MESOP NEWS SENSATIONAL: CIA’s Former Counterterrorism Chief for the Region: Afghanistan, Not An Intelligence Failure — Something Much Worse
by Douglas London – JUST SECURITY – LONDON – August 18, 2021
While it’s certainly convenient to depict the shock and miscalculation U.S. officials claim over Afghanistan’s tragic, rapid fall to the Taliban as an intelligence failure, the reality is far worse. It’s a convenient deflection of responsibility for decisions taken owing to political and ideological considerations and provides a scapegoat for a policy decision that’s otherwise unable to offer a persuasive defense.
MESOP NEWS AFGHANISTAN: OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM LEADERS IN THE CHRISTIAN UNDERGROUND CHURCH
by CD Media Staff August 18, 2021 FIRST-HAND GROUND REPORT
What we are witnessing right now is the decimation of the country and people of Afghanistan. We are watching twenty years of work and the strengthening of a nation being destroyed in a single day.
The Taliban has a hit list of known Christians they are targeting to pursue and kill. The US Embassy is defunct and there is no longer a safe place for believers to take refuge. All borders to neighboring countries are closed and all flights to and from have been halted, with the exception of private planes. People are fleeing into the mountains looking for asylum. They are fully reliant on God, who is the only One who can and will protect them.
The Taliban are going door-to-door taking women and children. The people must mark their house with an “X” if they have a girl over 12 years old, so that the Taliban can take them. If they find a young girl and the house was not marked they will execute the entire family. If a married woman 25 years or older has been found, the Taliban promptly kill her husband, do whatever they want to her, and then sell her as a sex slave…
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MESOP NEWS : GRÜNE nicht nur Klimaretter – jetzt will Baerbock auch Sicherheitspolitik des Westens erneuern
FOCUS-Online-Autor Hugo Müller-VoggFreitag, 20.08.2021, 08:21
DEUTSCHE KAMPFSOLDATEN MENTAL AM ENDE / FLIEHENDE AFGHANEN FITTER! / AKK BUWE
Wieder ein genialer Schachzug der Verteidigungsministerin, Soldaten, die gerade im Taliban-Gebiet im Einsatz sind, in einer de facto öffentlichen Sitzung als “psychisch am Ende” zu bezeichnen. Zum Glück sind genug US-Truppen am Kabuler Flughafen.
AKK Statement 20.8.2021 in der CDU/CSU-Fraktion: Die Bundeswehrsoldaten, die am völlig überfüllten Flughafen-Gate in #Kabul Dienst tun, sind wegen der Szenen, die sich dort abspielen, “psychisch und mental am Ende”. Sie werden heute ausgetauscht. #Afghanistan
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German spy services face criticism for failing to anticipate swift Taliban victory
| MESOP NEWS : „MADE IN GERMANY“ MEANS SECOND HAND
by Joseph Fitsanakis INTEL ORG 20.8.2021 |
THE PRINCIPAL EXTERNAL INTELLIGENCE service of Germany, known as the Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, is facing growing criticism for allegedly failing to anticipate the swift ascendance of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Critics from every political faction have described the situation in Afghanistan as an “impending disaster” for German interests, and have questioned the BND’s effectiveness and competence.
In a statement to the Bundestag this past June, Germany’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Heiko Maas, insisted that it was “inconceivable” that the Taliban “would, within just a few weeks, be able to seize power” in Afghanistan. In subsequent weeks, other leader members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet echoed Maas’s statement. It now appears that, as German diplomats and intelligence officers were forced to leave hastily the Central Asian country, they left behind numerous “people employed in Germany’s interests”, analysis to the German national broadcaster, Deutsche Welle (DW).
In his according of the BND’s performance in the Afghan situation, DW journalist Marcel Fürstenau quotes former BND intelligence officer Gerhard Conrad, who claims that the spy agency lacked sources on the ground. Others, including University of London researcher Jan Koehler, tell Fürstenau that the German intelligence services failed to grasp the broader dynamics of Afghan society, which are permeated by “a lack of trust among the Afghan security forces in their own government”, and led them to surrender to the Taliban en masse.
