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Theres been blowback following almost every Western engagement with Afghanistan. What are the lessons of history as the U.S. considers pulling troops out this time?

Thomas Barfield, anthropology professorat Boston University (). He researches systems of local governance and dispute resolution in Afghanistan. Author of "Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History."

Aaron B. O'Connell, professor of history at the University of Texas, Austin. Colonel in the Marine Corps reserve. He served in Afghanistan as special adviser to Gen. David Petraeus and later to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, from 2010 to 2011. Former director of defense policy and strategy on the Obama administration's National Security Council. Editor of "Our Latest Longest War: Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan." ()

Los Angeles Times: "Opinion: The war in Afghanistan isnt a stalemate. The U.S. has lost" "With the sole exception of Vietnam, the ongoing Afghanistan war represents the greatest failure in U.S. military history. Today, all but a few diehards understand that Vietnam was a debacle of epic proportions. With Afghanistan, its different: In both political and military circles, the urge to dodge the truth remains strong.

"This may explain, at least in part, why the present commander in chief has yet to visit the war zone. For a president with an aversion to accepting responsibility, traveling to Afghanistan would call attention to a situation he prefers to ignore. After all, Donald Trump campaigned against the war and vowed if elected to end it forthwith. Once in office, however, he caved in to advisors urging him not only to continue the war but even to dispatch a contingent of reinforcements. Steering clear of Afghanistan allows Trump to sustain the pretense that the war is not actually his.

"If only by default, it becomes incumbent on the military itself to explain whats going on. With the Afghanistan war in its 18th year, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, characterized the war as a 'stalemate' last month. Other high-ranking officers regularly use the same term."

CNN: "The evolving face of the US mission in Afghanistan" "Lieutenant Colonel Keith Benedict and Private First Class Brennen Bledsoe two different soldiers with very different stories are both fighting America's longest war in Afghanistan.

"'It's a privilege to lead soldiers in combat,' Benedict said on a crystal clear day at Kandahar Airfield. 'I think the fact that we have not had an attack in the United States since 2001 is testament to the fact that what we are doing here is working, and I am committed to doing everything I can while I am on ground here to achieving that.'

"Benedict is on his fifth deployment. He joined the military a month before 9/11 and deployed to Iraq in 2006 and 2007 and then to Haiti in 2010. He is now on his third deployment to Afghanistan.

"Bledsoe is on the same base. He was 3 years old when the 9/11 attacks happened and is on his first deployment.

"'I have a great group of guys that I am with, and I love being with them,' Bledsoe said. 'The training we get, the mission we are on, I feel like I am actually doing something for my country, and I am helping out Afghanistan. I am protecting my country, and it means the world to me.'

"These soldiers represent the evolving face of the US mission in Afghanistan over the 17-year long war from a mission to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda's leadership to an effort to defeat the Taliban. In 2013, Afghan forces officially took the lead in fighting for the country's security, and the US mission shifted again to counterterrorism as well as advising and training the Afghan forces."

Washington Post: "We gave more than enough sacrifices: Afghans blast Trumps praise of the Soviet invasion" "Afghan officials on Thursday denounced President Trumps praise of the 1979 Soviet invasion and occupation of their country, which he described this week as a fight against terrorism, breaking with decades of Republican anti-communist dogma.

"According to the revisionist historical account Trump delivered during a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, 'the reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia.' He added: 'They were right to be there. The problem is, it was a tough fight.'

"The comments marked a surprising split with U.S. conservatives dating back to President Ronald Reagan, who saw the invasion as an attempt to spread communism and aided insurgent forces fighting Soviet troops."

Read more:
A History Of Western Engagement With Afghanistan And Where ...

Afghanistan,a landlocked Asian country, is experiencing the worst drought in the past five decades. The United Nations has estimated that 2 million people have been affected by the drought and that 1.4 million people are in need of urgent food assistance. Several years of low rainfall and snowfall have led to the seriousness of the drought in Afghanistan.

The drought has affected 20 provinces in the country. Almost 1.5 million people rely on agriculture products for food in these affected regions. It has majorly affected the planting of wheat and livestock pastures. The Famine Early Warning System Network has placed many regions in Afghanistan in a crisis state and some regions are even considered to be in emergency phases. Due to the drought in Afghanistan, the number of households in the crisis to emergency phases are expected to rise even more.

