After fighting with the radical Islamic Taliban , more than a thousand Afghan soldiers fled to neighboring Tajikistan. The state news agency Chovar quoted a statement by the National Security Committee in Tajikistan as saying that 1,037 Afghan soldiers crossed the border on Monday night "to save their lives".
For the sake of humanity and good neighborliness, the soldiers were allowed to cross the border on Saturday evening, according to a statement from Tajikistan. The neighboring country of Afghanistan announced two weeks ago that it expected an increase in Afghan refugees. Pakistani intelligence officials also say that initial preparations are being made to reactivate refugee camps in Pakistan.
Tajikistan has meanwhile also mobilized around 20,000 military reservists to protect the border. President Emomalij Rahmon ordered the convocation after the Afghan security forces had fled. He also telephoned to discuss the situation with allies in the region, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to the Kremlin, Putin pledged Rahmon to help secure the border. The largest Russian foreign military base is in Tajikistan.
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As the provincial councilor Mohib-ul Rahman said, the Taliban did not even have to fight for the territory in Badakhshan in the northeast. There is hardly any morale among the poorly equipped soldiers. In the past three days, ten districts have fallen to the Taliban, eight of them without resistance, Rahman said. Hundreds of soldiers and police officers surrendered and fled. Rahman said politicians and administrative officials are now also fleeing to Kabul from the provincial capital Faisabad.
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The Taliban can also advance further in the south of the country. After fierce fighting on Sunday night, the government troops withdrew from the strategically important Pandschwai district in the south of the country, as the district's governor, Hasti Mohammed, told the AFP news agency. Dozens of residents fled to Kandahar city, which was rocked on Sunday by a fatal attack that killed a secretary to the governor. The chairman of the provincial council, Sajed Dschan Chakriwal, confirmed the capture of Pandschwai by the Taliban. Assadullah, a commander of the border police in the region, said that only the police fight against the insurgents there: "The army and special forces, which are better equipped, do not fight at all."
Afghan government plans counter-offensive in the north
Since the start of the withdrawal of NATO troops from the country , the Taliban have been occupying more and more territories . Most recently, the Taliban succeeded in conquering dozen of districts in several offensives, encircling almost all of the country's larger cities. Two weeks ago they captured the most important border crossing from Afghanistan to Tajikistan in Shir Khan Bandar.
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Observers fear that after the complete withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban could regain power in the country. Violence in the Hindu Kush country has risen sharply in recent weeks. The peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government are not progressing.
The Afghan government is now planning a counter-offensive in the north of the country to stop the Taliban's advance. The government army did not expect the Taliban attack, said national security advisor Hamdullah Mohib to the Russian news agency RIA. But they would "absolutely, definitely" counterattack. Mohib is a key advisor to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
Amnesty International urges deportation to be stopped
In April, US President Joe Biden announced that US troops would be withdrawn from the country by the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. NATO and with it the Bundeswehr are also withdrawing from the country. The Bagram base has already been handed over to the Afghan security forces. From there, numerous attacks against the Taliban and other Islamist groups had been launched during the 20 years of the Afghan war. The Bundeswehr, which was stationed in Kunduz in the north, ended its mission in Afghanistan on June 30 and withdrew the last soldiers.
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The Taliban had already ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until it was overthrown by US-led troops in 2001 and massively curtailed human rights, especially women's rights, in the country. The US intervened at the head of a NATO alliance shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks in Afghanistan. The Taliban government in Kabul had refused to take action against the Al-Qaeda of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks in the USA, and was quickly overthrown. However, their fighters withdrew to neighboring Pakistan and regrouped there.
In view of the worsening situation in Afghanistan, Amnesty International is urging an immediate ban on deportations from Germany and Switzerland to the country. With the withdrawal of international soldiers and the advance of the Taliban, the precarious security and human rights situation in Afghanistan threatens to worsen, warned the human rights organization. Nevertheless, German and Swiss authorities still wanted to deport hundreds of people into the country.
"Afghanistan is not safe, this fact has not changed in years," said the deputy general secretary of Amnesty International in Germany, Julia Duchrow. "Contrary to what the Federal Ministry of the Interior and some interior ministries of the federal states claim, there are no safe regions there either." Duchrow criticized the fact that a collective deportation from Germany was planned on Tuesday. Only at the weekend did the Berlin SPD top candidate Franziska Giffey speak out in favor of deporting offenders and terrorist threats to crisis areas such as Afghanistan in case of doubt.
