The Council must decide which steps to take regarding the Sanctions List. But, there is a pre-existing and deteriorating humanitarian crisis, mostly in rural areas, that cannot wait for political decisions, she said, emphasizing that, given the current situation, the role of the United Nations role must be clear and built on humanitarian imperatives.
There is an immediate and pressing need to deliver, on a huge scale, the required humanitarian aid in areas such as health, food security, non-food items and sanitation. Another looming crisis is the economic slump, she stated, noting that members of the international community have frozen billions in assets and donor funds. Explaining that the understandable purpose is to deny those funds to the de facto Taliban administration, she cautioned that inevitable effect will be a severe economic downturn that could throw millions of people into poverty and hunger, generate a massive wave of refugees and set Afghanistan back for generations.
A modus vivendi must be found, and quickly, that allows money to flow and prevent a total breakdown of the economy and social order, she stressed. Safeguards must be found to ensure that it is spent where it needs to be spent and not misused by the de facto authorities. She reported that United Nations premises have been mostly respected, adding, however, that incidents of harassment and intimidation against its national staff are increasing.
Expressing concern that former personnel of the national security and defence forces, as well as those who have worked as civil servants face reprisal killings, she said the United Nations is receiving increasing reports that the Taliban have prohibited females from appearing in public places without male chaperones and prevented women from working.
It is important now that the region use its available mechanisms to not just speak with one voice, but act in concert for the benefit of the entire region, she continued, citing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — which is soon to meet in Dushanbe, Tajikistan — the Extended Troika format created by the Russian Federation, which last met in Qatar in August, and the regional foreign ministers meeting hosted by Pakistan, which took place today.
Al-Qaida members remain in in the country, visibly welcomed and sheltered by the de facto Taliban authorities, she said, adding that Islamic State-Khorasan Province remains active and could gain strength. Concerns about such essential matters of international terrorism will not be allayed simply by Taliban promises, she warned, underlining that the region and the wider international community share clear common interests on that issue.
Today, countless Afghan men, women and children are stranded in the valleys of Panjshir following weeks of shelling and bombing, she said, adding that they have no food for their children, no medicine for the ill and no way to communicate to the rest of Afghanistan and the world about their ordeal. This week, the world saw brave women and men take to the streets of Kabul and other cities to demonstrate their anguish over how they are being treated.
The right to protest is now taken away and access to the Internet is limited based on location in Kabul, she noted. Today, her best chance for a life is to burn those documents and disappear.
While serving with the Afghanistan High Peace Council, she recalled, it was women members who reached out to communities and to the mothers of fighters on the ground and initiated the first National Dialogue that brought all Afghans together. Female Government workers have been told to stay home, she said, adding that some female judges and prosecutors had been working throughout the country, and 12, women in the police and military. Today, they are in hiding, fearful for their lives, she stated.
Urging the Council to include women in mediation teams, she also urged it to facilitate a meeting of Afghan women from across the different professions — peacebuilders, judges, security officers, educators, doctors and businesswomen — with the Taliban, as well as visas for women and men from among civil society, media, former government employees, judges and prosecutors, artists and musicians stranded inside the country and at risk of reprisals.
She went on to stress the need for the United Nations to protect Afghan female aid workers and peacebuilders, as well as other civic professionals and community organizations, describing them as critical to the distribution and delivery of aid to those in need. The group quickly became the dominant sociopolitical force throughout much of the north-west and life was marked by public floggings, schools that closed their doors to girls and banners in shopping malls declaring that women were not allowed inside.
Whereas girls made up 39 per cent of school-going children in Afghanistan during , that progress is now under threat, she stressed, pointing out that the doors to secondary schools have already been shut, and teachers and students have been told to wait at home. Some female teachers have been told they no longer have jobs because they are barred from teaching boys, she continued. Equitable and inclusive education also helps to prevent conflict, she said, noting that experts in some countries believe that doubling the percentage of students finishing secondary school would cut the risk of conflict in half.
Against that backdrop, she called upon the Council to support Afghan women and girls in four ways. Still, national security planning is often about planning for the worst, and that is not what happened here. Then those things happened. Biden had to reverse course and send thousands of more troops to Afghanistan to help after he brought them out.
Thirteen of them were killed this week, the worst daily death toll for U. EA: No argument there. This could have been handled better. I do think we also need to lay a lot of blame at the feet of the Trump administration, whose restrictions on immigration processing made it more difficult to get Afghans to safety over the last year.
But even with that, the government response has been glacial. Major news organizations like the New York Times ended up turning to Mexico to accept their local employees after getting nowhere with the U.
