The MacArthur Model for Afghanistan Wall Street Journal (subscription) Afghanistan is an expensive disaster for America. The Pentagon has already consumed $828 billion on the war, and taxpayers will be liable for trillions more in veterans' health-care costs for decades to come. More than 2,000 American soldiers have died ... |
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The MacArthur Model for Afghanistan - Wall Street Journal (subscription)
CNN | Deadly Bombing in Kabul Is One of the Afghan War's Worst Strikes New York Times KABUL, Afghanistan A truck bomb devastated a central area of Kabul near the presidential palace and foreign embassies on Wednesday, one of the deadliest strikes in the long Afghan war and a reminder of how the capital itself has become a lethal ... Afghanistan: Four things to know after the Kabul attack Kabul attack highlights security challenges in Afghanistan as US mulls more troops Horrific Afghanistan bombing highlights stalemate in longest US war |
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Deadly Bombing in Kabul Is One of the Afghan War's Worst Strikes - New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan Last summer a prominent Kabul politician, who founded a small Sufi political party that supports monarchial rule, received a letter inviting him to join the ISIS branch in Afghanistan.
"This is all part of their activity," the 65-year-old Sayed Ishaq Gailani, who founded the National Solidarity Movement of Afghanistan, told Fox News, shortly before Wednesdays horrific car bomb explosion in the capital that killed at least 80 people. "They study people. They find out who has a good name. Then they reach out."
Gailani is not only a known figure in elite Afghan circles, but his family members are hereditary leaders of a distinguished Sufi sect, the Qadiriya. Then eight months ago that ISIS letter was followed by the then-leader of the terrorist group, Abdul Hasib, freely venturing into Kabul to have lunch with Gailani.
Kabul politician and founder of the National Solidarity Movement of Afghanistan, Sayed Ishaq Gailani
"He was well-educated, always mentioning the problems in Afghanistan -- the lack of jobs, education, the presence of foreign troops," he recalled.
Ultimately, Gailani, a former mujahedeen who fought the Soviets, declined the persistent invitation but got an insight into the group's shrewd recruitment strategy.
Hasib was slain this year in late April, in a targeted operation that also claimed the lives of two U.S. Army Rangers. The current reigning leader is not known. ISIS in Afghanistan first announced its establishment in January 2015, calling themselves ISIS-K, a reference to the historical name in the Khorasan province.
According to an official at the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan's primary intelligence agency for both foreign and domestic affairs, the group has since recruited mostly through technological means, from private Facebook groups and encrypted apps like Telegram, as well as confiscating villagers land so they would have no livelihood and thus be forced to work for the brutal groups just to feed their families.
ISIS-K reached its membership and territorial peak in the summer of 2015, but following a concentrated military campaign by Afghan and NATO forces to eliminate the group in its entirely, it has been falling fast. Their numbers now are estimated to be around 1,000, down from a high of about 3,000 but still filled with fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Central Asia, China and beyond.
"Afghanistan is like a salad," Gailani quipped. "Everyone is here."
Commanding Officer Col. Mohammad Nader, of the 5th Battalion, 7th Brigade of the Afghan Border Police
Commanding Officer Col. Mohammad Nader of the Afghan Border Police also told Fox News that he discovered bodies of several ISIS fighters in the Ziback district of the far northeastern Badakshan province with identification cards belonging to Iraq, the birthplace of the brutal jihadist outfit.
There remains a concern that as ISIS dwindles rapidly in Iraq and Syria, escapees or even leadership could continue the fight and regroup in other countries such as Afghanistan. And even though numbers are low now, they may creep higher come summer.
"As the weather gets warmer and the snow on the mountain melts, the roads will be much clearer and travel into Afghanistan for terrorists much easier," Nader said.
Furthermore, one high-ranking NDS official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Fox News that around 85 percent of ISIS members in Nangarhar have come from Pakistans mountainous Waziristan region, and many of its members belong to the Orakzai Pashtun tribe in Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas. These fighters had convened mostly in Afghans Achin district, which is where U.S. forces dropped the MOAB last month.
