Flight takes about 200, including Americans, out of Kabul

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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)

A new order begins under the Taliban’s governance

The phrases have tripped off the tongues of Taliban for quite some time.

“We’re working to establish an inclusive government that represents all the people of Afghanistan,” promised Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar when he recently arrived in Kabul to start talks aimed at forming a leadership to move the movement from guns to government.

“We would like to live peacefully,” vowed Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid at the first press conference in the capital after the Taliban suddenly swept into power on 15 August. “We don’t want any internal enemies and any external enemies.”

Judge them by their actions, not their words, has become the mantra of a fast-expanding league of Taliban watchers including Afghans, foreign governments, humanitarian chiefs and political pundits the world over.

But Afghans are watching most closely of all. They have to.

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Don’t recognise Taliban regime, resistance urges

Anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan have asked the international community not to recognise the new government announced by the Islamists on Tuesday.

The all-male cabinet consisting entirely of Taliban leaders or their associates is “illegal”, they said.

The US has expressed concern that the interim government includes figures linked to attacks on US forces.

And the EU said the Islamist group had reneged on promises to make it “inclusive and representative”.

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Chaos and confusion: The frenzied final hours of the Afghan government

The Taliban have announced a new government from Kabul, 20 years after they were driven from power.

For a generation that grew up with education, international investment and hope in a democratic future, reading that line must feel scarcely believable.

So how did the previous administration fall so quickly? The Taliban went from taking control of their first major city to arriving at the gates of Kabul in just 10 days.

Read full article (BBC)