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Opinion

Where did the $5tn spent on Afghanistan and Iraq go? Here’s where

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Source: Guardian

While Washington bickers about what, if anything, has been achieved after 20 years and nearly $5tn spent on “forever wars”, there is one clear winner: the US defense industry.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military relied to an unprecedented degree on private contractors for support in virtually all areas of war operations. Contractors supplied trucks, planes, fuel, helicopters, ships, drones, weapons and munitions as well as support services from catering and construction to IT and logistics. The number of contractors on the ground outnumbered US troops most years of the conflicts. By the summer of 2020, the US had 22,562 contractor personnel in Afghanistan – roughly twice the number of American troops.

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Report

The Afghan view of 9/11: ‘This is the day the bad times started’

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Source: Guardian

In Afghanistan 9/11 is remembered as a trigger for decades of war which this year have come full, grim circle. The Taliban who controlled the country and sheltered Osama bin Laden at the time of the attacks are once more in command of Kabul and most of the country.

“This is the day when the bad times started for Afghanistan and Afghans,” said Haizbullah, a grocer in the southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban’s heartland and original capital.

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Opinion

US war on terror is still omnipresent

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Source: Deutsche Welle

“Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan. The longest war in American history.” These were the words of President Joe Biden on August 31, one day after the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan was concluded.  

Notably, however, Biden asserted in the same speech that “we will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries. We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it. We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground, very few if needed.” 

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Report

Flight takes about 200, including Americans, out of Kabul

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Source: Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An estimated 200 foreigners, including Americans, left Afghanistan on a commercial flight out of Kabul on Thursday with the cooperation of the Taliban — the first such large-scale departure since U.S. forces completed their frantic withdrawal over a week ago.

The Qatar Airways flight to Doha marked a breakthrough in the bumpy coordination between the U.S. and Afghanistan’s new rulers. A dayslong standoff over charter planes at another airport has left hundreds of mostly Afghan people stranded, waiting for Taliban permission to leave.

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Analysis, Background

How Kabul became an evacuation bottleneck and a prime terror target: The Last 96

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Source: Fox News

A new series “Fox News Digital Originals” analyses the reasons behind the fall of Kabul and the last days before the evacuation mission this year. It contains some nuanced information but should be read with a grain of salt considering the source.

Mick Mulroy, a former senior Defense Department official in the Trump administration who now thinks it was a mistake to negotiate with the Taliban, and other experts give their analyses on why the Afghan National Army was not able to defend the country against the Taliban.

Continue reading How Kabul became an evacuation bottleneck and a prime terror target: The Last 96 →
Analysis

Books, films and art about 9/11, 20 years later

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Source: Deutsche Welle

On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center fell victim to a terrorist attack. Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger planes, flying two of them into the iconic skyscrapers. Two other hijacked planes crashed into the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people died, including many first responders who had rushed to the scene in downtown Manhattan to help.

The terrorist attacks went down in history as a turning point in time, triggering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now, 20 years later, the cultural world is still dealing with the events of 9/11. Works of architecture, visual arts, film and television are asking important questions such as “How can we mourn? How do you rebuild a city? What should have been done better?”

DW rounds up some of the most significant developments in the cultural realm.

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Analysis

9/11, the ‘war on terror’ and the consequences for the world

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Source: Deutsche Welle

Twenty years have passed since the September 11 attacks. At Ground Zero in New York, the towers of a new World Trade Center rise above the skyline, and there is a memorial to the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks. The city has bounced back and now has more residents than in 2001. Until the pandemic, the economy was booming. 

But nothing is how it was in the US, large parts of the Middle East, and Afghanistan. The Taliban may be back, but when a terrorist attack recently killed some 170 Afghans and more than a dozen US soldiers during an evacuation operation at Kabul airport, it was the so-called “Islamic State” that claimed responsibility. That organization did not even exist 20 years ago when the “war on terror” began. Its emergence is closely linked to how the “war on terror” has been carried out.

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Background

‘Muslims were so demonized’: Mehdi Hasan, Zainab Johnson, Keith Ellison and more on 9/11’s aftermath

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Source: Guardian

Twenty years ago, 19 men flew commercial planes into New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington DC. A total of 2,977 people died and several thousand others were injured. The world watched as the United States was attacked on its own soil by hijackers with the singular mission of ending human life.

In addition to planes, the terrorists, who claimed to be acting in the name of Islam, hijacked the religion of more than 1.8 billion people.

Muslim Americans endured years of racism at best, and hate-filled violence at worst. Mainstream political pundits lambasted Islam and its followers. Many women permanently removed their hijabs in the hope of evading domestic terrorism at the hands of ignorant strangers. Muslim communities were subjected to government surveillance in their mosques, homes, schools and places of work.

Here, Muslim Americans in the arts, politics, healthcare, education and the media speak about life over the last two decades and the permanent repercussions of that single moment.

Read the full article (Guardian)

Background

Death Of An Afghan Icon: The Assassination Of Ahmad Shah Massoud

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Two days before 9/11, an Al-Qaeda suicide squad posing as journalists sat down for an interview with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the last major commander resisting the jihadist group’s Taliban allies in northern Afghanistan.

Before he could answer a question, they detonated explosives that investigators said later had been cunningly disguised in their camera equipment.

Twenty years on, Massoud’s assassination and the September 11 attacks on the United States are for many Afghans the twin cataclysms that started yet another era of uncertainty and bloodshed — and which continue to reverberate following the Taliban’s return.

Read full article (International Business Times)

A profile of Ahmad Shah Massoud can be found on Wikipedia.

Report

Tajikistan sends a signal; honors anti-Taliban stalwarts Ahmad Shah Massoud and Burhanuddin Rabbani

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Tajikistan, Afghanistan’s northern neighbor, has awarded its third-highest civilian award, posthumously, to two former anti-Taliban Afghan political figures belonging to the Tajik ethnic group – late legendary Mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud and former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani.

However, the timing of the award–when Massoud’s own son, Ahmad Massoud, and former Afghan vice-president Amrullah Saleh are putting a fierce resistance to the Taliban in Panjshir valley–seems a signal to the Taliban.

Read full article (South Asian Monitor)