Afghanistan's Vast Natural Resources Awaiting Exploitation

"With the Taliban running the city right now, all the government offices are closed. The situation is very tense and scary here."

"I was in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building at the time [the Taliban] entered the city. There was chaos and traffic jams and everybody was running to his or her home, and the situation got very tense."

"I can say that right now, probably because of the relationship with the Taliban, [the Russians] might be interested in this [metals mining] sector. Bear in mind that the Russians were the first who did surveys of all these mines in the 1970s when they invaded the country."

"During the past 20 years, the Taliban and some warlords have been exploiting these resources illegally, and they have been working on small mines."

"But major ones like rare earth elements and lithium will be very difficult for them to exploit.The question is how the Taliban will run the government [and] how they will contribute to the economy. How can they exploit these resources? That’s impossible for the Taliban."

"Right now, the major interested power is China, given the Chinese relationship with Pakistan, and then Pakistan’s influence on the Taliban. China will be very interested in exploiting these resources."

Ahmad Shah Katawazai, Ministry of Foreign Affairs bureaucrat, Kabul, Afghanistan

A general view of Mes Aynak valley, some 40 kilometers southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP)

"Many of the mineral deposits are of world-class size and tenor."

"[Afghanistan has] abundant mineral resources, but modern technical data and information are necessary if they are to be developed successfully." 

"Afghanistan might be far removed from being able to sustainably develop its mining sector, however, owing to several factors, such as deterioration of the security situation, political uncertainty, and insufficient infrastructure."

U.S. Geological Survey

"...Such a program was always considered in the context of having a government in Kabul that respected basic principles of representative governance, human rights, rule of law. That is not the case with the return of the Taliban to power."

"Given China's stranglehold on the [rare-earth elements] market ... and the West's commitment in blood and treasure to Afghanistan -- allowing China to stroll in and harvest Afghanistan's rare-earth riches seems both unwise and unfair. But the West's options are limited."

Alan Dowd, senior fellow, Fraser Institute

A local laborer in 2013 helping to excavate part of the mountaintop copper works above the ancient city at Mes Aynak in Afghanistan, which sits on the old Silk Road trading route connecting China and India with the Mediterranean. Matthew C. Rains/MCT/Newscom

 

Foreign Affairs Ministry bureaucrats in Kabul indulged in high-level discussions focusing on the Afghan government's near future following the U.S. withdrawal; ministry officials forecasting a six-month period before an interim government would be formed. And then, the Taliban marched into the capital city, and President Ashraf Ghani's government along with its 300,000-strong army vanished into the woodwork.

 

Ahmad Shah Katawaza feels himself still "technically" an employee of the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, involved in those high-level discussions, at a time when the anticipated vacuum following the U.S. withdrawal was suddenly filled thanks to the Taliban. The immediate aftereffect of the chaos and disruption of normal life saw Taliban soldiers on the streets and everywhere fears of violence.

In the past 20 years under Western tutelage in good governance and democracy, Afghanistan's culture of corruption went on undisturbed at every level of government and civil life under the veneer of Western-style democracy. But with it came a level of freedom never known before in a fundamentalist culture of rigid Islamist sharia law, brought to a fine art of repression and mismanagement and inequality under the Taliban. And they have returned with a familiar script.

This is a country with vast natural resources that have never been exploited, and those resources now attract the attention of countries that are amenable to Taliban rule; Iran, Turkey, Russia and China. And a cash-strapped Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan may look to its friends in China and Russia to help fund its Islamist regime through the development of its lithium, rare earths and other metals, resources which it has in abundance while scarce in many other parts of the world.

This is a legendarily impoverished and war-torn country whose rich stores of valuable natural resources have never been exploited. Its abundance of coal, natural gas, copper, lithium, gold, iron ore, bauxite and rare-earth mineral reserves speak of great, untapped wealth. Rare earth minerals in particular are a strategic resource, hugely attractive to China planning to corral and control the rare and valuable resources. 

China itself produces some 85 percent of these minerals used in rechargeable batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles, advanced ceramics, computers, cellphones and other vital electronics. A U.S. study highlights Afghanistan's resources, valued at about $1 to $3 trillion, according to the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum. But not so fast; the country lacks stability and infrastructure which makes is problematical to see foreign investors willing to risk venturing into the country as a profitable enterprise.

