Afghanistan needs a sustainable government

Pakistan has just played host to the biggest international gathering on Afghanistan in which Iran actively participated and submitted a number of proposals to address the dire situation in neighboring Afghanistan.

On Sunday, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation held an extraordinary session on Afghanistan at the request of Saudi Arabia. The meeting of the OIC council of foreign ministers was held in Islamabad, Pakistan with the participation of Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian. 

The session was the latest effort by Pakistan to put the limelight on the dire situation of Afghanistan amid growing international apathy toward the war-torn country. Since the rise of the Taliban a few months ago, Afghanistan has turned into a pariah state with no legitimate and internationally recognized government.

In August, the Taliban overthrew the US-backed government in Kabul and assumed power. But it is yet to be recognized by any country. Since then, some of Afghanistan’s neighbors, including Iran, have tried to help the Afghan people while encouraging the Taliban into forming a broad-based government representing all Afghan ethnoreligious groups. The Taliban has announced a caretaker government that raised alarm bells across the globe for excluding women and ethnic groups. 

The Taliban’s acting foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, was in attendance at the OIC meeting but he was excluded from the family photo of the 17th Extraordinary Session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers given the fact that none of the OIC member states has recognized the Taliban-led government. 

With the Taliban government continuing to be unrecognized, the international community has faced difficulty providing humanitarian aid to the Afghan people who are grappling with economic hardships during a frosty winter. 

Iran and some other countries have sent many planeloads of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. But some countries are concerned about and unwilling to directly provide aid to Kabul. This was addressed during the OIC meeting which pledged to set up a humanitarian trust fund for Afghanistan.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmoud Qureshi also pointed to this issue. He said many want to make donations, but they don't want to donate directly, they want a certain mechanism that will comfort them.

Commenting on the OIC-proposed mechanism, Qureshi said that the mechanism has been established, and donations will be made. 

Prime Minister Imran Khan also highlighted the dire situation in Afghanistan. “Unless action is taken immediately, Afghanistan is heading for chaos,” he said, adding, “Any government when it can’t pay its salaries for its public servants, hospitals, doctors, nurses, any government is going to collapse but chaos suits no one, it certainly does not suit the United States.”

Pakistan seems to believe that the non-recognition of the Taliban’s government would further exacerbate the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. But the Taliban also failed to meet the requirements of the international community in regard to the formation of an inclusive government. 

Iran sought to help the Taliban in this regard by presenting a four-point proposal that seems to be devised to pave the way for recognition of the Taliban by the international community. 

In his speech at the OIC meeting, Amir Abdollahian unveiled Iran’s proposal that he said was made in support of the people of Afghanistan.

“First, Muslim states should encourage the ruling establishment in Afghanistan and all parties to form an inclusive government. Second, the people of Afghanistan are in dire need of urgent humanitarian assistance. The formation of a financial fund among the Muslim states seems necessary to realize this objective,” Amir Abdollahian said. 

He added, “Third, it is also necessary to release Afghanistan’s assets. Fourth, undoubtedly, the UN member states and its Secretary General can play a leading role in contributing to the formation of an inclusive government and assisting the people of Afghanistan and prevent a new humanitarian catastrophe.”

The Iranian foreign minister also expressed hope that an inclusive government will soon be formed in Afghanistan with the participation of all Afghan ethnic groups so that its representative will be able to attend the next OIC conference and Afghanistan’s seat won’t be vacant.  

Amir Abdollahian reiterated Iran’s position during a meeting with Imran Khan. He pointed out that the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to cooperate with Afghanistan's neighbors, regional countries and the UN to facilitate the establishment of a broad-based government in Afghanistan by Afghans themselves. Amir Abdollahian also spoke of bilateral issues between Iran and Pakistan, especially the issue of border cooperation.

 

Iran’s growing trade with ECO member countries

Iran’s trade with the members of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) exceeded US$10.447 billion in the first eight months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-November 22) to register a 44% increase year on year (YoY), the spokesman of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA) said.

According to Ruhollah Latifi, the volume of trade with the mentioned countries also increased by 34 percent in comparison to the previous year’s same eight months, IRNA reported.

