Mastung a site of frequent deadly killing

This morning (Sunday) around 8.30am, I received a message from Syed Tauqeer Hussain Zaidi, a journalist stationed at D. I. Khan about an attack on security personnel, informing that at least three security personnel were martyred and 20 injured in a suicide attack near a Frontier Corps check post on Mastung Road near Quetta in Baluchistan province of Pakistan. 

Later, the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attack came in less than two weeks after three Levies personnel were martyred and as many injured when their vehicle hit a landmine in Ziarat district.

Situated at a distance of 54km southeast of Quetta, Mastung has been a frequent site of deadly bombings targeting civilians.

According to various reports, in July 2018, At least 128 people, including politician Nawabzada Siraj Raisani, were martyred and more than 200 injured in a deadly suicide blast in Mastung.

The militant Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack through its Amaq news agency. The attack is the deadliest since the 2014 carnage at Peshawar's Army Public School.

In May 2017, 28 people were killed and over 40 others injured in an explosion near a local seminary in Mastung, which targeted the convoy of then deputy chairman Senate Abdul Ghafoor Haideri.

In 2014, more than two dozen people were killed and several injured when a powerful explosion ripped through a bus carrying Shia pilgrims.

In 2012, 19 people were killed and 25 others injured after three passenger buses were struck by an explosion in Mastung's Dringarh area. A remotely-triggered bomb had hit a convoy of three buses and set one of them ablaze.

Kabul airport reopens

Ariana Afghan Airlines resumed some flights in Afghanistan between Kabul and three major provincial cities on Saturday, the carrier said, after a technical team from Qatar reopened the capital's airport for aid and domestic services.

Flights between Kabul and the western city of Herat, Mazar-i Sharif in northern Afghanistan and Kandahar in the south have started, the airline said in a statement.

"Ariana Afghan Airlines is proud to resume its domestic flights," it said.

Earlier, Qatar's ambassador to Afghanistan said a technical team was able to reopen Kabul airport to receive aid, according to Qatar's Al Jazeera news channel.

The airport's runway has been repaired in cooperation with authorities in Afghanistan, the ambassador said, according to Al Jazeera, in a further small step towards a return to relative normality after the turmoil of the past three weeks.

Reopening the airport, a vital lifeline with both the outside world and across Afghanistan's mountainous territory has been a high priority for the Taliban as they seek to restore order after their lightning seizure of Kabul on 15^th August 2021.

Kabul airport had been closed since the end of the massive US-led airlift of its citizens, other Western nationals and Afghans who helped Western countries. The end of that evacuation of tens of thousands of people marked the withdrawal of the last US forces from Afghanistan after 20 years of war.

Thousands of people wanting to leave Afghanistan, fearful of life under Taliban rule, were left behind when the evacuation operation ended at the end of August.

The Taliban, the West's adversary in the two-decade war that followed the 11^th September 2001 attacks on the United States, have promised safe passage for those wanting to leave.

 

Bennett urged to meet Abbas at the earliest

I am inclined to refer to an editorial of The Jerusalem Post. It says, “A strong Palestine Authority (PA) is in Israel’s interest, Bennett needs to keep that in mind.” The concluding line also resolves the mystery why Israeli Defense Minister, Benny Gantz met Mahmoud Abbas, President Palestine Authority (PA) in Ramallah recently.

The newspaper writes, “The signals from Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that he has no plans to meet Abbas do not augur well. It is in Israel’s strategic interest that Bennett put politics aside and invite Abbas for talks as soon as possible, not only to establish a high-level dialogue to discuss issues of bilateral interest and provide hope for future peace negotiations but also – if necessary – to stand together to prevent war and violence.”

Bennett’s spokesman dismissed reports on Wednesday that the prime minister would attend a summit in Cairo with Abbas, Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah.

The London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat had reported that Bennett had been “disinvited” from what would have been a quadrilateral meeting in Egypt. The spokesman clarified that while Bennett is scheduled to travel soon to Cairo to meet Sisi, no date has been set yet for the meeting.