The recent drought in Afghanistan has added more pressure to the refugee and displaced person population in the region. Water levels are so low that, in some areas, dry wells are driving even more people to leave the country.

Continuous conflict and unemployment have been a typical factor of migration in Afghanistan, but now the drought adds to the problem. During the recent refugee crisis, Afghans were the second largest group of refugees. Countries like Iran and Pakistan are no longer welcoming Afghanistan refugees and are even encouraging refugees to return home. Those who are unable to leave the country move into urban cities in order to find work to provide for their family.

The European Union has recently added $22.7 million in emergency aid to the region in response to the severeness of the drought in Afghanistan. The recent funding will help to provide assistance to projects on the ground. These ground projects include food assistance, water, sanitation and health care.

A portion of this help will come from the EUs own Emergency Response Mechanism that provides assistance to vulnerable regions. The Humanitarian Country Team also plans to revise their Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) to ask for $177 million in aid to assist people affected by the drought. The revision of the HRP plans to reach 4.2 million people across the country in various aspects, especially agriculture, sanitation and nutrition. These programs aim to ensure food security in the region as the number of households in need of emergency assistance increases.

There is hope for the region to somewhat sustain itself. The coming of Fall and El Nino,routine climate pattern, are promising to planters in Afghanistan. El Nino is expected to provide more than average precipitation in the coming season. The areas planted for wheat are expected to be higher than average due to the prediction of high precipitation.

This prediction, however, is one of many and there are other outcomes for the spread of rainfall. Hopefully, rainfall will return to the region and provide farmers with the resources to plant and harvest. As long as the people in urgent need of humanitarian aid are assisted, there is hope to ensure food security for those most affected by the drought in Afghanistan.

Olivia HalliburtonPhoto: Flickr

Go here to read the rest:
Drought in Afghanistan | The Borgen Project | Afghanistan

Politicians and pundits alike have roundly criticized Donald Trump for stating he will pull our troops out of Syria and cut US forces in Afghanistan by half. James Mattis immediately resigned as secretary of defense, writing in a letter to Trump, you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.

As the US military kills civilians in Syria and CIA-led Afghan forces continue to commit war crimes, it appears Trump is doing the right thing in pulling out military troops. But the CIA will remain and grow stronger after the US troops leave. [A]s American military forces are set to draw down, the role of the Central Intelligence Agency is only likely to grow in importance, according to The New York Times.

On December 31, The Times described a CIA-sponsored Afghan strike force that operates unconstrained by battlefield rules designed to protect civilians, conducting night raids, torture and killings with near impunity. In the article, journalist Mujib Mashal cites an October 2018 United Nations report that raised concern about consistent, credible accounts of intentional destruction of civilian property, illegal detention and other abuses.

Mashal reports that the abuses by the CIA are actively pushing people toward the Taliban and when few US military troops remain, the [CIA-led] strike forces are increasingly the way that a large number of rural Afghans experience the American presence. Indeed, Mohibullah, whose relative was killed when his home was attacked by a strike force, told The Times he saw no difference between the CIA-sponsored force and the Islamic State if the result was to be attacked with no warning.

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Last fall, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, asked the courts Pre-Trial Chamber to open a formal investigation into the possible commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by parties to the war in Afghanistan, including US persons.

Bensoudas preliminary examination found a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes of torture and ill-treatment had been committed by US military forces deployed to Afghanistan and in secret detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, principally in the 2003-2004 period, although allegedly continuing in some cases until 2014.

Bensouda noted these alleged crimes were not the abuses of a few isolated individuals, but rather part of approved interrogation techniques in an attempt to extract actionable intelligence from detainees. She concluded there was reason to believe that crimes were committed in the furtherance of a policy or policies which would support US objectives in the conflict in Afghanistan.

Like its predecessor, the Trump administration is adamant that US war criminals escape justice. In response to Bensoudas referral, National Security Adviser John Bolton told the right-wing Federalist Society the United States would punish the ICC if it mounts a full investigation of Americans for war crimes committed in Afghanistan.

