. defense officials also note that Washington has spent nearly 20 years and close to $90 billion to train and equip the more than 300,000 members of Afghanistan’s security forces, which outnumber the Taliban by about 3 to 1.
 
They argue that while almost all U.S. combat forces have left the country, Washington is continuing to bolster the Afghan military with money and equipment.
 
“They’ll continue to see a steady drumbeat of support,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Wednesday. “We remain committed to helping the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government going forward.”
 
Yet even within the U.S. government, concerns about the ability of the Afghan security forces to withstand an attempted Taliban takeover persist.
 
A report issued last week by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a U.S. government watchdog, warned that by the Pentagon’s own metrics for assessing how the Afghan military would fare without a U.S. military presence, the prognosis was inconclusive.
 
“The question of how to accurately project how the ANDSF (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) would perform against an adversary in the absence of direct U.S. combat enabler support remains difficult to answer,” the report said.Few Metrics Support Future Success for Afghan Forces‘Lessons learned’ report by a US government watchdog warns US military assessments of Afghan security forces were at times ‘undermined by overoptimism’U.S. military planners have said that as of last week, 95% of the U.S. military withdrawal had been completed, and that the U.S. remains on pace to finish by the end of August.
 
Also Wednesday, the Pentagon said it expects the first group of Afghan interpreters — and others whose lives may be in danger for having aided Washington’s efforts — to arrive in the U.S. shortly.
 
“These are friends of the United States who have done exemplary and courageous work, and we take our obligations to them and to their families very seriously,” Austin said.
 
Speaking separately Wednesday, U.S. Afghanistan Task Force Director Tracey Jacobson said the first Afghan special immigrant visa (SIV) applicants could land in the U.S. as early as next week.
 
Earlier this week, officials announced that 2,500 interpreters and their families will be brought to Fort Lee in Virginia, about 216 kilometers south of Washington, D.C., before being resettled elsewhere in the U.S.US Army Base Set to Welcome Afghans Fleeing TalibanInterpreters and their families will be among the first group of Afghans to be evacuated via “Operation Allies Refuge”A second group of 4,000 Afghans and as many as another 15,000 or so family members will likely be relocated to a site outside the U.S. while their applications are being processed, officials said.
 
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Turkey is going ahead with its plans to take over security at the Kabul international airport after the pullout of U.S. troops, despite opposition from the Taliban. Ankara is in negotiations with Washington to secure the airport, which analysts say is key to maintaining stability and an international presence in Afghanistan.The Taliban has warned Turkey of severe consequences if its military remains in Afghanistan when other foreign forces pull out, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in remarks this week, appeared to play down those threats and indicated negotiations would continue.Erdogan says whether, at the level of the foreign ministry or at his level, Turkey is trying to see what kind of talks it can hold with the Taliban and where these talks can take them.Ankara is banking on its historical ties with Afghanistan and its status as NATO’s only predominantly Muslim member to help ease Taliban opposition.The 500-person Turkish force in Afghanistan has also avoided any military confrontation with the Taliban.However, Huseyin Bagci, head of the Ankara-based Foreign Affairs Institute, who has recently returned from the region, warns Ankara is overestimating its position.“Any Turkish participation concerning the airport would be disastrous for Turkish foreign policy. Taliban, they stated they don’t like Tayyip Erdogan and they don’t like the Turkish military presence. Taliban is very determined to kick out all the forces there, and Turkey’s presence there is definitely unwanted,” said Bagci.Turkey is continuing discussions with Washington over the airport mission. Both sides describe the talks as productive. Relations between the NATO members have been deeply strained, especially over Ankara’s deepening ties with Moscow.Ilhan Uzgel, a columnist for the Duvar news portal, said Ankara sees the Kabul airport mission as key to repairing relations with Washington.“The most important thing is the AKP government is trying to fix the ties with the Biden administration, and they want to offer something good for them. Ankara is trying to prove that it’s a very good ally; it’s a precious ally and cannot be ignored,” said Uzgel.Kabul Military Airport where helicopters are parked are seen through a window of a commercial airplane, July 7, 2021.Turkey is looking to its close allies, Pakistan and Qatar, which some observers say have close relations with the Taliban, to overcome opposition from the group. But Bagci warns that with the Taliban believing it is on the verge of assuming power, the importance of those countries is diminishing.“The Taliban doesn’t consider Pakistan, Qatar, and Turkey as the countries “which should be on the priority list; no, they are not,” said Bagci. “Politically speaking, Russia, China, Russia, and America, and maybe India to a certain extent. Taliban say, ‘we establish our state, then we negotiate.’” With only a matter of weeks left before the pullout of American forces is complete, analyst Uzgel warns if the Taliban maintains its opposition, Ankara could find itself trapped.“If Turkey insists on maintaining troops there, that would be risky. If Turkey concedes to the Taliban’s recent statement, that would be a humiliation for Turkey,” said Uzgel.With Ankara having little leverage over the Taliban, Uzgel suggests a last-minute collapse in U.S.-Turkish talks over the airport operation could provide a face-saving option for Ankara, but at a cost to bilateral ties.
 
