Several nights ago , CIA-backed Afghan militias tied to the NDS, the Afghan intelligence service, raided a religious school in Khogyani district, Nangarhar province, and killed ten civilians.
They terrorised us for years," a local, who wished to remain anonymous, told me. Although the CIA's future role in Afghanistan remains unresolved, and such operations will probably continue, the United States itself appears to be sceptical towards President Ashraf Ghani's and his government's role within the peace process.
In a highly anticipated letter to Ghani, US Foreign Secretary Antony Blinken warned that Afghanistan might face a Taliban onslaught alone if Ghani failed to take his role within the talks seriously. We are considering the full withdrawal of our forces by May 1st, as we consider other options," the letter, which was leaked and firstly published by Tolo News, said.
Many observers believe that the letter will put pressure on Ghani's government while the Taliban will benefit from the situation.
According to Zakir Jalaly, a Kabul-based university lecturer and political analyst, things are more complicated. There are demands from Ghani, but it also clearly hints that the Taliban have to agree. Both sides have not been capable of doing so," he told me. Jalaly believes that the US withdrawal will take place if both sides are ready for a peaceful political transition.
The next few weeks will be crucial," he added. However, the Taliban do not feel they were primarily addressed by Blinken's letter. At this moment, around 2, American troops remain in Afghanistan, according to the Doha Deal, due to withdraw from the country by May. Emran Feroz is an independent journalist, author and the founder of Drone Memorial, a virtual memorial for civilian drone strike victims.
He is also a regular contributor to German-language newspapers and magazines. Moreover, insurgent violence fell precipitously compared to 1, attacks in versus 1, incidents in ; a decrease of 22 percent. Figure 1, below, depicts this trend, as well as casualty rates, using data from through Paradoxically, this is cause for serious concern. Specifically, violence decreases as a belligerent cements control over territory. This article proceeds in four sections.
The first explains the aforementioned factors that contributed to the seasonality of fighting in Afghanistan. The subsequent section summarizes the extant literature, which explains trends in insurgent violence.
The penultimate section analyzes the latest data from the Global Terrorism Data GTD and other sources, with specific reference to the theories explained in the previous section. The final section concludes. This section explores the relationship between each of these three factors and springtime fighting.
Arguably, agricultural cycles have the greatest impact on defining the Afghan fighting season. This is the case for two reasons. First, the Taliban rely on the cultivation and trafficking of opium poppy to finance their insurgency. As such, fighting occurs around opium poppy cultivation cycles.
Specifically, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNODC reports that opium cultivation has surged from a low of just 8, hectares under cultivation in to a high of , hectares in , before tapering off slightly in The Taliban are heavily involved in these activities as well.
One Afghan expert noted that three distinct classes of Taliban fighters exist. This group is heavily involved in the opium economy and other illicit actives. It sides with the Taliban due to the opportunity to profit handsomely from opium cultivation and related activities and not because of ideology.
In short, during harvest times, the number of available insurgent fighters is substantially lower. Second, harsh weather makes winter fighting extremely challenging. Specifically, the confluence of extremely difficult terrain, limited improved road networks and substantial snowfall make overland travel next to impossible in parts of the country.
For example, a particularly strong winter storm dumped more than five feet of snow in parts of the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan during just a 24 hours period earlier this year. This particular storm left more than Afghans dead. These types of weather dynamics are common place and some remote parts of Afghanistan remain completely cutoff from the rest of the country by inclement weather for as many as six months a year.
He doesn't like being questioned, and on many foreign policy questions he is convinced of his own rightness. Joe Biden has never been a "liberal interventionist", thinking that liberal democracy is something that can be shipped out of Baltimore Harbour in 40ft containers and exported around the world.
He thinks the US military should only be overseas to defend vital US interests. And with al-Qaeda largely beaten, Osama Bin Laden dead, it was job done. Time to come home. That is a view, I should add, shared by millions of Americans. But approving of the policy is very different from the dysfunctional implementation. And what if terror groups, feeling emboldened by the Taliban victory, decide to launch their own attacks on Americans abroad - or Americans at home?
Then it could be politically catastrophic. Which brings us to how Western leaders see America now. A fascinating nugget from a briefing that's just been given by Joe Biden's National Security Adviser.
Since the fall of Kabul, Jake Sullivan revealed, Biden hadn't spoken to another world leader. Wasn't that just a bit surprising, given that there were a lot of other nations - including Britain - who'd committed vast resources to Afghanistan? When the G7 gathered in Cornwall and the Nato nations met in Brussels the sense of relief was palpable among the prime ministers and presidents that a more outward looking American president was in charge. But on Monday three US Marines were killed in a Taliban attack at Bagram air base north of the city, and authorities in the capital are on high alert.
The US has held several rounds of talks with the Taliban in a bid to bring an end to the war against the fighters. Another round of negotiations are expected to take place later this month in Qatar where the Taliban have a political office, and will include representatives from a variety of Afghan groups. An Afghan delegation who are not part of the government also met with the Taliban in Moscow in February.
The United States still has about 14, troops in Afghanistan, nearly 18 years after the US-led invasion to topple the Taliban.
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