As reported, during the mentioned period Iran traded over 21,778,387 tons of commodities worth US$10.447 billion with ECO member countries including Turkey, Afghanistan, the Republic of Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Iran exported 18.631 million tons of commodities worth over US$6.823 billion to the said nations in the mentioned period.

He said major export destinations of the Iranian goods in the said union were Turkey with about US$3.767 billion of imports, Afghanistan with US$1.27 billion, Pakistan with US$764.389 million, and Azerbaijan with US$335.843 million.

As reported, the Islamic Republic’s export to ECO members increased by 46% and 54% as compared to the figures for the previous year in terms of weight and value, respectively.

Meanwhile, the country imported 3,147,332 tons of goods valued at over US$3.623 billion from the ECO member countries, with Turkey, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan being the top sources of imported goods.

The value of Iranian imports from the ECO union also increased by 28% as compared to the previous year’s same time span, the official said.

According to Latifi, more than 23.723 million tons of goods worth US$11.71 billion were traded between Iran and the ECO member countries during the previous Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20), of which the share of exports was 18.419 million tons of goods worth US$6.890 billion and the share of imports from these countries was 5.312 million tons worth US$4.819 billion.

The value of Iran’s non-oil trade during the first eight months of the current year stood at about US$33 billion, Latifi had previously announced.

The Economic Cooperation Organization or ECO is an Asian political and economic intergovernmental organization that was founded in 1985 in Tehran by the leaders of Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey.

 

Creation of Bangladesh: Javed Jabbar presents another perspective

The first screening of Javed Jabbar’s documentary, ‘Separation of East Pakistan — The Untold Story’ at the Cinepax Packages Mall left the audience amazed at the ways how history had been manipulated against Pakistan, purposefully creating issues between Bangladesh and Pakistan to ensure continued regional unrest.

In the documentary, experts and intellectual leaders address the false information and share little-known facts about 1971. The documentary claims how the plight and insecurities of the vulnerable people of the then East Pakistan were misused by the international community to promote a separatist movement when they, including Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, did not necessarily want an independent nation.

It poses the question how it is even possible that those who created Pakistan would want to break it. The documentary unfolds the reality and full extent of India’s involvement in the region, which is not limited to 1971 but, actually started years before.

Most importantly, it clarifies the fake news spread by those against Pakistan of the number of people killed and raped and clears the misnomers of the supposed, non-violent movement. The documentary also outlines the misjudgments made by those in power at the time, which created conducive environment for regional powers to play politics and break up a nation.

The documentary is an important step to clarify what really happened, to move towards improving relationships between Bangladesh and Pakistan. It is a time we told the true story so that we can build stronger ties with our Muslim brothers.

Speaking on the occasion, former Senator and Federal Information Minister Javed Jabbar said that 1971 was the source of an enduring pain and melancholy. Throwing light on the documentary, he said he had found many well-written books and vast amount of literature on 1971 tragedy but could not find even a single documentary on the subject that’s why this documentary was produced. He held in high esteem the team behind the documentary, especially the producer Iram Shahid.

Jabbar said the documentary would be dubbed into Urdu for making it understandable for more people. The documentary also featured interviews of eminent scholars who all had endorsed its edited version, he said and added that making of the documentary would not have been possible without the military-civil cooperation for the archival material. The documentary screenings would also be held in Islamabad and Karachi.

 

Macron leading the charge against Biden

Lately, French President, Emmanuel Macron said he would rather work with the International Olympic Committee to protect athletes all over the world rather than participate in symbolic boycotts of the China games. “We must not politicize the Olympics,” said Macron.

“I prefer to do things that have a positive impact on the international stage, as I do with everything else.”

The United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom are among the Western countries that have announced that they will not send officials to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in order to send a message to China about its human rights record.

Foreign Affairs Ministers of European Union (EU) were scheduled to meet in Brussels to discuss the issue, but they were not likely to agree to follow the US stance.

“We’re not rushing into it,” said one EU diplomat.

“I don’t think people are rushing to support the US position.”