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The World Meteorological Organization is calling for action to halt climate change as extreme weather becomes the norm rather than the exception. Heavy rainfall this week has triggered devastating floods across western Europe, killing and injuring scores of people, destroying homes and livelihoods.  At the same time, parts of Scandinavia — northern Europe’s coldest region — are enduring scorching temperatures.The Finnish Meteorological Institute says Finland had its warmest June on record, which has extended into July.   Southern Finland it notes has had 27 consecutive days with temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius.  By Finland’s normally frigid temperatures, that qualifies as a heatwave.US Facing Triple Weather ThreatsUS experiencing varying, but intense weather conditionsThe western U.S. and Canada also have been gripped by heat, with many records broken in states of Nevada and Utah. Last August, Death Valley, California reached a temperature of 54.4 degrees Celsius, the world’s highest temperature record.  But meteorologists believe Death Valley may have equaled that record a week ago on July 9.The spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organization, Clare Nullis, says the heatwave in the western U.S. has led to megadrought conditions and numerous wildfires.”The heatwave that we saw in parts of the U.S. and Canada at the end of June…This heatwave would have been virtually impossible without the influence of human-caused climate change,” said Nullis. “Climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, made the heatwave at least 150 times more likely.”   Nullis says climate change already is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events.  She adds many single events have been shown to have been made worse by global warming.”We need to step up climate action,” said Nullis. “We need to step up the level of ambition.  We are not doing really enough to stay within the targets of the Paris agreement and keep temperatures below two degrees Celsius, even 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.”   The spokeswoman’s call echoes that of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who is urging all countries to do more to avoid a climate catastrophe linked to rising carbon dioxide emissions and temperatures.
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Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan defended Friday his government’s efforts to promote a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan, rebutting allegations that Islamabad was backing the Taliban’s violent insurgency to fuel hostilities in the neighboring country.Khan spoke at an international regional connectivity conference hosted by Uzbekistan, shortly after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani addressed the event and accused Pakistan of “playing a negative” role in the war.The Afghan leader said that “intelligence estimates indicate the influx of over 10,000 jihadi fighters from Pakistan and other places in the last month.” Ghani went on to allege that despite pledges and assurances, Khan’s government had failed to influence the Taliban to “negotiate seriously” to find an end to the Afghan war.Khan responded by saying he was “disappointed” by the Afghan president’s “extremely unfair” allegations, insisting that Pakistan had suffered 70,000 casualties in the last 15 years in its own battle against terrorism and that its fragile national economic progress could ill afford a prolonged instability in the immediate neighborhood.“President Ghani, let me just say that the country that is going to be most affected by turmoil in Afghanistan is Pakistan,” he said. “The last thing Pakistan wants is more conflict … and turbulence in Afghanistan.”The prime minister stressed that “no country has tried harder” to bring the Taliban to the dialogue table than Pakistan. “Short of taking military action against Taliban [leaders living] in Pakistan, we have made every effort to get them [to] the dialogue table and to have peaceful settlement there.”FILE – Supporters of the Taliban carry the Taliban’s signature white flags in the Afghan-Pakistan border town of Chaman, Pakistan, July 14, 2021. The Taliban are pressing on with their surge in Afghanistan.Taliban ‘sensing victory’Khan emphasized that the two decades of conflict, deep divisions among Afghans and the U.S. policy of seeking a military solution to the war are to blame, not Pakistan.“When there were 150,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, that was the time to ask the Taliban to come [to] the table,” Khan said. “Why are the Taliban going to compromise when the [troop] exit date was given [by the U.S.], with only a few thousand American troops left? Why would they listen to us when they are sensing victory?”He argued a peaceful Afghanistan is in the interest of all its neighbors.”There are already 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan. We’re petrified that there will be another flow of refugees coming in. We don’t have the capacity or the economic strength to bear another inflow of refugees. So, I can assure you again if any country is trying its best out of all the countries in the world, it’s Pakistan today,” Khan noted.U.S. and NATO allied troops plan to fully withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of next month after nearly 20 years of engagement in the war with the Taliban. The exit, which began formally on May 1, is an outcome of Washington’s bilateral peace agreement with the insurgents that the two sides signed in February 2020.Pakistan is credited with bringing the Taliban to the table for negotiations with the U.S. that culminated in the deal. The understanding also encouraged the insurgents to open direct peace talks with representatives of the Ghani government in Qatar last September. But the intra-Afghan dialogue has had little success.Pakistan officials insist the pace of the U.S. military exit should have matched the pace of the peace talks. They argue the rapid troop withdrawal has diminished whatever leverage Islamabad had over the Taliban.FILE – A convoy of Afghan Special Forces is seen during the rescue mission of a police officer besieged at a checkpoint surrounded by Taliban, in Kandahar province, July 13, 2021.The Taliban have captured scores of districts and expanded insurgent influence to swaths of landlocked Afghanistan since the foreign troops started leaving the country two months ago. The insurgents have also seized control of most of the border crossings with neighboring countries, including a major trade route with Pakistan.The intensified conflict has drawn fears of a full-fledged Afghan civil war, prompting the U.S. and regional countries to step up diplomatic efforts to press the warring sides to agree on a peace deal without delay.Quad platformOn the sidelines of Friday’s connectivity conference in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, the United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan established a new quadrilateral diplomatic platform to support Afghan peace efforts and boost regional economic connectivity.”The parties consider long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan critical to regional connectivity and agree that peace and regional connectivity are mutually reinforcing,” said a joint statement.U.S. special envoy for Afghan peace Zalmay Khalilzad also attended the event organized to enhance connectivity between South and Central Asia.The United States and the five participating Central Asia nations, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, in a joint statement issued at the end of the Tashkent conference, affirmed their commitment “to strengthening the region’s security and stability, including through Afghan peace negotiations.” It also reiterated that there is no support for the imposition by force of a new government in Afghanistan.
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China asked Pakistan on Friday to bring to justice planners of this week’s “terrorist attack” in the neighboring country that killed at least nine Chinese workers and three of their Pakistani coworkers. Premier Li Keqiang raised the issue with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan by phone, Chinese state media reported. Li stressed the need for Pakistan to “use all necessary measures” to investigate the incident and hold the culprits accountable.FILE – Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks during a news conference at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov. 19, 2020.Khan’s office said in a statement that he assured Li that his government would spare no effort to fully investigate the incident. “No hostile forces would be allowed to damage brotherly relations between Pakistan and China,” he added.Wednesday’s suspected suicide attack — the largest loss of life of Chinese citizens in Pakistan in recent years — targeted a two-bus convoy transporting Chinese and Pakistani workers to the China-funded Dasu hydropower project that is under construction in the northwestern Kohistan region.Chinese officials were quick to blame a “blast” for causing the deadly incident.”China is shocked by and condemns the bomb attack … mourns for the Chinese and Pakistani personnel killed in the attack, and expresses sympathy to their families and the injured,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters in Beijing just hours after the attack.Pakistani officials originally described the event as an accident, saying a “mechanical failure” triggered the blast and plunged one of the buses into a ravine.FILE – Pakistani Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry speaks in Islamabad, Sept. 25, 2018.Pakistani Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said Thursday, however, that traces of explosives were detected and that “a terrorist attack cannot be ruled out in the incident.”The confusion, VOA has learned, stemmed from medical examinations of the victims, none of whom carried explosives-related marks or injuries. Sources said Pakistani investigators later retrieved a car and the body parts of its suspected driver, suggesting it was a suicide car bombing. The bomber tried to ram his explosive-laden car into the first bus, but the ensuing blast did not go off with full intensity due to technical glitches, shattering windows but causing no harm to the passengers. The explosion prompted the driver of the second bus to swerve to avoid a collision, plunging the bus into a ravine. That resulted in all the deaths and injuries, the sources said. This is not the first time Chinese nationals have come under attack in Pakistan. Beijing and Islamabad are traditionally close allies. In recent years, China has invested billions of dollars in Pakistan building roads, communication networks, ports and power plants under President Xi Jinping’s global Belt and Road Initiative.The bilateral collaboration, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC, has brought more than $25 billion in Chinese investment over the past six years, along with thousands of Chinese workers and engineers to work on the mega project.No one has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack. FILE – A Chinese national, who was injured in the bus accident, sits on a bench after receiving initial treatment at a hospital in the Kohistan district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, July 14, 2021.Pakistani officials usually suspect separatists operating in southwestern Baluchistan province, the hub of CPEC projects, who often claim credit for plotting attacks against Chinese.Islamabad accuses rival India of funding the Baluch militants to subvert its deepening economic partnership with Beijing, charges New Delhi rejects. Pakistan has deployed tens of thousands of regular and paramilitary troops to protect CPEC projects and Chinese nationals working on them.Officials also suspect the attack could be the work of the outlawed Islamist Pakistani Taliban militant group.”There are complicated and deep changes in the global and regional situations,” Li was quoted as telling Khan. “China attaches high attention to China-Pakistan relations and is willing to enhance strategic communications and coordination, deepen practical cooperation, safeguard regional peace and security and bring benefits to both peoples.” Pakistani officials said the Dasu dam project, where Wednesday’s attack took place, is not part of the CPEC, but Chinese nationals live and work at guarded facilities in the area. Local media reported Friday the latest attack on Chinese nationals prompted Beijing to abruptly postpone a long-awaited meeting with Islamabad to review progress on CPEC projects and related problems facing Chinese companies in Pakistan.The meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee, which was intended to accelerate work on CPEC programs, was scheduled to take place Friday after nearly two years. “The JCC-10 meeting on CPEC, which was scheduled to be held on July 16, 2021, has been postponed to a later date after Eid,” Asim Saleem Bajwa, chairman of the CPEC Authority, tweeted Thursday. This report includes information from Reuters.
 
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Officials in Afghanistan said Friday an international award-winning journalist from India had been killed during pre-dawn fighting in embattled southern Kandahar province.

Danish Seddiqi, a Reuters photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, was covering clashes between Afghan government forces and the Taliban in Spin Boldak district, which fell to the insurgents earlier in the week.

“Deeply disturbed by the sad news of the killing of a friend, Danish Seddiqi in Kandahar last night,” tweeted Farid Mamundzay, Kabul’s ambassador to New Delhi.

“The Indian Journalist & winner of Pulitzer Prize was embedded with Afghan security forces. I met him 2 weeks ago before his departure to Kabul. Condolences to his family & Reuters,” added Mamundzay.

Seddiqi last tweeted from Kandahar on July 13, when Afghan forces launched a counteroffensive to try to retake Spin Boldak.

The slain photojournalist was based in the Indian city of Mumbai and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for feature photography on the Rohingya refugee crisis.

“We are urgently seeking more information, working with authorities in the region,” Reuters President Michael Friedenberg and Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni said in a statement.

“Danish was an outstanding journalist, a devoted husband and father, and a much-loved colleague. Our thoughts are with his family at this terrible time.”

Seddiqi told Reuters he had been wounded in the arm by shrapnel earlier on Friday while reporting on the clash. He was treated and had been recovering when Taliban fighters retreated from the fighting in Spin Boldak.

Among other major events he covered were the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests in 2019 and 2020, and the Nepal earthquake in 2015. At home, Seddiqi extensively reported on India’s COVID-19 pandemic.

Global and local media watchdogs list Afghanistan as one of the dangerous countries for journalists.