The possibility of an official parliamentary investigation into the performance of the BND is now a strong prospect in the coming weeks, says Fürstenau. He adds that that several senior members of Chancellor Merkel’s government would have to testify behind closed doors during a probe. The soon-to-retire ‘iron lady’ of German politics may even have to testify after she leaves office, he concludes.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 20 August 2021
MESOP NEWS : HOW RUSSIA STANDS TO GAIN THANKS TO BIDEN’S AFGHANISTAN DISASTER
by Anna Borshchevskaya 19FortyFive August 18, 2021
Whether or not Russian leaders genuinely believe the Taliban will turn into a responsible stakeholder, they will likely be rewarded with more international and regional clout at Washington’s expense.
MESOP NEWS : Turkish airstrikes claim Yazidi lives in Iraq’s Sinjar
Turkish airstrikes hit makeshift hospital in the predominantly Yazidi Sinjar region of Iraq on Tuesday.
Amberin Zaman AL MONITOR – August 18, 2021
At least five people were killed and numerous others wounded in Turkish airstrikes on a makeshift hospital in the predominantly Yazidi Sinjar region of Iraq on Tuesday, according to local and diplomatic sources on the ground. The attacks are part of Ankara’s broader military campaign against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) across Iraqi Kurdistan that has displaced thousands of villagers and claimed dozens of civilian lives.
The clinic in the village of Skiniya at the southwestern foot of Sinjar Mountain was totally destroyed in the airstrikes, according to medical workers cited by Agence France-Presse. They initially placed the death toll at three. Several of the victims were reportedly civilians and the rest members of a Yazidi militia known as the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), which received training from the PKK and is on the Iraqi government’s payroll.
Sikiniye was among a string of Yazidi villages seized by the Islamic State when it rampaged across Iraq murdering thousands of Yazidi men and enslaving the women in what the United Nations has formally labeled a genocide.
Scenes of the airstrikes published by Firat News, a pro-PKK news agency, showed black plumes of smoke rising above a dusty plain and several collapsed buildings.
Roj TV, another pro-PKK news channel, broadcast images of a grieving Yazidi woman in Sikiniye, her arms raised in despair. She said villagers were not allowed to retrieve numerous people thought to be trapped under the rubble because of the threat of further Turkish attacks.
A Yazidi asylum seeker in Europe who declined to be identified by name said the clinic was once a school that had been established in the 1950s. “It’s close to a water source that is renowned for its healing properties and there are several houses nearby,” said the source, who belongs to the slain YBS commander Hesen’s Hababa tribe. “Civilians were treated at the clinic because there are no functioning hospitals within reach,” the source added.
The Turkish raids followed an attack the previous day on a vehicle carrying a senior YBS commander. Seid Hesen and his nephew, a YBS fighter, perished in the drone strike carried out by Turkish forces just as Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi was visiting Kocho village in Sinjar to commemorate the mass slaughter of more than 800 Yazidis by IS. Three civilians were reported to have been wounded in that attack. The strike on the hospital is thought to have targeted fighters wounded in Tuesday’s attack who were receiving treatment there.
Khadimi’s office issued a toothless rebuke following a meeting of Iraq’s National Security Council today. A statement summarizing the deliberations said the National Security Council “condemned the military actions” in Sinjar without naming Turkey.
The statement “mirrors the long-established pattern of [Iraqi leaders’] disregard for Sinjar and its people. Though the Yazidis went through a genocide in 2014 and one of the survivors [Nadia Murad] received a Nobel Peace Prize, it has taken seven years to convince an Iraqi prime minister to visit Sinjar,” noted Matthew Travis Barber, a University of Chicago PhD candidate who worked for a number of years on the humanitarian and advocacy responses to the Yazidi genocide. “As the prime minister was arriving, Turkey assassinated a man who had been summoned by Iraqi military officials to join a meeting with him. The lack of response to this insult merely reinforces the posture of weakness that Turkey seeks to accentuate,” Barber told Al-Monitor.