Afghanistan's rugged and remote terrain represents yet another roadblock to development which, added to the security situation, lack of infrastructure required to haul minerals to global markets alongside rampant corruption and what seems hugely attractive at first glance, merits a second and a third assessment. Yet the reality is that those mineral resources could contribute significantly to economic growth in the country if it was possible to develop their extraction efficiently.

Few Western investors would take the leap with the Taliban in power and from that source there would be "zero interest". China and Russia can be guaranteed to have fewer scruples and fewer fears of losing a promising investment in a country ruled by diehard Islamist functionaries with whom they would have no trouble getting along. China has demonstrated amply its penchant and purpose in investing heavily in countries with natural resources begging to be exploited. 

The global electric-vehicle boom that China is eager in cornering the market on, with production of batteries dependent on lithium, will readily see the Taliban recognizing an opportunity and allowing China permission to get on with its investment, building the required infrastructure, and maintaining efficient extraction of the minerals the modern world is being built upon. A situation where the country with 47 percent poverty levels can hope to raise its standard of economic self-sufficiency.

The pledge of $13 billion from international donors in grants to Afghanistan's development and reforms of last November is unlikely to be carried through at this juncture, to benefit the Taliban. The International Monetary Fund, preparing to transfer close to $150 million of a $370 million credit facility will be set aside, frozen in reflection of Taliban rule which most countries will not recognize as secure and legitimate.

Afghanistan's central bank with 22 tonnes of gold stored at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, has been frozen. Its international reserves of $9.8 billion in cash, gold and other instruments will be closed to the Taliban wishing to withdraw any of it for immediate use. According to Mr. Katawazai, the Afghan government and Metallurgical Corp. of China Ltd. were negotiating terms for a lease to develop Afghanistan's largest copper mine, with reserves of an estimated 6 million tonnes. 

Goodbye United States of America, NATO countries, hello China and Russia, Afghanistan's Islamic Emirate is open and ready for business.

An Afghan man holds a small piece of gold, prospected from the site of a proposed Qara Zaghan mine.

"Why can't the civil service of distressed nations be adequately funded? After all, many countries which receive aid have extensive natural resources. The answer is that these valuable commodities tend to be contracted out to extractive industries, often foreign."

"Contracts for the extraction of resources such as petroleum or minerals are not disclosed to the public, so the industry and their procedures remain highly opaque ... massive diversions of funds means that usable domestic revenues on the books is a fraction of its potential."

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani; Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World

Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, left, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in China on July 28, 2021.

Afghanistan: What Went Wrong

"[The U.S. government was simply not equipped to undertake something this ambitious in such an uncompromising environment, no matter the budget."

"[Authorities] consistently underestimated the amount of time required to rebuild Afghanistan, created unrealistic timelines and expectations that prioritized spending quickly." 

"Prioritized their own political preferences for what they wanted reconstruction to look like, rather than what they could realistically achieve."

"Billions of reconstruction dollars were wasted as projects went unused or fell into disrepair."

"Police advisors watched American TV shows to learn about policing, civil affairs teams were mass-produced via PowerPoint presentations and every agency experienced annual lobotomies as staff constantly rotated out, leaving successors to start from scratch and make similar mistakes all over again."

"[The result] could be described as twenty one-year reconstruction efforts, rather than one twenty-year effort."

Lessons Learned, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report 

Murals are seen along the walls at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. | Paula Bronstein /Getty Images

 

In 2008 the U.S. created the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Its purpose was to ensure that officials in Washington were kept informed and up-to-date on the progress of the U.S. administration's intention at rebuilding the country that had been invaded seven years earlier by a U.S./NATO-led group of Western allies whose original purpose was to capture the leader of the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda, whom the ruling Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) refused to hand over to the U.S. 

Identified as the man responsible for planning and helping to carry out the audaciously threatening and ultimately violently destructive attack on the New York World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and an aborted attack on the U.S.Capitol, Osama bin Laden was an honoured guest of the Taliban and of the Pakistan Interagency Intelligence Service aligned with the Taliban. The invading forces quickly dispersed both al Qaeda and the governing Taliban to the mountains bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And the international alliance of foreign troops spent the next twenty years attempting to quell the ever-recurring guerrilla raids by the Taliban intent on returning to power, while the U.S. focused for the first ten years on capturing Islamist terrorists and confining them to a special prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. While foreign diplomats and troops found themselves in Afghanistan a second purpose was worked out, to take the country from its theocratic primitive state into modernity, including gender equality and separation of church and state.