Abbas traveled to Cairo on Wednesday for the trilateral meeting with Sisi and King Abdullah. Palestinian official Azzam al-Ahmed said that the three Arab leaders would discuss coordinated positions ahead of Abbas’s address to the UN General Assembly later this month.

Contacts were also under way to hold an Arab summit to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he added.

The Cairo summit took place days after Defense Minister Benny Gantz met Abbas in Ramallah. It was the first high-level meeting between the sides in close to a decade, and Gantz promised that Israel would make a series of goodwill gestures to the PA, including a NIS 500 million loan.

The summit also came a week after Bennett had his first meeting with President Joe Biden in Washington, where he made clear that he had no intention of meeting with Abbas or engaging in peace negotiations on a future Palestinian state.

“There is no diplomatic process with the Palestinians, nor will there be one,” a source close to Bennett insisted after the Abbas-Gantz meeting, for which he had to give his approval.

This statement is unwise and offensive to the ears of the US and the international community. Why would an Israeli prime minister oppose a diplomatic process with the Palestinians?

Bennett does not have to support a Palestinian state, but there are other important issues to address for the sake of both Israelis and Palestinians.

For example, what if Hamas decides to launch a new war from Gaza? Shouldn’t the Israeli and Palestinian leaders establish a direct channel of communications, and join forces against any aggression that threatens people of these countries, peace and stability?

What if Hamas were to make a move to establish control over the West Bank, or to once again fan the flames of violence and unrest inside Israel or the West Bank, as it did in May during the last IDF operation in the Gaza Strip?

Wouldn’t it be beneficial for Israel’s prime minister to be able to talk directly to the leader of the Palestinian Authority?

The US has been the main broker for past Israeli-Palestinian talks, the last round of which came in 2014. But so far Biden has not shown any interest in kick-starting a new process.

In a Zoom talk to the Nizami Ganjavi International Center on Tuesday, PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh declared “Washington does not have a peace initiative at all.”

The new Israeli government, he said, “has no political platform and no initiative to end the conflict with us. It seems to me that all it cares for is to maintain the status quo, and all of us know that the status quo is unsustainable,” adding that this “political vacuum… is very dangerous.”

Shtayyeh concluded that the vacuum “needs to be filled with some initiative. The US does not have an initiative, Europe does not have an initiative, the Israelis have no idea how to end the conflict with us… and Arab countries are going in a totally different direction.”

Unfortunately, Shtayyeh is right. We urge the prime minister to pick up the phone and schedule a meeting with Abbas at his earliest convenience.

Escalating tension between Algeria and Morocco

On 24th August 2021, Algeria broke off its already minimal bilateral relations with Morocco, declaring this was due to the kingdom’s “hostile actions” and accusing it of involvement in the wildfires that struck the Kabylia region earlier that month. 

The heightened tension between the two countries brings into focus regional uncertainty and may spell the end of their limited collaboration in the energy sector.

The two countries have a long history of tense relations, behind which lie issues of political ideology, border demarcation, and competition for regional influence. Morocco and Algeria fought a short border war after the latter’s independence from France in the fall of 1963, and Algeria has long supported the Polisario Front in its struggle against Morocco for control of the Western Sahara.

The land border between the two countries has officially been closed since 1994; a decision Algeria made unilaterally following Moroccan accusations that the Algerian military was behind a terrorist attack in Marrakesh in 1994. The Moroccan leadership, including King Mohammed VI, has repeatedly called for re-opening the border, something Algerian leaders have consistently rejected. Still, the two countries have managed to find limited avenues for cooperation around a gas pipeline that transports Algerian gas through Morocco and on to Spain and other European markets, although the future of this arrangement is now in doubt.

Lately, tensions between Algeria and Morocco reached a level unseen in past, though an all-out military confrontation remains unlikely. Both governments have increased their military presence along the border, and while the prospects of armed conflict remain low, the growing tension provides each enough fodder to distract from more serious domestic issues. Indeed, the biggest challenge for Algeria’s military leadership has remained how to convince an inwardly focused population that Morocco is a greater threat to their well-being than internal economic, political, and security challenges.