Spin Boldak is a major border crossing between landlocked Afghanistan and Pakistan, facilitating travel and trade activities.

The insurgents have recently captured Afghanistan’s seven trade routes with neighboring countries, including Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, China, Iran and Pakistan.

The Taliban have stepped up battlefield attacks since the United States and NATO-allied militaries formally began withdrawing from Afghanistan on May 1, overrunning scores of districts and dramatically expanding insurgent influence to wide swaths of the country.

Some information for this report came from Reuters. 
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Women’s rights supporters and faith leaders are calling for a United Nations peacekeeping force for Afghanistan to protect hard-won gains for women over the last two decades as American and NATO forces complete their pullout from the war-torn country and a Taliban offensive gains control over more territory.

Under the Taliban, women were not allowed to go to school, work outside the home or leave their house without a male escort. And though they still face many challenges in the country’s male-dominated society, Afghan women have increasingly stepped into powerful positions in numerous fields — and many fear the departure of international troops and a Taliban takeover could take away their gains.

In a May 14 letter obtained by The Associated Press, 140 civil society and faith leaders from the U.S., Afghanistan and other countries “dedicated to the education and rights of women in Afghanistan” asked U.S. President Joe Biden to call for a U.N. peacekeeping force “to ensure that the cost of U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is not paid for in the lives of schoolgirls.”

The letter also asked the U.S. to increase humanitarian and development aid to Afghanistan “as an important security strategy” to strengthen women and girls and religious minorities like the Hazaras. Three bombings at a high school in a Hazara neighborhood in Kabul on May 8 killed nearly 100 people, all of them Hazara and most of them young girls just leaving class.

The signatories blamed the Trump administration for failing to honor a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted in 2000 demanding equal participation for women in activities promoting global peace “by refusing to insist that women were part of the peace talks” with the Taliban.

Sakena Yacoobi, founder of the Afghan Institute of Learning which runs schools across 16 provinces, is quoted in the letter as saying: “For 20 years the West told the women of Afghanistan they are free. Free to learn, to grow, to be a human being independent of men’s expectations of who they are.”

“What the Taliban did in the 1990s was bad enough,” she said. “What will they do now, with a generation of women taught to expect freedom? It will be one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history. Help us save them. Please. Help us save who we can.”

Among the signatories of the letter were Yacoobi; feminist activist and writer Gloria Steinem; former U.N. deputy secretary-general Mark Malloch Brown, who now heads the Open Society Institute; filmmaker and philanthropist Abigail Disney; former UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy; Betty Reardon, the International Institute on Peace Education’s founding director emeritus; the Rev. Dr. Chloe Breyer, executive director of The Interfaith Center of New York; Masuda Sultan, co-founder of Women for Afghan Women; and Nasir Ahmad Kayhan, UNESCO program manager in Afghanistan.

In April the Taliban promised that women “can serve their society in the education, business, health and social fields while maintaining correct Islamic hijab.” It promised girls would have the right to choose their own husbands but offered few other details and didn’t guarantee women could participate in politics or have freedom to move unaccompanied by a male relative.

Deborah Lyons, the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan, told the Security Council on June 22 that “preserving the rights of women remains a paramount concern and must not be used as a bargaining chip at the negotiating table.”

In a follow-up letter on July 12 to U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a wider international group expressed deep concern “for the lives and well-being of the people of Afghanistan, especially women and girls now under great threat” and called for a U.N. peacekeeping mission to deploy to Afghanistan “as soon as practically possible.”

The signatories said they are convinced the 2000 Security Council resolution obliges U.N. member states “to protect women in such circumstances.”

The United Nations has a political mission in Afghanistan. A U.N. peacekeeping mission would have to be approved by the Security Council, where the five permanent members — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France — have veto power.

The letter to the U.S. ambassador said similar messages were being sent to other U.N. ambassadors from citizens in their countries asking for a peacekeeping operation. It asked Thomas-Greenfield to “take action toward the initiation of a peacekeeping operation in Afghanistan.”

A U.S. mission spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the call for a U.N. peacekeeping force, instead stressing Thursday that the Biden administration will continue to support Afghan forces and U.S. “diplomatic, humanitarian and economic engagement in the region.”

