Category: “Dead Skunk in The Middle of The Road”

Issues and events that stink to high heaven

The Taliban reportedly have control of US biometric devices – a lesson in life-and-death consequences of data privacy

The Conversation

The Taliban reportedly have control of US biometric devices – a lesson in life-and-death consequences of data privacy

Margaret Hu, Prof. of Law and of International Affairs, Penn State 
<span class="caption">A U.S. Army soldier scans the irises of an Afghan civilian in 2012 as part of an effort by the military to collect biometric information from much of the Afghan population.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="link rapid-noclick-resp" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-american-isaf-solider-from-team-apache-of-task-force-news-photo/149781425" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:Jose Cabezas/AFP via GettyImages">Jose Cabezas/AFP via GettyImages</a></span>
A U.S. Army soldier scans the irises of an Afghan civilian in 2012 as part of an effort by the military to collect biometric information from much of the Afghan population. Jose Cabezas/AFP via Getty Images.

In the wake of the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul and the ouster of the Afghan national government, alarming reports indicate that the insurgents could potentially access biometric data collected by the U.S. to track Afghans, including people who worked for U.S. and coalition forces.

Afghans who once supported the U.S. have been attempting to hide or destroy physical and digital evidence of their identities. Many Afghans fear that the identity documents and databases storing personally identifiable data could be transformed into death warrants in the hands of the Taliban.

This potential data breach underscores that data protection in zones of conflict, especially biometric data and databases that connect online activity to physical locations, can be a matter of life and death. My research and the work of journalists and privacy advocates who study biometric cyber-surveillance anticipated these data privacy and security risks.

Biometric-driven warfare

Investigative journalist Annie Jacobson documented the birth of biometric-driven warfare in Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, in her book “First Platoon.” The Department of Defense quickly viewed biometric data and what it called “identity dominance” as the cornerstone of multiple counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategies. Identity dominance means being able to keep track of people the military considers a potential threat regardless of aliases, and ultimately denying organizations the ability to use anonymity to hide their activities.

By 2004, thousands of U.S. military personnel had been trained to collect biometric data to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. By 2007, U.S. forces were collecting biometric data primarily through mobile devices such as the Biometric Automated Toolset (BAT) and Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE). BAT includes a laptop, fingerprint reader, iris scanner and camera. HIIDE is a single small device that incorporates a fingerprint reader, iris scanner and camera. Users of these devices can collect iris and fingerprint scans and facial photos, and match them to entries in military databases and biometric watchlists.

In addition to biometric data, the system includes biographic and contextual data such as criminal and terrorist watchlist records, enabling users to determine if an individual is flagged in the system as a suspect. Intelligence analysts can also use the system to monitor people’s movements and activities by tracking biometric data recorded by troops in the field.

By 2011, a decade after 9/11, the Department of Defense maintained approximately 4.8 million biometric records of people in Afghanistan and Iraq, with about 630,000 of the records collected using HIIDE devices. Also by that time, the U.S. Army and its military partners in the Afghan government were using biometric-enabled intelligence or biometric cyberintelligence on the battlefield to identify and track insurgents.

In 2013, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps used the Biometric Enrollment and Screening Device, which enrolled the iris scans, fingerprints and digital face photos of “persons of interest” in Afghanistan. That device was replaced by the Identity Dominance System-Marine Corps in 2017, which uses a laptop with biometric data collection sensors, known as the Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit.

Over the years, to support these military objectives, the Department of Defense aimed to create a biometric database on 80% of the Afghan population, approximately 32 million people at today’s population level. It is unclear how close the military came to this goal.

More data equals more people at risk

In addition to the use of biometric data by the U.S. and Afghan military for security purposes, the Department of Defense and the Afghan government eventually adopted the technologies for a range of day-to-day governmental uses. These included evidence for criminal prosecution, clearing Afghan workers for employment and election security.

In addition, the Afghan National ID system and voter registration databases contained sensitive data, including ethnicity data. The Afghan ID, the e-Tazkira, is an electronic identification document that includes biometric data, which increases the privacy risks posed by Taliban access to the National ID system.

A computer screen shows an enlarged image of a pair of eyes as an arm holds a boxlike object in front of the eyes of a woman wearing a headscarf and facemask
A computer screen shows an enlarged image of a pair of eyes as an arm holds a boxlike object in front of the eyes of a woman wearing a headscarf and facemask

 

It’s too soon after the Taliban’s return to power to know whether and to what extent the Taliban will be able to commandeer the biometric data once held by the U.S. military. One report suggested that the Taliban may not be able to access the biometric data collected through HIIDE because they lack the technical capacity to do so. However, it’s possible the Taliban could turn to longtime ally Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, for help getting at the data. Like many national intelligence services, ISI likely has the necessary technology.

Another report indicated that the Taliban have already started to deploy a “biometrics machine” to conduct “house-to-house inspections” to identify former Afghan officials and security forces. This is consistent with prior Afghan news reports that described the Taliban subjecting bus passengers to biometric screening and using biometric data to target Afghan security forces for kidnapping and assassination.

Concerns about collecting biometric data

For years following 9/11, researchers, activists and policymakers raised concerns that the mass collection, storage and analysis of sensitive biometric data posed dangers to privacy rights and human rights. Reports of the Taliban potentially accessing U.S. biometric data stored by the military show that those concerns were not unfounded. They reveal potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the U.S. military’s biometric systems. In particular, the situation raises questions about the security of the mobile biometric data collection devices used in Afghanistan.

The data privacy and cyber-security concerns surrounding Taliban access to U.S. and former Afghan government databases are a warning for the future. In building biometric-driven warfare technologies and protocols, it appears that the U.S. Department of Defense assumed the Afghan government would have the minimum level of stability needed to protect the data.

The U.S. military should assume that any sensitive data – biometric and biographical data, wiretap data and communications, geolocation data, government records – could potentially fall into enemy hands. In addition to building robust security to protect against unauthorized access, the Pentagon should use this as an opportunity to question whether it was necessary to collect the biometric data in the first instance.

Understanding the unintended consequences of the U.S. experiment in biometric-driven warfare and biometric cyber-intelligence is critically important for determining whether and how the military should collect biometric information. In the case of Afghanistan, the biometric data that the U.S. military and the Afghan government had been using to track the Taliban could one day soon – if it’s not already – be used by the Taliban to track Afghans who supported the U.S.