The Algerian military and ruling elite’s dislike and suspicion of Morocco runs deep and goes back to the border conflict of the 1960s and Cold War-era ideological tensions. Old Algerian fears of Rabat’s designs for a “Greater Morocco” are no longer realistic — if they ever were — but nonetheless hawkish views of Morocco and concerns over its expansionist plans persist among Algeria’s military top brass. Morocco’s growing ambitions to increase its regional political and economic influence therefore remain alarming to some in Algeria’s military.

Recent domestic, regional, and global events have added to this ongoing suspicion and tension between the two neighbors. The US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara dealt a blow to Algerian efforts to keep Morocco isolated on the issue. Although the conflict is by no means resolved, US recognition is a major win for Morocco — and therefore, in this zero-sum game, a loss for the Polisario.

Algeria is also extremely wary of growing Moroccan-Israeli cooperation. The two countries normalized relations as part of the deal struck with the Trump administration that granted Morocco US recognition over its Western Sahara claims. Algeria remains a staunch ideological supporter of the Palestinian cause, and was extremely critical of Morocco’s decision to normalize relations.

Adding to Algeria’s outrage, Morocco’s alleged involvement in the Pegasus spyware scandal prompted condemnations and accusations of spying on Algerian officials and top military brass. Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra’s fiery back and forth with Morocco’s ambassador to the UN, Omar Hilal, in July regarding the Western Sahara further amplified tensions. In response to Lamamra’s reaffirmation of Algeria’s support for self-determination, Hilal, as he has provocatively done before, called on Algeria to adopt the same support for self-determination for its own long-restive Kabylia region.

Despite their sharp jabs against Algeria, the Moroccan leadership blames Algeria for the escalation and interprets it as a way for the Algerian leadership to save face while shunning King Mohammed VI’s recent calls for the reopening of the border and improved relations.

In August, as wildfires swept through the Kabylia region, Morocco offered Algeria two of its firefighting Canadair aircraft. Algeria, despite having no firefighting fleet of its own, rejected the offer.

As tensions escalate, one of the key uncertainties with broader implications is the future of the Maghreb-Europe Gas (MEG) pipeline that began operations in November 1996 to export gas to the Spanish and Portuguese markets. The pipeline crosses through Morocco and in return Morocco receives 7% of the gas transported, which it uses for domestic consumption. The agreement has weathered previous diplomatic crises. However, this time, its future is more uncertain.

In addition to the MEG pipeline, Algeria also currently exports through Medgaz, an underwater pipeline that bypasses Morocco and is under expansion to handle higher flows. MEG pushes through 13.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Algerian gas yearly, while Medgaz has capacity for 8 bcm a year. Medgaz has announced plans to boost its export capacity to 10 bcm a year, but the expansion will not be operational until the end of the year at the earliest. The MEG transit agreement between the two states is up for renewal in October.

For Morocco, if the deal falls through, this would deprive it of a key source of energy. Gas accounts for 10% of its domestic energy consumption, and the loss of access to Algerian gas would particularly impact two power plants located in northern Morocco — south of Tangier and south of Jerrada respectively — both of which rely on imported gas.

Over the past couple of years, with the pipeline agreement coming up for renewal, Morocco has signaled its intention to strike a more advantageous deal with Algeria, bolstered by the fact that the full ownership of the pipeline will pass from the Spanish company Naturgy to the Moroccan government as of 1st November 2021. Morocco wants to boost its own access to gas as an important energy source, despite ongoing domestic efforts to diversify its energy mix and increase the share of renewables.

If the two countries fail to reach an agreement, Morocco could face energy shortages that it might struggle to make up in the short to medium term, while Algeria would deprive itself of an important income source. For their part, Spain and Portugal would likewise have to make up energy shortages from a different supplier. If Morocco and Algeria take a hard-nosed approach, Algeria could deprive Morocco of a key bargaining chip, but it would be at the expense of its own domestic economic considerations.

