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Recent Developments

In April 2021, President Joe Biden announced that U.S. military forces would leave Afghanistan by September 2021. The Taliban, which had continued to capture and contest territory across the country despite ongoing peace talks with the Afghan government, ramped up attacks on Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) bases and outposts and began to rapidly seize more territory. In May 2021, the U.S. military accelerated the pace of its troop withdrawal. By the end of July 2021, the United States had completed nearly 95 percent of its withdrawal, leaving just 650 troops to protect the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

In the summer of 2021, the Taliban continued its offensive, threatening government-controlled urban areas and seizing several border crossings. In early August, the Taliban began direct assaults on multiple urban areas, including Kandahar in the south and Herat in the west. On August 6, 2021, the Taliban captured the capital of southern Nimruz Province, the first provincial capital to fall. After that, provincial capitals began to fall in rapid succession. Within days, the Taliban captured more than ten other capitals, including Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and Jalalabad in the east, leaving Kabul the only major urban area under government control. On August 15, 2021, Taliban fighters entered the capital, leading Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to flee the country and the Afghan government to collapse. Later that day, the Taliban announced they had entered the presidential palace, taken control of the city, and were establishing checkpoints to maintain security.

The speed of the Talibans territorial gains and collapse of both the ANDSF and Afghan government surprised U.S. officials and alliesas well as, reportedly, the Taliban itselfdespite earlier intelligence assessments of the situation on the ground. The Biden administration authorized the deployment of an additional six thousand troops to assist with the evacuation of U.S. and allied personnel, as well as thousands of Afghans who worked with the United States and were attempting to flee. The speed of the Afghan governments collapse threatens a mass exodus of refugees from Afghanistan and has exacerbated an already dire humanitarian crisis.

Background

After the Taliban government refused to hand over terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in the wake of al-Qaedas September 11, 2001, attacks, the United States invaded Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership quickly lost control of the country and relocated to southern Afghanistan and across the border to Pakistan. From there, they waged an insurgency against the Western-backed government in Kabul, Afghan national security forces, and international coalition troops.

When the U.S.-led coalition formally ended its combat mission in 2014, the ANDSF was put in charge of Afghanistans security. The ANDSF, however, faced significant challenges in holding territory and defending population centers, while the Taliban continued to attack rural districts and carry out suicide attacks in major cities. The war remained largely a stalemate for nearly six years, despite a small U.S. troop increase in 2017, continuing combat missions, and a shift in U.S. military strategy to target Taliban revenue sources, which involved air strikes against drug labs and opium production sites.

The Taliban continued to contest territory, including provincial capitals, across the country. The group briefly seized the capital of Farah Province in May 2018, and in August 2018 it captured the capital of Ghazni Province, holding the city for nearly a week before U.S. and Afghan troops regained control. The ANDSF suffered heavy casualties in recent years.

In February 2020, after more than a year of direct negotiations, the U.S. government and the Taliban signed a peace agreement that set a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Under the agreement, the United States pledged to draw down U.S. troops to approximately 8,500 within 135 days and complete a full withdrawal within fourteen months. In return, the Taliban pledged to prevent territory under its control from being used by terrorist groups and enter into negotiations with the Afghan government. However, no official cease-fire was put into place. After a brief reduction in violence, the Taliban quickly resumed attacks on Afghan security forces and civilians. Direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban began months after the agreed upon start of March 2020, faced multiple delays, and ultimately made little progress. Violence across Afghanistan continued in 2020 and 2021 as the United States increased air strikes and raids targeting the Taliban. Meanwhile, the Taliban attacked Afghan government and Afghan security forces targets and made territorial gains.

Civilian casualties across Afghanistan have remained high over the past several years. The United Nations documented a thenrecord high of 10,993 civilian casualties in 2018. Although 2019 saw a slight decline, civilian casualties exceeded 10,000 for the sixth year in a row and brought the total UN-documented civilian casualties since 2009 to more than 100,000. Despite another decline in 2020, the first half of 2021 saw a record high number of civilian casualties as the Taliban ramped up their military offensive amid the withdrawal of international troops.