Read more:

Margaret Hu is affiliated with the Future of Privacy Forum, a non-profit think tank that provides policy guidance on data privacy. Some of Hu’s research assistants receive funding from Microsoft Research. She received an honorarium for speaking at an event hosted by Microsoft Research.

Don’t Negotiate With Trump’s Disease-Spreading Zombie Army

Don’t Negotiate With Trump’s Disease-Spreading Zombie Army

Wajahat Ali                        
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos Getty
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos Getty

 

What will it take for the American majority to stop being hijacked by the bad-faith politics of an increasingly radicalized GOP that will stop at nothing to promote death and achieve minority rule?

Most of us in this country, who have chosen life during a pandemic, are asked to coddle the unhinged temper tantrums and violent extremism of a conservative base that continues supporting the Jan. 6 violent insurrection and attacking our voting rights, and is willing to sacrifice our children as canaries in the COVID coalmine to fuel their endless culture war during a pandemic that has killed over 600,000 Americans.

Yet their elected leaders and mouthpieces, like Rep. Steve Scalise, are still treated as credible sources and normalized by being invited on news channels and by papers of record to criticize President Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a cartoonishly hardcore Trump loyalist, and ridiculous pseudo-intellectual Ben Shapiro, whom The New York Times once referred to as “the cool kid’s philosopher” and whose Daily Wire is hugely influential in pushing vaccine misinformation on Facebook, still get coveted platforms in Politico.

Welcome to the Upside Down. Democracy might not survive, but the ratings will be great as the GOP base has become so unhinged and radicalized on a feed bag of disinformation to the point that Crenshaw, a slavish MAGA man, got heckled for refusing to say the election was stolen. Even Trump, their god-king, was booed by his adoring cult at a recent rally in Alabama. Did he praise Muslims? Hug an undocumented immigrant? Compliment Obama? Nope. He simply gently recommended that they take a life-saving vaccine, like he did, that will protect them from suffering a tragic, unnecessary death.

The GOP’s New Heroes Are All Killers, Kooks, and Creeps

You can’t “win over” these folks anymore. They are too far over the bend to get brought back around by Hillbilly Elegies, FDA vaccine approvals, sympathetic profiles of voters in rust belt diners, or town halls with undecided voters. Facts, common sense, and good-naturedness will not sway their fragile, terrified hearts.

Enough coddling. It’s time to say enough is enough.

Thankfully, Democrats are flexing their slim congressional majorities—a result of Republican gerrymandering—and trying to push back. The 13-person House panel selected to investigate the Jan. 6 riot announced Wednesday that it’s requesting communications from within the Trump White House and other agencies to determine information about the planning and funding of the Jan. 6 insurrection that left five people dead. This includes asking telecommunication companies to preserve phone records of congressmen to ascertain what, if anything, they knew about the unfolding riots and when.

Republicans like GOP House “leader” Kevin McCarthy have already dismissed the investigation as a political witch hunt. I mean I also would be dismissive of an investigation that would potentially incriminate myself. After all, McCarthy has already admitted he was in touch with Trump from inside the Capitol on the day of the insurrection, and Rep. Jordan has also acknowledged he was in conversation with Trump. Even though a recent report said the FBI found “scant evidence” that the insurrection was a result of an “organized plot,” one of the main organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally, conservative activist Ali Alexander, has claimed he worked in tandem with three GOP lawmakers. “We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Alexander confessed in a since-deleted video, pointing to Reps. Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks and Paul Gosar.

This Trump Wannabe Just Might Be the Worst of the Rotten Bunch

When he isn’t busy giving keynote speeches at white nationalist rallies and tweeting white supremacist talking points, Gosar is busy accusing Capitol police of “lying in wait’” to “execute” Ashli Babbitt, a radicalized insurrectionist who was transformed after her death into a “martyr” by Trump and the GOP. “I know that day I saved countless lives,” veteran officer Lt. Michael Byrd said in an interview with Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News finally revealing his identity after enduring months of racist hate and death threats. Thankfully, Officer Byrd was just internally cleared by his department for any wrongdoing, but that didn’t stop Tucker Carlson and Russian state TV from weaponizing his Blackness and attacking him and alleging that he “executed” Babbitt.

Meanwhile, Brooks had more to say in support of the failed terrorist and Trump voter who streamed his pathetic attempt to blow up the Library of Congress last week than he did about Officer Brian Sicknick, who died trying to protect the Capitol. Recently, Brooks confirmed he was wearing body armor during his Jan. 6 speech to the Trump supporters who would later overrun the nation’s Capitol.

“Should I wear a striped tie? Cuff links? Bow tie? Body armor?” is a totally normal, daily sartorial debate for elected officials. Meanwhile, his colleagues who didn’t get the memo and were barricaded, protected by Capitol Hill officers, fearing for their lives.

Those include Rep. Andrew Clyde, a hypocrite whose commitment to his extremist base and their attack on our democracy is so great that he tried to gaslight the world by claiming afterward that the riot was a “normal tourist visit.” In reality, new reports reveal that the Secret Service warned Capitol Police about violent threats a day before the insurrection, but due to intelligence lapses did not prepare for a large-scale assault.

Meanwhile, the same 21 GOP officials who’ve attacked the Squad for supporting “defund the police,” voted against awarding congressional medals to the Capitol Police officers who saved their lives. Along with Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, some of these congressmen are holding rallies in support of the individuals who were arrested for their part in the insurrection.

It’s not surprising any more to hear white supremacist conspiracy theories parroted by GOP elected officials and mainstreamed by Fox News hosts, or domestic terror threats like QAnon embraced by former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and tolerated by Kevin McCarthy.

But it is still shocking, and should be a big news story, to hear these pols embrace a lunatic conspiracy that just radicalized a young father who speared his two daughters to death because he was convinced his wife “possessed serpent DNA and had passed it onto his children.”

These radicalized Republicans fighting to maintain minority rule do so in no small part thanks to the aid and comfort provided by “moderate” Democrats like Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. Even though the House just passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to strengthen federal oversight of state election laws, it has no chance of passing thanks to Senate Republicans who will filibuster it to death. And instead of voting to kill the filibuster, an archaic instrument of Jim Crow, these Democrats will instead maintain the fiction of “bipartisanship” with colleagues who are actively supporting a radicalized cult that supported a violent coup that could have killed them.

