No regrets; you must take up the fight: Biden to Afghan leaders

Afghanistan is trundling down a dangerous path of a full-scale civil war that has the potential to throw a tenuous regional peace off balance and redefine the US role in the region. On Wednesday (August 11) a seventh regional capital in Afghanistan fell to the advancing Taliban even as US President Joe Biden called upon Afghan leaders to fight for their motherland.

Biden’s remarks came at a time when US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Pakistan Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa over the phone and told him about the safe havens that exist along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby.

The US President said he did not regret his decision to withdraw, noting that Washington has spent more than $1 trillion over 20 years and lost thousands of troops.

Officials have appealed for pressure on Pakistan to stop Taliban reinforcements and supplies flowing over the border. Pakistan denies backing the Taliban, a group of around 75,000 predominantly Pashtuns, whom Islamabad had nurtured in the mid-nineties and helped it occupy Afghanistan as part of its plan to gain “strategic depth” in the region to counter whatever influence India has. The Taliban were ousted by US forces following 9/11 in 2001.

Also read: Taliban marches on; India to evacuate all diplomats from Afghanistan

“They’ve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation,” Biden said amid a relentless Taliban campaign, which the Islamist force claims, has already claimed 65 per cent of the country. Biden said he did not regret his decision to withdraw, noting that Washington has spent more than $1 trillion over 20 years and lost thousands of troops.

In Kabul, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he was seeking help from regional militias he has squabbled with for years. He appealed to civilians to defend Afghanistan’s “democratic fabric.”

US airstrikes

US military aircraft have been hitting ground targets in Afghanistan. President Biden has ordered B-52 bombers and AC-130 Spectre gunships to strike enemy fighters advancing toward Kandahar and other cities, media reported.

The Taliban has termed the US airstrikes to support Afghan government forces in Kandahar and Helmand provinces as a “violation of the signed agreement that will have consequences”. Biden said at the White House on Tuesday that the US was keeping the commitments it had made to Afghanistan, such as providing close air support, paying military salaries and supplying Afghan forces with food and equipment.

The tactic of the Afghanistan National Defence Security Forces (ANDSF) is to launch the pushback against the Taliban as the US airstrikes take down the concentrated presence of the Taliban. Hundreds of Taliban fighters have died in these simultaneous attacks.

Also read: Over 570 Taliban militants killed as Afghan and US forces launch counterstrikes

Pul-e-Khumri, capital of the northern province of Baghlan, fell to the Taliban on Tuesday evening (August 10), according to residents who reported Afghan security forces retreating toward the Kelagi desert, home to a large Afghan army base.

Pul-e-Khumri became the seventh regional capital to come under the control of the Islamist militants in about a week. The other cities are Zaranj, the capital of western Nimroz province, Sheberghan, the capital of northern Zawzjan province, Taleqan, the capital of another northern province with the same name, Aybak the capital of Samangan and Sara-e-Pul with the same name of the province in the north. The Taliban are also fighting for the control of Kunduz, the capital of northern Kunduz province, and Kandahar in the south of the country bordering Pakistan.

Qatar talks

Two back-to-back international meetings are being held in Qatar this week to press Afghanistan’s warring parties to resume peace negotiations. The diplomatic efforts follow US airstrikes in support of embattled Afghan government forces.

It also follows last week’s warning by the United Nations that “the war in Afghanistan has entered a new, deadlier, and more destructive phase.”

The US special representative for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, and his counterparts from Russia, China and Pakistan, will meet in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Wednesday (August 11) under what is officially known as the “extended troika,” media reports quoting diplomatic sources said.

The Moscow-initiated group conducts regular consultations on ways to support intra-Afghan negotiations to help the parties reach a political settlement and a permanent and comprehensive cease-fire.

The extended troika will hold consultations before meeting Doha-based Taliban and Kabul government representatives who are engaged in slow-moving intra-Afghan peace negotiations there, media reports said.

Pakistan’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Muhammad Sadiq, and the country’s ambassador to Kabul, Mansoor Khan, will be visiting Doha to attend the Afghan peace-related meetings there, sources said.

“We are always looking for ways and means to help accelerate the negotiations because we don’t see a military solution to the war in Afghanistan,” Khalilzad told Voice of America last week.

“There must be a political solution, a political agreement for a lasting peace, and we will stay with it. We are committed to staying with it until that goal is achieved,” the U.S. envoy pledged.

At its last meeting in April this year, the extended troika had warned the insurgents not to attempt to militarily seize control of the Afghan capital, Kabul. “We do not support the establishment in Afghanistan of any government-imposed by force,” said a joint statement issued at the time.

Pakistan’s double game

Taliban have neither changed their tactics nor their enforcement of the Sharia law since they captured Kabul 25 years ago. Pakistan, notwithstanding its umpteen denials, continues to play on both sides. The Spin Boldek border outpost is witness to it. Pickup vans and trucks full of armed Taliban are seen freely moving in and out of Pakistan even though Pakistan has fenced its border – the Durand Line of 2,670 km that cuts through both countries.

Interestingly, the Taliban and the Afghan government reject the boundary. The Durand Line was originally established in 1893 as the international border between British India and the Emirate of Afghanistan by Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat of the Indian Civil Service, and Abdur Rahman Khan, the Afghan Emir, to fix the limit of their respective spheres of influence and improve diplomatic relations and trade.

Also read: How Afghanistan is sliding back to dark days: Taliban atrocities a grim warning

The military flux has led to foreign terrorists from Pakistan, Xinjiang (China) and Uzbekistan migrating to the Taliban-held territories in east and north Afghanistan and it is only a matter of time when these terrorist groups start targeting democracies under the protection of the Islamist medieval force.

The Taliban, or “students”, emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. It is believed that the predominantly Pashtun movement first appeared in religious seminaries — mostly funded by Saudi Arabia and profusely facilitated by the Pakistan military.

In September 1995 they captured the province of Herat, bordering Iran, and exactly one year later they captured the Afghan capital, Kabul, overthrowing the regime of President Burhanuddin Rabbani – one of the founding fathers of the Afghan mujahideen that resisted the Soviet occupation. By 1998, the Taliban were in control of almost 90% of Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s love for Taliban – first explicit and now implicit — stems from its military’s hunger for strategic depth to counter any Indian influence in the region.

On Monday (August 9), with over 3 lakh tweets, #Sanction Pakistan was among the top trending hashtags on Twitter as Afghans took to the platform demanding sanctions against Islamabad for its alleged support to the Taliban.

Pakistan is now in a dilemma for allegedly supporting the Taliban and providing a haven for terrorists. Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar recently said the Taliban is colluding with terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and al-Qaeda, which have bases in Pakistan.

Afghanistan was also the only country to directly call out Pakistan’s role in the current situation during the recent UN Security Council meeting. However, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said the international community should pay attention to the “meltdown” of Afghan security forces rather than blaming Pakistan.

(With inputs from agencies)