In addition to the Talibans offensive, Afghanistan faces a threat from the Islamic State in Khorasan, which has also expanded its presence in several eastern provinces, attacked Kabul, and targeted civilians with suicide attacks.

Uncertainty surrounding the future of international assistance has strained the Afghan economy. Although the United States and its allies pledged in late 2020 to continue providing support to the Afghan government, they could reduce aid following the Taliban takeover. Such a move could compound Afghanistans deteriorating economic situation.

Concerns

The United States has an interest in attempting to preserve the many political, human rights, and security gains that have been achieved in Afghanistan since 2001. The Taliban takeover of the country could once again turn Afghanistan into a terrorist safe haven, as the group is believed to maintain ties with al-Qaeda. The takeover also threatens to reverse advances made in securing the rights of women and girls. Moreover, increasing internal instability, a mass exodus of refugees, and a growing humanitarian crisis could have regional ramifications as neighboring countries respond. In addition, Pakistan, India, Iran, and Russia are all likely to compete for influence in Kabul and with subnational actors.

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War in Afghanistan | Global Conflict Tracker

An Afghan volleyball player on the girls national team was beheaded by the Taliban with gruesome photos of her severed head posted on social media, according to her coach.

Mahjabin Hakimi, one of the best players in the Kabul Municipality Volleyball Club, was slaughtered in the capital city of Kabul as troops searched for female sports players, her coach told thePersian Independent.

She was killed earlier this month, but her death remained mostly hidden because her family had been threatened not to talk, claimed the coach, using a pseudonym, Suraya Afzali, due to safety fears.

Images of Hakimis severed neck were published on Afghan social media, according to the paper, which did not say how old she was.

Conflicting reports online suggested that happened earlier, with an apparent death certificate suggesting she was killed Aug. 13 the final days of the Talibans insurgency before seizing Kabul.

However, the Payk Investigative Journalism Center said its sources also confirmed that Hakimi was beheaded by the Taliban in Kabul. The governing group has yet to comment, Payk Media said.

Afzali told the Persian Independent that she was speaking out to highlight the risk that female sports players face, with only two of the womens national volleyball team having managed to flee the country.

All the players of the volleyball team and the rest of the women athletes are in a bad situation and in despair and fear, she told the paper. Everyone has been forced to flee and live in unknown places.

One of the players who escaped, Zahra Fayazi, told the BBC last month that at least one of the players had been killed.

We dont want this to repeat for our other players, she told the broadcaster from her new home in the UK.

Many of our players who are from provinces were threatened many times by their relatives who are Taliban and Taliban followers.

The Taliban asked our players families to not allow their girls to do sport, otherwise they will be faced with unexpected violence, Fayazi said.

They even burned their sports equipment to save themselves and their families. They didnt want them to keep anything related to sport. They are scared, she said.

Another teammate who escaped told the BBC everyone was shocked when they heard that one of their team had been killed.

Im sure it was the Taliban, said Sophia, a pseudonym to protect her family members still in Afghanistan. Maybe we will lose other friends, she said.

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Taliban beheaded Afghanistan volleyball player: coach

While Afghanistans new Taliban leadership has been preoccupied with the near-term challenges of forming a government, managing internal tensions, and pursuing foreign recognition and funding to stave off an economic collapse, nonstate armed actors in Afghanistan have begun to assess the opportunities and limitations that come with a return to Taliban rule. For them, the new environment is likely to be favorable. These groups, including designated terrorist organizations, will find themselves less vulnerable to monitoring and targeting by the United States and its coalition partners; will be able to take advantage of a huge pool of experienced armed labor drawn from former Taliban, Afghan security forces, and other militant ranks; and will have increased space to forge new collaborations and plan operations in the region and further afield.

This new environment poses numerous risks to the U.S. and its partners. This analysis reviews three of the most prominent and their implications for the United States.

The first risk is that the Islamic State Khorasan (ISK), which has had an openly adversarial relationship with the Taliban, takes advantage of the new governments weakness and preoccupations to bolster its own recruiting, fundraising, and territorial control within Afghanistan; and that its pressure on the government makes the Taliban leadership less likely to offer concessions to domestic or foreign critics.