Algeria cannot afford to lose this access, particularly considering the crippling economic losses the country has faced in recent years. Although Morocco has promised to keep the pipeline open, it could risk being seen as blocking access to gas for European markets. Coming on top of its recent woes with European partners over migration, spying allegations, the Western Sahara, and the upcoming European ruling on the fisheries agreement, this could seriously damage Morocco’s ties with the EU.

As the three partners — Algeria, Morocco, and Spain — continue negotiations on this agreement that they all need, geopolitical considerations are not to be overlooked. Algeria is growing more anxious to reassert itself as a regional power following two years of turmoil at home and a longer-standing retrenchment from regional affairs.

Cutting ties with Morocco, even at the risk of potentially jeopardizing its critical energy exports, is about drawing a line in the sand, a total unwillingness to allow Morocco any leverage, as well as an effort to draw the attention of domestic audiences away from problems at home and rally against an external enemy.

For Morocco, these old conflicts and tensions that it wishes to leave behind create a challenge to its domestic and foreign ambitions. They stand as a reminder that the country is vulnerable, and that its regional and local stability are not to be taken for granted — something Algeria is keen to emphasize as it seeks to restore its wider regional role.

 

Baradar to lead new Afghan government

According to Reuters report, Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is likely to lead a new Afghan government. One of the primary concerns is; can Taliban govern a country facing economic meltdown, a humanitarian disaster and threats to security and stability from rival groups.

Baradar, who heads the Taliban's political office, will be joined by Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of late Taliban co-founder Mullah Omar, and Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, in senior positions in the government.

"All the top leaders have arrived in Kabul, where preparations are in final stages to announce the new government," a Taliban official told Reuters.

Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban's supreme religious leader, will focus on religious matters and governance within the framework of Islam, another Taliban source said.

Taliban seizing Kabul on 15th August, after sweeping across most of the country, have faced resistance in the Panjshir Valley, where there have been reports of heavy fighting and casualties.

Several thousand fighters of regional militias and remnants of the government's armed forces have massed in the rugged valley under the leadership of Ahmad Massoud, son of former Mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud.

While Taliban have spoken of their desire to form a consensus government, there are forecast that the interim government would be formed solely by Taliban members.

It would comprise 25 ministries, with a consultative council, or shura, of 12 Muslim scholars, the source added.

Also being planned within six to eight months is a loya jirga, or grand assembly, bringing together elders and representatives across Afghan society to discuss a constitution and the structure of the future government, the source said.

Western powers say they are prepared to engage with the Taliban and send humanitarian aid, but that formal recognition of the government and broader economic assistance will depend on action - not just promises - to safeguard human rights.

The United States, European Union and others have cast doubt on the movement's assurances. Many Afghans, especially women and those with connections to the former government or Western coalition forces, now fear for their security and even lives.

The European Union is ready to engage with Taliban but the Islamist group must respect human rights, including those of women, and not let Afghanistan again become a base for terrorism, the EU foreign policy chief said on Friday.

The US administration has no plans to release billions in Afghan gold, investments and foreign currency reserves parked in the United States that it froze after the Taliban's takeover.

Who is providing arsenal to National Resistance Front?

After weeks of fruitless negotiations between Taliban’s political leadership and senior leaders of National Resistance Front in Panjshir, Taliban launched a multi-pronged attack on Panjshir Valley beginning 31st August 2021. 

Taliban began assault on Panjshir immediately after the US military pulled out of Kabul airport and ended efforts to evacuate American citizens and Afghan allies.

According to conventional media reports, National Resistance Front has mostly successfully warded off Taliban by virtue of easily defending positions in the mountainous region, inflicting heavy casualties on Taliban.

Prior to Taliban incursions, the nascent resistance claimed it controlled four districts in Baghlan and Parwan provinces outside of the Panjshir Valley. These districts provided a cushion for the anti-Taliban militia to gather Afghan security forces who did not surrender to Taliban.

However, Taliban recaptured the crucial district of Dih Saleh in eastern Baghlan province, which granted the group access to the Khawak Pass that leads into the heart of Panjshir. Along with Khawak, Taliban sent militants to the southern gate of the Panjshir Valley at the town of Gulbahar, and Anjuman, a critical pass in the north in Badakhshan province. Despite its numerical superiority, Taliban was not able to break the defensive lines of the resistance forces. 