Building schools and medical clinics, educating Afghans on best governance practises, sending civil instructors in police action, prison practise, well digging, modernizing medical practices to permit women to be treated in once-men-only medical treatment centres, encouraging a free press, educating women to take their place in the workforce, persuading farmers to grow cash crops other than poppies, and instructing the Afghan military in modern warfare techniques and counter-measures to terrorism.

A Taliban fighter holds a machine gun in front of the main gate leading to the Afghan presidential palace on Monday in Kabul. The U.S. struggled to manage a chaotic evacuation after the Taliban rolled into the Afghan capital. Rahmat Gul/AP

These props were onerous to maintain while fighting an ongoing ferociously barbarian insurgency that just would not stop, that tested the efficacy of wildcat guerrilla techniques against the cumbersome weight of a traditional military apparatus. All the while the Taliban struck with suicide bombers, threatened farmers to grow poppies for the opium market, the proceeds going to fund the Taliban as they destroyed schools and health clinics and attacked foreign diplomatic missions and set IEDs to blow up foreign troops.

How efficient and effective were the Western powers in countering the Taliban, that the U.S. alone spent a whopping trillion of their treasury and lost well over two thousand American military personnel, other nations losing proportionately fewer military personnel, every one a rebuke to the West that it felt it would be capable of taming a primitive tribal compulsion to kill and terrorize to fulfill their intransigent view of force, guile and conquest. Rome's armoured phalanxes of seasoned legionnaires and siege machines in the end, failed against the savage hordes of uncivilized barbarians; an empire destroyed by its own ambition.

Taliban fighters patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

SIGAR has been diligently over the years churning out reports in great detail on the outcome of spending hundreds of billions in Afghanistan -- to determine whether effort and the effect was succeeding in taming the unruly culture that historically relied on warlords to respect each others' territory, and corruption was endemic, common to each and every fraction of societal culture. The agency seemed well aware right off that the huge mission was awry, reflecting quarterly report conclusions.

The agency scrutinized public statements and dispatches from people in  Afghanistan that appeared to be ignored by the Washington administrative elite. The SIGAR output in annual updates emphasized that the great creaking machinery at work by the West in Afghanistan was failing to achieve any of its grand state-re-making drives to turn Afghanistan in an eastern version of a western democracy. In 2015 the $83 billion spent on turning the Afghan National Security Forces into a professional fighting force concluded with no data on training, recruitment or equipment.

Strangely, the report discovered $135 million to have vanished though its purpose was for rebuilding projects that had also suddenly vanished. The final report, "Lessons Learned" was released the very day that the Taliban entered Kabul and the government fell as its prime minister fled the country. The report outlined that those projcts that did see completion failed to be of use and quickly fell into disrepair. Afghans appeared not to have been consulted or included on projects they knew nothing of where the success of a project was weighed by whether its budget was fully spent.

 

Neither the State Department nor the Department of Defence was fully engaged in oversight, and neither had the resources and expertise for large-scale reconstruction missions with significant economic and governance components. "The U.S. government -- clumsily forced western technocratic models onto Afghan economic institutions; trained security forces in advanced weapon systems they could not understand, much less maintain; imposed formal rule of law on a country that addressed 80 to 90 percent of its disputes through informal meas and often struggled to understand or mitigate the cultural and social barriers to supporting women and girls."

Havana Syndrome, Malevolent Microwave Attacks

"[The Canadian government is trying to] sweep things away quietly and carry on as if there is nothing to see  here. What is being done is simply not good enough."

"I thought, all right then things are fine [told of no confirmed cases of Havana syndrome with Canadian diplomatic staff since 2018 in Cuba]. It has been almost three years since things happened. There is no apparent reason for concern."

"I had no idea. The department did not tell me about them [other 'incidents']. [Global Affairs] had been withholding and hiding information and being rather dishonest about the reality there and the risks."

"It is a perfect storm of privacy, security and bureaucratic inertia all coming together to make sure things don't happen."

"One would thnk the top priority would be to find out what it is that is potentially putting all of our international staff everywere in the world at risk and defend against it. Instead, they are choosing to leave their people to fend for themselves. Why?"

Top echelon Canadian diplomat (name withheld)

"There is no other explanation for it, considering he can identify the time and date of the attack and the symptoms are the same as every other case."

