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4 Sep, 18 tweets, 12 min read
The head of #Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence - the agency that controls the #Taliban and its allied jihadists - is in Kabul, just in time for the announcement of how the Taliban will structure its government in #Afghanistan. Pure coincidence, of course.
There was clearly heavy fighting yesterday and overnight in #Panjshir, where the last pocket of resistance to the #Taliban in Afghanistan is based. The claims from both sides are difficult to verify, but it does seem the Panjshiris lost some territory:
The #Panjshir resistance itself directly confirmed personnel losses in the fighting yesterday with the #Taliban. Again, what happened territorial and what the relative losses were remains very uncertain.
#Taliban/#ISI continue escalating against #Panjshir. Looks as if they plan to stamp out the last pocket of resistance before the "formal" announcement of the jihadist government.
The end approaches in Panjshir
The #Taliban have broken through in #Panjshir, the last pocket of resistance in #Afghanistan.
Honestly don't think this is that complicated at all: Hameed is there to oversee the final phase of the Taliban's "formal" consolidation, namely crushing the Panjshir resistance and ironing out any turf wars in Kabul so government posts can be announced
Not sure what sources these intelligence officials are using - be legitimately interested to find out - but common sense would get them to the same place, so it is what it is.
Very disturbing reports from #Panjshir as the #Taliban closes in on the last pocket of resistance
#Hekmatyar, of course, has joined with #ISI in trying to stamp out the last remnants of resistance to #Taliban rule
#Taliban claims to have captured the centre of #Panjshir, the last holdout against jihadi rule.
The anti-Taliban opposition is now at the mercy of outside powers and their fractious interests for survival. That said, there are a lot of external players - even those who have investments in the Taliban - who don't want #Pakistan to own all Afghanistan
A lot of reports of abductions in #Panjshir today. Reading between the lines it looks like #ISI/#Taliban is holding families as hostages to try to get the resistance fighters to give it up.
Unsurprisingly, the #Taliban arrested this man after he defied them on the television stations they now control:
A lot of very murky reports flying around about where the resistance commander Ahmad Massoud and #Afghanistan's legal president Amrullah Saleh are in #Panjshir. The only certainty seems to be the #Taliban are advancing and the resistance is crumbling.
Naturally
Reports from #Panjshir that #Pakistan is variously using fighter jets, attack helicopters, and drones to support its #Taliban jihadists during their onslaught against the final resistance pocket.

This seems eminently plausible but everything so unclear rn
Maulvi Fasihuddin, a Tajik #Taliban commander from the north, allegedly killed in clashes in #Panjshir with the last remnants of the anti-Taliban forces

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More from @KyleWOrton

Kyle Orton Profile picture
14 Sep
#IS established itself in "Af-Pak" by building off the Afghan Salafist community that took root in eastern areas via the Arab presence there beginning many decades ago. The Salafis had some second thoughts, but the #Taliban is now pressuring them, too. trtworld.com/opinion/the-dy…
#pt: The Taliban made an approach to IS-Centre in 2015 to ask that ISKP not be used to open another jihadist front, since this would distract from the war with the West. No dice. IS didn't even bother to reply.
#pt: The original Pakistani, mostly TTP, leadership of #ISKP was killed off quite quickly and replaced with Afghan Salafis. The current leader, though, Dr. Shahab al-Muhajir, seems to be a former Haqqani Network operative, and has peeled away other parts of that network.
Read 4 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
13 Sep
The lengths the #KGB went to in trying to destroy #Solzhenitsyn even after he had been expelled from the Soviet Union are extraordinary, and not entirely irrational: they understood the danger he posed to them.

<Mini thread drawn from "The Sword and the Shield", pp. 312, 317-21>
Andropov first tried to expel Solzhenitsyn in autumn 1971, but Brezhnev listened to interior minister Nikolai Shchelokov, who said the great writer should be co-opted rather than persecuted. Andropov did not forget this, and later witch-hunted Shchelokov until he killed himself.
In late 1973, after Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov wrote an open letter that encouraged Congress to override the Nixon-Kissinger administration by passing Jackson-Vanik that linked Soviet trade privileges to human rights, Brezhnev said the KGB should have cracked down from the start.
Read 9 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
9 Sep
#Pakistan's ruler from 1999 to 2008, General Pervez Musharraf, wrote in his memoir: "It is true that we had assisted in the rise of the #Taliban after the Soviet Union withdrew from #Afghanistan" (p. 202). Image
Even after #Pakistan's General Musharraf disparages the "obscurantist" nature of the #Taliban and the "peace of the graveyard" they brought, he writes: "Nevertheless, we still supported them, for geostrategic reasons", to minimise Indian influence in #Afghanistan (p. 203).
Musharraf tries to create a narrative where #Pakistan was not engaged with the #Taliban at inception, even though the Saudis and UAE were (p. 201-11), which is absurd, and that the ISI had lost its "leverage" over the Taliban after it came to power (pp. 203, 209), equally absurd.
Read 8 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
5 Sep
"Though Mr. Biden reversed other Trump policies, he was inclined to go through with the Afghan [withdrawal] ... The military argued for keeping 2,500 troops ... Bagram air base was central to the military's plans" for drones and special forces. wsj.com/articles/insid…
On 8 May, "The Pentagon wanted a discussion on an emergency evacuation of the embassy and how to plan to remove Afghans at risk, but White House officials asked that those issues be removed from the agenda"

Again, Biden cannot say he didn't know. Biden chose to leave the Afghans
Even Jake Sullivan thought closing Bagram Airbase was a bad idea, and in June there was a pause for four days. But Biden insisted on doing all this with 650 troops in Kabul, so the Pentagon could only protect either Bagram or HKIA, and Biden went with the latter.
Read 7 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
4 Sep
#Pakistan's use of #Islamists to interfere in #Afghanistan does not begin in 1979—that jihad project had begun in 1973 and all the Mujahideen groups were formed before the Soviet invasion—but the origins go back to c. 1956 for a cluster of reasons. <Mini Thread>
#Pakistan inherited the #British concept of "strategic depth", i.e. the need for a buffer against the most dangerous imperial rival (#Russia), and thus from foundation sought to make #Afghanistan into a client state.

[@husainhaqqani, "Between Mosque and Military", pp. 164-6]
#pt: Pakistan's move to vassalise #Afghanistan began in earnest in 1956, after the creation of the Pakistani constitution, with its "Objectives Resolution", creating an Islamic Republic, which had impacts not only internally, allowing the state to define "Muslim", but externally.
Read 8 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
4 Sep
While #Pakistan's death squads were at work in #Afghanistan, its ambassador in the US, Asad Majeed Khan, told officials "[the Taliban] were not seeking retribution, and in fact were going home to home to assure Afghans that there will not be reprisals" politico.com/news/2021/09/0…
"The Biden administration has been unusually circumspect about revealing its contacts and discussions with Pakistan."

Presumably trying to figure out if the ISI and the Haqqani Network are separate entities. (Spoiler: they are not)
Quite the phrasing here from @Politico:

"Pakistan has been more helpful to the United States in its fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, but even that cooperation has been questioned," given, you know, Bin Laden being sheltered near Pakistan's premier Army garrison
Read 4 tweets

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