ISK, the Afghanistan affiliate of the larger Islamic State group, emerged in 2015 and established a main base of operations in the countrys mountainous eastern regions. Salafi in outlook, it is militantly anti-Shia and rejected both the Pakistani government and the Western-backed Afghan government as apostate regimes that ought to be overthrown and replaced.

From its founding, ISK has also been fiercely critical of the Taliban, which it regards as insufficiently Islamic. Taliban and ISK fighters have clashed frequently, and the Taliban played a critical role in defeating ISK strongholds in rural Afghanistan, coordinating informally at times with U.S. forces. Following the Taliban takeover last summer, ISK continued its attacks, this time targeting the Taliban not as insurgent competitors, but as illegitimate governing authorities. Already ISK is taking advantage of the Taliban governments divided attention and its struggles to establish basic social services. Its ranks renewed by prisoner releases and prison breaks during the tumultuous collapse of the Ashraf Ghani government, ISK has stepped up the pace of urban attacks and, according to United Nations reporting, is positioning itself as the sole pure rejectionist group in Afghanistan. As the U.S. and its Afghan partners learned over many years, defending urban areas against dedicated teams of small-cell terrorists is a daunting task, even for a well-resourced government.

While ISK might seek to copy elements of the Talibans insurgent strategy, it stands little chance of replicating the Talibans success. The groups Salafi ideology and embrace of wanton violence against civilians will continue to alienate most Afghans, even religiously conservative Pashtun leaders. Even so, a revitalized ISK would be disruptive and dangerous. It could modestly expand its territorial control, giving it the opportunity to extract rents and engage in coercive recruitment, and could leverage spectacular attacks against the government to raise its profile. In theory ISK could use safe havens and expanded resources to plan attacks against Western targets, but there are no public indications that it is plotting to do so; more likely it will remain focused on contesting for control of the Afghan state.

ISKs campaign of attacks is also shaping the Taliban leaderships calculations in unhelpful ways. The Taliban has been relatively cohesive, but as it pivots to governance, its factionalization is becoming more apparent. Some of the movements leaders who negotiated with the international community clearly prefer a somewhat more accommodating posture toward foreign donor institutions and a more inclusive government, while others, most notably Sirajuddin Haqqani, interior minister and leader of the infamous Haqqani Network, have successfully pushed the government to adopt hardline positions on domestic and foreign policy. Facing a vigorous challenge from ISK, the Taliban will likely worry about defections and a loss of ideological legitimacy. These pressures will only empower hardline elements.

The second risk is that a Haqqani-dominated Taliban government in Kabul, with few reputational incentives to constrain the activities of al-Qaida or Pakistan-aligned militant organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), will allow these groups increased freedom to use Afghanistan for logistics, recruiting, and planning, and to reduce their dependencies on Pakistan.

It was inevitable, even under the best of circumstances, that the departure of U.S. and coalition forces from Afghanistan would lead to a more permissive environment for terrorist groups. Indeed, the U.S. government estimated in October that ISK could reconstitute its ability to conduct external operations against the United States in six to 12 months while al-Qaida could do so with a year or two. India and its global partners, meanwhile, are rightly worried that LeT and JeM, which have largely used Afghanistan as a secondary theater for recruiting and training, will have even greater room to plan attacks against Indian targets.

The prominence of Haqqani Network-associated militants in the security apparatus of the new government merely exacerbates these risks. The Haqqanis and certain other Taliban military commanders have sustained close ties with al-Qaida, and although they may advise the terror group to maintain a low profile, they do not appear to have made meaningful much less irreversible efforts to constrain its freedom of action. The Haqqanis links with Pakistan-sponsored jihadi groups are also longstanding, complex, and mutual. LeT and JeM could gain from securing with presumed Pakistani mediation sustained support by the Haqqanis to train and recruit in Afghanistan. And the Haqqanis and their allies would benefit from stitching together a broad coalition of militants that can oppose ISK and deny it legitimacy and space to recruit.