Why Trump Is Anointing Ashli Babbitt as MAGA’s First Martyr

If there’s a silver lining to these dark clouds, perhaps it’s that death and economic pain are great motivators for the majority to wake up and say “enough” to the right wing’s multi-pronged culture war. With the FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine, government agencies and private entities are moving forward with vaccine mandates. Meanwhile, these enraged zombies for white supremacy are now assaulting and harassing doctors who are simply providing health guidelines at town halls, bullying our teachers and school boards, fighting mask mandates, resisting vaccine mandates and doing everything to combat the overwhelming majority—nearly 70 percent of us—who have decided to choose life.

Delta Air Lines said it will begin charging unvaccinated workers $200 per month, citing steep hospital bills for their unvaccinated employees who got COVID-19. Tyson is now requiring all of its U.S. employees to be vaccinated by Nov. 1, even as thousands are employed in Arkansas, which just ran out of ICU beds.

It’s too late to convince people determined to believe otherwise that the pandemic is real, deadly, and requires them to wear masks and take vaccines. It’s been nearly two years. We could have reopened safely by now, saved thousands of lives, and protected our front-line workers if we simply followed social distancing and masking.

Instead, a radicalized minority enabled by demagogic governors continues to choose death, which Republicans are trying, insanely, to rebrand as “freedom.”

To quote Batman Begins, “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you.” That minority may have a right to choose death, but they certainly don’t have a right to infect us with their virus by coming to work, to sporting events and into our children’s schools.

Also, it’s encouraging to see U.S. Capitol Police officers fight back against Republicans who are trying to gaslight the Jan. 6 insurrection. Seven officers are now suing Trump and those who organized the Stop the Steal riot that killed five people and injured more than 140 officers.

We are the majority. We have the numbers. However, it’s not enough for the rest of us to be complacent and simply acknowledge the multiple threats to our democracy. It’s time to flex and fight back on all fronts to save lives and our democracy from a conservative hate machine willing to attack truth, science, safety, and democracy in its desperate, violent attempt to preserve white rule.

Biden Deserves Credit, Not Blame, for Afghanistan

The Atlantic – Ideas

Biden Deserves Credit, Not Blame, for Afghanistan

Americans should feel proud of what the U.S. government and military have accomplished in these past two weeks.

By David Rothkopf                           
About the author: David Rothkopf is an author, a commentator, a former senior government official, and the host of the Deep State Radio podcast.
President Joe Biden
Evan Vucci / AP

America’s longest war has been by any measure a costly failure, and the errors in managing the conflict deserve scrutiny in the years to come. But Joe Biden doesn’t “own” the mayhem on the ground right now. What we’re seeing is the culmination of 20 years of bad decisions by U.S. political and military leaders. If anything, Americans should feel proud of what the U.S. government and military have accomplished in these past two weeks. President Biden deserves credit, not blame.

Unlike his three immediate predecessors in the Oval Office, all of whom also came to see the futility of the Afghan operation, Biden alone had the political courage to fully end America’s involvement. Although Donald Trump made a plan to end the war, he set a departure date that fell after the end of his first term and created conditions that made the situation Biden inherited more precarious. And despite significant pressure and obstacles, Biden has overseen a military and government that have managed, since the announcement of America’s withdrawal, one of the most extraordinary logistical feats in their recent history. By the time the last American plane lifts off from Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 31, the total number of Americans and Afghan allies extricated from the country may exceed 120,000.

Graeme Wood: What does ISIS want now?

In the days following the fall of Kabul earlier this month—an event that triggered a period of chaos, fear, and grief—critics castigated the Biden administration for its failure to properly coordinate the departure of the last Americans and allies from the country. The White House was indeed surprised by how quickly the Taliban took control, and those early days could have been handled better. But the critics argued that more planning both would have been able to stop the Taliban victory and might have made America’s departure somehow tidier, more like a win or perhaps even a draw. The chaos, many said, was symptomatic of a bigger error. They argued that the United States should stay in Afghanistan, that the cost of remaining was worth the benefits a small force might bring.

Former military officers and intelligence operatives, as well as commentators who had long been advocates of extending America’s presence in Afghanistan, railed against Biden’s artificial deadline. Some critics were former Bush-administration officials or supporters who had gotten the U.S. into the mess in the first place, setting us on the impossible path toward nation building and, effectively, a mission without a clear exit or metric for success. Some were Obama-administration officials or supporters who had doubled down on the investment of personnel in the country and later, when the futility of the war was clear, lacked the political courage to withdraw. Some were Trump-administration officials or supporters who had negotiated with and helped strengthen the Taliban with their concessions in the peace deal and then had punted the ultimate exit from the country to the next administration.

David Frum: The two blows America is dealing to the Taliban

They all conveniently forgot that they were responsible for some of America’s biggest errors in this war and instead were incandescently self-righteous in their invective against the Biden administration. Never mind the fact that the Taliban had been gaining ground since it resumed its military campaign in 2004 and, according to U.S. estimates even four years ago, controlled or contested about a third of Afghanistan. Never mind that the previous administration’s deal with the Taliban included the release of 5,000 fighters from prison and favored an even earlier departure date than the one that Biden embraced. Never mind that Trump had drawn down U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500 during his last year in office and had failed to repatriate America’s equipment on the ground. Never mind the delay caused by Trump and his adviser Stephen Miller’s active obstruction of special visas for Afghans who helped us.

Never mind the facts. Never mind the losses. Never mind the lessons. Biden, they felt, was in the wrong.

Despite the criticism, Biden, who had argued unsuccessfully when he was Barack Obama’s vice president to seriously reduce America’s presence in Afghanistan, remained resolute. Rather than view the heartbreaking scenes in Afghanistan in a political light as his opponents did, Biden effectively said, “Politics be damned—we’re going to do what’s right” and ordered his team to stick with the deadline and find a way to make the best of the difficult situation in Kabul.