As long as Pakistan with its ISI, India, China and other active players play along, there will be no peace there either way. But to be honest, it is not the responsibility of the EU or NATO to ensure that there is either. One should have looked for bin Laden without occupying all of Afghanistan and let the local forces clear the rest. Of course, the Taliban are medieval executioners. But Pakistan has no interest in losing control in Afghanistan. Probably stay out of the way and close your eyes and ears and let the others do it. On the other hand, there are enormous resources to which one would naturally want to secure access.
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Resources in Afghanistan could never be extracted at a cost-effective rate due to the catastrophic security situation and infrastructure. The "enormous raw material treasures" are window dressing. The only strategically valuable goal in Afghanistan would have been a tolerably stable state with a reasonably functioning rule of law. But it was a crashing failure (with all the consequences).
China uses Pakistan as a counterweight to India. Pakistan does not want to let Afghanistan out of its influence and keeps various radical Islamists in Afghanistan and Pakistan ready as "silent reserves" for a possible war against India. To this end, China is massively supporting Pakistan with weapons and money. At the same time, China does not want an Afghanistan under US influence so close to Tibet and Pakistan, but neither does India want to establish itself there. And even if Afghanistan's raw materials cannot be extracted sensibly at the moment, it is better to keep an eye on them before others do.
Why China sells Pakistan so many weapons - Pakistan is not particularly creditworthy. Cultural connections? Nope. China pursues power politics like any other great power. And if China were only looking for peace, they would not have waged several wars of aggression against India and Vietnam. Or would they leave Taiwan alone and not detonate in the South China Sea. Or support North Korea or or or. Because of their deeply rooted hospitality, the Taliban have refused to hand over bin Laden to the Americans. But they were ready to let him emigrate to another country that would take him in. The USA did not want that, however, because he could then have evaded access there as well. I don't know whether there was even a country that would have accepted him.
Sometimes independent of the economic interests of the Western powers:
If the terrorist cells gain strength again, it will not only become more restless in Afghanistan. And by that I don't necessarily mean the IRAQ or other strongholds, but I direct my gaze to possible terrorist targets. And there you have to reckon with further calls for terror against unbelievers in the USA or Europe. What is often underestimated is that the terror cells have arrived in the 21st century and radicalization are taking place everywhere through highly developed networks. For many, the image of primitive men with machetes still prevails. But this only underpins the brutality, the organization is definitely more professional. In this respect, for example, I never really understood the intervention of the anti-terrorist troops as meddling in a certain way. The only thing that was rightly always up for discussion were the many civilian sacrifices that the fight against terrorism has brought with it. And I don't want to downplay them in any way. And since strictly structured hierarchies prevail in the terrorist organizations, for example, a targeted wiping out of bin Laden would by no means have significantly reduced their influence. "Back then, the Taliban were not friends of IS at all, they would have turned over bin Laden and his entire entourage if you had spoken to them, I remember."
The US has asked the Taliban about 30 times since 1996 to extradite bin Laden, without success.
“Mullah Omar mobilized the Taliban to resist the USA and rejected all demands to surrender power and Osama Bin Laden and the members extradite from al-Qaeda to the Americans. The Pakistani secret service ISI repeatedly tried to persuade Mullah Omar to extradite bin Laden in order to save the Taliban regime, but he refused, although he knew that the Taliban leadership was deeply divided on this issue and that there was a revolt within its own ranks was quite conceivable. Omar also felt strengthened by the assurance of his supporters in Pakistan and in the terror network Al-Qaeda that the US would bomb Afghanistan - which the Taliban could survive - but never send ground troops into the country.
A distinction has to be made between what is officially declared and the actual background.
Why did the US decide to withdraw?
1. The goals set have not been achieved in 20 years. There is also no prospect of it. End unpredictable.
2. Biden (also Trump) recognized that the real challenge for the USA is not Afghanistan, not even Iraq or Syria or Libya - but China!
It is clear to Biden that any intervention in other countries will fritter away US forces.
In addition, the US itself definitely needs China as a trading partner, and China is also the US's largest creditor.
Conclusion:
Whether the US plan (to remain the dominant power for the foreseeable future) will achieve - is open.
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