Category Archives: Afghanistan

Biden says no ‘mission accomplished moment’ as US troops withdraw from Afghanistan – video

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Joe Biden has said the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan after 20 years of war will conclude on 31 August and added there will be no ‘mission accomplished’ moment to celebrate. ‘We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build,’ the US president said. ’It is the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.’

His remarks come as the Taliban makes advances in the country, which some senior Afghan officials have blamed on the abrupt departure of US troops

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Biden says ‘I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan’ – live

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Michael Avenatti, the former lawyer to Stormy Daniels who repeatedly clashed with Donald Trump during his presidency, has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for trying to extort Nike.

Reuters reports:

U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe in Manhattan said Avenatti, 50, ‘had become drunk on the power of his platform’ in betraying his client, a youth basketball coach, in order to obtain riches for himself.

The sentencing caps a precipitous downfall for a once-obscure lawyer who in 2018 became a cable news fixture, disparaging then-President Trump and even flirting with a White House run himself.

Joe Biden rejected comparisons between the end of the Vietnam War and the conclusion of the war in Afghanistan, insisting the two events are nothing alike.

However, some American veterans have said they feel the US military is leaving a job undone in Afghanistan, just as it did in Vietnam. Some also fear that Kabul will soon fall to the Taliban, as Saigon fell after US troops departed Vietnam.

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Taliban close in on Helmand capital as UK Afghan mission ends

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Lashkar Gah still under control of government forces but local activist says city is under siege

As Boris Johnson announced the end of Britain’s military mission in Afghanistan, Taliban fighters pressed in on the capital of Helmand province, once the centre of the UK’s presence there.

Militants are less than a mile from Lashkar Gah, now also home to tens of thousands of people who have fled the fighting or Taliban rule across the rest of the province, local officials said.

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Boris Johnson announces end to UK military mission in Afghanistan – video

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Boris Johnson has announced the end of Britain’s military mission in Afghanistan, following a hasty and secretive exit of the last remaining troops 20 years after the post-9/11 invasion that started the 'war on terror'. Speaking in the Commons, the prime minister confirmed to MPs that the intervention, which claimed the lives of 457 British soldiers, would end even as the insurgent Taliban have been rapidly gaining territory in rural areas as UK and other forces withdraw

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Armed Afghan women take to streets in show of defiance against Taliban

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Women in north and central regions of country stage demonstrations as militants make sweeping gains nationwide

Women have taken up guns in northern and central Afghanistan, marching in the streets in their hundreds and sharing pictures of themselves with assault rifles on social media, in a show of defiance as the Taliban make sweeping gains nationwide.

One of the biggest demonstrations was in central Ghor province, where hundreds of women turned out at the weekend, waving guns and chanting anti-Taliban slogans.

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Afghan anger over US’s sudden, silent Bagram departure

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Military officials say troops turned off power and slipped away without notifying new commander

US forces plunged their main operating base in Afghanistan into darkness and abandoned it to looters when they slipped away in the middle of the night after two decades at the site without notifying their Afghan allies.

The furtive departure from Bagram airbase, which is vital to the security of Kabul and holds about 5,000 mostly Taliban prisoners, infuriated the Afghans. Many saw it as emblematic of a withdrawal they say is being carried out entirely to fit an American political schedule, with no heed for the collapsing security situation on the ground.

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Hundreds of Afghan security forces flee as districts fall to Taliban

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Militants’ advance continues as Britain nears end of its two-decade deployment to country

The Taliban’s rapid advance through northern Afghanistan continued on Sunday with more than a dozen districts falling to the militants, as Britain entered the final days of its two-decade deployment to Afghanistan.

More than 300 members of the Afghan security forces fled across the border into Tajikistan to escape the militants, and Badakhshan and Takhar provinces are now largely under Taliban control, beyond the respective regional capitals.

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Afghanistan: America’s ‘longest war’ ends amid accusations of betrayal

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Analysis: Washington did not learn the lessons of Vietnam and more death and suffering are inevitable

The US war in Afghanistan was not supposed to be another Vietnam. “I don’t do quagmires,” said Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of the original US invasion, who died last week. In the end the former US defence secretary did two quagmires, airily assuming Afghanistan was “won” in the spring of 2003 when he sent American troops to fight in Iraq.

US combat troops were in Vietnam for eight years, but they have been in Afghanistan for 20. It has been America’s longest war by far.

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After the retreat: what now for Afghanistan?

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As the west departs, the Taliban are resurgent. They say they have changed – but misogyny and brutality still mark their rule

The public flogging in Obe district, captured on video that quickly went viral this spring, was a mistake, a local Taliban judge admitted. Commanders were angry.

As the footage spread between urban Afghans, who shared it on their smartphones, it revived memories of darker times when the militants ruled the country, and an outpouring of revulsion.

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US troops leave Afghanistan’s Bagram airbase after nearly 20 years

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Departure marred by poor liaison with local forces and comes just before 20th anniversary of start of US operations to topple Taliban

US troops have left Bagram, the sprawling airbase north of Kabul that was the symbolic and operational heart of the American military operation in Afghanistan.