Joy Neumeyer: How Afghanistan changed a superpower

The Biden administration nimbly adapted its plans, ramping up the airlift and sending additional troops into the country to aid crisis teams and to enhance security. Around-the-clock flights came into and went out of Afghanistan. Giant cargo planes departed, a number of them packed with as many as 600 occupants. Senior administration officials convened regular meetings with U.S. allies to find destinations for those planes to land and places for the refugees to stay. The State Department tracked down Americans in the country, as well as Afghans who had worked with the U.S., to arrange their passage to the airport. The Special Immigrant Visa program that the Trump administration had slowed down was kicked into high gear. Despite years of fighting, the administration and the military spoke with the Taliban many times to coordinate passage of those seeking to depart to the airport, to mitigate risks as best as possible, to discuss their shared interest in meeting the August 31 deadline.

The process was relentless and imperfect and, as we all have seen in the most horrific way, not without huge risks for those staying behind to help. On August 26, a suicide bomber associated with ISIS-K killed more than 150 Afghans and 13 American service members who were gathered outside the airport. However, even that heinous act didn’t deter the military. In a 24-hour period from Thursday to Friday, 12,500 people were airlifted out of the country and the president recommitted to meeting the August 31 deadline. And he did so even as his critics again sought to capitalize on tragedy for their own political gain: Republicans called for the impeachment of Biden and of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Within hours of the attack at the airport, America struck back, killing two terrorists and injuring another with a missile launched from a drone. A separate drone strike targeted a vehicle full of explosives on Sunday. In doing so, Biden countered the argument that America might lack the intelligence or military resources we would need to defend ourselves against violent extremists now that our troops are leaving.

The very last chapter of America’s benighted stay in Afghanistan should be seen as one of accomplishment on the part of the military and its civilian leadership. Once again the courage and unique capabilities of the U.S. armed services have been made clear.  And, in a stark change from recent years, an American leader has done the hard thing, the right thing: set aside politics and put both America’s interests and values first.

RECOMMENDED READING

Biden Is Betting Americans Will Forget About Afghanistan

PETER NICHOLAS

Biden’s ‘America First’ Policy on Afghanistan

DAVID A. GRAHAM

Who Takes the Blame?

PETER NICHOLAS

The US military says it permanently disabled over 150 vehicles and aircraft before leaving Kabul so they can ‘never be used again’

The US military says it permanently disabled over 150 vehicles and aircraft before leaving Kabul so they can ‘never be used again’

The US military says it permanently disabled over 150 vehicles and aircraft before leaving Kabul so they can ‘never be used again’ 

Ryan Pickrell                    
A view of the C-17 Globemaster prepares to take off in the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 29, 2021
A view of the C-17 Globemaster prepares to take off in the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 29, 2021 MARCUS YAM / LOS ANGELES TIMES via Getty Images 
  • The last manned US military aircraft departed the airport in Kabul on Monday.
  • The US permanently disabled over 150 vehicles and aircraft when the military departed, a US general said Monday.
  • The Taliban captured an arsenal of operational US-made weapons when they defeated the Afghan army.

The last manned US military aircraft have departed Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, ending nearly two decades of war in Afghanistan, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, the head of US Central Command, said Monday afternoon.

Asked about military equipment left behind at the airport, McKenzie said that some was brought out. Other systems, he said, were “demilitarized,” meaning US forces purposely broke them to prevent them from being used, CENTCOM clarified for Insider.

The counter rocket, artillery, and mortar (C-RAM) systems, which were used to fend off a rocket attack on the airport on Monday, were kept online until the last minute and then demilitarized.

“We demilitarized those systems so that they’ll never be used again,” McKenzie said. “We felt it more important to protect our forces than to bring those systems back.”

The general further explained that demilitarized equipment included 70 mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles “that will never again be used by anyone,” 27 Humvees “that will never be driven again,” and 73 aircraft that “will never fly again.” Many of the aircraft were not mission capable anyway.

“They’ll never be able to be operated by anyone again,” the CENTCOM commander said.

McKenzie added that some systems, such as fire trucks and front-end loaders, were left operational so that the airport could restart operations as soon as possible.

Even if the Taliban, which rapidly seized control of Afghanistan earlier this month in a sweeping offensive, is unable to use any of the systems the US military did not take with it when it departed the Kabul airport, the group has been able to get its hands on plenty of other working systems.

The Taliban managed to capture a substantial arsenal of American-made weapons, from rifles to military vehicles, when it overran the country and defeated the Afghan armed forces, which the US has spent billions of dollars arming and equipping.

The Biden administration, which has faced criticism for its handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, has acknowledged that US-funded combat capabilities fell to the Taliban.

“We don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said a few days after the fall of the Afghan capital.

California Marine Nicole Gee, 23, who cradled baby at Kabul airport, killed in Afghanistan attack

California Marine Nicole Gee, 23, who cradled baby at Kabul airport, killed in Afghanistan attack

Bill Keveney, USA TODAY                     

 

Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee celebrated the joy of service just days before she was one of 13 U.S. service members killed in Thursday’s suicide bombing attack near Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.

A week ago, Gee, 23, posted a photo on Instagram that showed her holding a baby at that airport. She added a simple, profound comment: “I love my job.” The same photo was posted by the Department of Defense on Aug. 21.

Gee, from Sacramento, California, served as a maintenance technician with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. On her Instagram page, she described herself as a “positive mental attitude advocate.” The locations listed on her page include California, North Carolina and “somewhere overseas.”

Another photo on Gee’s Instagram page shows her earlier in the week, on duty with her rifle next to a line of people waiting to board a transport plane. She described her assignment as “escorting evacuees onto the bird.”

Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, seen holding a baby at Kabul&#39;s airport, was one of the 13 U.S. service members killed in the Aug. 26 bombing in Afghanistan.
Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, seen holding a baby at Kabul’s airport, was one of the 13 U.S. service members killed in the Aug. 26 bombing in Afghanistan.

 

Other recent Instagram photos show Gee with friends in Spain, where they shared a toast, and Greece. Other pictures show the Marine riding a camel in Saudi Arabia and receiving her promotion to sergeant.

“Never would have imagined having my Sergeant promotion meritoriously in Kuwait,” she wrote of the promotion in a post shared three weeks ago.

A Facebook post by the city of Roseville, California, which calls Gee “a hometown hero,” says she graduated in 2016 from the city’s Oakmont High School and enlisted in the Marines a year later. It says her husband, Jarod Gee, also is an Oakmont graduate and a Marine.

