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MOORHEAD In August of 2021, as Taliban fighters made their way toward Kabul, Afghanistan, officials in charge of the U.S. embassy in Kabul began planning how they would evacuate the consulate.

However, the Taliban moved faster than anyone expected and a decision was made to empty the embassy in a single day, recalled Benjamin Dille, a Moorhead native who at the time was running the administration of the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

In short order, Dille said, embassy staff were transported by helicopter to the airport in Kabul and from there flown out of the country via transport planes.

"We got all 800 of our staff out, plus their families, probably 2,000 people," Dille said, adding that although they were not able to get all of the embassy's contract staff out of the country, U.S. officials are continuing to work on helping people who remain in Afghanistan who are believed to be at risk because of their connection to the U.S. embassy.

Dille was among a number of Americans who recently received the U.S. State Departments Award for Heroism for work done at Kabul's besieged airport.

The honor, presented by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, reads in part:

"For steadfast courage as core members of the leadership of the Department of State NEO (Noncombatant Evacuation Operation) team, enduring constant threats and danger to support the evacuation of over 124,000 Americans and Afghans from Kabul August 15-30, 2022."

Dille, who's worked for the U.S. Foreign Service for more than 30 years, grew up in Moorhead and graduated from Moorhead High School in 1978.

He is the son of the late Roland Dille, longtime president of what is now Minnesota State University Moorhead, and Beth Dille, who still lives in Moorhead.

Benjamin Dille is currently stationed in Turkmenistan, where he will serve as charg d'affaires for the month of August, essentially filling the role of acting ambassador.

In September, he will head to the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Virginia, where he will teach Marine Corps officers about diplomacy and statecraft.

Dille said he is grateful to both of his parents for being supportive of his early interest in all things international, and he said the Fargo-Moorhead area's education-rich environment of colleges and universities helped, too.

"I really feel I had a really rich upbringing," he said, adding that he believes the education environment in the Fargo-Moorhead area "opened the world" to him.

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Moorhead native recognized for role in evacuating US embassy in Afghanistan - INFORUM

Photo: Salam Watandar

The 12-year-old childs lifeless body was pulled up on Monday, according to local Taliban officials in the province of Ghazni in central Afghanistan. The boy had fallen into a deep well in the province and died as a result.

The Taliban authorities said that the young child drowned in a well after inhaling gas, which is what caused the childs death. The child died as a result of gas poisoning, a high concentration of carbon dioxide gas in the well.

The childs dead body was pulled out of the well on Monday morning, August 22, in the Qarabagh district of Ghazni province by the provincial rescue team, according to Taliban officials.

Earlier this week, the body of a 15-year-old child was discovered after four days in a water well in the Grishk district of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.

The child tumbled into a deep uncovered well in the Grishk district of Helmand province, and the dead body was discovered and pulled 4 days after.

Another 2-year-old child who fell into a 30-meter-deep well in the province of Helmand was ultimately rescued by the rescue crew after two days of uninterrupted effort.

Similar incidents have happened in other regions, mostly in the southern part of this country, and in the majority of these tragedies, children were brought up dead at the conclusion.

This comes as the Taliban Interior Ministry ordered that wells without a cover be covered since there had been more incidents of people falling into wells.

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Lifeless Body of Child Pulled Up from Well in Central Afghanistan - The Khaama Press News Agency - The Khaama Press News Agency

If it bleeds, it leads so goes the media expression and this is especially true of news out of Afghanistan, which made global headlines during the presence of US forces but few while lives are being lost to the climate crisis.

The main attention Afghanistan gets these days is when big international aid agencies put together posters of hungry women and children for donations, or when a calamity like the June 2022 earthquake hits.

But as you are reading these lines, many towns and villages in the war-ravaged country remain submerged by flash floods triggered weeks ago by a relentless spate of untimely rains and melting glaciers, claiming lives and destroying livelihoods of marginalised communities already surviving on small amounts of foreign aid.

Its currently peak summer harvest season when farmers gather fruits and collect staples for the approaching winter. But it snowed briefly in the central highlands after long and crippling dry spells, when farmers were desperately longing for the usual spring season rains.

Then came violent hail storms destroying orchards and eventually rain that ruined the wheat crops. None of these events are anywhere near normal in terms of the climate of this landlocked country of nearly 40 million people.

The glaciers in the Himalayas are melting at an unmatched pace, bringing the deadly floods from the mountains of the northern provinces all the way down to the plains in the south. These fast-depleting glaciers are the lifeline of Afghans who rely heavily on the natural streams and rivers. Despite this, there has been no development work on water preservation, storage and distribution over the past couple of decades on a national level. The underground levels are dropping at an alarming rate as it is the only way for locals to look for water.

Prior to the latest downpours, the drought was so severe and the heatwave so intense it led to multiple occurrences of forest fire in the countrys east and south. This was a grim tragedy. Locals in the fire-affected Khost and Nuristan provinces had to rely on youth from the local communities to put out the fires by carrying buckets of water and sand with their bare hands, day and night.