Trump issued a statement saying that in the event the ICC opens a formal investigation, he might negotiate even more binding, bilateral agreements to prohibit nations from surrendering United States persons to the ICC. Trump threatened to prohibit ICC judges and prosecutors from entering the United States, sanction their funds in the United States financial system, and, prosecute them in the United States criminal system. He would consider taking steps in the United Nations Security Council to constrain the Courts sweeping powers.

But Bensouda will not be bowed. After Boltons speech, she stated that the ICC is an independent and impartial judicial institution based on the principle of complementarity, where the ICC will step in only if the accuseds home country does not. Bensouda added, The ICC, as a court of law, will continue to do its work undeterred, in accordance with those principles and the overarching idea of the rule of law.

Meanwhile, the ICC has received an astounding 1.7 million allegations of war crimes committed in Afghanistan during a three-month period ending in January 2018. Some accusations encompass entire villages.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) is one of the few Congress members who favor pulling US troops out of Syria and Afghanistan. She told MSNBCs Rachel Maddow, I think it is right to get our troops out of Syria and let me add, I think its right to get our troops out of Afghanistan. Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she disagrees with the foreign policy establishment position that US troops should stay forever in Afghanistan.

Robert D. Kaplan, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan think tank, wrote in The New York Times that the United States should withdraw from Afghanistan. No other country in the world symbolizes the decline of the American empire as much as Afghanistan, he opined. There is virtually no possibility of a military victory over the Taliban and little chance of leaving behind a self-sustaining democracy facts that Washingtons policy community has mostly been unable to accept It is a vestigial limb of empire, and it is time to let it go. While Kaplan writes, it may soon be time to for the United States to get out of the country altogether, he presumably includes CIA, as well as military, forces in that withdrawal.

Regardless of Trumps motivation in pulling out of Syria, it is the correct decision, says international law scholar Richard Falk. But, he adds, Trump should also end the air strikes and use the money saved by terminating military operations to help Syria recover from the humanitarian disaster wrought by seven years of war.

Falk slammed Mattis geopolitical hubris for writing in his resignation letter that the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world. Falk wrote, Really. Such an opinion is not widely shared in most parts of the world. Many people and foreign leaders now worry far more about what the United States does than they do about China and Russia.

The near-universal condemnation by Democrats and Republicans alike of Trumps announcement that he will withdraw US forces from Syria says less about Trump than it does about the US foreign policy establishments blinkered vision, Columbia Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs wrote at Project Syndicate. Sachs disputes the notion that the United States has been in Syria (or Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Libya, and elsewhere in the region) because of ISIS. Sachs sees ISIS as more a consequence than a cause of the US presence.

Sachs disabuses us of the notion that the United States from Obama to Trump has sought to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for the purpose of bringing democracy to Syria, citing US support for the undemocratic Saudi Arabia. The real purposes, Sachs astutely notes, have been US regional hegemony; and the real consequences have been disastrous.

In a statement following Trumps announcement, Veterans for Peace (VFP) lauded the goal of a total removal of US troops from Syria, hoping it would lead to the complete withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and the Saudi-led war in Yemen as well. It is high time to unwind all these tragic, failed and unnecessary wars of aggression, domination and plunder, VFP stated. It is time to turn a page in history and build a new world based on human rights, equality and mutual respect for all. We must build momentum toward real and lasting peace. Nothing less than the survival of human civilization is at stake.

Indeed, the United States should withdraw all of its forces, including the CIA, from Afghanistan. All US troops should be removed from Syria and all bombing must end. And the US government should make reparations for the devastation it has wreaked in both of those countries.

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Continued here:
Notorious CIA-Backed Units Will Remain in Afghanistan

To the Editor:

In Time to Get Out of Afghanistan (Op-Ed, Jan. 2), Robert D. Kaplan refers to the diplomatic expertise of Richard Holbrooke. Mr. Holbrooke famously remarked, after becoming familiar with Afghan affairs, We may be fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country. He recognized that Pakistan was the true enemy.