Gee was remembered by Sgt. Mallory Harrison, a fellow Marine who roomed with her for more than three years, in a Facebook post accompanied by more than a dozen photos.

“Her car is parked in our lot. It’s so mundane. Simple. But it’s there,” she began the post. “My very best friend, my person, my sister forever. My other half. We were boots together, Corporals together, & then Sergeants together. Roommates for over 3 years now, from the barracks at MOS school to our house here. We’ve been attached at the hip from the beginning.

“I can’t quite describe the feeling I get when I force myself to come back to reality & think about how I’m never going to see her again. How her last breath was taken doing what she loved — helping people — at HKIA in Afghanistan. Then there was an explosion. And just like that, she’s gone.”

She said the war stories told by older Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are “not so distant anymore.”

Harrison concluded: “My best friend. 23 years old. Gone. I find peace knowing that she left this world doing what she loved. She was a Marine’s Marine. She cared about people. She loved fiercely. She was a light in this dark world. She was my person. … Til Valhalla, Sergeant Nicole Gee. I can’t wait to see you & your Momma up there. I love you forever & ever.”

Contributing: Associated Press

Afghanistan, The Great Game of Smashing Countries

Afghanistan Feature photo
CROCODILE TEARS

 

In 2010, I was in Washington and arranged to interview the mastermind of Afghanistan’s modern era of suffering, Zbigniew Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted that his grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created “a few stirred up Muslims”.

“Do you have any regrets?” I asked. “Regrets! Regrets! What regrets?”

As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed.

In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shar. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.

Foreign journalists in Kabul, reported the New York Times, were surprised to find that “nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup”. The Wall Street Journal reported that “150,000 persons … marched to honor the new flag …the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.”

The Washington Post reported that “Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned”. Secular, modernist and, to a considerable degree, socialist, the government declared a program of visionary reforms that included equal rights for women and minorities. Political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.

Under the monarchy, life expectancy was thirty-five; one in three children died in infancy. Ninety per cent of the population was illiterate. The new government introduced free medical care. A mass literacy campaign was launched.

For women, the gains had no precedent; by the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up 40 per cent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 per cent of its teachers and 30 per cent of its civil servants.

So radical were the changes that they remain vivid in the memories of those who benefited. Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who fled Afghanistan in 2001, recalled:

“Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked … We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian films on a Friday … it all started to go wrong when the mujahedin started winning … these were the people the West supported.”

For the United States, the problem with the PDPA government was that it was supported by the Soviet Union. Yet it was never the “puppet” derided in the West, neither was the coup against the monarchy “Soviet-backed”, as the American and British press claimed at the time.

President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, later wrote in his memoirs: “We had no evidence of any Soviet complicity in the coup.”

In the same administration was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser, a Polish émigré and fanatical anti-communist and moral extremist whose enduring influence on American presidents expired only with his death in 2017.

On 3 July 1979, unknown to the American people and Congress, Carter authorized a $500 million “covert action” program to overthrow Afghanistan’s first secular, progressive government.  This was code-named by the CIA Operation Cyclone.

The $500 million bought, bribed and armed a group of tribal and religious zealots known as the mujahedin. In his semi-official history, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote that the CIA spent $70 million on bribes alone. He describes a meeting between a CIA agent known as “Gary” and a warlord called Amniat-Melli:

“Gary placed a bundle of cash on the table: $500,000 in one-foot stacks of $100 bills. He believed it would be more impressive than the usual $200,000, the best way to say we’re here, we’re serious, here’s money, we know you need it … Gary would soon ask CIA headquarters for and receive $10 million in cash.”

Recruited from all over the Muslim world, America’s secret army was trained in camps in Pakistan run by Pakistani intelligence, the CIA and Britain’s MI6. Others were recruited at an Islamic College in Brooklyn, New York – within sight of the doomed Twin Towers. One of the recruits was a Saudi engineer called Osama bin Laden.

The aim was to spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and destabilize and eventually destroy the Soviet Union.

In August, 1979, the US Embassy in Kabul reported that “the United States’ larger interests … would be served by the demise of the PDPA government, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.”

Read again the words above I have italicized. It is not often that such cynical intent is spelt out as clearly.  The US was saying that a genuinely progressive Afghan government and the rights of Afghan women could go to hell.

Six months later, the Soviets made their fatal move into Afghanistan in response to the American-created jihadist threat on their doorstep. Armed with CIA-supplied Stinger missiles and celebrated as “freedom fighters” by Margaret Thatcher, the mujahedin eventually drove the Red Army out of Afghanistan.

Calling themselves the Northern Alliance, the mujahedin were dominated by warlords who controlled the heroin trade and terrorized rural women. The Taliban were an ultra-puritanical faction, whose mullahs wore black and punished banditry, rape and murder but banished women from public life.

In the 1980s, I made contact with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, known as RAWA, which had tried to alert the world to the suffering of Afghan women. During the Taliban time they concealed cameras beneath their burqas to film evidence of atrocities, and did the same to expose the brutality of the Western-backed mujahedin. “Marina” of RAWA told me, “We took the videotape to all the main media groups, but they didn’t want to know ….”

In1996, the enlightened PDPA government was overrun. The Prime Minister, Mohammad Najibullah, had gone to the United Nations to appeal to for help. On his return, he was hanged from a street light.

“I confess that [countries] are pieces on a chessboard,” said Lord Curzon in 1898, “upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world.”

The Viceroy of India was referring in particular to Afghanistan. A century later, Prime Minister Tony Blair used slightly different words.

“This is a moment to seize,” he said following 9/11. “The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.”

On Afghanistan, he added this: “We will not walk away [but ensure] some way out of the poverty that is your miserable existence.”

Blair echoed his mentor, President George W. Bush, who spoke to the victims of his bombs from the Oval Office: “The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering … “

Almost every word was false. Their declarations of concern were cruel illusions for an imperial savagery “we” in the West rarely recognize as such.

In 2001, Afghanistan was stricken and depended on emergency relief convoys from Pakistan. As the journalist Jonathan Steele reported, the invasion indirectly caused the deaths of some 20,000 people as supplies to drought victims stopped and people fled their homes.