The reality is that al-Qaida, LeT, JeM, and other groups targeting Western and Indian interests do not need the Talibans active support and facilitation. They need only that the new Afghan government remain largely passive and on that count, the Taliban are likely to oblige. Even though the Taliban has obvious incentives to prevent al-Qaida in particular from planning foreign attacks from its soil, and al-Qaida itself may be hampered by organizational weaknesses, the U.S. cannot rely on the Talibans reputational anxieties to constrain al-Qaida and other (non-Islamic State) militants. Pakistan, therefore, may well continue to be a valuable, if fraught, counterterrorism partner: It is close enough to the Taliban to gain unique insights into al-Qaidas activities in Afghanistan, and sufficiently anxious about al-Qaidas historic animus toward Pakistan that it might be willing to cooperate in limited ways with Washington to degrade the group.

The third risk is that the increasingly permissive and opaque environment in Afghanistan, combined with the large pool of unemployed armed labor, will lead to novel operational partnerships among nonstate armed actors that could make it hard to identify new threats to the U.S. and its partners.

The risks, in other words, are not simply anchored in what the counterterrorism community can discern about todays Taliban-led Afghanistan, but about what it cannot see or predict. Afghanistan is a fecund environment for new militant partnerships. Even before the fall of the Ghani government, the Haqqanis were acting as the default broker among a dizzying array of groups: al-Qaida; India-focused militants; anti-Shia sectarian groups; the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), focused on challenging the Pakistani state; Uyghur militants, about whom China has pressed the Taliban to crack down; and others.

This complex organizational network of Sunni militant groups is now intersecting with a market that is flush with former Taliban, unemployed ex-Afghan National Security Forces foot soldiers, and militants arriving from nearby countries to take advantage of the permissive environment or the recruiting opportunities. Militant organizations are unlikely to be able to absorb more than a small fraction of these available fighters, but they will benefit from the unusually high-quality labor pool.

Washingtons ability to understand the militant landscape in Afghanistan has already been dramatically degraded with the loss last summer of many of its human intelligence and technical collection platforms. U.S. visibility will decrease further as militant labor flows in unpredictable ways. Unfortunately, this risk cannot easily be mitigated by diplomatic partnerships or military infrastructure. U.S. insights into the Afghan militant environment will inevitably be more heavily mediated by Pakistan which despite its narrow assistance against al-Qaida, and of course TTP, is considered by most U.S. officials to be an unreliable narrator due to its substantive support to the Taliban and anti-India militants.

A large-scale U.S. and coalition presence in Afghanistan did not prevent the United States from being startled and embarrassed in 2015 by the discovery of a massive al-Qaida training camp in southern Afghanistan. That discovery created waves in the U.S. counterterrorism community, which had grown overly confident in its assumptions about the militant environment. Afghanistans ability to surprise us is even greater today than it was seven years ago. The United States has little choice but to remain vigilant.

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Nonstate threats in the Talibans Afghanistan - Brookings Institution

KABUL, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Taliban fighters will no longer be allowed to carry their weapons in amusement parks in Afghanistan, the group's spokesman said on Wednesday, in what appeared to be another effort by the country's new rulers to soften their image.

Taliban fighters, many of whom have spent most of their lives in a 20-year insurgency against a U.S.-backed government, flocked to amusement parks in Afghan cities in towns after they took over in August.

"Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate are not allowed to enter amusement parks with weapons, military uniforms and vehicles," the main Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said on Twitter.

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"(They) are obliged to abide by all the rules and regulations of amusement parks."

The Taliban earned a reputation as uncompromising and often brutal enforcers of their strict ways then they last ruled, between 1996 and 2001.

But since taking over in August, they have tried to present a more moderate face to their fellow Afghans and to the wider world, as an interim cabinet grapples with a looming humanitarian crisis.

Of particular attraction for Taliban fighters was one of Kabul's largest amusement parks and a waterside park at the Qargha reservoir, in the city's western outskirts. read more

Fighters clutching automatic rifles queued for up carousel and swinging pirate ship rides - with regular visitors looking on nervously.

Most of the fighters Reuters spoke to then had never been to Kabul until the Taliban took control of the capital on Aug. 15, and some were eager to visit the amusement park before returning to duties around the country.