The climate crisis is so real in the country that it will likely trigger another food crisis in the months to follow. All this at a time when the delivery of aid is hampered and overshadowed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leading to supply chain disorders, inflation and donor fatigue.

Is the media solely to blame for this? No. Could they do more to help? Yes. Just as the major environment polluters must take responsibility for the miseries they have inflicted upon a population that has been left at the mercy of the Taliban.

Before Afghanistan plunged into the current crisis, the country was promised some funding from the Green Climate Fund, but with the fall of Kabul to the Taliban it seems the world has simply abandoned the country, turning a blind eye to the escalating disasters.

Amid all this, Afghanistans neighbours have manipulated the situation to their advantage with dodgy deals with the Taliban that would give them access to the countrys rich natural resources at throwaway prices, propping up a funding stream for the defecto regime.

China also has its eyes on Afghanistans rich and extensive lithium, iron and copper ore reserves while Pakistan has accelerated the import of high-grade coal at bargain prices, which is only going to accelerate the melting of the Himalayan glaciers as well as increasing global pollution levels. For Pakistan, a country grappling under tough financial conditions, a steady flow of coal will help fire up power plants and revive the ailing railway network.

The quest for coal even prompted Pakistani authorities to make non-stop border-crossing arrangements during the day and night a privilege that was not even offered during the peak of the war when thousands of war-weary Afghans were fleeing the country in all directions.

The search for Afghanistans untapped mineral wealth even attracted Australias richest man, Andrew Forrest, to the country just weeks before the Taliban takeover.

Reporting on environmental disasters in Afghanistan is important, as it would serve as a catalyst for the entire green movement around the world to hold deniers and polluters to account.

The local media the few surviving outlets post the Taliban takeover is unable or unwilling to critically report on all of this because of obvious fears of retaliation. And for the international media, the Afghanistan story seems to have hit a dead-end of sadness, with nothing new or exciting for the international media or its consumers.

One can dispute matters of politics in the country, but the climate calamity Afghanistan is facing is imposed from outside. Its time the world, and neighbouring and regional polluters, take responsibility.

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Afghanistan is facing a climate calamity its time the world took ...

Taliban fighters guard the site of an explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan. Last month, several explosions and gunfire ripped through a Sikh temple in Afghanistan's capital. Ebrahim Noroozi/AP hide caption

Taliban fighters guard the site of an explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan. Last month, several explosions and gunfire ripped through a Sikh temple in Afghanistan's capital.

A year ago, India was not happy about the state of affairs in Afghanistan. The U.S. was negotiating its exit, the Taliban was consolidating power, and decades of India supporting anti-Taliban forces was evaporating.

But just last month, Indian officials went to Kabul to meet with Taliban leaders. India has also partially reopened its embassy in Kabul to coordinate humanitarian aid.

So, why is India reopening dialogue with the Taliban now? Asfandyar Mir, an expert in international relations and counterterrorism at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says that the interests for all parties involved have a long and complicated history.

He joined All Things Considered to explain the dynamic between India, the Taliban, and Pakistan, as well as India's interests in providing aid to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

On what the meeting between Indian and Taliban officials last month focused on

In recent weeks, the Taliban have been making a series of public moves to India, which was really an unlikely prospective partner country, given that the Taliban have been allied with Pakistan, which is an arch rival of India. So in many ways, this is a stunning development.

There are some real tensions between the Taliban and the Pakistani government. For one, the Taliban have taken a position which is contrary to Pakistan's expectation on the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Another reason is that the Taliban are protecting one of the most significant anti-Pakistan insurgent groups, by the name of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the TTP.

So, watching that, the Indian policymakers seem to have concluded that perhaps there is enough distance between their arch-rival Pakistan and the Taliban, that the Taliban after all are not a mere proxy of the Pakistanis, and that there might be some room for them to forge a working relationship with the Taliban.

On why the Taliban would turn to India for help now

For years, they [Taliban] bemoaned India's support for the former Afghan government republic. And then India's embassy was blown up by the Taliban in 2008. So there was a lot of bad blood between the two sides.

So the question is, why are the Taliban so interested now? And economics might be one big reason. The Taliban are really struggling to govern the country. The fact that they are not diplomatically recognized is making it difficult for them to just fund their government: it's short on resources, there's a humanitarian crisis in the country, there are issues of food security.

Policemen attend a ceremony to receive new uniforms from the Taliban authorities in Kandahar in July. Javed Tanveer/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Policemen attend a ceremony to receive new uniforms from the Taliban authorities in Kandahar in July.

The Taliban are hoping that the Indians would increase their supplies of wheat to the country. And over the medium term, the Taliban seem to be interested in India reviving its development projects in Afghanistan.

India built a lot of hospitals, so the Taliban appear to be interested in India reviving some of those activities as well.

On why India might be interested in aiding Afghanistan again

It seems like the Indians and the Taliban have been talking about counterterrorism. So one concern the Indians had, in the lead up to the Taliban's rise to power, was that much like the 1990s, Afghanistan under the Taliban would become a safe haven for terrorists and not just anti-U.S., anti-Western terrorists, but also anti-Indian terrorists.