Eighteen months later, I found unexploded American cluster bombs in the rubble of Kabul which were often mistaken for yellow relief packages dropped from the air. They blew the limbs off foraging, hungry children.

In the village of Bibi Maru, I watched a woman called Orifa kneel at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet weaver, and seven other members of her family, including six children, and two children who were killed next door.

An American F-16 aircraft had come out of a clear blue sky and dropped a Mk82 500-pound bomb on Orifa’s mud, stone and straw house. Orifa was away at the time. When she returned, she gathered the body parts.

Months later, a group of Americans came from Kabul and gave her an envelope with fifteen notes: a total of 15 dollars. “Two dollars for each of my family killed,” she said.

The invasion of Afghanistan was a fraud. In the wake of 9/11, the Taliban sought to distant themselves from Osama bin Laden. They were, in many respects, an American client with which the administration of Bill Clinton had done a series of secret deals to allow the building of a $3 billion natural gas pipeline by a US oil company consortium.

In high secrecy, Taliban leaders had been invited to the US and entertained by the CEO of the Unocal company in his Texas mansion and by the CIA at its headquarters in Virginia. One of the deal-makers was Dick Cheney, later George W. Bush’s Vice-President.

In 2010, I was in Washington and arranged to interview the mastermind of Afghanistan’s modern era of suffering, Zbigniew Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted that his grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created “a few stirred up Muslims”.

“Do you have any regrets?” I asked.

“Regrets! Regrets! What regrets?”

When we watch the current scenes of panic at Kabul airport, and listen to journalists and generals in distant TV studios bewailing the withdrawal of “our protection”, isn’t it time to heed the truth of the past so that all this suffering never happens again?

John Pilger’s 2003 film, Breaking the Silence, is available to view 

Mississippi’s governor says people in the state are less scared of COVID-19 because they ‘believe in eternal life’

Mississippi’s governor says people in the state are less scared of COVID-19 because they ‘believe in eternal life’

Tom Porter                            
Tate reeves
Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves delivers a televised address prior to signing a bill retiring the last state flag with the Confederate battle emblem during a ceremony at the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson, Mississippi, on June 30, 2020. ROGELIO V. SOLIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images.
  • Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said people in the state are “less scared” of COVID-19.
  • “When you believe that living on this earth is but a blip on the screen, then you don’t have to be so scared of things,” he said.
  • Health services are struggling under a wave of new infections in the state.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, in remarks Saturday, said that people in the state were “less scared” of COVID-19 because they believe in “eternal life,” as new infections reach record levels and hospitalizations spike.

Reeves made the remarks to a gathering of state Republicans at a fundraiser last Thursday in Eads, reported the Daily Memphian.

“I’m often asked by some of my friends on the other side of the aisle about COVID … and why does it seem like folks in Mississippi and maybe in the Mid-South are a little less scared, shall we say,” Reeves said.

“When you believe in eternal life – when you believe that living on this earth is but a blip on the screen, then you don’t have to be so scared of things,” he said.

Read more: Governors of all 50 states are vaccinated against COVID-19

Reeves went on to say, “God also tells us to take necessary precautions. And we all have opportunities and abilities to do that and we should all do that. I encourage everyone to do so.”

Mississippi has recorded more new COVID-19 cases per capita than any other state, with around 127 new cases per 100,000, according to an analysis of data by The New York Times.

The wave of infections in Mississippi has put state health services at breaking point, with 93% of the state’s ICU beds in use and 63% occupied by COVID-19 patients, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services.

The state also has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, with about 37% of the population fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Reeves, throughout the pandemic, has criticized measures to slow the spread of the disease introduced by public health officials and has declined to issue a mask mandate at schools, where the disease is spreading rapidly.

In July, after the CDC issued new guidance for those fully vaccinated to wear a mask indoors to help reduce transmission, Reeves told supporters the measure was part of a political plot.

“It reeks of political panic so as to appear they are in control,” Reeves told supporters, reported the Associated Press.

13 U.S. service members killed in Kabul attack: Pentagon

13 U.S. service members killed in Kabul attack: Pentagon

 

A “complex attack” involving at least two explosions outside the airport in Kabul on Thursday killed 13 U.S. service members and injured at least 15 others, the Pentagon said.

The attack also killed and wounded a number of Afghan civilians. An Afghan official told Associated Press that at least 60 Afghans were killed and 143 others were injured in the attack.

“Let me be clear: While we’re saddened by the loss of life, both U.S. and Afghan [lives], we’re continuing to execute the mission,” Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, said at a press briefing on Thursday.

McKenzie confirmed earlier reports that a suicide bomb exploded outside one of the main gates at Hamid Karzai International Airport. He said another bomb went off in the vicinity of the Baron Hotel, which is near the airport and is often frequented by Americans in Kabul.

Smoke rises from explosion outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021. The explosion went off outside Kabul&#39;s airport, where thousands of people have flocked as they try to flee the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. (Wali Sabawoon/AP)
Smoke rises from an explosion outside the airport in Kabul on Thursday. (Wali Sabawoon/AP)

 

McKenzie also confirmed that ISIS-K, an affiliate of the Islamic State terrorist group in Afghanistan, is believed to be responsible for the attacks. He said U.S. officials believe it is the group’s “desire to continue those attacks, and we expect those attacks to continue.” ISIS-K is also an enemy of the Taliban.

Asked whether the U.S. would take military action against those responsible, McKenzie said, “Yes. If we can find who is associated with this, we will go after them.”

On Thursday evening, President Biden, speaking somberly from the White House, vowed to “hunt down” those who carried out the attack.

“We will not forgive, we will not forget, we will hunt you down and make you pay,” he said.

Biden added that officials “have some reason to believe we know who [the ISIS-K leaders] are, and we will find ways of our choosing, without large military operations, to get them.”

(Yahoo News)
Yahoo News

 

The Hamid Karzai airport has been the site of a massive airlift operation by the U.S. military to evacuate tens of thousands of Americans, at-risk Afghans and citizens of allied nations out of Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover of the country less than two weeks ago.

McKenzie told reporters that the suicide bomber likely made it past Taliban checkpoint outside the airport and was being screened by U.S. Marines for entry at the gate when the attack occurred, highlighting the threats to U.S. troops who are facilitating the airlift.