The lack of care, the lack of support from the government has been disgraceful. They are throwing these people under the bus."

Lawyer Paul Miller

A high-ranking Canadian diplomat in Cuba was flown home for assessment earlier this year after experiencing neurological symptoms consistent with Havana syndrome. The man, who the lawyer described as “high-ranking,” had only been posted in Cuba for a short time before the incident in February. Photo by Desmond Boylan /THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The mysterious, unseen, unheard, unexpected and little-understood attacks remain a mystery, even as they continue to re-occur, now not only in Havana, Cuba, but elsewhere in the world as well, wherever the U.S. and Canada have their diplomatic missions abroad. The attacks' origin is as unknown as is the uncertanty over the nature of the attacks themselves. What is no mystery is the great physical and psychological harm they cause to people innocent of any aggravating effect that might bring such punishing attacks upon them.

Research has been incapable of conclusively identifying the method of the attacks, what they are comprised of to render them so ubiquitous and effective, and who might be directing them to malevolent effect, much less why. Although uncertainty remains and many experts in the field of microwave energy are skeptical, U.S. investigations concluded Havana syndrome to result from targeted energy attacks. The whys and wherefores  unknown, much less the hows.

When it first emerged in Havana, striking American diplomats and members of their families, and then Canadians were also targeted, many observers suggested some type of hysteria was at play. Until patient studies revealed brain abnormalities caused by some type of blunt force trauma although there was no physical outer sign of anything amiss. People reported a sound reverberating in their heads and from that what emerged was imbalance, memory impact, headaches, dizziness and other critical brain function signals attesting to the reality of the attacks. Not psychosomatic as some suggested.

US Vice President Kamala Harris delayed her arrival in Hanoi after reports that US diplomats in the Vietnam capital may have experienced the mysterious illness dubbed "Havana Syndrome" EVELYN HOCKSTEIN POOL/AFP

Americal diplomatic personnel around the world have been affected by continued reports of Havana syndrome. Two American diplomats this week were evacuated from their posts in Vietnam following Havana syndrome attacks. In Canada, a high-ranking Canadian diplomat posted to Cuba was flown back to Canada for assessment early this year after undergoing an attack consistent with the syndrome.

His experience left him so devastated at the neurological symptoms he now suffers that he has become the latest in a string of Canadian diplomats to join a $28-million lawsuit brought against the government of Canada for neglect and abandonment of its employees. Before this man was posted to Cuba he was sent to Dalhousie University's Brain Repair Centre in Halifax for an assessment of his brain health.

Tests were conducted on his brain and cognitive functions. A routine of baseline testing that Canadian diplomats posted to Cuba since the concussion-like symptoms first appeared in 2017. There was no reason to be concerned he was told, no confirmed cases of Havana syndrome in Canadian diplomatic staff had occurred since 2018. Once in Cuba, however, his colleagues briefed him otherwise. Talk of 'incidents' since 2018 arose.

Russia and possibly China have developed technology capable of injuring brain and a US company made a prototype in 2004. A slide from the 60s or early 70s from a CIA briefing on microwave radiation. A microwave weapon has been suggested as a possible cause of ‘Havana Syndrome’ suffered by US officials. Photograph: Handout

 

One morning in February he felt his right ear begin reverberating: "It was like a ringing, but there was no sound", he explained. When it stopped after a minute he ran to the front door but there was no one about. In the days to follow his symptoms became more serious; distorted sound, echoing in one ear, ear pressure, and acute pain. Headaches developed and intensified pain in his ear and right side of his face. 

Flown out of Cuba back to Canada and on to Halifax for assessment, he underwent testing where he was unable to complete a balance test without falling over. Doctors identified inconsistency in his brain waves, but were unable to determine whether his was a case of Havana syndrome. He is still awaiting a definitive diagnosis. 

 

A physiotherapist he sought out treated what he diagnosed as a percussive force such as a targeted energy device that hit the man behind the right ear. Thanks to the treatment his symptoms were reduced, but vertigo and vision issues continue to emerge. "We are all on our own, so take care of yourself because Global Affairs is not going to", he was told by colleagues after he had arrived in Cuba. 