It appears that now the Indian government has gone to the Taliban, and said, "Look, if you want a relationship with us, we have to talk about these terrorism concerns." So the Taliban for their part have reciprocated with some guarantees similar to what they have provided to the United States government, that they will not allow Afghan territory to be used against India, that the Taliban are telling the Indians they are even ready to take action on any intelligence that the Indians might provide.

On whether there is something for the United States to gain from this new potential alliance

If the Taliban are responding to India, if they are talking about terrorism, if they open up to a human rights conversation with the Indians, that might be good news. In addition, I would say that if the Indians can really figure out a counterterrorism pact with the Taliban, I think that would also be a significant positive step, and could provide a channel for the international community and the U.S. in particular.

It's a complicated situation, and my view is that the U.S. should really be coordinating with India to maximize the counterterrorism benefit and any other benefits that can be had from India's engagement.

This story was adapted for the web by Manuela Lopez Restrepo.

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India and the Taliban are working towards forming a relationship. Here's why - NPR

WENATCHEE - The fear of living or dying daily is now an afterthought for a Afghan family who are among Wenatchees newest residents. Today, their focus is getting back on their feet and make the best life possible for themselves in America.

An article written by independent journalist Dominick Bonny detailed the harrowing journey of the Noori family in their escape from the imminent danger posed by the Taliban in Afghanistan when the U.S. withdrew its remaining troops from the country as part of a 2020 peace treaty with the militant group.

Bonnys article reads that Reshad Ahmad Noori and his family arrived in Wenatchee in early July after their long and arduous trek from Kabul, Afghanistan in 2021.

Noori was a former employee at the U.S. Army base at the Kabul Airport. Noori was employed by NATO and the U.S. military selling retail items, clothes, managing laundry, customer service and was an engraving designer. However, Nooris gainful employment ended when American troops withdrew from the besieged country in 2021, putting the father of three in a tough spot.

Noori and his wife Fatima have three daughters Mehrin, 6, Maryan, 4, and Behtrin, who is 19 months. Noori was already granted clearance to leave the country because of his employment with the U.S. military, but the situation at the Kabul airport, he felt, was too dangerous to expose his family to. But when the Taliban asked to see him because of his American car that was sitting outside his apartment, he knew he had to leave immediately.

The watchman call me, he said. Here are some people from the new government, Taliban. They want to ask for the owner of the car.

Nooris father instructed him not to go and instead, Nooris older brother went to speak with the Taliban.

My father didnt let me to go, because they say its not safe for you to go and speak with them if they know that you was working somewhere in NATO or for Americans, it can make you trouble, he said. And I didnt and they took the car.

Noori told Bonny that he and his family didnt go back to their apartment building and instead, went to his dads home outside of Kabul where they burned all the documents that connected him with NATO, other than a few papers he needed to have in order to leave the country.

After spending two nights huddled in a crowd at the Kabul Airport while the U.S. defended the wall surrounding the aviation facility, the Noori family caught a break and got onto an airlift.

It was a very bad situation, he said. I dont know, its not a gun, but theres a kind of gun, that its making kind of like a bullet sound. But its giving fire just to scare the people to not approach to the wall. So from that side US Army and other members of NATO who was firing to not make people crowd behind the wall, and from the other side Taliban.

He said the children were terrified, screaming and crying.

As a father I was, hm, I dont know enough English to explain, he said. But it was really, really scary time.

A short time later, the Nooris landed in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, where they were entered into a refugee camp. The family of five were relegated to a very small one-room shelter for months and couldnt leave due to COVID protocols. The camp was referred to as Abu Dhabi jail. After nine months, refugees began staging protests about the length of time they stayed and conditions, which got the attention of US officials prompting things to change from there.

There was 12,000 people and on June first they decide they would take out seven thousand people to the United States, he said. Then they bring us to Virginia.

The Nooris spent most of June in Virginia and eventually became connected with the Wenatchee Valley Afghan Support Circle.

Rashad Noori and his daughters in June in Virginia

Photo: Courtesy of Dominick Bonny

In a phone call, Noori said he told the Wenatchee-based group that he would be happy to move to Washington state, having a childhood friend of his living in Seattle.

I sign the paper and then after four or five days they call me and they told me that 'There is a team of the sponsor circle in Washington state, Wenatchee, Noori said. So they would like to take the responsibility to call you to that city. Are you ready to go? And I said, This is the first time in the United States, so all United States must be the same.

Noori learned quickly that the Wenatchee area was quite different from Virginia.

When I came here I see the mountains, river, green places same like Afghanistan, he said. I love it and I want to stay here. I am very happy, very glad to be here.

Today, the family is staying in a two-room hotel in Wenatchee, and are preparing to move into an apartment in August. The Wenatchee Valley Afghan Support Circle has set up a GoFundMe page for the family to help raise funds for furniture and monetary support.

The Nooris are also honing in on their English-speaking skills; their kids are attending a day camp at the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center and will attend public school in the fall.

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Goodbye Afghanistan: Chaos created by Taliban back east forces family to flee to Wenatchee - iFIBER One News