Luckily, the United States, its partners, and those private charitable concerns together are now lifting almost 20, people a day from Kabul. Perhaps we should wrap up by talking about the bigger picture? The question of accountability in Afghanistan, and of what the Afghan withdrawal means for U. And many of them are damning: top generals who misled Congress about the course of the war, bureaucracies that kept trying the same failed strategies over and over again, and senior policymakers who misled the American people about how successful the campaign actually was.
MK: I agree the war effort was managed poorly over the years. Due to ever-shifting strategies, Afghanistan was not one year war as the quip has it but 20 one-year wars. Washington went in with a light footprint, then surged, and then seemed to be pulling everything out, then staying, and then suddenly negotiating with the Taliban.
Despite the inconsistency, I do believe the United States fell into a sustainable and effective approach after , so much of the blame for the final outcome, in my view, goes partially to Trump and mostly to Biden for upsetting this equilibrium. Do you agree? EA: There was a Politico poll this week that asked respondents whether the United States should withdraw from Afghanistan even if it increases the chances of terrorism. That leading question still got more respondents agreeing the United States should leave than those who wanted to stay.
That is so telling. The public overwhelmingly backs withdrawal from Afghanistan, and I suspect the messy evacuation will be long forgotten by the time the next presidential election comes around.
What about you? MK: That is probably right. EA: Well, Biden has three more years in which to show that he can conduct foreign policy competently and—now that he has made the tough choice in Afghanistan—an opportunity to show the American people that he can do foreign policy better than his predecessors. And as some international relations scholars have pointed out, the United States may well have better credibility on key issues like great-power competition now that it has finally shed the dead albatross of Afghanistan from around its neck.
After all, what better way to show China that it is taking the Indo-Pacific seriously than finally pivoting away from the war on terrorism?
And China itself may come to regret the U. MK: Well, let me try to end with a note of optimism. This week has seen some terrible tragedies, and there are only a few days until the deadline to remove Americans and supportive Afghans from the country. Even though it seems unlikely at this point, let us pray that they make it to safety. Twitter: EmmaMAshford. Twitter: matthewkroenig. Shusha was the key to the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
There are numerous cultural, ethnic and religious connections. The former Afghan leader Hamid Karzai once described the two countries as "inseparable brothers". But for some capitals queuing up to revive their relationship with Islamabad, there are mixed feelings. Pakistan has not been seen by all as a firm ally in the battle against jihadist terrorism. It has long been accused by many in the United States and elsewhere of providing support for the Taliban, something it denies.
Yet diplomats in the West want to persuade the Taliban to allow their nationals to leave Afghanistan , to let humanitarian aid in and to govern moderately. And that means they need to talk to countries like Pakistan and others in the region.
Critics of Pakistan have accused it of hedging its bets over Afghanistan and the Taliban. But at the same time, parts of the country's military and intelligence establishment maintained links with Islamist groups in Afghanistan like the Taliban. Those links, so it is claimed, at times turned into significant material and logistical support. The belief among strategists was that Pakistan wanted a stake in Afghanistan, to ensure it did not end up with a government that was pro-India.
The extent and duration of Pakistan's support for the Taliban is disputed. But when the Taliban were last in power 20 years ago, Pakistan was one of the few countries to formally recognise its government.
And when the Taliban seized Kabul last month, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan declared the group were "breaking the chains of slavery". The third way would have been to leave once an intra-Afghan peace deal between the Taliban and the Ghani government was reached. The Doha deal contained provisions for the intra-Afghan negotiations to be set in motion. But while Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad repeatedly assured Congress that all the elements of the deal came as a package, it was difficult to argue, with the deal as it was written literally and without the content of the annexes — those have never been made public , that our exit was conditional on an intra-Afghan peace deal.
Yet that is the minimum that we should have ensured. As I see it, there were two ways to have done this: renegotiate the Doha deal to make withdrawal explicitly conditional on an intra-Afghan agreement, as Biden was well within his rights to do as a new president; or, starting January , put maximum pressure on the Taliban and the Ghani government to compromise.
The Biden administration could have set the wheels for this in motion after the election in November For both options, our presence in Afghanistan was the leverage we needed. But the administration lost precious time in undertaking an Afghanistan policy review. Any power-sharing agreement that would have emerged would have been better than the current outcome, where the Taliban rule Afghanistan unchecked. An aggressive attempt at diplomacy would possibly have spilled over past the summer, and the Taliban may have begun to attack U.
But that scenario was manageable: It would likely have meant going back to a pre-February level of warfare, in which U. A more considered withdrawal would also have meant giving the Afghan security forces more cover as we eventually withdrew — taking intelligence and air support away step by step, and empowering them in the process, rather than pulling the rug from under them.
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