“We are putting our full weight behind diplomatic efforts to reach a peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government,” said the spokesperson, who could not be named, adding the U.S. remains the largest aid donor to Afghanistan and continues to support the U.N. political mission known as UNAMA. 
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The U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan is raising questions about who will fill the power vacuum left in America’s wake. In Moscow, Kremlin officials are skeptically eyeing recent Taliban advances — and how they might affect neighboring buffer states in Central Asia. Charles Maynes reports from Moscow.Camera: Ricardo Marquina-Montanana
Produced by: Henry Hernandez  
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The security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating and some fear it could lead to a civil war. In the 1990s, a similar conflict forced millions of Afghans to flee into neighboring countries including Pakistan, which has hosted some three million Afghan refugees for decades.  But this time Pakistan is far more reluctant to take on more refugees, as VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem reports from Islamabad.Camera: Malik Waqar Ahmed  
Produced by: Marcus Harton Ali Furqan of VOA Urdu Service contributed to this report.
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It’s vacation time for young and old visitors crowding Shimla, one of North India’s most popular hill stations. Some ride horses, others sit at scenic spots soaking in the sight of Himalayan slopes, others snack at cafes in the charming town.  But health officials warn that the massive holiday crowds visiting hill towns and beach resorts in recent weeks could jeopardize the gains made in the fight against the coronavirus. A second wave ripped through the country in April and May.  India is in the throes of what the health ministry called “revenge travel” — a buzzword coined for the urge to break free and vacation after a year of stress, anxiety and isolation as cities remained shut.   “I came to enjoy. I was confined at home for a long time due to COVID. So, I and my friends wanted an outing,” said Yamini Sharma, who traveled to Shimla with her friends from Chandigarh in northern India.The crowds of vacationers are causing alarm in a country where health experts said events such as massive political rallies and religious gatherings earlier this year had contributed to the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant. As daily new infections had hit a high of over 400,000 a day in May, the health system buckled, hospital beds ran out, and people made desperate appeals for oxygen and critical medicines.  Most people had shut themselves indoors as fear gripped Indian cities. But that has changed dramatically as authorities eased restrictions and infections declined. “I will say very emphatically that it is not OK to have huge crowds in hill stations, markets, without wearing masks,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday addressing a meeting of eight chief ministers. “The virus does not come and go on its own. We bring it when we disobey the rules.” Devotees wait to offer prayer at Lord Jagannath temple ahead of annual Rath Yatra or chariot procession in Ahmedabad, India, July 10, 2021.Pointing to images and videos of holiday crowds that have gone viral on social media, top health officials stressed that India is still struggling with the pandemic. “The war is not over yet,” Vinod K. Paul, who heads the federal government’s group on COVID management, said at a news conference last week. “If we don’t take precautions, we are giving the virus an opportunity to infect us. It is with great difficulty that cases have declined but this can be reversed because we have not won victory over the virus.” Concerns are high because just over 5% of the country has been fully inoculated — India’s immunization program has moved slowly due to vaccine shortages.Health experts and doctors have repeatedly warned that crowds could bring on an early third wave.India’s top body representing doctors, the Indian Medical Association, has appealed to state governments and citizens not to lower their guard.“Tourist bonanza, pilgrimage travel, religious fervor are all needed, but can wait for few more months,” the IMA said in a statement. “Enabling people without vaccination to go scot-free in these mass gatherings are potential super spreaders for the COVID third wave.”   Such warnings are getting a mixed response. The northern Uttarakhand state that is already crowded with tourists, suspended a pilgrimage that sees tens of thousands of devotees travel through several states. However, a neighboring state, Uttar Pradesh, which was among the worst affected during the second wave, said it would allow the event to take place.  A pandemic-weary public rushing for a break acknowledges the risk that COVID-19 still poses but for the time being appears to be shrugging aside such concerns. “My exams were cancelled recently due to COVID and I felt the need to get out. It is very necessary for mental health,” points out Chakshu Sharma, a college student who travelled to Shimla for a break with his brother. “It could be problematic. But a person cannot stay shut in the house,” according to Yamini Sharma, another tourist. FILE – Sun sets at the candolim beach on the Arabian Sea coast in Goa, India, Dec.6, 2020.Meanwhile “revenge travel” is music to the ears of businesses in states that rely heavily on tourism like Himachal Pradesh. Most of them were struggling to get back on their feet after a strict lockdown last year but a second shutdown this year has again set them back. “10% of the gross domestic product here comes from tourism in our state,” said Siddharth Bakaria, head of Sahyog Foundation, a volunteer group that is helping develop the tourism sector in Himachal Pradesh. “If we have total restrictions, then it is a huge loss to the hotel industry and people’s livelihoods. Many people have lost jobs.” India is grappling with the lives versus livelihoods dilemma the pandemic poses to many countries — the need to open up a battered economy and restore jobs even as the threat of surging infections looms large.Vijay Kumar, who sells popular Indian snacks in his restaurant in Shimla, said he had to cut back supplies amid shutdowns. “My work was down to 20%,” Kumar said. “But things are looking up again. Now, my business is back to about 60 to 70%.” 
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It began in February with a tweet by pop star Rihanna that sparked widespread condemnation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s handling of massive farmer protests near the capital, souring an already troubled relationship between the government and Twitter.Moving to contain the backlash, officials hit Twitter with multiple injunctions to block hundreds of tweets critical of the government. Twitter complied with some and resisted others.Relations between Twitter and Modi’s government have gone downhill ever since.At the heart of the standoff is a sweeping internet law that puts digital platforms like Twitter and Facebook under direct government oversight. Officials say the rules are needed to quell misinformation and hate speech and to give users more power to flag objectionable content.Critics of the law worry it may lead to outright censorship in a country where digital freedoms have been shrinking since Modi took office in 2014.Police have raided Twitter’s offices and have accused its India chief, Manish Maheshwari, of spreading “communal hatred” and “hurting the sentiments of Indians.” Last week, Maheshwari refused to submit to questioning unless police promised not to arrest him.On Wednesday, the company FILE – In this Feb. 25, 2021, photo, India’s Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, left, and Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar new regulations for social media companies and digital streaming websites.Tech companies also must assign staff to answer complaints from users, respond to government requests and ensure overall compliance with the rules.Twitter missed a three-month deadline in May, drawing a strong rebuke from the Delhi High Court. Last week, after months of haggling with the government, it appointed all three officers as required.“Twitter continues to make every effort to comply with the new IT Rules 2021. We have kept the Government of India apprised of the progress at every step of the process,” the company said in a statement to the Associated Press.Apar Gupta, executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, says he worries the rules will lead to numerous cases against internet platforms and deter people from using them freely, leading to self-censorship. Many other critics say Modi’s Hindu nationalist government is imposing what they call a climate of “digital authoritarianism.”“If it becomes easier for user content to be taken down, it will amount to the chilling of speech online,” Gupta said.The government insists the rules will benefit and empower Indians.“Social media users can criticize Narendra Modi, they can criticize government policy, and ask questions. I must put it on the record straight away . . . But a private company sitting in America should refrain from lecturing us on democracy” when it denies its users the right to redress, the ex-IT minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, told the newspaper The Hindu last month.FILE – India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Despite the antagonisms between Modi and Twitter, he has been an enthusiastic user of the platform in building popular support for his Bharatiya Janata Party. His government has also worked closely with the social media giant to allow Indians to use Twitter to seek help from government ministries, particularly during health emergencies. Bharatiya Janata Party’s social media team has meanwhile been accused of initiating online attacks against critics of Modi.Still, earlier internet restrictions had already prompted the Washington-based Freedom House to list India, the world’s most populous democracy, as “partly free” instead of “free” in its annual analysis.The law announced in February requires tech companies to aid police investigations and help identify people who post “mischievous information.” That means messages must be traceable, and experts say this it could mean end-to-end encryption would not be allowed in India.Facebook’s WhatsApp, which has more than 500 million users in India, has sued the government, saying breaking encryption, which continues for now, would “severely undermine the privacy of billions of people who communicate digitally.”Officials say they only want to trace messages that incite violence or threatening national security. WhatsApp says it can’t selectively do that.“It is like you are renting out an apartment to someone but want to look into it whenever you want. Who would want to live in a house like that?” said Khursheed of Laminar Global.The backlash over online freedom of expression, privacy and security concerns comes amid a global push for more data transparency and localization, said Kolla, the tech expert.Germany requires social media companies to devote local staff and data storage to curbing hate speech. Countries like Vietnam and Pakistan are drafting legislation similar to India’s. In Turkey, social media companies complied with a broad mandate for removing content only after they were fined and faced threats to their ad revenues.Instead of leaving, some companies are fighting the new rules in the courts, where at least 13 legal challenges have been filed by news publishers, media associations and individuals. But such cases can stretch for months or even years.Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and founder of India’s Software Freedom Law Center, says that under the rules, social media platforms might lose their safe harbor protection, which shields them from legal liability over user-generated content. Courts have to decide that on a case-by-case basis, she said. And their legal costs would inevitably soar.“You know how it is in India. The process is the punishment,” Choudhary said. “And until we get to a place where the courts will actually come and tell us what the legal position is and determine those legal positions, it is open season for tech backlash.” 
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U.S. officials voicing optimism that Afghan security forces would be able to prevent insurgent Taliban forces from sweeping across Afghanistan may be basing their assessment more on hope than on any measurable data.A “lessons learned” report released Wednesday by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a government watchdog, warns that after almost 20 years and more than $88 billion in spending, the U.S. military has few tangible indicators of how Afghan security forces will do on their own.“The question of how to accurately project how the ANDSF (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) would perform against an adversary in the absence of direct U.S. combat enabler support remains difficult to answer,” the report said.“The systems designed to measure that capability have been criticized for being inconsistent,” the report added. “Rating systems designed to capture ANDSF operational effectiveness have shifted over time, reflecting persistent questions about what data mattered, how to balance quantitative and qualitative information, and, more fundamentally, how exactly to measure capability in the first place.”The SIGAR report also noted that attempts to assess the readiness of Afghan forces were “limited by a complex environment that made it difficult to gather actionable data and identify useful metrics” while the credibility of some of the assessments that were done was “undermined by overoptimism.”Attempts to measure how well Afghan forces are holding up as U.S. and coalition troops withdraw have likewise been grim.One tracker, by the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, estimates that the Taliban have more than doubled the number of districts under their control, from 73 to 204, since the start of May.And each day seems to bring with it new claims of victory by Taliban forces, with Taliban officials posting videos of celebrations from places such as Spin Boldak, in the country’s southern Kandahar province, and Sighan, in central Bamiyan province, on Twitter.Afghan defense officials have fought back, taking to social media to post their own accounts of victory.“38 #Taliban terrorists were killed and 15 others including one of their commanders named ‘Qayum’ son of ‘Sofi’ were wounded in #airstrikes conducted by #AAF at the outskirts of #Takhar provincial center,” Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Fawad Aman tweeted Wednesday.38 #Taliban terrorists were killed and 15 others including one of their commanders named “Qayum” son of “Sofi” were wounded in #airstrikes conducted by #AAF at the outskirts of #Takhar provincial center , afternoon today.Also,2 vehicles,1 machine gun & their amos were destroyed— Fawad Aman (@FawadAman2) July 14, 2021Another post claimed Afghan forces killed 16 Taliban and wounded four more during an operation in Nangarhar province.16 #Taliban terrorists were killed and 4 others were wounded in an operation conducted by #ANDSF in Pachir W Agam district of #Nangarhar province, last night. Also, 1 machine gun and some amount of their ammunition were seized by #ANA— Ministry of Defense, Afghanistan (@MoDAfghanistan) July 14, 2021Meanwhile, Pentagon officials continue to voice support for the more than 300,000-strong ANDSF.“They have the advantage. They have numerous advantages,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters Wednesday, while declining to share any assessment of how Afghan forces have been faring in battle.“They have better capabilities than the Taliban in the air and on the ground. And they are certainly going to continue to have American support financially, logistically and through assistance and maintenance,” Kirby said. “It’s really going to come down to their ability and their willingness to use those advantages to their benefit.”In its report released Wednesday, SIGAR, the U.S. government watchdog, found that U.S. military trainers did have some successes.Notably, programs to train, advise and assist specialized Afghan forces “resulted in fairly proficient Afghan Special Forces and a promising Afghan Air Force.”But there have been questions about how long those forces, and the Afghan air force in particular, can survive without the presence of U.S. military personnel and U.S. military contractors on the ground.Earlier this year, John Sopko, the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, warned that the Afghan air force would not be able to sustain its aircraft for more than a few months once thousands of U.S. and foreign contractors left the country.The Pentagon this week has said several hundred contractors remain, though they are expected to leave when the U.S. withdrawal concludes at the end of next month.
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The United States this month is to begin airlifting from Afghanistan thousands of those who helped support American forces there during the past 20 years and now fear for their lives amid a Taliban offensive.The White House announced Wednesday it is launching “Operation Allies Refuge” for many of those awaiting a Special Immigrant Visa.  “In terms of the specific numbers, I’m not going to be able to provide those to you for operational and security reasons,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. “But I can confirm that flights out of Afghanistan, for SIV applicants who are already in the pipeline, will begin in the last week of July and will continue, and our objective is to get individuals who are eligible, relocated out of the country in advance of the removal of the withdrawal of (U.S.) troops at the end of August.”  FILE – A local Afghan imam listens to an interpreter for the U.S. Marines in Marjah, Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, April 12, 2010.Officials are also keeping quiet on the destinations for the evacuation flights, for which civilian charter aircraft are expected to be used. It has been reported that negotiations have been underway with such Central Asian nations as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.  In response to a question from VOA on whether the U.S. mid-Pacific territory of Guam is still under consideration as a waystation for the evacuees, Psaki replied, “I’m just not going to rule in or rule out any places,” as “the security and safety of the individuals who were relocating is of utmost focus and concern.”  Officials on the island of Guam, which has previously been used as a refugee processing center, have welcomed plans to use the territory to temporarily host the Afghans.  FILE – Pentagon spokesman John Kirby speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, July 2, 2021.Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday that potential locations have been identified, “some of them not U.S. installations,” but final selections have not been made.  The initial priority, according to administration sources, is airlifting several thousand of those whose visa applications are already being processed.  Eventually, the operation could expand to accommodate tens of thousands more people, including family members of the interpreters, translators and other personnel who supported the U.S. forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban. “We applaud the administration’s decision and look forward to coordinating with them,” said James Miervaldis, a Defense Department consultant and board chairman of No One Left Behind, which says it has raised $1 million to fund direct airfare for the special visa applicants. “We are committed to making sure SIVs have every opportunity to come to the United States safely,” Miervaldis said. “To meet our promises to our Afghan allies, any evacuation must include all 18,000 Afghans who worked with U.S. forces and their families,” said Jennifer Quigley, senior director of government affairs at Human Rights First, adding that to limit the evacuation based on visa application status “would do a terrible wrong to them and to America’s reputation around the world.”  In recent weeks, fighting has surged between U.S.-backed Afghan forces and the Taliban, with the insurgents capturing significant territory in the northern part of the country, as well as some border crossings.  VOA’s Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
 