“We don’t want to let somebody on an airplane with a bomb,” McKenzie said. “Ultimately, Americans have got to be endangered to do these searches, there’s really no other way to do it.”

McKenzie said he doesn’t think there’s any reason to believe the Taliban intentionally let the attack happen.

“Clearly, if they were able to get up to the Marines at the entry point of the base, there’s a failure somewhere,” he said. Still, McKenzie said, U.S. officials have asked Taliban leaders for help providing additional security around the airport, given threats of another possible attack.

“They have a practical reason for wanting us to get out of here by Aug. 31,” McKenzie said of the Taliban, who, he said, want to reclaim control of the Kabul airfield. “As long as we kept our common purpose aligned, they’ve been useful to work with.”

Biden to ISIS-K: ‘We will hunt you down and make you pay’

President Biden addressed the nation Thursday evening following two bombing attacks outside the Kabul airport that killed 12 U.S. service members and dozens of Afghans. Biden blamed Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, for the attack and vowed to avenge those deaths.

Biden reiterated this point on Thursday, saying that “no one trusts” the Taliban, but that U.S. officials are counting on the group’s “self-interest.”

“It’s not a matter of trust,” Biden said, “it is a matter of mutual self-interest.”

The U.S. has been racing to evacuate as many people from Afghanistan as possible before Aug. 31, when the last American troops are scheduled to withdraw from the country. Earlier this week, Biden confirmed that he intends to stick with that withdrawal deadline, despite calls to extend it. He cited the growing threat that ISIS-K poses to U.S. troops on the ground in Kabul.

“Every day we’re on the ground is another day we know ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport,” Biden said Tuesday. “The sooner we can finish, the better.”

As of Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that more than 4,500 American citizens and their immediate family members had been evacuated from Afghanistan, and that up to 1,500 others were still waiting to leave.

At the Pentagon on Thursday, McKenzie said that before the attack, 104,000 people had been airlifted out of the Kabul airport.

Medical and hospital staff bring an injured man on a stretcher for treatment after two blasts outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday. (Photo by Wakil Koshar/AFP via Getty Images)
Medical staff bring an injured man on a stretcher for treatment after the explosions on Thursday. (Wakil Koshar/AFP via Getty Images)

The Real Winner of the Afghan War? It’s Not Who You Think.

The Real Winner of the Afghan War? It’s Not Who You Think.

Jane Perlez                        
Pakistani police officers stand guard outside the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, May 5, 2011. (Warrick Page/The New York Times)
Pakistani police officers stand guard outside the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, May 5, 2011. (Warrick Page/The New York Times)

Just days after the Taliban took Kabul, their flag was flying high above a central mosque in Pakistan’s capital. It was an in-your-face gesture intended to spite the defeated Americans. But it was also a sign of the real victors in the 20-year Afghan war.

Pakistan was ostensibly America’s partner in the war against al-Qaida and the Taliban. Its military won tens of billions of dollars in American aid over the last two decades, even as Washington acknowledged that much of the money disappeared into unaccounted sinkholes.

But it was a relationship riven by duplicity and divided interests from its very start after 9/11. Not least, the Afghan Taliban the Americans were fighting are, in large part, a creation of Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, which through the course of the war nurtured and protected Taliban assets inside Pakistan.

In the last three months as the Taliban swept across Afghanistan, the Pakistani military waved a surge of new fighters across the border from sanctuaries inside Pakistan, tribal leaders have said. It was a final coup de grâce to the American-trained Afghan security forces.

“The Pakistanis and the ISI think they have won in Afghanistan,” said Robert Grenier, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan. But, he warned, the Pakistanis should watch what they wish for. “If the Afghan Taliban become leaders of a pariah state, which is likely, Pakistan will find itself tethered to them.”

Pakistan’s already shaky reputation in the West is likely to plummet now, as the Taliban take over Afghanistan. Calls to sanction Pakistan have already circulated on social media. Absent foreign financing, Pakistan faces reliance on a jihadi drug trade encouraged by the new rulers in Kabul. A Taliban-run state on its border will no doubt embolden Taliban and other Islamist militants in Pakistan itself.

Not least, relations with the United States, already on the downslope, will unravel further. Aside from maintaining the stability of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, the Americans now have less incentive to deal with Pakistan.

So the question for the Pakistanis is what will they do with the broken country that is their prize? Already Pakistan, along with Russia and China, is helping fill the space the Americans have vacated. The embassies of the three nations have remained open since the Taliban seized Kabul.

A Pakistani protégé, Khalil Haqqani, a Taliban leader who was a regular visitor to Pakistan’s military headquarters in Rawalpindi, is one of the new rulers of Afghanistan.

Known to U.S. intelligence as the Taliban emissary to al-Qaida, Haqqani showed up in Kabul last week as their new chief of security, brazenly armed with an American-made M4 rifle, with a protection squad dressed in American combat gear.

“Governing a war-ravaged country will be the real test and imposing challenge especially as the Taliban have been a warring force, not one adept at governing,” Maleeha Lohdi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations, wrote in a column in The Dawn newspaper this week.

During the war the Americans tolerated Pakistan’s duplicitous game because they saw little choice, preferring to fight a chaotic war in Afghanistan to warring with nuclear-armed Pakistan. Moreover, Pakistan’s ports and airfields provided the main entry points and supply lines for American military equipment needed in Afghanistan.

Pakistan did that, even as its spy agency provided planning assistance, training expertise and sometimes on the ground advice to the Taliban all through the war, American officials said.

Though Pakistan was supposed to be an American ally, it always worked toward its own interests, as nations do. Those interests did not include a large American military presence on its border, an autonomous Afghanistan with a democratic government it could not control or a strong and centralized military.

Rather, Pakistan’s goal in Afghanistan was to create a sphere of influence to block its archnemesis, India. The Pakistanis insist that India uses separatist groups like the Balochistan Liberation Army, operating from havens in Afghanistan, to stir dissent in Pakistan.

“The Pakistani Army believes Afghanistan provides strategic depth against India, which is their obsession,” said Bruce Riedel, a former South Asia adviser to the Bush and Obama administrations. “The U.S. encouraged India to support the American-backed Afghan government after 2001, fueling the army’s paranoia.”

The Pakistanis were incensed that former President Barack Obama visited India in 2015 but conspicuously boycotted Pakistan, he said.