The ISIS indoctrination process, said the official, continues to run rampant in local Waziristan madrassas, where ISIS leaders devote "enormous attention" to radicalizing children as young as 10.
"The young boys are locked in compounds for weeks -- no windows. They are made to draw gardens of naked women. They are taught to believe in paradise and that their country is invaded by infidels," the source said. "The whole process is to make them hate what they are and what they have and give them a cause to die for."
US SOLDIER IN AFGHANISTAN: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF ONE AMERICAN FIGHTER
MOAB DAMAGE IN AFGHANISTAN EXTREME, WIDESPREAD
And while the issue of ISIS slavery in Iraq and Syria has generated massive attention over the past few years -- having barbarically invaded Iraq's Sinjar Mountain and captured thousands of Yazidi girls -- multiple intelligence officials said ISIS-K in Nangarhar province practices keeps female slaves there, too. Yet given the conservative and taboo nature of the crime in much of the country, it has generated little media or mainstream attention.
"ISIS is raping women here as well. They have created a narrative that divorced women in the areas they control must marry an ISIS fighter and women are being kidnapped," an NDS official explained.
Leaders are said to have affixed white flags to the doors of homes that have families with young unmarried girls and black flags on homes in which widowed or divorced women live, instilling a sense of fear in the population that the females inside could be taken at any time.
And despite ISIS-K's dwindling numbers on the battlefield, the presence of sleeper cells -- especially centered around Kabul -- remain a given. On a daily basis, Afghan security officials foil attack plots and dismantle operational networks.
Former Afghan Army Chief of Staff, Qadam Shah Shahim (Hollie McKay/Fox News)
"ISIS is getting a lot of help from local, organized criminal gangs who just want the money," former Afghan Army Chief of Staff Qadam Shah Shahim told Fox News. Shahim recently resigned along with the minister of defense following thedeadly Mazar-e-Sharif Army baseattack.
ISIS-K operatives have claimed responsibility for a rash of fatal attacks in some of the most secure places in the city, from an attack on Canadian Embassy guards to an assault on a major military hospital to a suicide bombing during an ethnic minority protest. In fact, these three tragedies alone left 150 dead and more than 300 wounded.
Shahim also pointed out that the group does have a remarkable ability to relocate and regroup quickly. He said that talk of dropping the MOAB began six months ago when ISIS had a foothold in Tora Bora, a mountainous region in eastern Afghanistan. But the process was delayed as Afghan officials wanted to first understand the side effects of such a bombing and its environmental impact. When the green light was given, the leadership had already moved to Achin and the planning had to start over.
Moreover, there is apprehension the Taliban and ISIS could at some point merge or at least cooperate with each other.
"This would be very expensive for the international community," cautioned Gailani. "The Taliban is in a bad financial situation, whereas ISIS receives a lot of foreign funding -- as well as food, clothes, ammunition, which encourages people to join them. A lot can happen in a few months."
He said that while the Taliban has much greater numbers, ISIS has a much greater weapons arsenal, including captured Afghan government tanks and brand-new Jeeps and pickup trucks. Shahim, too, noted that while Taliban salaries are unpredictable and are usually in Pakistani rupees, ISIS still manages to pay its high-ranking members in euros the equivalent of $670 to $900 a month.
"And unlike the Taliban, they are not hassling for food and civilian support," Shahim said.
As it stands, the Taliban and ISIS typically fight each other in the eastern provinces and also such southern provinces as Nangahar, but they cooperate in northern areas likeBadakshan and Kunduz against government forces. Nader noted that Taliban leaders even provide safe passage for injured ISIS fighters to travel back to Pakistan for medical treatment.
The U.S.-led focus on ISIS stems from the analysis that the Taliban, while a large and vicious force, is a more regional threat, whereas ISIS has more global goals to spread its "caliphate." Yet Afghan officials repeatedly emphasize that ISIS will never be properly eliminated without the squashing of the Taliban, which many refer to as the ideological umbrella to which all terrorists globally now operate.
Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the Chief Executive Officer of Afghanistan (Hollie McKay/Fox News)
"The ideology of the two is the same, the level of readiness to do whatever it takes is the same," Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, chief executive officer of Afghanistan, told Fox News. "The interests in the immediate term differ, but at the same time both are against the state institution and want to replace the governance with their own system."
And, on a parting note, Abdullah offered an analogy.
"Remember," he cautioned. "Usama bin Laden also called himself a Talib."
Hollie McKay has been a FoxNews.com staff reporter since 2007. She has reported extensively from the Middle East on the rise and fall of terrorist groups such as ISIS in Iraq. Follow her on twitter at @holliesmckay
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ISIS threat in Afghanistan shows no end in sight - Fox News
KABUL, Afghanistan Hospitals have become the focal point of life in Afghanistan, and perhaps none more than the Surgical Center for War Victims, which has long been poised in the heart of the nations deteriorating capital.
Operated byEMERGENCY, the Italian non-governmental organization (NGO), it runs on a somewhat controversial policy of neutrality. The staff don't ask questions when patients are rushed through the gate; they just get on with saving lives.
"We don't discriminate. We don't ask if they are Afghan Army or Taliban or ISIS or civilians," Cristina Contini, the hospital's country administrator, tells Fox News. "But most end up being civilians and children. Too many children."
Currently, one-third of the 400 patients who pass through the starkly red and white cluster of buildings each month -- filling up some 109 beds in the facility -- are minors. This includes babies whose lives have been laid to waste by bullets, shells, mortars, land mines and even knives.
One child, not even 4 years old, lies languishing in the intensive care unit -- a close-range bullet lodged in his head from the fighting. Another, Abdullah, wakes up without his arm and much of his ability to physiologically function. His father wraps his son's tiny broken body in towels to preserve his dignity as the days grow darker, helping hospital staff to clean if only to pass the time and not knowing what will come next.
A young woman fights for survival after being shot in an attempted car theft in Kabul, Afghanistan (Hollie McKay/Fox News)
Then there is 10-year-old Bakhtullah who bore the brunt of a shell that ripped open his torso. He weeps through the day and night as his brother -- with a face far too lined in grief for a child -- watches over him in silence, occasionally clipping his nails or combing his hair.
And while many are victims of the country's seemingly intractable war between government forces and an array of Islamic terrorist outfits, many are merely caught in the crossfire of random attacks born out of senseless criminal activity gripping the nation.
"There is another kind of war here, the violence of this city. This is a country that has an enormous number of thieves, drug addicts and high unemployment that leads to kidnappings and other attacks," notes Giorgia Novello, a nurse and the hospitals medical coordinator. "Every year it is worse and worse. Disputes because this land is mine or this goat is mine and the value of a human life loses its worth."
Cristina Contini, the country administrator and Giorgia Novello, the medical coordinator for EMERGENCY's hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan (Hollie McKay/Fox News)
Inside another ward, a young woman barely 20 years old writhes in agony and moans. Days ago, her body was battered with bullets from an AK-47 in the backseat of her family's car after a thief arbitrarily decided to steal it. She is the only one in the vehicle to have survived. Another elderly woman, all alone, pleads with glazed eyes to no one in particular. Her skin was scorched and her nerves destroyed by a shell, all while innocently praying in a mosque.
The other women and girls inside the ward were seared by missiles and rockets cracking through their windows while they slept or were left for dead en route to school because a bomb exploded near them. Some scream, some sob, some simply lie in their beds, silent.
Medical conditions are often made worse by the fact that many of the injured travel for days from remote parts of the country, given that there is limited access to quality care. This, along with poor living conditions, often renders them prone to severe infection. Novello points to one case in which it took 30 hours for a child who was shot in the chest to reach them.
"There is an infection behind every corner," she continues bluntly.
The uptick in homemade bombs filled with a wide assortment of objects also has become an increased cause for concern. Medical staff are now finding not only the expected shrapnel and nails embedded in the flesh of their patients, but miscellaneous objects like bones belonging to other people, making them all the more difficult to treat effectively.