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The Taliban, a Pashto-language term for students of religious seminaries, were historically known as devout ascetics who avoided politics in communities across Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.They promoted their religious devotion by highlighting how they avoided all kinds of joy or leisure in this “temporary life” with the hope of rewards in the afterlife.It was perhaps that image of the Taliban’s piety that persuaded Afghans to welcome them in their towns in late 1994, the year the Afghan Taliban launched their movement in southwestern Kandahar province.I was then a reporter in Peshawar, Pakistan, and first met a small group of the Taliban when they came to the office. The group was there to see a BBC correspondent, to tell the story of their rise in a faraway town in Afghanistan.Following that day in September 1994, the Taliban captured international attention for their astonishing battlefield gains in the southwestern, southern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan. Most of those areas share a border with Pakistan and were under the control of different warlords. The locals attributed all kinds of evils to the warlords of the early 1990s, and the Taliban movement was first seen as an uprising against them.’Warm receptions’Mullah Ihsan Ullah, the Taliban governor in 1995, at the time bragged about the group’s acceptance among Pashtuns in Khost, the provincial capital of eastern Paktia province. “I was welcomed by the elders with warm receptions here in Khost, all the way from Kandahar, without firing a shot in the air,” he told a Western journalist and myself who had traveled to Khost to interview him.My trip to Khost from Peshawar, through Waziristan, and into Afghanistan was an eye-opener for me.  It was a smooth trip through Ghulam Khan, a border town, even though no members of my traveling group, including a Western reporter, held valid visas. The Taliban didn’t care and did not ask about our travel documents in Khost.FILE – Taliban fighters huddle in a front line shelter during a lull in fighting south of Kabul, Afghanistan, March 22, 1995.At that time, the Taliban already had the stigma of being seen as an extension of the Pakistani state in Afghanistan. Many fighters had studied in Pakistani madrassas and spoke Urdu, not the Pashto or Dari spoken by many Afghans. The group also was publicly supported by Pakistan’s then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and others in her government.Taliban’s early hardline policiesThe Taliban claimed Khost’s “conquest,” a term they would use for control over the cities and towns, a few weeks before my trip to the province. They had already imposed their strict version of sharia fused with local tribal codes.  The Taliban’s Virtue and Vice police were on alert every day to find people breaking their rules.During the trip, I saw another face of the Afghan Taliban, which differed from their Pakistani counterparts. Fighters who had long hair, untrimmed beards, with turbans on their heads and guns slung over their shoulder, were casting threatening looks and patrolling the streets in Toyota pickup trucks. That was in complete contrast to what I saw in the madrassas in Pakistan, where they were humble, often shy and carrying religious books, with shawls over their shoulders and no weapons.I never saw a woman walking on the street during a weeklong stay in Khost. The Taliban governor would quote the Quran, the sayings of the prophet of Islam and the Pashtun tribal codes as justification for restrictions on women’s movements in the town.FILE – Tanks manned by Taliban fighters and decorated with flowers are seen in front of the the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 28, 1996.I can still recall a conversation I had with Mullah Ihsan on the touchy topic of women’s roles in Taliban-controlled areas. The gist of his argument was that sharia forbade Muslim women and men to look at one another.He quoted a verse from Quran, starting with: “Tell, also the believing women, to guard their eyes.” Mullah Ihsan said he chose this verse to justify his vision for a woman’s role in society and explained whom a woman could talk to and what to hide or reveal about her body.By invoking the Quran, he had essentially ended all debate on the topic in our discussion as well as in the Khost community. The Taliban governor and his male assistants had the Quran on their side of the argument, and it was a loss for Khost’s rich cultural history.Growing up, I had heard of Khost’s contributions to Pashto folk music and the popular unique dance Attan since my childhood. The Pashto folk literature had fascinating references to the Attan dance, which originated in the Loya Paktia region of Afghanistan.Dancing, folk literature soon goneBut dancing and folk literature were banned in Khost under the Taliban. While pre-recorded audio music cassettes were still trendy in the 1990s in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban collected cassettes they confiscated and piled them into a heap inside the premises of the governor’s house.The cassette tapes, unwound and broken, were on display on the roadsides and markets, reminding passersby that music was forbidden under the Taliban. Taliban armed men would check all vehicles for tape recorders and cassettes as they heard “music is haram [forbidden] in Islam.” Some drivers would trick the Taliban by playing religious cassettes in the cars to avoid dismantling their stereos.FILE – A Taliban fighter walks with a Russian made RPG7 on the front line area in Gorband valley, 150 km northwest of Kabul, Afghanistan, May 3, 1997.By 1995, the cinema in Khost had already been converted into a mosque. Khost University was closed down. So were the schools for boys and girls, which remained shut until the Taliban’s fall in October 2001. During their rule, the Taliban expressed a number of reasons for not resuming education at schools and colleges.“The situation is not right,” was one major argument of the Taliban for not opening schools in Afghanistan. However, they believed in only two kinds of education: religion and medicine. That’s why the madrassas flourished in Afghanistan during the Taliban era from 1995 to 2001.Barbers worked under strict orders not to shave the beards of their customers. Instead, they trimmed men’s hair without touching their beards.The shopkeepers and vendors in the town were required to shut down their businesses after the call for prayers, a total of five calls a day. And local trade was conducted using Pakistani rupees. Afghanistan’s own currency, the afghani, was in circulation but that was not the preferred currency for selling or buying. The civil war and the Taliban’s advancement toward Kabul and other major cities in the north had already devalued the afghani against the U.S. dollar or Pakistani rupee.Hint of futureThe Taliban’s sharia and other restrictions in Khost were a prelude to the group’s leadership style for the whole country.While the group initially ruled with a light hand in Pashtun-majority areas, the extremists were more forceful in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif and Bamiyan, leading to gross violations of human rights, as they dug their heels into power.By the time the Taliban seized control of Kabul on September 27, 1996, they had established a firm reputation as hardliners who used their austere version of Islam as a tool for governing.
 