With that hub handed over to Afghan security forces, it sets the scene for the final departure of American forces from the country only months before the 20th anniversary of the start of US operations to topple the Taliban, launched in response to the 9/11 attacks.

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‘It feels good’: Kashmir folk singer’s rise from dusty street to music star

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Noor Mohammad Shah has given traditional Sufi music a new lease of life after a chance encounter

Noor Mohammad Shah had always happily lived a life of obscurity. Born in a small village in the conflict-ridden state of Kashmir in India, Shah had been introduced to the mystical world of Sufi music as a child and for decades since had made a meagre but fulfilling living singing traditional songs and performing on his rabab, a lute-like music instrument, at weddings and village festivals.

Yet it was a chance encounter between Shah and a group of young men, who happened to pass by as the god-fearing musician was playing his instrument on a dusty street corner, that would propel him into becoming one of Kashmir’s most famous modern rabab musicians.

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Afghan civilians forced to fight Taliban as foreign troops depart

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Violence is spiralling with militants seizing at least 50 of county’s nearly 400 districts since May

Haji Ghoulam Farouq Siawshani watched the Taliban rampage across northern Afghanistan this month, weighing up the threat from militants on his doorstep. Then, 10 days ago, the former oil trader turned militia commander issued a call to arms.

“Where the Taliban go, they bring destruction, and they are one kilometre away from my village,” he told the Guardian. “We decided to respond.”

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US plans to evacuate thousands of interpreters before Afghanistan pullout

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• Operation expected to include up to 50,000 people

• Interpreters and families fear reprisals from Taliban

The United States is planning to evacuate a group of vulnerable Afghan interpreters before the US military completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan so they can wrap up their visa applications from safety, according to officials.

The evacuation of the at-risk Afghans will include their family members for a total of as many as 50,000 people, a senior Republican lawmaker told Reuters.

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Hungary’s LGBT protests and Juneteenth Day: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms from China to Colombia

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‘We have more in common than what separates us’: refugee stories, told by refugees

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In One Thousand Dreams, award-winning photographer Robin Hammond hands the camera to refugees. Often reduced by the media’s toxic or well-meaning narratives, the portraits and interviews capture a different and more complex tale

Robin Hammond has spent two decades crisscrossing the developing world and telling other people’s stories. From photographing the Rohingya forced out of Myanmar and rape survivors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to documenting the lives of people in countries where their sexuality is illegal, his work has earned him award after award.

But for his latest project the photographer has embarked on a paradigm shift: to remove himself – and others like him – from the process entirely. Instead, as part of an in-depth exploration of the refugee experience in Europe, the stories of those featured are told by those who, arguably, know them best: other refugees.

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Eradicating polio is finally within reach. Why is the UK taking its foot off the pedal? | Anne Wafula Strike

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Instead of cutting the aid budget – including 95% from the plan to stamp out the disease – Britain should take a global lead

Despite the Covid pandemic, there have been just two recorded cases of wild polio in 2021 – in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the two remaining hiding places for the disease. But eradication is not guaranteed. Polio is virulent and spreads quickly. Even one case poses a threat to unvaccinated children everywhere, which is why a new strategy launched last week by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) outlines a plan to utilise this small window of opportunity for the world to end polio for good.

A 99.9% fall in polio cases globally in recent decades is thanks in large part to the GPEI and its supporters. The British government’s recent announcement that it will slash its contributions to the GPEI by more than 95% has been a body blow. The funding cut amounts to almost a quarter of the annual World Health Organization polio eradication budget.

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‘I’m sacrificing myself’: agony of Kabul’s secret sex workers

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Decades of war and grinding poverty have forced more Afghans into risky double lives to survive

When Zainab met her first client almost two years ago, she was drunk, drugged-up, and had passed out by the time he started raping her. She had never touched alcohol before, but was told she’d be better off unconscious. Terrified, she reluctantly agreed.

The man was gone when the then 18-year-old woke up; her body in pain, her thoughts filled with regret.

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Jailing of Afghans for Lesbos migrant camp fire a ‘parody of justice’

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Lawyers criticise 10-year terms given to four asylum seekers, saying three should have been tried in juvenile court

Draconian prison sentences handed down to four Afghan youths found guilty of starting the fire that destroyed the Moria migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos last year have been described as a “parody of justice”.

Defence lawyers called the penalties “unfair”, saying three of the accused were under the age of 18 at the time and should have been tried before a juvenile court. The asylum seekers received 10-year jail terms each.

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How the ‘good war’ went bad: elite soldiers from Australia, UK and US face a reckoning

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As coalition troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan after 20 years, former soldiers, key officers and the public are asking what went wrong with some special forces

“Whatever we do … ,” one Australian special forces soldier said of his service in Afghanistan, “I can tell you the Brits and the US are far, far worse.

“I’ve watched our young guys stand by and hero worship what they were doing, salivating at how the US were torturing people. You just stand there and roll your eyes and wait for it to end.”

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