Multiple investigatons into the incidents were launched in the U.S. Some concluded the attacks were likely caused by the use of radio-frequency energy like microwave radiation. The Canadian government on the other hand has been silent about cases involving staff. A briefing was held in the spring to discuss plans to expand the Canadian mission in Cuba after staff was reduced in the wake of the original incidents.

Diplomats and their family members who suffer hearing, cognitive and balance issues are suing the federal government, with the claim that it had failed to protect them or to take adequate action to have them medically treated. The Canadian govrnment speaks of the "health, safety and security of ur diplomatic staff and their families is a priority", and that it is continuing to investigate the cause of Havana syndrome.

"At least two U.S. officials stationed in Germany sought medical treatment after developing symptoms of the mysterious health complaint known as Havana Syndrome, U.S. diplomats said."

"The symptoms, which included nausea, severe headaches, ear pain, fatigue, insomnia and sluggishness, began to emerge in recent months and some victims were left unable to work, the diplomats said. They are the first cases to be reported in a NATO country that hosts U.S. troops and nuclear weapons."

"U.S. diplomats said similar incidents had been registered among American officials stationed in other European nations, but declined to provide any detail."

Washington Post, 18 August 2021

The American Embassy in Berlin is investigating unexplained illness among U.S. staff posted in Germany.  Photo: Kay Nietfeld/DPA/Zuma Press

"American officials may have reason to fear Havana syndrome even on U.S. soil: In April, lawmakers on the House and Senate Armed Services committees said that there was an investigation into two potential Havana-like attacks in the States, including one reported instance involving a National Security Council official just south of the White House. In August, Vice-President Kamala Harris’s trip from Singapore to Vietnam was delayed after the U.S. embassy in Hanoi warned of a “report of a recent possible anomalous health incident,” the language that government officials use to describe Havana syndrome symptoms. While the symptoms have predominantly hit Americans, several Canadian officials have also reported experiencing Havana syndrome. In April, nine Canadian diplomats wrote to the foreign affairs minister saying they were struggling to get information from the government on their cases. Canadian Global Television Network reported at the time that there had been more than two dozen cases among Canadian officials."

Intelligencer

"While French commandos in buses got their people out, we sent texts [in English] telling our friends to head to the airport on their own. Ten buses screamed out of France's embassy in Kabul early this week, past every Taliban checkpoint along the way, and according to eyewitnesses, zipped confidently through a back-entrance gate and straight onto the chaotic tarmac at Hamid Karzai International Airport. Five hundred exhausted and terrified passengers were then loaded onto a French military aircraft which quickly took off."

"All of our allies had eyes and boots on the ground ... at Kabul's airport. Canada did not. It closed its embassy and withdrew all its diplomats and military by jet to Ottawa just as the Taliban was rolling into town."

Kevin Newman, journalist, former anchor, Global National

 

"I'm scared. Who knows, they could come here in the middle of the night and nobody is going to know anything. We could be executed, any day any time, any minute -- I can feel the death coming."

"The Taliban are driving around, staring at us, wondering what's going on here [at the hotel assigned to his family by the Canadian government, in Kabul while awaiting rescue]."

"Your government put us in the line of execution."

Abdul Ahmadullah, Kandahar native, awaiting rescue in Kabul 

"Abdul has worked on a daily basis, often on short notice, assisting in resolving issues both complex and urgent in nature."

"His family and country have reason to be proud of this fine young man."

Canadian military officers letter of commendation

 

"The security situation surrounding the airport has become increasingly dangerous. Violence has become more common and Taliban checkpoints in surrounding area are preventing many from reaching the airport area."

"For those who do make it ... Canadian Armed Forces members have been able to assist eligible evacuees to enter the airport parameter."

Unnamed senior government official

Afghans board a U.S. Air Force transport plane during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Sunday. Officials told media Monday that Canada's special forces are currently working inside and outside the confines of the airport to ensure Canadians and eligible Afghans can get onto planes destined for Canada. (U.S. Air Force/REUTERS)

 

 

Canadian military veterans who were assigned to tours of duty in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, as part of the Western allied forces led by the United States and NATO, have been extremely aware of the imminent danger their former Afghan colleagues would be exposed to. They have been working for months independently of government agencies to locate and contact former Afghan volunteers, interpreters and others working with the Canadian military for the ten years of its presence there.