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Former U.S. President George W. Bush, who sent U.S. troops to Afghanistan in 2001 to wipe out training grounds for al-Qaida terrorists after the September 11th attacks, says he thinks it is a mistake for U.S. troops to be pulled out now as Taliban insurgents take control of more and more territory in the country.Bush, since leaving office in 2009, has rarely commented on the actions of three subsequent U.S. presidents — Barack Obama, Donald Trump and now Joe Biden.But with Biden rapidly pulling American forces out of Afghanistan and saying they all will return home by the end of August, Bush says he is worried how the Taliban, if they take power again after American forces ousted them two decades ago, will treat women and children, along with others who have supported U.S. and NATO forces.In an interview released Wednesday, Bush, from his summer estate in the northeastern U.S., told German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle, “I’m afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm.”Asked if it is a mistake for Biden to pull troops out of Afghanistan, Bush said, “I think it is, yeah, because I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad, and I’m sad.”The Taliban claims it already controls 85% of the country, a figure which the U.S. disputes even as Pentagon officials express concern about militant group’s rapid takeover of territory and its advance toward the capital, Kabul. Already, more Afghans are said to live in territory controlled by the Taliban than that overseen by the Afghan government.Bush launched the U.S. war in Afghanistan in his first year in office in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in the U.S.  American forces helped Afghan resistance units to overthrow the Taliban-run government and targeted al-Qaida. It became America’s longest war.Bush said Afghan women, who have been terrorized by the Taliban, are “scared” by the prospect of living under Taliban rule again. Bush said he is also worried about the fate of thousands of Afghans who acted as interpreters for U.S. and NATO troops over the last 20 years.FILE – Afghan women attend an event to mark International Women’s Day in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 7, 2021.“I think about all the interpreters and people that helped not only U.S. troops, but NATO troops and they’re just, it seems like they’re just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart,” Bush said.Biden has vowed to grant the interpreters and their families visas to move to the United States and says the processing of their visas has been “dramatically accelerated,” but it is far from complete.Trump, while he was in office, also committed to ending the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Biden followed suit, although with a longer troop withdrawal period than Trump envisioned.Although some opposition Republicans have criticized Biden’s troop withdrawal, polls show the American public supports it.Biden staunchly defended bringing the troops home last week, saying the U.S. did not go to Afghanistan to “nation build.””It’s the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country,” Biden said.He described the troop drawdown as proceeding in a “secure and orderly way.” Days ago, U.S. forces withdrew from the mammoth Bagram Airfield, the central point of U.S. military operations.“Nearly 20 years of experience has shown us — and the current security situation only confirms — that just one more year of fighting in Afghanistan is not a solution, but a recipe for being there indefinitely,” he said.FILE – Afghan army soldiers stand guard after American troops left Bagram air base, in Parwan province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan, July 5, 2021.A reporter questioning the troop withdrawal drew a sharp response from Biden. Asked whether he trusted the Taliban, Biden responded: “Is that a serious question?””It’s a silly question. Do I trust the Taliban? No. But I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped and more competent in terms of conducting war,” Biden said.Trump, defeated by Biden in last November’s election, has said he would have withdrawn all troops by May 1, which Biden decided was too hasty.But Biden said he was the fourth U.S. president to preside over American forces in Afghanistan and that he would not hand the responsibility to a fifth.As he first announced plans in April to end the U.S. presence in the country, he said the U.S. “cannot continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan hoping to create the ideal conditions for our withdrawal and expecting a different result.”The foreign troop exit is the outcome of an agreement negotiated by Washington with the Taliban in February 2020 under then-President Trump. It requires the insurgents to fight terrorism on Afghan soil and negotiate a political peace deal with the Kabul government.However, the U.S.-brokered intra-Afghan peace negotiations have moved slowly since they started last September in Qatar and have met with little success. 
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India’s popular holiday destinations are crammed with visitors with what some have termed “revenge travel” — the urge to vacation following long shutdowns. But as Anjana Pasricha reports, authorities warn that the massive holiday crowds could reverse the gains made recently in the world’s second worst hit country.Camera: Kritagya Pandav    
 