“Turkey delivered a message to the Iraqi government that clearly says, ‘This is our military activity zone and we can act as we wish.’ These strikes were not only a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, but also disrespect to the prime minister,” concurred Murad Ismael, co-founder and president of Sinjar Academy, an advocacy group. “Iraq has the backing of all the five members of the UN Security Council and can easily confront Turkey, at least diplomatically. Iraq is not powerless but so far it has not acted,” Ismael told Al-Monitor.
The Yazidis’ anguish is compounded by the international community’s apparent indifference in the face of Turkish aggression, notably the United States’.
A State Department spokesperson speaking not for attribution said in emailed comments to Al-Monitor, “We are aware of the press reports concerning the Turkish operations in northern Iraq. We reaffirm our view that military action in Iraq should respect Iraqi sovereignty. We defer to the governments of Iraq and Turkey for further comment.”
Turkey has escalated attacks on Sinjar, which falls under the governorate of Nineveh, killing high-value PKK linked cadres with its increasingly sophisticated drones and sowing further fear and insecurity among the region’s traumatized Yazidi population. Ankara demands that the PKK withdraw from the region, saying it is a logistical hub for fighters and weapons flowing to northeast Syria, where a PKK-linked administration backed by the United States is in charge.
Sinjar is among 14 disputed territories claimed by the Iraqi central government and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The Iraqi Kurds gained control of Sinjar in 2003 following the US invasion but lost it to Iraqi forces in 2017 following the Kurdistan Regional Government’s ill-fated referendum on Kurdish independence.
The area has since been dominated by a patchwork of allied and rival militias. They include the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), the PKK and the YBS on the one hand, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP), which enjoys close ties with Ankara, and its Yazidi affiliates on the other. “All of them are using the Yazidis for their own individual agendas,” the Yazidi asylum seeker said. “The Iraqi government doesn’t want the KDP to return to Sinjar so it plays blind to the PKK and subsidizes the YBS with monthly salaries paid out of the budgetary allocation for the PMUs. The KDP cooperates with Turkey because it wants to weaken the YBS, which it views as its main obstacle to regaining control of Sinjar. Iran has a common interest with the PKK because they both use Sinjar to access Syria,” the asylum seeker added.
The lack of economic opportunity in Sinjar, which remains devastated by the war against IS, leads many Yazidi men to turn to whichever militia offers the highest pay.
The PKK established a presence on and around Sinjar Mountain in August 2014, when it intervened to rescue thousands of Yazidis abandoned by Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters as IS forces butchered their way through the area that is known as Shingal in Kurdish.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to invade the area but the presence of Iraqi and Iranian-backed forces stand in the way.
A deal finalized in October 2020 between the Iraqi Kurds and the central Iraqi government in Baghdad was meant to defuse the situation and pave the way for the return of more than 200,000 Yazidis who continue to shelter in camps in Iraqi Kurdistan. The US-backed accord calls among other things for the withdrawal of all armed forces from the region and refers to the PKK by name. A 2,500-strong local police force absorbing some YBS members is meant to provide security.
“Through all the years of this conflict, the Yazidi demand has been consistent: They want Sinjar to become a governorate with a local security and administrative framework similar to that enjoyed by every other governorate of Iraq. They do not want to be co-opted and occupied by any of the external political parties with guns — KDP, PKK or PMU. A key part of this process means a robust project on the part of Baghdad to develop a single, depoliticized security force for Sinjar that must absorb the members of all current militias,” Barber noted.
However, the deal has remained mostly on paper and critics say it was crafted without proper consultation with the Yazidis themselves. And with Turkey’s continued attacks, “the agreement is falling apart,” said Hanar Marouf, a Millenium Leadership fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank based in Washington. Marouf told Al-Monitor that the central government can take immediate “baby steps” to reverse its demise by establishing the police force for which provisions already exist in the Iraqi budget.