China said it was unconcerned about a ‘domino effect’ of diplomatic boycotts after Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada joined the United States in refusing to send officials to the Olympics.

Because of China’s atrocities in the western region of Xinjiang, the United States was the first to announce a boycott, say that its government officials would not attend the February 4-20 Games next year.

“I don’t see any need to be concerned about any domino effect,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said during a daily press conference when asked about the possibility of more boycotts.

“On the contrary, the Beijing Winter Olympics have received widespread support from around the world.”

The US and its allies’ diplomatic boycotts come after a sharp deterioration in relations between Beijing and Washington, which began under former US President Donald Trump.

The administration of US President Joe Biden has continued to put pressure on China on a number of issues, including human rights and China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea.

Wang noted that the United Nations on December 02, 2020 adopted a resolution calling for an ‘Olympic Truce’ during the Beijing Games, which was co-sponsored by more than 170 of the 193 member states.

According to him, quite a few foreign leaders and members of royal families had signed up to attend.

Joe Biden is here to stay

Joe Biden, President of United States is sticking with his White House team despite lagging poll numbers that have contributed to rising Democratic worries about the party's prospects in next year’s midterm elections.  

Biden’s core team has remained largely intact, and there are few signs of a looming shake-up. The White House and its allies have also signaled they see little reason to make changes.

“I don’t think the problem is staffing,” said Jim Kessler, Executive Vice President for Policy at Democratic think tank Third Way.

“I don’t think there’s any need to make staffing changes,” added Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist and Director of Hunter College’s Public Policy Program.

The end of Biden’s first year in office has been difficult, with the key item in his legislative agenda stuck in the Senate largely because of an impasse with Sen. Joe Manchin.

The White House is also dealing with a nagging pandemic as COVID-19 case rise and the omicron variant threatens to create a new wave of the virus in the United States. The pandemic has also fed Biden’s economic problems, from inflation to supply chain crisis that has frustrated businesses and consumers.

These are all real challenges but are not symptoms of a staffing problem. They pointed instead to the deep polarization in Congress and a pessimistic electorate that is tired of the pandemic and related economic issues.

Smikle said the 50-50 Senate equally divided between Democrats and Republicans is the reason for Biden’s difficulties legislatively and that staffing would not make much of a difference.

“The challenges with the legislation are less about his own administration and more about the political landscape in the Senate and the small majority there as well as the broader polarization within Congress,” he said.

Kessler said that while the White House is hearing a lot of criticism on its messaging, Biden’s problems aren’t that unusual.

“Democrats have historically had a hard time crowing about good economic news when they’re in charge because there is a belief that if people think the economy is good then they don’t need democratic programs,” he said.

“Meanwhile, Republicans are saying the economy is bad because they want to take power. Democrats need to take a page from Ronald Reagan and be talking about the positives in this economy.”

Sources pointed to Biden’s history as a loyal boss who enjoys a tight-knit inner circle of aides he has known for years, including White House chief of staff Ron Klain, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and senior advisers Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon.

Asked about Biden’s legislative team, Sen. Chris Coons, a Biden ally, said they “do a great job.” “I like them personally, I respect them professionally and I think they’re doing a really good job of managing some really tough dynamics,” Coons said. “Our Framers intended the executive and legislative branches to have different priorities and to have a contest of ideas. There are 635 of us over here. It’s not easy. Given that, they do about as good a job as they could.” 

Former President Trump presided over unprecedented turnover among White House staff and across his administration. He was prone to firing and replacing high-level officials, cycling through multiple chiefs of staff, press secretaries and national security advisers in his first year, which led to further dysfunction. 

Vice President Harris’s office has also seen staff churn during her first year, which has contributed to a perception of dysfunction within her operation.

Roberta Jacobson, who was tapped to oversee issues surrounding the US-Mexico border, left in April after a brief stint in what she said was a planned departure. Tyler Moran, a senior adviser on migration, is set to leave in January after spending roughly six months in the administration.

Andy Slavitt departed the White House coronavirus response team in June as previously planned, and Anita Dunn, who held a senior role in the communications team, also made a planned exit over the summer.