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A high-powered Afghan government delegation, which will include the head of the country’s reconciliation council, is to meet the Taliban in Doha to jump-start a long-stalled peace process, an Afghan official said Tuesday. The Taliban were expected to bring their senior leaders to the table when the two sides meet, possibly on Friday, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters. The Taliban maintain a political office in the Qatari capital of Doha.  The renewed push to reach a peace deal comes as the U.S. winds down its military presence in Afghanistan. Outgoing U.S. commander Gen. Scott Miller recently warned that increasing violence seriously hurts Afghanistan’s chances of finding a peaceful end to decades of war. FILE – Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at his house, in Kabul, Afghanistan, June 20, 2021.Former President Hamid Karzai is also expected to be among the delegates. The negotiations are aimed at ending the violence that has steadily increased since the U.S. signed a deal with the insurgent movement in February last year. Karzai called on the government not to miss the opportunity and press ahead toward peace. He also expressed hope that one day Afghanistan would have a woman as president and urged women to stay in their jobs and continue their education. “This country has everything, youths, educated people,” he said. “I call on the young generation to not leave your country, stay here. … You must trust in your country, peace will come.” Thousands of Afghans are trying to leave the country amid growing anxiety about the future. In a new sign of concern about what lies ahead, France urged its citizens to leave Afghanistan and announced it was arranging a special flight Saturday to evacuate them from Kabul. There was no indication the French Embassy would be closed.  Australia has closed its embassy. While the U.S. has downsized its embassy staff, it says it has no plans to evacuate and announced its visa section had reopened after temporarily closing due to a COVID-19 outbreak. Also Tuesday, an explosion in the capital of Kabul killed four people and wounded 11 others Tuesday, according to police spokesman Ferdaws Faramaz. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The Taliban and government accuse each other of carrying out attacks in the capital, while the Islamic State group often is the only one to claim an attack. 
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A bus carrying Chinese and Pakistani construction workers on a slippery mountainous road in northwest Pakistan fell into a ravine Wednesday, killing at least 13 people, including nine Chinese nationals, officials said. At least 36 people were injured in what appears to be an accident in the Kohistan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said Arif Javed, a deputy district commissioner.  The incident happened on a wet road following an overnight rain, but Pakistani officials were still investigating. The Chinese Embassy said in a statement the bus was attacked. Chinese engineers and construction workers are helping Pakistan build a dam in Kohistan. Javed said the Pakistani and Chinese construction workers were on their way to the project site when the accident happened. Asim Abbasi, an assistant commissioner in Kohistan, said authorities believe the incident was an accident but were investigating whether there was some type of explosion in the bus. He said a gas cylinder may have exploded and it was possible that explosive material was in the vehicle. Explosives are often used by engineers in construction projects. “So far, we are not sure whether there was a blast in the bus, but the bus fell into a ravine and it seems it was an accident,” he said. The Chinese Embassy in a statement called the incident an attack. “Recently, our workers at a business on a certain project in Pakistan were attacked and have suffered deaths and injuries,” the statement said. “We have notified Chinese citizens in Pakistan to avoid venturing outside unless required by work or business and pay especial care to their safety.” In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said China was “shocked by and condemns the bomb attack in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. “We mourn over the Chinese and Pakistani personnel killed in the attack and express sympathies to bereaved families and the wounded,” Zhao said at a daily news briefing.  “We have demanded the Pakistani side get to the bottom of the incident, arrest and strictly punish the assailants as soon as possible, and earnestly protect the safety of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects in Pakistan,” Zhao said.  Kamran Bangash, a government spokesman for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, asked the media not to speculate because officers were still investigating. He said helicopters were transporting critically injured people to hospitals for treatment. Bangash said investigators would soon brief the media about the cause of the incident. His comments came after local media quoted unnamed sources to report that there was an explosion in the bus carrying Chinese and Pakistani construction workers and security officials. Road accidents are common in Pakistan, where motorists largely disregard traffic rules and safety standards on damaged roads, particularly in the mountainous terrain in the north. 
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Uzbekistan’s goal of securing new trade routes to the Indian Ocean — the focus of a conference this week featuring many of the region’s top diplomats — has been complicated by rising uncertainty about the future of a major country along the way: Afghanistan.The goal of enhancing regional connectivity between Central and South Asia is a long-standing one; landlocked Central Asia would gain access to markets and trade routes to the south while South Asia would acquire access to resources and opportunities to the north.Until now, however, such schemes have mostly proven to be pipe dreams. And Uzbekistan bears part of the blame.For decades, Tashkent’s late leader, Islam Karimov, resisted many connectivity ideas, getting into spats with neighboring countries and battling over how to share water and electricity. But his successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has improved relations with those neighbors, dropped resistance to some of these connectivity schemes, and positioned Uzbekistan as a potential leader.The July 15-16 gathering will cement this shift through an Uzbek-hosted interregional dialogue to foster commerce, transportation and communications links.But Tashkent’s plans relied heavily on a more peaceful Afghanistan, which straddles the most practical route into South Asia with the only alternative running through Iran. Now, with the Taliban rapidly seizing more and more Afghan territory, it has to hope the extremist group will cooperate.Attendees at this week’s conference will undoubtedly urge peace talks and negotiations among the warring Afghan parties. But the Taliban may not attend and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who will, has an increasingly precarious hold on power.The delegations will be led by prominent figures including Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, U.S. Special Representative on Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, White House Homeland Security Advisor Elisabeth Sherwood-Randall and Josep Borrell, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy.The Chinese, Indian, Saudi, Turkish, and Bangladeshi foreign ministers as well as the top diplomats from the Central Asian states are also expected in the Uzbek capital.According to the Uzbek Foreign Ministry, at least 160 guests, including experts, diplomats, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs, have confirmed plans to attend the conference, which will feature discussion sessions on economic cooperation, cultural ties and security relationships. US Seeking New Security Arrangements in Central AsiaAs American troops withdraw from Afghanistan, Washington looks for other ways to address terrorist threatsTashkent aims at concrete proposals to unlock the potential of both regions. “South Asia has historically been tightly connected to Central Asia economically, socially, culturally,” states the ministry in the conference agenda.Farkhad Tolipov, director of Knowledge Caravan center in Tashkent, says “the Uzbek government is determined to demonstrate that it has an active regional policy. If connectivity becomes real, Uzbekistan will have shorter transportation corridors to the sea.”Tolipov expects no agreements, only joint statements. “Let’s wait and see but I doubt that there will be any practical results,” he says.Washington has long promoted regional connectivity and economic integration and even reorganized the State Department in 2005 to promote it, creating a new Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. But its initiatives and rhetoric have not been matched by money. And so they have met skepticism at a time when China is pouring billions into the region via its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.Has Trump Remade America’s Priorities in Central Asia? Trump’s adviser for South and Central Asia says ‘important shifts in the last several years led us to update our approach’ Tolipov notes that U.S.-promoted energy projects such as a pipeline to deliver Turkmen gas to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a scheme to supply Central Asian electricity to South Asia, “have mostly just been aspirations.”Still, Jennifer Murtazashvili, director of the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh, sees the Tashkent conference as an opportunity to generate enthusiasm and ultimately investment for double-landlocked Uzbekistan, which is dependent on trade routes through Kazakhstan and either Russia or China to reach seaports.“Given the difficult relations between the U.S. and Iran, it would be difficult to secure funding for that southward route, so it is more politically feasible to connect Uzbekistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan than to go through Iran right now.”Murtazashvili says fragmented markets separating Central and South Asia are costly to entrepreneurs, governments, and citizens. “Improved connectivity from agreements at this conference can facilitate economic prosperity in the region.”U.S. partners in the region want technical assistance from America’s government and ramped up investment from its private sector. But Murtazashvili thinks that uncertainties in Afghanistan and conflict fatigue will make Americans unlikely to invest in ambitious projects.“The U.S. has talked quite a lot about this but has not offered a concrete alternative.”The Bush administration promoted economic connectivity and the Obama administration’s Northern Distribution Network carried non-military goods in and out of Afghanistan. But, says Murtazashvili, there was never much serious commercial investment or project finance from the U.S.“The economic orientation of the Mirziyoyev government relies on international trade and investment for survival, where Karimov’s was inward-looking, autarkic, and eschewed trade.”Uzbekistan seems to be hoping that these projects can move forward regardless of who is in power in Kabul, adds Murtazashvili. “Tashkent has maintained close relations with the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan’s ‘Heart of Asia’ [policy] aims to benefit from trade and connectivity.”But, as experts point out, the real story of the conference is not Afghanistan but Uzbekistan. By stepping up on both Afghan peace and regional connectivity, Tashkent has made these the twin pillars of an activist foreign policy, giving Mirziyoyev’s government enhanced stature and newfound influence. 
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The U.N. refugee agency warns Afghanistan is on the brink of another humanitarian crisis as escalating conflict is causing civilian casualties to rise and is driving hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes in search of safety.
 
More than 3.5 million people currently are displaced inside Afghanistan.  Among them are an estimated 270,000 who have become newly displaced since the beginning of the year due to worsening security in the country.  
 
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reports civilian casualties have risen 29% during the first quarter of this year compared to last.  This increase coincides with the U.S. troop withdrawal from the country.
 
In addition to ongoing fighting, U.N. refugee agency spokesman Babar Baloch says many displaced people report fleeing because of harassment and extortion by armed groups, as well as because of a lack of social services and loss of income due to rising insecurity.
 
“Our concern is if this does not stop, further numbers may be forced to seek safety inside the country. But there is a potential risk that they may have to seek safety not only in the neighboring countries but beyond as well,” he said.
    
Baloch noted that Iran and Pakistan host nearly 90% of more than 2 million registered Afghan refugees. He said the generosity and hospitality of these countries should not be taken for granted as they have their own problems of development.
 
The Taliban have been rapidly retaking land across Afghanistan as the U.S. troop withdrawal accelerates.  On Friday, the insurgent group claimed to be in control of 85% of Afghanistan after seizing key border crossings with Iran and Turkmenistan.
 
Baloch said Afghan women are particularly fearful of losing the many gains they have made over the past 20 years if the Taliban come back to power.
    
“Women who finally found the space to breathe in Afghanistan—they are anxious, they are worried and probably they are angry as well. They want peace and stability for their country. They do not want to go back to an era where there is no freedom for them,” he said.
    
Baloch said an examination of casualty figures shows an increasing proportion of women and children becoming victims of targeted killings. He said women activists and women journalists are at particular risk.
 
The UNHCR is urging the international community to step up support to the government and people of Afghanistan at this critical time.
   