Barber insists that external pressure is required to unblock the current impasse. “The administrative dysfunction in Iraq’s minority-inhabited territories is the product of internal competition between the central and regional governments — especially as the latter attempts to increase its influence through the annexation of minority areas. This dynamic will not fix itself and Iraq needs external support in producing a solution,” he argued. But the deafening silence in the face of Tuesday’s bloodletting suggests that no such help is forthcoming in the near future and that Turkish attacks will continue apace.
MESOP NEWS : THE TALIBAN IS BACK, AND THE WORLD’S JIHADIS ARE COMING
by Roy Gutman Daily BeastAugust 18, 2021
Much ink has been spilled about a potential al-Qaeda comeback, but the Taliban’s return could also send insurgents and refugees streaming toward China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan.
MESOP NEWS : Did ‘gender studies’ lose Afghanistan?
How Ivy League diplomats sought to remake Afghanistan in Harvard’s image
August 19, 2021 | Written by: Cockburn THE SPECTATOR
Twenty years of war in Afghanistan are over. What comes next is twenty years, or even more, of recriminations and blame for why the war ended as it did.
MESOP NEWS : IRAN IS POISED TO EXPLOIT THE UNCERTAINTIES OF THE AFGHAN COLLAPSE
by Farzin Nadimi – PolicyWatch 3522 – August 18, 2021
Since the fall of Kabul—and well beforehand—Iranian officials have signaled how they might use a Taliban victory to further their goals in the Middle East, though they remain concerned about the fate of Afghan Shia.
Based on official statements and media coverage so far, the Iranian regime seems pleasantly surprised by the sudden collapse of nascent liberal democracy in Afghanistan, with commentators expressing cautious satisfaction at the Taliban takeover and the chaotic final days of the Western-supported government. In 1998, Iran almost went to war with the Taliban after years of arming and financing the group’s local opponent, the Northern Alliance. And as late as 2015, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was still referring to the Taliban as a “bunch of cruel, fanatical mercenaries who know nothing about Islam or international norms.”
Today, however, senior Iranian figures such as Foreign Ministry official Rasoul Mousavi are readily calling the group the “Islamic Emirate,” the Taliban’s preferred name, and state media are portraying it as a revamped movement. Meanwhile, new president Ebrahim Raisi shed no tears for the ousted government, instead calling the U.S. “military defeat and withdrawal” an opportunity for all Afghans to achieve lasting peace. What is behind this shift, and what implications does it hold for Iran’s near-term policy in Afghanistan and beyond?
Damaging U.S. Interests While Safeguarding Iran’s
Well before the recent public rebranding, Iran was apparently working behind the scenes for months to reap benefits from the final episode of the long war, including assurances about the safety of Shia Muslim co-religionists in Afghanistan. For example, Tehran did not express concern when Herat and its sizable Shia community fell to radical Sunni Taliban fighters on August 15, perhaps indicating that a deal had been struck with the group beforehand. According to Iran’s state-affiliated Tasnim News Agency, Taliban officials recently reassured Tehran that Afghan Shia could pursue their religious activities freely and safely, including the ongoing Muharram ceremonies that culminate in the holy day of Ashura. Yet new social media videos from Herat showed Taliban fighters disrupting such proceedings.
Iran’s tilt toward the Taliban and away from the pro-Western Afghan government is nothing new. For the past two decades, Khamenei has been careful to dismiss America’s role in the group’s original 2001 defeat while calling for the country to establish an independent and deeply Islamist regime—which the Taliban once again seems bent on doing today. Then, after years of dismissing the Taliban’s legitimacy, he suddenly stopped excoriating the group in 2015. Whatever his reasons, he has since focused on promoting resistance against American “evildoing” in Afghanistan, repeatedly making analogies between the Afghan, Syrian, Iraqi, and Yemeni “resistance.”