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Reporting by Kabul newsroomEditing by Robert Birsel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Afghanistan's Taliban told they can't take their guns to the funfair - Reuters

Michael Slackman, Lauren Katzenberg, Doug Schorzman and Greg Winter | The New York Times

For 20 years, The New York Times has remained fully dedicated to covering the war in Afghanistan. As we usher in a new era, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Christina Goldbaum take the helm in Kabul.

Dear Colleagues,

Afghanistan experienced tremendous upheaval last summer that forced The Times to evacuate all of our staff after the Taliban took control. It was a trying time, you will all recall, as over the course of five days we sought to get more than 120 Afghan current and former colleagues and their family members out of the country, without any idea what would come next, all while putting out a report on the historic moment.

We succeeded on both fronts, thanks to the tremendous efforts of so many throughout the newsroom and the company.

But while our commitment to covering Afghanistan never wavered, we were unsure how we would move forward.

Now those plans are clear and we wanted to share them with you.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff, who took on the role of acting bureau chief at the height of the crisis, is now our permanent Kabul bureau chief.

He will be joined by Christina Goldbaum, who became part of our Kabul reporting team just five weeks before the collapse and will return to Afghanistan as a correspondent.

Both will work closely with David Zucchino, a prince of a correspondent who will continue to rotate through Kabul with extended visits. We expect other correspondents to rotate through as well.

When they are in the country, the team will work from our Kabul bureau, which was reopened a few weeks ago and is managed by Warren Coleman. Were extremely thankful for the months of hard work by The Times operations team, including Tug Wilson, Charlie OMalley, Warren and Mark Powell and by our correspondents who made this return possible.

Thomas T.M. Gibbons-Neff

Thomas T.M. Gibbons-Neff joined The Times in our Washington bureau in 2017, covering the Pentagon before heading to Kabul in 2020. In Afghanistan, he reported on a range of stories, from the Talibans choice of sneakers to the shadowy militias forced to defend Afghanistans highways. On the frontlines, he painted haunting portraits of the war through dispatches that showed the rapid collapse of Afghan security forces as U.S. troops left, weaving his experiences as a Marine with what he witnessed on the frontlines as a reporter.

As Kabul fell in August, T.M., alongside other Times employees, helped evacuate our Afghan colleagues and their families over five brutal days where he had to draw on his experience as a Marine and journalist to help get everyone to safety.

In October last year, T.M. returned to Afghanistan to cover a country now ruled by the very movement he had fought a decade earlier. He visited his old battlefields and showed a country now at peace but ravaged by a humanitarian crisis and the remnants of war. T.M.s coverage also wrestled with the one question that has endured after the two-decades-long U.S. occupation ended last August: What was it all for?

Christina Goldbaum

Christina Goldbaum won the Livingston Award in 2018 for her coverage in East Africa and joined The Times that same year. In Metro, she had a fine run covering immigration and transportation, then quickly established herself in Kabul. As the Taliban seized territory, Christina anchored our coverage, charting Afghanistans unfolding migration crisis and offering an early glimpse of life under Taliban rule. After the U.S.-backed government collapsed, she worked around the clock to help secure The Times Afghan employees safe arrival in Doha and transfer to Mexico City and then the United States.

Christina returned to Afghanistan last October and has traveled across the country writing the insightful, compassionate stories we have come to expect from her: She introduced us to high school girls coming to terms with life under Taliban rule, delved into the rising threat from the Islamic State, and defly explained the economic collapse and ensuing humanitarian catastrophe. Her reporting on women trying to keep their children alive amid a worsening hunger crisis spurred the U.S. government to issue humanitarian exemptions to sanctions, U.S. officials told The Times.

David Zucchino, who had a brilliant career with The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Los Angeles Times before joining The Times as a contributing writer, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, first in 1989 for his series, Being Black in South Africa, for The Inquirer, and in 2021, for his book, Wilmingtons Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy.

For 20 years, The Times remained fully dedicated to covering the war in Afghanistan. In 2021, it operated the largest bureau in Kabul of any foreign newspaper. Now, we will continue that commitment in this new era and are thrilled to have T.M. and Christina at the helm.

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Afghanistan: The New York Times announces next steps in coverage - Editor And Publisher Magazine