Outside the Emergency Center for War Victims in Kabul, Afghanistan (Hollie McKay/Fox News)
"Our job is to make them survive," Contini continues. "But sometimes that is worse than dying. Every day, it is heartbreak."
Yet the generosity of the international community in recent years has alleviated at least a little of that pain, with donations paving the way for expanded and improved medical facilities. The hospital opened in early 2001 when the city was still under Taliban control -- a deserted, bombed-out nursery school was transformed into a center for survival.
But the Surgical Center for War Victims is now comprised of everything from an emergency room and three operating theaters where an average of 20 surgical procedures are performed daily, to an intensive care unit, sub-intensive care unit and a physiotherapy section to assist those learning to walk again. It employs just more than 300 staff, including six surgeons. The center even endeavors to give jobs to some of the patients who survive.
Three of the facility's permanent tailors are amputees and the soft-spoken man whose occupation it is to clean the corridors has found a way to do so despite having lost both his hands.
The biggest challenge EMERGENCY faces is in dealing with Afghan customs. While they use local suppliers for medical needs where possible, the surgical materials are imported from Europe for quality purposes -- and will almost always be left for months at the nearby airport awaiting clearance.
"It is frustrating," Novello acknowledges. "But we won't bribe."
AFGHAN GOVERNMENT WELCOMES KABUL'S 'BUTCHER'
US ROCKER USES MUSIC TO BRING HEALING, HOPE TO AFGHAN CHILDREN
Perhaps the saddest section yet pertinent to any country in conflict is the designated open area in the far back of the facility, which is designed to quickly be filled with the wounded for the occasions when a mass attack such as suicide bombing strikes and there simply aren't enough beds elsewhere. The code word is "old falcon" and that signals medical staff to quickly fill the space with cots and mattresses and bed sheets and fluids.
Premature baby girl fights for survival in EMERGENCY's hospital in Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan (Hollie McKay/Fox News )
"We have a triage system when this happens," Novello explains, where we have to determine who must be treated first, and who can wait."
Meanwhile, some 80 miles north in the secluded province of Panjshir Valley, sits another EMERGENCY hospital in the form of converted war barracks from the Soviet invasion. There, the staff contend with a war of yet another kind -- helping mothers and babies in a country plagued by the highest infant mortality rate in the world; The CIAs World Factbook, stands at 112 per 1,000 live births.
When it first opened in 1999, the hospital primarily focused on tending to the war wounded, but the hospital was soon transformed into a pediatric and maternity hub. Expectant mothers commute from far and wide -- sometimes on donkeys from the mountain tops -- to give their young a better chance at survival.
Starting in 2015, the center underwent construction to meet the growing demand. It now holds 160 beds with four delivery rooms, two operating theaters, a neonatal intensive care ward and intensive care ward for those suffering complications.
"We want to reduce the injustice of being far from a hospital," said the facilitys medical coordinator, Gabriella Rivera.
And for all the hardships currently afflicting the conflict-punctured country, it's a gentle place teeming with life and the welcome sounds of newborn cries. The hospital delivers an average of 700 babies per month and patients, distinguished by their white pajamas and red headscarves, sit together in their cots cradling their young.
EMERGENCY Maternity Hospital in Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan (Hollie McKay/Fox News)
EMERGENCY has also implemented a prenatal care program from women in these remote areas, which includes periodical monitoring and training local midwives.
But perhaps its greatest life-saving addition has been the development of a special section for babies born prematurely. The hospital has 10 incubators, all of which are occupied by the tiniest of the tiny, every little breath supported by medical advancements that just a few years ago would have been unheard of by those in the quaint village.
The maternity center also is a space that, slowly but surely, is challenging the archaic gender norms that have encumbered medical care for Afghan women. The doctors are almost all male.
"At first, many of the husbands and wives had problems with this. They feared having a male doctor do the delivery," Rivera adds. "But it is less so now. It is about exposing them to something new, and we find most are willing to accept the change.