Biden’s first Staff Secretary left in October and the Director of the Presidential Personnel Office left last week for the top job at UNICEF. A handful of lower-level communications aides have also departed. None of the departures so far have been attributed to a deliberate effort by Biden to shake up his staff. 

There are Democrats who look at the poll numbers and privately question why Biden hasn’t taken a closer look at replacing some aides around him. 

"Voters have had enough and the Biden team keeps doubling down," said one Democratic strategist, pointing to the President's low approval ratings. "Begs the question, when does Biden stop listening to a team that has tanked his presidency in less than 12 months?"

A strategist said the New Year would be an ideal time for a transition.  “As they approach year two of the presidency, it might be a good time to change things up and bring in fresh perspectives in order to help with some of the unplanned challenges that have come up in the last part of the year,” the strategist said. “Phase two happens in every administration, and it's a way they could pivot from the past few months."

Others dismissed such suggestions. One person familiar with Biden World’s thinking said it was best to “do the opposite” of what anonymous strategists were suggesting. 

“Biden has surrounded himself with people he’s worked with for decades,” said Chris Whipple, author of “The Gatekeepers,” a book about White House chiefs of staff. “That lends real stability when you’ve got people like that.”

The messy withdrawal from Afghanistan prompted questions about whether Biden would fire one of his advisers, and there were rumblings that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was on rocky footing. But Biden ultimately did not make changes, a signal that the withdrawal was his decision and he would own it.

“I’d say it’s remarkable that in the wake of Afghanistan there were no changes at all,” said Bill Galston, Chairman of the Brookings Institution’s Government Studies Program. “That may reflect the fact that almost everything that happened was driven from the president down and not the staff up.” “What’s he going to do, fire himself?” he added.

Still, some departures could be on the horizon. White House press secretary Jen Psaki has said she expects to leave her post next year, though she hasn’t laid out a timeline. 

Others may serve out their positions until at least the midterm elections. 

“You try to get the administration through the midterms, make sure their agenda, which in the first two years would be the most ambitious, you try to get that pushed through, especially when you have the House and the Senate as allies,” Smikle said.

 

US and EU support for Taiwan deepens ideological fault line

The global ideological fault line running between mainland China and Taiwan deepened in recent weeks owing to support for the self-governing island in Washington and Europe. 

US President Joe Biden’s plan for a Summit for Democracy, announced shortly before he took office, looked certain to become a thorn in Beijing’s side. 

The announcement was one of the first signals that he would keep hard-line policies against Beijing introduced by the administration of his predecessor Donald Trump.

Soon after, Washington suffered setbacks at home and abroad that allowed Beijing to treat the summit more as farce than threat.

Just two weeks before Biden took office, Trump’s supporters ransacked the US Capitol building, incited by a fiery speech from the then-president which was full of unsubstantiated claims about election fraud that few in his Republican Party have disavowed.

The fall of Kabul to the Taliban in Afghanistan in August as well as humanitarian crises in countries including Lebanon, Ethiopia and Sudan further underscored Washington’s uphill battle against what the US Secretary of State has called the world’s “democratic recession”.

However, news that Taipei would be at the virtual summit table crossed a red line that raised the stakes for Biden’s event. The move enraged Beijing after a long-awaited summit between Biden and his counterpart Xi Jinping that appeared to have at least stabilized a bilateral relationship strained by a trade war, export restrictions and defence posturing in the South and East China Sea.

The online gathering of more than 100 heads of state, which pointedly excluded China and Russia, was billed as an allied effort to counter the rise of authoritarians and convened at a time when Beijing was dispatching record numbers of military jets to Taiwan’s airspace and a build-up of Russian troops on the country’s border with Ukraine.

While criticizing Biden’s summit, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi promised to work with Iran, another country not invited to the forum, “to oppose any unilateralism and bullying acts, and uphold the principle of non-interference in internal affairs”.

Washington isn’t the only Western country expressing such explicit support for Taipei. Lithuania’s decision to host the first de facto Taiwanese embassy in Europe to bear the name “Taiwan” has also deepened the ideological rift between Beijing and the West.

