Those trapped in Afghanistan, to @AP: "All say they are scared the ruling Taliban will find them, throw them in jail, perhaps even kill them because they are Americans or had worked for the U.S. government."
@POTUS@AP "And they are concerned that the Biden administration’s promised efforts to get them out have stalled."
@POTUS@AP "The California family, which includes a 9-year-old girl and two boys, ages 8 and 6, say they have been on the run for the past two weeks after the Taliban knocked on the door of their relative’s apartment asking about the Americans staying there."
@POTUS@AP Oh, we all know why. The Taliban want hostages, and the U.S. doesn't want to admit it.
"Neither the U.S. nor the Taliban have offered a clear explanation why so few have been evacuated."
@POTUS@AP The Taliban gets all of the benefits of a hostage situation, with the plausible deniability that it isn't actually holding hostages.
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1) Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, a former Gitmo detainee with ties to Al Qaeda, is now a deputy minister of defense Ibrahim Sadr, who obtained support from Iran to help build the Taliban's Army, was named a deputy minister of the interior for security.
2) Both Zakir and Ibrahim are influential / powerful military commanders who previously served as the head of the Taliban’s military commission between 2010 and 2020. Both served as deputy military commission chiefs under Mullah Yacoub from 2020 until the Taliban's victory.
3) Zakir and Ibrahim were not given postings in the initial round of government appointments that were announced on Sept. 7, which of course prompted rumors of a Taliban rift, that they were furious, etc. Now they are part of the Taliban government.
1) Pakistani jihadi cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz, who led the 2007 insurrection at the Red Mosque or Lal Masjid in Islamabad, raised the Taliban's white flag over the mosque after the Taliban's victory. en.dailypakistan.com.pk/18-Sep-2021/la…
2) Aziz is threatening policemen with violence if they take the flags down. He has been charged by the Pakistani police, but don't expect those charges to stick. More than 100 people were killed in the Lal Masjid crisis, but Aziz only spent two years in jail. A Teflon Cleric.
3) After his release in 2009, Aziz continued his anti-state jihadist activities. In 2014, the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan chose Aziz and other pro-Taliban clerics to negotiate on their behalf with the Pakistani government. You can see Aziz accompanied by armed guards.
1) @bpolitics should be ashamed of publishing this article that authoritatively states that Khalil Haqqani began punching Mullah Baradar, and then a gunfight broke out between security details. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
@bpolitics 2) I noted here that this rumor mill reporting of so called clashes between Taliban leaders is a mainstay of the region, and it nearly always wrong:
@bpolitics 3) If you want to report that there was a gunfight between two senior Taliban leaders, you better have more than just "my sources said it was true." This is how the world ate up @hxhassan's "Zawahiri is dead" narrative. It was of course wrong:
1) The U.S. drone strike that was supposed to target an Islamic State car bomber in Kabul killed 10 civilians, including 7 children, the military admitted.
It was clear to me from the outset that this a was what used to be called a "signature strike."
2) I watched the @nytimes video report last weekend. It was obvious that the military made critical areas. But the military didn't have access to CCTV footage, which showed the man carrying multiple empty water jugs in a single hand, etc. nytimes.com/video/world/as…
@nytimes 3) This was a tragic final act of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. It also demonstrates why relying on "over the horizon" strikes to deal with AL Qaeda and the Islamic State is fraught with peril.
1) Before the fall of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the Pakistani government constantly berated the Afghan government for purportedly sheltering the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, which is responsible for killing tens of thousands of Paksitani civilians and soldiers.
2) The Afghan government wasn't sheltering the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan (TTP), the TTP was sheltering in areas in southern and eastern Afghanistan that were under Afghan Taliban control. The TTP also fought alongside the Afghan Taliban against the Afghan government.
3) Now that Afghanistan is under control of the Taliban, where are the Pakistani government's calls for the Taliban to eliminate safe haven for the TTP? Don't hold your breath.
1) @US4AfghanPeace Zalmay Khalilzad’s explanation of what happened in the final days of the fall of Kabul is a jumbled mess. He is spinning to make himself look good but it fails. If you take his narrative at face value, he essentially green lighted the Taliban to enter the city.
2) @thomasjoseclyn notes that the idea that the Taliban was going to negotiate after it surrounded Kabul is absurd. He is of course right. foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/15/zal…
3) @husainhaqqani also nails it. Negotiations at this point were gaslighting. Zal was a fool if he believed there was anything left to negotiate.