That same group has desperately urged the Liberal Trudeau government to action, emphasizing the dire reality of a tragedy waiting to unfold. They have been frustrated at every turn. Agonizingly complex paperwork has confronted Afghans registering, proving their past work performance with the military, with the Canadian diplomatic mission as locally engaged employees and workers with Canadian NGOs. One department of government has shunted them off to another. During registration procedures communication lines freeze.

And it soon became distressingly evident that the Government of Canada had made up no contingency plans for evacuation of Afghans who were eventually successful in obtaining visas, much less those whose complex, often confusing paperwork had stalled. Finally, with the Taliban entrance to Kabul imminent, Canada yanked its diplomats out of Kabul and its military, sending them all back to Canada. And no one was left to aid and expedite the rescue of hundreds of Afghans promised evacuation by Canada. 

Messages sent directly from the Department of Foreign Affairs to the cellphones of the registered visa applicants and holders informed them they must make their own way to the airport for airlifting out of Afghanistan, at a time when the Taliban is manning checkpoints refusing to allow even visa holders entry to the airport. Canada prepared two transport planes to land at the Kabul airport and they returned half empty. People were simply unable to reach the airport, as ordered by an absent Canada.

 

More than 1,000 Afghans have been flown out on 12 Canadian flights thus far. Canadian Forces are not bringing people into this country without legitimate documentation, unlike the U.S. and U.K., says a former Afghan interpreter. CBC

 

Abdul Ahmadullah's plight is a case in point. Back in June the Canadian government responded to his need as a former interpreter for Canadian Forces in the knowledge that he was a marked man having worked for the Canadian combat mission Kandahar and he was forced into hiding while simultaneously the Taliban were searching for all Afghans linked to foreign forces. Others, like him interpreters, were found and murdered.

Ahmadullah had reached Kabul a month ago, with his family, waiting with dozens of other ex-employees locally engaged by Canada at downtown Kabul hotels until a flight could take them away. Their wait is interminable and they grow increasingly fearful in an atmosphere of grim suspense, where it has become impossible to reach the airport grounds much less make it inside, without assistance. Massive crowds of desperate Afghans and the presence of Taliban fighters surround the airport complex.

Some other countries working to extract their nationals and Afghans linked to them from Kabul and onto planes have taken people to the compound by helicopter, or with the use of armed convoys. The backstory is that interpreters' lives have been threatened by the Taliban and many assassinated by them. Ahmadullah had applied to emigrate to Canada back in 2011, when the Canadian mission left or as he put it "disappeared like ghosts".

Soon after the Canadians had departed Ahmadullah's young son, on his way home from school was abducted and he was contacted by someone representing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan inviting him to appear at a certain place, to see his son. "My wife told me, 'If you go there, both of you are going to die'." Instead, with the help of Pashtun elders he was able to negotiate a ransom for his son. Who came home badly beaten, missing two toenails. "You better run for your life, they're coming after you", warned one of the elders.

He, his wife and children moved every six months to new locations, attempting to change their appearance as they did -- for the next seven years. In June Kandahar was breached by the Taliban who killed all the officers manning the local police station, and took their place. The day of the invasion he appealed to Canadian officials and was wired $1,500. He and his family left for Kabul. In their absence from Kandahar their home was burnt to the ground.

When the Taliban took the capital on August 15, all those at the hotel they had been assigned to by the Canadian government were informed they should head out to the airport. When they did, they reached a dangerous place of mad chaos, packed with desperate people. They had little option but to return to the hotel to try again the following day, with similar results. Those in the hotel whom the Canadian government has pledged to rescue have tried again and again to reach the blast barriers of the airfield.

According to Ahmadullah, Taliban guards ripped up one former employee's Canadian visa then beat him. He was warned not to return or he'd be killed. "He didn't have hope any more", said Ahmadullah. He said, '[If we wait for Canada, we will die." The Canadian Armed Forces assigned to help extract Afghans has three to four days left to airlift people out of Kabul.

 

 U.S. President Joe Biden has informed his allies that the withdrawal date of August 31 is firm and will not be renegotiated with the Taliban. His concern now is that U.S. troops are vulnerable to attacks by Islamic State terrorists, obviating the potential of conflict with Taliban terrorists since the Taliban refer to August 31 as their 'red line' for foreign departures. And then there is their statement that they do not want any more Afghan nationals leaving on evacuation flights

Hoping to flee the country, people gather outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 20, 2021.   JIM HUYLEBROEK/The New York Times News Servic

The Imminence of Afghanistan's Civil War

"We want to make the Taliban realize that the only way forward is through negotiations. We do not want a war to break out."