Investigating reports of an embargo on Lithuania’s exports to and imports from China, apparently as a result of the representative office’s name, the European Union confirmed that it was looking into the accusations and warned that Lithuania’s relationship with China “has an impact on overall EU-China relations”.

Digging in, Beijing rejected a request by the EU to discuss the alleged trade block on Lithuanian firms, claiming it is too preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic.

Days later, Vilnius pulled its Beijing embassy staff from the country and, almost simultaneously, Xi pledged to support efforts by Lithuania’s historical rival Russia to protect its long-term security amid rising international pressure over Moscow’s attitude to Ukraine.

Xi made the pledge in a video call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, where the Chinese leader also said China and Russia opposed attempts to divide the two nations and called for more joint actions to safeguard their security interests.

As if to underscore the growing divide between the democratic world that Biden is trying to solidify into a more determined and closely aligned bloc and nations on Beijing’s side, Xi said “China and Russia are both major nations with global influence”.

United States drops over 100,000 bombs across Syria

I am shocked to read a revelation by The New York Times (NYT) that a top secret US cell known as Talon Anvil sidestepped safeguards and repeatedly ordered airstrikes that killed an untold number of civilians in Syria under the guise of targeting ISIS fighters.

According to the report published on 12 December, the shadowy group operated from anonymous rooms “cluttered with flat screens” in three shifts around the clock between 2014 and 2019.

Among US officials, Talon Anvil was known to disregard safeguard procedures to function at the “speed of war,” and obscured a countless number of civilian deaths including farmers trying to harvest, children in the street, families fleeing fighting, and villagers taking shelter in buildings.

The NYT report also claims that Talon Anvil played an “outsize role” in the dropping of over 100,000 bombs in the war-torn country.

“They were ruthlessly efficient and good at their jobs … but they also made a lot of bad strikes,” a former Air Force intelligence officer who worked on hundreds of classified Talon Anvil missions told the NYT.

Among the many bombing campaigns that Talon Anvil was responsible for is the 2019 airstrike in the eastern Syrian governorate of Dayr al-Zawr which killed over 60 civilians, including dozens of women and children. This particular attack has been described as being “part of a pattern of reckless strikes that started years earlier.”

US Air Force officials who spoke with the NYT on condition of anonymity said that over the years they notified their commanding officers several times about Talon Anvil’s disregard for civilian lives. However, the military leaders seemed reluctant to scrutinize the strike cell as it was “driving the offensive” on the battlefield.

According to Larry Lewis, a former Pentagon and State Department adviser, every year that Talon Anvil operated in Syria the civilian casualty rate increased significantly.

Lewis also claims that US military commanders “enabled the tactics by failing to emphasize the importance of reducing civilian casualties.” He singles out General Stephen J. Townsend, who commanded US troops in Syria in 2016 and 2017, as being “dismissive of widespread reports from news media and human rights organizations describing the mounting toll.”

Talon Anvil’s operations were highly classified and the strike cell as a whole never existed in an official manner. It was run by a classified Special Operations unit called Task Force 9, whose other tasks included training allied Syrian and Kurdish armed groups.

The strike cell reportedly worked out of “bland office spaces” both in Iraq and Syria and was in control of a “fleet of Predator and Reaper drones that bristled with precision Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs.”

They carried out most of their operations based on tips from allied forces, secret electronic intercepts, drone cameras, and other information to find enemy targets.

A former member of Talon Anvil told the NYT that the strike cell often decided that something was an enemy target with scant supporting evidence. But as suspicion mounted over their tactics, Talon Anvil began to classify nearly all of its attacks as defensive – even when targets were 100 miles away from the front lines.

“It’s more expedient to resort to self-defense,” said Lewis. “It’s easier to get approved.”

The drone operators were also known to turn away the drone cameras away from targets before launching bombs or missiles to avoid accountability.

The operators also pressured analysts, who watched drone footage after strikes had taken place, to report that they had seen weapons or other evidence that would justify a strike hit. If they refused, the cell would simply ask for another analyst.