 
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The Taliban warned Tuesday that if Turkey extends its military presence in Afghanistan the Islamist group will view Turkish troops as “occupiers” and wage “jihad” against them.The warning came amid fresh battlefield moves that critics say show the Taliban are planning a military takeover of Afghanistan in defiance of their peace pledges, raising the prospects of a full-blown civil war.The United States has asked Turkey to secure Kabul’s airport after all American and NATO allied troops withdraw from the country by the end of next month.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday without elaborating that he had agreed with Washington on the “scope” of how to secure and manage the airport.The Taliban condemned the deal as “reprehensible” and demanded Turkey review its decision.“We consider stay of foreign forces in our homeland by any country under whatever pretext as occupation,” the group said in a media release. “The extension of occupation will arouse emotions of resentment and hostility inside our country towards Turkish officials and will damage bilateral ties.”The security and smooth running of the Hamid Karzai international airport in the Afghan capital is crucial for preserving diplomatic missions and foreign organizations operating out of Kabul, where a bomb explosion Tuesday killed at least four people. Hostilities elsewhere in Afghanistan also have escalated to record levels.A blood-stained man rests after he helped people who were injured in a deadly bomb explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan, July 13, 2021.Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told reporters after a cabinet meeting on Monday evening that Turkey agreed to some points with U.S. counterparts on running the airport.  He said work towards a deal continues.“If the airport does not operate, the countries will have to withdraw their diplomatic missions there,” Akar said.Hundreds of American troops are expected to stay in the Afghan capital, guarding the sprawling U.S. embassy compound there.Taliban forces have dramatically extended their territorial control across Afghanistan by overrunning scores of districts without any resistance since U.S. troops formally started withdrawing from the country in early May.In most cases, government forces either retreated to safety or surrendered to the advancing insurgents.A convoy of Afghan Special Forces is seen during the rescue mission of a police officer besieged at a check post surrounded by Taliban, in Kandahar province, July 13, 2021.The battlefield gains have enabled the Taliban to effectively encircle major Afghan cities, including provincial capitals.In Washington, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby on Monday also voiced concern that the Taliban are planning to militarily take control of the country.“It is clear from what they are doing that they have governance designs certainly of a national scale. It is clear from what they are doing that they believe there is a military solution to the end of this conflict,” Kirby told reporters.“We continue to believe that the most sustainable and the most responsible end and solution to this war is a political one, one through negotiated diplomacy,” Kirby stressed.Afghan authorities have vowed to defend and keep the Taliban from major cities, saying security forces have killed hundreds of insurgents in recent days.Kabul has also protested and criticized regional countries for stepping up their diplomatic engagements with the Taliban in pursuit of a peaceful settlement to the war.“The Taliban delegation is traveling to the regional countries at a time when its brutal attacks have killed more than 3,500 people, displaced more than 200,000 of our compatriots, disrupted public order and life, and economic activities in tens of districts,” ministry said.The Taliban took control of Afghanistan after emerging victorious in the civil war of the 1990s and introduced harsh Islamic laws to govern the conflict-torn country before they were ousted by the U.S.-led foreign invasion in late 2001.The Islamist movement has since been waging a violent insurgency against the U.S.-backed government in Kabul.Washington negotiated and signed a troop withdrawal deal with the Taliban in February 2020 in return for security assurances and pledges the insurgents would negotiate a peace arrangement with Afghan rivals for a sustainable peace in the country.However, the slow-moving U.S.-brokered intra-Afghan negotiations, which started in Qatar last September, have failed to produce a peace deal and remain deadlocked. Some information in this report was provided by Reuters.  
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Pakistan’s government said it has reached its limit and cannot accept more Afghan refugees as the threat of violence looms in Afghanistan.  Pakistani officials are demanding that the world make arrangements for the refugees inside Afghanistan, amid fears that millions of Afghans may be forced to flee into neighboring countries if fighting between Taliban and Afghan government forces intensified or deteriorated into a civil war.   “As a matter of fact, we are not in position to accept any more refugees,” Pakistan’s National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf told VOA in a one-on-one interview.    Almost 3 million Afghan refugees, half of them unregistered, have been living in Pakistan since the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s and subsequent waves of violence and later a civil war, according to the U.N.    FILE – Children of Afghan refugees play outside tents in Afghan Basti area on the outskirts of Lahore on June 19, 2021 on the eve of World Refugee Day.“We are willing to help but we are in no position to take in new refugees this time around. The international forces and the U.N. should make arrangements for them inside Afghanistan,” Yusuf said.    Yusuf said there needs to be an effort to prepare for the refugees, highlighting his government’s policy. “If such a situation arises, then the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, should set up camps for the refugees on the Afghan side of the border,” he said.   At present, there are two key border crossings between Pakistan and Afghanistan — Chaman in Balochistan and Torkham in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — apart from several small trading points.   Of the 2,640-kilometer boundary with Afghanistan, Pakistan has fenced nearly 90% and deployed the army and the Frontier Constabulary, a militia under the federal interior ministry, to man it.   Yusuf said that because the countries share a long border and the terrain allows crossings on foot or mules, Pakistan cannot begin to enumerate the threats and fallout of a civil war in Afghanistan.   “There are fears that members of the banned terror outfits like the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (the TTP or Pakistani Taliban) might enter Pakistan from Afghanistan in the guise of refugees and create unrest in the country,” he said. The Pakistani Taliban are based in Afghanistan but differ from the Afghan Taliban.    He also expressed concern that India, Pakistan’s eastern neighbor with whom it has a hostile relationship, might use this opportunity against his country.   “We have evidence about the involvement of India in terrorist activities in Pakistan by using the Afghan soil,” he said. “Movement of such a large number of refugees could provide the Indian agencies a chance to infiltrate into Pakistan.”    Pakistan’s army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and the head of the intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, told the national security committee of the parliament earlier this month that Pakistan feared a new civil war in Afghanistan.   They said that Pakistan estimated it would receive as many as 700,000 new refugees in the first year alone, a parliament member present in the briefing told VOA on the condition of anonymity because the briefing was private. Last month, in an interview with The New York Times, Prime Minister Imran Khan said Pakistan would not open its borders to refugees if the situation deteriorated in Afghanistan.    In a worst-case scenario, Pakistan plans to settle the refugees in camps along the border with Afghanistan to prevent them from settling in Pakistan, a senior official of the Interior Ministry who wasn’t authorized to speak to the media told VOA on condition of anonymity.    UNHCR Pakistan spokesperson Qaiser Khan Afridi said the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan was concerning and added that the government of Pakistan has not yet shared with the agency its policy regarding a new influx of Afghan refugees.   “The UNHCR is constantly in consultation with the government of Pakistan and would devise it’s strategy according to the policy of the Pakistan government,” Afridi said.   Afridi didn’t predict the number of refugees but said if refugees came in large numbers, it would be difficult for Pakistan to handle them without the support of the international community.   He said that UNHCR was ready to assist the government of Pakistan in the process of registration, providing them shelter and basic necessities.     Pakistani authorities say they have been hosting millions of refugees even though they are not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention or the 1967 Optional Protocol for refugees.   U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday announced that the U.S. would complete the troop withdrawal in Afghanistan by August 31, nearly 20 years after the U.S. led an invasion of the country following al-Qaida’s attack on the U.S., September 11, 2001.  US Military Mission in Afghanistan Ends August 31, Biden Announces   It is time to look to fight the battles of the next 20 years, says the US president, in remarks after he was briefed on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan Al-Qaida’s top leadership was based in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban who refused to give them up, leading to the invasion.   Biden also said it was up to the people and the leadership of Afghanistan to decide their future.   The Taliban have intensified violence in Afghanistan in the last few months, especially since the start of the withdrawal of foreign forces two months ago. This story originated from VOA’s Urdu service. Ayesha Tanzeem contributed to the report.  
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Lightning has killed at least 38 people across two Indian states over the past 24 hours, officials said Monday.
A majority of the deaths occurred in the western state of Rajasthan, where 11 people died after being struck by lightning near a watchtower at the 12th century Amber Fort, police said.
Senior police officer Anand Srivastava said some of the victims were taking selfies near the watchtower when lightning struck late Sunday.
Srivastava said at least nine more people were killed and nearly 20 others were injured in separate lightning strikes when the state was lashed with thunderstorms and monsoon rains.
In Uttar Pradesh, 18 people were killed by lightning on Sunday, said Manoj Dixit, a government official. Most of those killed were farm laborers working in fields.
Both state governments announced financial compensation for the families of the victims and those who were injured.
The Indian Meteorological Department has warned of more lightning in the next two days.
Lightning strikes are common during India’s monsoon season, which runs from June to September.  
More than 2,900 people were killed by lightning in India in 2019, according to the the most recent official figures available.
 
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Afghan interpreters were invaluable to American troops during two decades of war. Now that U.S. forces are pulling out, Afghans who aided Americans fear for their lives. As the U.S. government processes thousands of visa applications to allow them to emigrate, VOA’s Carolyn Presutti has the exclusive story of two former interpreters who say they are in grave danger. Contributed by: Ekram Shinwari, John Walker, Hedayatullah NooriCamera: Ekram Shinwari, Ahmad Javed
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