"They [supporters and members of the newly-formed National Resistance Front of Afghanistan [NRF] want to defend, they want to fight, they want to resist against any totalitarian regime."

Ahmad Massoud, leader NRF

Ahmad Massoud, the son of resistance icon Ahmad Shah Massoud, founded the NRF   Reuters

"[We want to pursue peaceful negotiations, but] if this fails... then we're not going to accept any sort of aggression."

"[We have] thousands of forces ready for the resistance. However, we prefer to pursue peace and negotiations before any sort of war and conflict."

"The NRF believes that for lasting peace we have to address the underlying problems in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a country made up of ethnic minorities, no one is a majority. It's a multicultural state, so it needs power sharing - a power-sharing deal where everyone sees themselves in power." 

"[Having one group dominating politics will lead to] internal warfare and the continuation of the current conflict."   

"We prefer peace, we prioritize peace and negotiations. If this fails - if we see that the other side is not sincere, if we see that the other side is trying to force itself on the rest of the country - then we're not going to accept any sort of aggression."  

"And we've proven ourselves, our track record in the past [40 years] has shown that no-one is able to conquer our region, especially the Panjshir Valley."   

"The Red Army, with its might, was unable to defeat us... I don't think any force right now in Afghanistan has the might of the Red Army. And the Taliban also 25 years ago... they tried to take over the valley and they failed, they faced a crushing defeat."

Ali Nazary, head, foreign relations, National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF)

 

"There is the risk of a renewed civil war in Afghanistan."

"Of course, no one intends to interfere in these events."

"[The current situation poses] an additional danger and threats."

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman, Kremlin

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Taliban   peoplesgazette

Unlike President Ashraf Ghani who fled Afghanistan to avoid 'bloodletting" and taking with him over a hundred million in treasury and is now installed in Qatar, while promising to return at some date, his vice-president, Amrullah Saleh had pledged not to leave the country and he is now in Panjshir, an area northwest of the capital where the Taliban do not rule, held by a recently-formed resistance group by the son of the Afghan patriot who fought the Soviet invasion until it withdrew in 1989, then turned to opposing the Taliban when it ruled the country in the 1990s.

 

Under control of the NRF, founded by the son of the deceased champion of Afghanistan Ahmad Shah Massoud, the region stands firmly in opposition to the Taliban. Ahmad Massoud leading the movement he founded, is holding out the hope that the Islamist Taliban will agree to holding talks to hear out the position of the NRF in the interests of avoiding a civil war. It may be difficult to give credence to this faint hope, given the relentless advance of the Taliban and their quick and brutal disposal of any who oppose their control of the country.

Men opposed to Taliban totalitarian rule of the country have travelled to the region where the NRF boasts of forces comprised of parts of the country's regular army units and special forces along with local militia fighters. And although both spokesmen for the group spoke of avoiding conflict it seems highly unlikely that this will be possible. A widely distributed Taliban statement declared that hundreds of its fighters were on the march toward Panjshir after local state officials refused to hand it over "peacefully".

With the statement came a short video showing a column of trucks emblazoned with the identifying markers of the ousted national government, and the white Taliban flag in prominent view advancing along a highway toward Panjshir. Should Taliban forces, warns Massoud, attempt an invasion of the valley, his fighters were prepared to fight.  A Taliban official claimed an offensive was launched on Panjshir, but a Massoud aide revealed no signs the column had yet entered the narrow pass leading to the valley, and no reports of conflict.

 

The NRF says it wants to pursue peaceful negotiations before fighting   Reuters

 

The very presence of a narrow pass having to be negotiated by columns of fighters before access to the valley, conjures up pictures of a complete route of any invaders by opposition fighters alerted to their entrance by sentries, a classic pincer attack of an almost impregnable area, vigilant to the emerging presence of an enemy. There was indeed instances of forces opposing the takeover of the Taliban that took place recently.

In the northern province of Baghlan which borders Panjshir, anti-Taliban forces restored to themselves three districts -- an operation that Massoud claimed not to have himself organized but which had been carried out by local militia groups in reaction to "brutality" on the part of the Taliban, carried out in the area. Which itself speaks volumes of the potential for ongoing conflict flaming into an overall civil war that could possibly spell the end of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, despite its formidable reputation.