During a visit to Washington this spring, Moeed Yusuf, the national security adviser to Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, stressed the need to eliminate the Indian presence in Afghanistan, Americans who met him said.

Yusuf is considered a moderate on the Pakistani political spectrum, and the Americans said they were struck by his vehemence on India’s role in Afghanistan.

When Indian diplomats were among the first foreigners to evacuate from Kabul, their departure was played in the Pakistani press as a singular victory.

The nexus between the Pakistanis and the victorious Haqqani was indisputable and indispensable to the Taliban victory, said Douglas London, a former CIA counterterrorism chief for South and Southwest Asia.

The head of the Pakistani Army, Qamar Javed Bajwa, and the head of the ISI, Hameed Faiz, met with Haqqani on a “recurring basis,” London said. The extended Haqqani family has long been known to live in the largely ungoverned areas of Pakistan along the Afghan border.

“All the time Bajwa was pressed by the U.S. to give up Khalil Haqqani and two other Haqqani leaders, and all the time, Bajwa would say, ‘Tell us where they are,’” said London, who has written an upcoming memoir of his CIA years, “The Recruiter.” “My favorite quote was when Bajwa said: ‘You just have to come to my office and we will go in a helicopter and we will go and pick them up.’”

Pakistan’s help, he said, encompassed a gamut of services. Safe havens in the borderlands of Pakistan, particularly in the city of Quetta, sheltered Afghan Taliban fighters and their families. Medical services treated wounded fighters, sometimes in hospitals in the major cities, Karachi and Peshawar. Free rein for the Haqqanis to run lucrative real estate, smuggling and other businesses in Pakistan kept their war machine churning.

The ISI usually kept its operatives out of the actual conflict, fearful that they might be captured in Afghanistan, delivering a smoking gun to the Americans, London said.

The ISI also provided the Taliban with assets that elevated their international status. The Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar traveled on a Pakistani passport to attend peace talks in Doha, Qatar, and to meet in Tianjin, China, with Wang Yi, the foreign minister.

“The Afghan Taliban would not be where they are without the assistance of the Pakistanis,” London said.

Washington’s relationship with Pakistan cooled after Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 at a safe house located near a Pakistani military academy. Top American officials stopped visiting Pakistan and assistance was reduced.

But the Obama administration never said publicly what it suspected: that the Pakistani military knew all along that bin Laden was living with his extended family in Abbottabad, one of Pakistan’s best-known garrison towns.

If Washington had declared that Pakistan was harboring bin Laden, then Pakistan would have legally been a state sponsor of terrorism, and subject to mandatory sanctions like Iran, said Riedel, the former South Asia adviser to the Bush and Obama administrations.

That would have forced the Americans to end its support for Pakistan and that in turn, would have led Pakistan to stop American war supplies from transiting Pakistan, increasing the cost of the war.

The bin Laden raid played into long-standing fears within the Pakistani military that the Americans wanted to dismantle Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, and would violate Pakistani territory to do it.

Despite the strained relations, the U.S. continues to work with Pakistan through the Department of Energy to help provide security for the weapons, and fissile material, said Toby Dalton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment.

But Pakistan is also agile in its alliances. China, a longtime patron of Pakistan — they call each other as “close as lips and teeth” — is investing heavily in Pakistani infrastructure.

Publicly, China says it is cheered to see the Americans exit Afghanistan, and is ready to step into the void, expanding its Belt and Road initiative into Afghanistan, where it hopes to extract minerals.

But privately, the Chinese are wary. Chinese workers in Pakistan have been killed in terrorist attacks, which could presage a rough ride in Afghanistan. And the Taliban prefer isolation to roads and dams that could serve to loosen their control on the population.

China is counting on Pakistan to serve as its facilitator in Afghanistan, said Sajjan Gohel, International Security Director of the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London.

“The Chinese appear confident that they will be able to secure more security guarantees from the Taliban,” Gohel said, “because of their mutual ties with Pakistan.”

Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton says it’s ‘impossible’ for Mike Pompeo to ‘rewrite history’ on his negotiations with the Taliban

Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton says it’s ‘impossible’ for Mike Pompeo to ‘rewrite history’ on his negotiations with the Taliban

Oma Seddiq                           
Donald Trump Mike Pompeo John Bolton.JPG
John Bolton, right, Mike Pompeo, center, and President Donald Trump, left. REUTERS/Leah Millis 

  • Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton slammed Mike Pompeo over his negotiations with the Taliban.
  • Bolton said it was “impossible” to “rewrite history” about the Trump administration’s role in the Afghanistan pullout.
  • Pompeo and Trump have come under attack over their deal with the Taliban in February 2020.

Donald Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton criticized former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who negotiated a deal with the Taliban in February 2020, for distancing himself from the Afghanistan withdrawal.

“Trying to extricate yourself from this withdrawal is I think difficult if not impossible to do, especially to rewrite history about what actually happened,” Bolton told Politico in a report published Thursday. “I think that’s a prescription for Democratic attack ads that would be fatal to someone’s credibility.”

Pompeo and Trump have come under attack over their agreement with the Taliban, which stipulated that US troops be withdrawn from Afghanistan within 14 months on the condition that the militant group not turn the country into a terrorist base. At the signing ceremony in Qatar, Pompeo posed for photos alongside the Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is anticipated to head the next Taliban government in Afghanistan.

At the time, critics blasted the Trump administration for excluding the Afghan government, saying it undercut its legitimacy. That criticism has been renewed amid the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the collapse of the US-backed Afghan government on August 15.

Read more: We identified the 125 people and institutions most responsible for Donald Trump’s rise to power and his norm-busting behavior that tested the boundaries of the US government

Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security advisor from 2018 to 2019, has said both the Trump administration and President Joe Biden are responsible for the chaotic, ongoing removal of US troops from Afghanistan.

Other Republicans who have criticized Trump and Biden over the pullout include Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security advisor from 2017 to 2018, denounced Trump’s Taliban deal as a “surrender agreement.”

Pompeo and Trump have attempted to absolve themselves of the situation in Afghanistan and blamed Biden for the fallout.

“I hope this Administration comes to understand that apologizing, placating, appeasing, being weak, only presents risks to American security,” Pompeo tweeted on Thursday.