It was Pakistan that helped create the Taliban in the early 1990s and has supported them ever since. In order to bring peace to Afghanistan, the influence of Pakistan must be terminated. This is particularly urgent because of Pakistans position as a leading nuclear power. In 2009 the American ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, noted that enriched uranium being produced in Pakistan might be acquired by terrorists to produce their own bomb. Ten years later, that danger still exists.

Pakistan must be confronted to prevent the Afghan-Pakistan region from becoming a haven for nuclear-armed terrorists.

Edward A. FriedmanHoboken, N.J.The writer teaches courses on nuclear weapons and energy at Stevens Institute of Technology. He represented Stevens in an international development program in Afghanistan from 1965 to 1967 and 1970 to 1973.

To the Editor:

Robert D. Kaplan contradicts himself by describing the horrific situation in Afghanistan as the triumph of deterministic forces, and then almost immediately says, It did not have to be like this. Well, which is it: Is the fault in our stars or in ourselves?

During the Cold War, foreign policy realists lauded Americas morally indefensible alliances with regimes in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that fostered Islamic extremism at home and exported it abroad as a necessity in the struggle with Communism, especially during the Soviet-Afghan War.

When this strategically reckless policy resulted in a tragic reversal for our nation on 9/11, not only the realists but writers of all stripes refused to face the fact that this catastrophe had a long, tragic prelude. Among the worst results of this denial was the resumption of American military aid to Pakistan, which it used to continue backing the Taliban and defeat our war aims.

What we owe to the Afghan people and ourselves is a brave recognition of our own role as protagonists in this drama and a sea change in our policies, not least because walking away from clear and present danger will not make it go away.

Vanni CappelliPoughkeepsie, N.Y.The writer is president of the Afghanistan Foreign Press Association.

To the Editor:

Bravo to Robert D. Kaplan for his opinion regarding our military presence in Afghanistan: Indeed, it may soon be time for the United States to get out of the country altogether. Having been a Marine officer in the Vietnam era, I was pleased when President Richard M. Nixon began pulling troops out of Vietnam. We had been there for a number of years, and it was clear there was no light at the end of the tunnel. We now face a similar dilemma in Afghanistan.

A close friend of mine was killed in Vietnam on Feb. 22, 1969. What a shame our leaders did not respond to the futility of that war earlier and spare the lives of thousands of troops. Lets hope that President Trump will keep us out of stupid wars.

As Mr. Kaplan points out, even if a terrorist group finds refuge in Afghanistan and plans a 9/11-scale attack, Yemen, Somalia and a number of other places could also provide the setting for that. Dont lose lives just to save embarrassment.

David NelsonHouston

To the Editor:

Time to get out of Afghanistan? Past time. There are places where we shouldnt interfere, shouldnt try to impose our values, shouldnt think that we can succeed where others have failed, and Afghanistan is one of them.

Sandra SizerBoston

Go here to see the original:
Opinion | Should the U.S. Leave Afghanistan?

It was not clear why the shaft collapsed, say officials. (Representational)

At least 30 people were killed when a gold mine collapsed in northeastern Afghanistan on Sunday, officials said, in the latest tragedy to strike the war-torn country.

Another seven were injured in the incident in Kohistan district of Badakhshan province, district governor Mohammad Rustam Raghi told AFP.

Villagers had dug a 60-metre deep shaft in a river bed to search for gold. They were inside when the walls fell in. "The people were using an excavator to dig a big hole in the river when it collapsed, trapping dozens of workers," Raghi said.

"At least 30 people have been killed and seven wounded."

It was not clear why the shaft collapsed, but the provincial governor's spokesman Nik Mohammad Nazari told AFP the miners were not professionals.

"The villagers have been involved in this business for decades with no government control over them," Nazari said.

"We have sent a rescue team to the area, but villagers have already started removing bodies from the site."

Badakhshan is a remote, mountainous province in northeast Afghanistan bordering Tajikistan, China and Pakistan.

The impoverished region is prone to landslides, particularly in the colder months when heavy snow blankets the province.

Illegal mining is common in resource-rich Afghanistan, with the Taliban relying on the sector for much of its revenue.

But most of the country's minerals remain untapped as the raging conflict and lack of regulation deter international miners from exploiting the huge reserves.

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At Least 30 Killed After Gold Mine Collapses In Afghanistan ...