At the regional level, the emerging situation in Afghanistan is adding a huge element of uncertainty for U.S. policy in the Middle East, and Iran will likely exploit that by encouraging its numerous local proxies to increase their activity in the coming weeks and months. It may even attempt to recruit the Taliban into its “axis of resistance,” which in practical terms could entitle the group to fuel shipments, money, and advanced Iranian-made arms. Tehran has already provided some arms—when Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Shamkhani visited Kabul in December 2018, he reportedly told the Afghan government that Iran was supplying the Taliban with light arms.
Throughout its cross-country offensive, the group has also been seizing large caches of advanced U.S. weapons worth billions of dollars. Some of those weapons may now end up in the hands of Iranian forces, proxy militias, or terrorist groups. In return, Tehran might offer to help the Taliban maintain its seized arsenal in operational condition.
What Role for Iran’s Afghan Militia?
Before the latest dramatic developments, the Iranian proxy militia Liwa Fatemiyoun—comprising thousands of seasoned Afghan fighters who have helped prop up Syria’s Assad regime since 2012—was expected to take an active part in countering a potential Taliban takeover, at least in the Shia regions of Afghanistan. On August 12, however, the militia denied rumors that any of its forces had been or would be deployed to Afghanistan; the statement also cheered the U.S. withdrawal and derided Afghan liberal democrats.
Yet this denial need not be taken as the gospel truth. Fatemiyoun members would hold immense intelligence collection value for Iran’s Qods Force if Tehran deployed them to Afghanistan, so it seems highly plausible that some of them are operating there amid the current chaos. Notably, though, such activities would still constitute significant restraint compared to the major opposition that Iran organized in Iraq several years ago to counter the Islamic State—a Sunni jihadist group that shares many ideological similarities with the Taliban. Withholding a large-scale Fatemiyoun deployment might also be Iran’s way of preserving the unit as a valued military and political asset for use in future Afghanistan plans.
Conclusion
As the dust settles and the situation on the ground becomes clearer, Iran can be expected to reconfigure its approach to Afghanistan in whatever manner it believes will make the most out of the collapse. In addition to pursuing relations with the Taliban, this will likely mean pressuring the United States and its partners with increased determination and confidence, particularly in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
Tehran will also presumably reexamine its old plans for cross-border military action in Afghanistan, mainly to ensure that its forces are prepared to fight the Taliban if existing arrangements or future accords with the group falter. Iranians will never see the Taliban as a natural ally—anti-American affinities aside, they remain ideological competitors with historical resentments toward each other. Relatedly, Iran will keep a closer eye on its own Sunni population in provinces bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially after top Iranian Sunni cleric Molavi Abdolhamid Ismailzahi openly congratulated the Taliban on August 17. The regime may also be worried about a surge in drug trafficking from Afghanistan given the Taliban’s heavy involvement in such activity in the past.
At the same time, there are logical reasons to expect an Iranian-Taliban alliance, even one limited to the tactical level. After all, Shia-Sunni differences have not stopped Iran from forming close relations with similar groups (e.g., Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad), so long as they share common enemies. Partnering with the Taliban could meet several Iranian interests: keeping even more extreme groups at bay (e.g., the Islamic State); establishing closer economic and political relations with those who run Afghanistan; and, perhaps, enabling Iran to access Shia-majority regions as far away as Gilgit-Baltistan, a strategic portion of Kashmir that connects with Afghanistan and China.
As for al-Qaeda, it remains to be seen whether the regime will allow senior members of the group currently residing in Iran to relocate to Afghanistan. In light of that possibility and other security risks, the United States needs to ensure that sufficient intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities are focusing on Afghanistan and its border with Iran and Pakistan around the clock—a requirement that will place even more importance on existing U.S. bases in the Middle East.
Farzin Nadimi is an associate fellow with The Washington Institute, specializing in the security and defense affairs of Iran and the Gulf region.
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