In the south, Taliban massed forces in the district of Jabul-Saraj in Parwan in hopes of overrunning the National Resistance Front’s defenses in Gulbahar. Intense fighting waged for two days, as reports emerged of Taliban militants advancing past the initial defensive positions into Shotul district in Panjshir. On social media, pro-Taliban accounts continued circulating videos claiming that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s forces had taken control of Shotul. However, neither Taliban officials nor their more credible social media supporters have posted similar information, indicating that the claims are false. The Taliban does appear to have controlled the pass for a period of time.

The reports indicate that the NRF was able to expel the Taliban from Shotul as fighting continued further south near Gulbahar. National Resistance Front spokesman Fahim Dashty corroborated those reports, stating “the Taliban has spread rumors that they have entered parts of Panjshir. These are psychological operation (PsyOp) and propaganda. We assure full control over all the entrances of Panjshir. [The] Taliban have made multiple attempts to enter Shotul from Jabul-Saraj, and failed each time.” 

On the western border of Panjshir, Taliban used the Khawak Pass to probe the NRF’s defenses. According to National Resistance Front officials, the initial attack was repelled easily, but Taliban continued sending forces. Pro Taliban sources posted videos of Taliban vehicles and soldiers climbing the Khawak Pass to enter the Panjshir Valley in order to divide the resistance forces down the middle and overwhelm the weakened units. While the numbers could not be independently confirmed, pro-resistance reporters noted that 40 Taliban fighters were killed within the first 24 hours of fighting near the pass. Additionally, video from an ambush site in the Khawak Pass has gone viral, depicting resistance commandos decimating Taliban fighters on the road below.

That video gave credence to the resistance claim of staving off the Taliban assault in the Khawak Pass, as the terrain granted a sizable advantage to the defenders of the valley. The most recent reports suggested that pro-resistance fighters from Andarab have retaken the Khawak Pass, halting further Taliban incursions, although that information could not be independently verified. 

In the northeast, the Taliban also attempted to enter the Panjshir Valley through the Anjuman Pass near Badakhshan. Given the lack of reporting on clashes in the northeast, it is likely that this was not a main line of effort for the Taliban and that the resistance forces were able to easily defend the pass from the assault. A former Afghan National Army commando reported that the Anjuman Pass is heavily guarded by elite units who have inflicted heavy casualties on any Taliban fighters who attempted to enter the valley.  

Furthermore, reports emerged of Taliban employing Al Qaeda and foreign fighters to attack in Panjshir. Originally, that claim was propagated by Massoud’s forces in Panjshir. However, videos surfaced of militants speaking Arabic and Persian – among other languages on their way to the Khawak Pass in Baghlan. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the successful NRF ambush at Khawak, militia leaders are claiming that they eliminated both Taliban and Al Qaeda units.

While the Taliban do have advantages in both manpower and firepower, Panjshir’s terrain provides the National Resistance Front with easily defendable positions, enabling the resistance to continue to withstand the Taliban onslaught. As a result, the National Resistance Front has thus far been successful in maintaining the territorial integrity of Panjshir and resisting incursions by the Taliban.

As fighting continues, the lack of declarations of victory by the Taliban and its supporters on social media would indicate that the resistance has the upper hand, at least temporarily.  

A tribute to Angela Merkel of Germany

Angela Merkel will leave office as one of modern Germany’s longest-serving leaders and a global heavyweight diplomatic. She leaves behind a legacy defined by her management of a succession of crises that shook a fragile Europe rather than any grand visions for her own country.

In 16 years at the helm of Europe’s biggest economy, Merkel did end military conscription, set Germany on course for a future without nuclear and fossil-fueled power, enabled the legalization of same-sex marriage and introduced a national minimum wage and benefits encouraging fathers to look after young children, among other things.

But a senior ally recently summed up what many view as her main service as an anchor of stability in stormy times. He told Merkel: “You protected our country well.”