Hollie McKay has been a FoxNews.com staff reporter since 2007. She has reported extensively from the Middle East on the rise and fall of terrorist groups such as ISIS in Iraq. Follow her on twitter at @holliesmckay
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Inside Afghanistan's war hospitals: Children left for dead amid escalating violence - Fox News
When Radio Shaista goes silent, you know the Taliban are close. The female-run radio station was looted and wrecked when the group captured Kunduz, Afghanistans embattled northern city, in 2015, sending journalists fleeing. Even after the Taliban were routed, female journalists have been on guard, if they ever returned, that is.
Zarghoona Hassan, Radio Shaistas director, fled after armed militants knocked on her door at home. They accused her of converting listeners to Christianity and announced a date for her execution.
She says the Talibans anger was fuelled by talk of empowering women. The radio broadcast discussions with religious scholars about womens rights and called on mothers of Taliban combatants to prevent their sons from fighting.
We had conversations about women studying, and talked about female pilots, says Hassan.
Hassan now splits her time between Kunduz and the capital, Kabul. Since 2015 she has shut down her radio station twice in fear of Taliban advances.
A vibrant media is one of the great successes of post-2001 Afghanistan. However, womens position in it is fragile. For many Afghan families, when security worsens, protection of women overrides most other concerns.
[When we started], women flocked to the radio to work, even for free. But when the Taliban came closer, around 2012, peoples attitude changed, says Hassan, who founded two other radio stations in Kunduz. Many women in Kunduz want to work in media but their families wont let them.
This anxiety highlights the complexities around western endeavours to empower Afghan women, particularly outside liberal, urban classes. And when efforts to promote human rights do make Afghan women visible, they are usually cast as victims.
One magazine is hoping to change that. In May, the first issue of Gellara, Afghanistans first womens lifestyle magazine, hit the newsstands.
Until now, the media mostly focused on women facing violence, baad [compensating for a crime by giving a woman away in marriage], and women who had their faces cut, says Fatana Hassanzada, 23, the magazines founder and editor. We want to portray other faces of women.
Modelled on international magazines like Vogue, Gellara addresses Afghan women as consumers of fashion and culture, as book readers and as love seekers. As human beings, says Hassanzada.
The cover of the first monthly issue, 2,000 copies of which were printed at offices in Kabul, features Canadian-Afghan singer Mozhdah Jamalzadah, her hair unveiled. Inside, articles on breast cancer and yoga follow pieces on Iranian film and beauty.
We want to show that a woman can have a pretty face and be well dressed. We are trying to teach society not to be shocked by these things, says content editor Aziza Karimi.
Perhaps most controversial, in a country where arranged marriages are still widely enforced, is an introduction to the dating app Tinder.
When asked how that would go down in conservative rural areas, Hassanzada laughs. We try to target everyone. There is something for the cities and something for the villages, she says, while recognising that many rural women would probably only see the magazine if their husbands brought it home.
This month, Afghanistan also saw the launch of Zan TV (Womens TV), the first channel dedicated to women. Female presenters are common on Afghan television, but Zan is the first with all-female newsreaders (though its owner is a man).
Mehria Afzali, 25, a presenter, says her parents opposed her working in media until her husband convinced them. Some people in the provinces believe women on TV are destroying the unity of the family, she says. But we wear proper hijab. We are an Islamic channel.
Conditions for Afghan journalists are deteriorating. Last year was the bloodiest for media workers since 2001, according to the Afghan Journalists Safety Committee.
Though cities offer a larger, liberal audience, they are not always safe. A few years ago, Hassanzada, then a TV presenter, fled to Kabul from Mazar-i-Sharif with her family after a group of men stabbed her younger brother in the street, demanding that she stop working.
In Kabul, she faces threats, too. On a visit to Kabul University this week to promote the magazine, students from the Islamic law faculty tried to intervene, calling the magazine infidel, before security blocked them.
Hassanzada says she would not go back to the university. But three of our reporters study there. I am worried something will happen to them.
Yet, she says, reporting on controversial topics is worth the risk. We are the second generation of democracy in Afghanistan. In a revolution, there will always be sacrifices.
These issues are not dangerous. Its society thats dangerous.
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The female journalists defying taboos and braving death threats in Afghanistan - The Guardian