“All the major crossroads you had to navigate ... we never mapped out in any election program — they came overnight and you had to govern well,” Bavarian governor Markus Soeder said.

Merkel passed her first test in 2008, pledging at the height of the global financial crisis that Germans’ savings were safe. Over the following years, she was a leading figure in the effort to save the euro currency from the debt crisis that engulfed several members, agreeing to bailouts but insisting on painful spending cuts.

In 2015, Merkel was the face of a welcoming approach to migrants as people fleeing conflicts in Syria and elsewhere trekked across the Balkans. She allowed in hundreds of thousands and insisted that “we will manage” the influx, but ran into resistance both at home and among European partners.

And in the twilight of her career — she announced in 2018 that she wouldn’t seek a fifth term — she led a COVID-19 response that saw Germany fare better than some of its peers.

On the international stage, Merkel insisted on seeking compromises and pursuing a multilateral approach to the world’s problems through years of turbulence that saw the U.S. drift apart from European allies under President Donald Trump and Britain leave the European Union.

“I think Ms. Merkel’s most important legacy is simply that, in such a time of worldwide crises, she provided for stability,” said Ralph Bollmann, a biographer of Merkel and a journalist with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper.

There was “a constant succession of crises that were really existential threats and raised questions over the world order we are used to, and her achievement is that she led Germany, Europe and perhaps to some extent the world fairly safely through that, for all that you can criticize details,” Bollmann said.

Before winning the top job in 2005, he noted, Merkel campaigned as “a chancellor of change, who wanted to make Germany more modern,” seeking deeper economic reforms and a more socially liberal approach than her center-right party had previously taken.

But she ditched much of her economic agenda after almost blowing a huge poll lead by turning off voters with talk of far-reaching reforms, instead embracing what she called an approach of “many small steps.” Along with a pragmatic willingness to jettison conservative orthodoxy such as conscription when opportune, it enabled her to dominate the center ground of German politics.

Crises consumed so much energy that “not much time was left to deal with other issues,” Bollmann said. There is plenty of unfinished business: Merkel has conceded that “the lack of digitization in our society” is a problem, ranging from notoriously patchy cell phone reception to many health offices using faxes to transmit data during the pandemic.

Merkel’s political longevity is already historic. Among democratic Germany’s post-World War II leaders, she lags only Helmut Kohl, who led the country to reunification during his 1982-98 tenure. She could overtake even him if she is still in office on Dec. 17. That’s feasible if parties are slow to form a new government after the Sept. 26 election.

Merkel, 67, insists that others must judge her record. Still, she highlighted a few achievements at a rare campaign appearance last month, starting with the reduction of the number of unemployed in Germany from over 5 million in 2005 to under 2.6 million now.

Predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, whose welfare-state trims and economic reforms were beginning to kick in when he left office, arguably deserves part of the credit.

Merkel also inherited a plan to exit nuclear power from Schroeder, but abruptly accelerated it following the meltdowns at Japan’s Fukushima plant in 2011. More recently, she set in motion Germany’s exit from coal-fueled power.

The chancellor pointed to progress on renewable energy, saying its share of the German energy mix has risen from 10% to well over 40%. Merkel was often referred to as the “climate chancellor” in her early years, but also has drawn criticism for moving too slowly; her government this year moved forward the date for reducing German greenhouse gas emissions to “net zero” to 2045, after the country’s top court ruled that previous plans place too much of the burden on young people.

Merkel praised her government’s drive to improve Germany’s public finances, which enabled it to stop running up new debt from 2014 until the coronavirus pandemic pushed it into huge rescue packages. Opponents argue that it skimped on necessary investments in infrastructure.

“I could talk about how we saved the euro,” she said, adding that “our principle of combining the affected countries’ own responsibility with solidarity was exactly the right method to give the euro a future.” Merkel’s austerity-heavy approach was resented deeply in parts of Europe and controversial among economists, but allowed her to overcome reluctance at home to bail out strugglers.

Whatever the ultimate verdict, Merkel can celebrate a unique end to her tenure; she is set to become the first German chancellor to leave power when she chooses.