In calling for an inclusive, broad-based government in Kabul meant to represent all of the country's various ethnic groups, Massoud emphasized that the international community should forbear from recognizing a "totalitarian regime". His region leading the way, the examples of the war-torn country's past defence of its autonomy and traditional values can be seen in the presence of wrecked Soviet-era armoured vehicles still dotting the valley. 

Optimism never faltering, the practicality of an assumed force numbering some 6,000 fighters however determined and motivated they may be in defence of an Afghanistan freed from the shackles of the Taliban, Massoud speaks of the need for international support to enable his group to succeed in its mission, should large-scale conflict break out. And in view of the current withdrawal of some 51 foreign national troops anxious to finally leave the "Graveyard of Empires" after two decades of stalemate, how likely is that scenario?           

The New Afghanistan is the Old Afghanistan

"Make no mistake, this evacuation mission is dangerous. I cannot promise what the final outcome will be or that it will be without risk of loss. Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home."

"I have seen no questioning of our credibility from our allies around the world. I have spoken with our NATO allies. the opposite, we're acting with dispatch. It's time to end this war. I think we can get it done [get all Americans out by August 31] by then, but we're going to make that judgement as we go."

"To the best of our knowledge, the Taliban checkpoints, they are letting through people showing American passports."

"I took the consensus opinion [on withdrawal of forces]. the consensus opinion was, that in fact, it [Taliban takeover] would not occur, if it occurred, until later in the year."

U.S. President Joe Biden

US Air Force security forces raven maintains a security cordon at Hamid Karzai International Airport [Taylor Crul/US Air Force/AFP]

American allies complained bitterly that the Biden administration failed to consult with them, failed to give them timely notice of the intention to withdraw the U.S. military presence from the American bases that fell to the Taliban. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was said to have attempted fruitlessly to speak with Mr. Biden, but his request for a return call wasn't returned for a day and a half. Now, NATO allies are attempting to persuade the Biden administration to put off complete withdrawal until such time as they have succeeded in getting all of their nationals to safety and rescuing as many of the Afghan civilians that worked for and with them.

 

The Taliban control roads leading to the Kabul airport and they maintain strict control over the checkpoints leading into the airport. There are reports the Taliban are confiscating passports from Afghans desperate to make flights out of Afghanistan, and are refusing to allow people to pass through into the airport from the packed crowd-control areas where rifle butts and whips and stark orders help with the job of keeping people in line. The U.S. agreement with the Taliban not to harm Americans in exchange for non-interference is tenuous.

 

"Any attack on our forces or disruption of our operations at the airport will be met with a swift and forceful response", said the president of the Taliban airport checkpoints. In any event, pointed out the president, some of those gathered by the thousands desperate to enter the airport and be taken by magic flights away from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan may not be who they appear to be: "There's a whole lot of Afghanis who would just as soon come to America, whether they have any involvement with the United States in the past at all rather than stay under Taliban rule or any rule".

Taliban fighters patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan [Rahmat Gul/AP Photo]

According to Democratic congressman Jason Crow sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, 100,000 Afghans who gave assistance to the United States during its 20-year tenure in Afghanistan could ultimately be left behind, that the Taliban were making use of files from Afghanistan's intelligence agency to identify U.S. 'sympathizers' for their very own special treatment. Diplomats from the Kabul U.S. embassy had sent an internal memo of "dissent" warning of swift gains by the Taliban and a collapse of Afghan security forces, back in mid-July.

And in Kabul and other cities now in the capable hands of the Taliban, an Afghan woman, ordered to pay for, provide and cook the food ingredients to serve to Taliban stationed nearby her home -- a general order that went out in an aura of increasingly scarce food supplies impoverishing Afghans -- was set on fire by the Taliban fighters she was serving who deemed her cooking to be inferior and who viewed this as just punishment for the error of her cooking skills.

It was an Afghan judge who reported on the incident following a group of Afghans waving the Afghan flag being attacked by the Taliban. Former judge and human rights campaigner Najia Ayoubi, fled when the government collapsed but continues to campaign against violence directed at women, as she did when reporting casual abuse of women taking place since the Taliban victory. "They also force families to marry their young daughters to Taliban fighters. I don't see where is the promise that they think women should be going to work, when we are seeing all of these atrocities."

 

House-to house searches in systematic manhunts for government officials, former soldiers, Afghans who had worked with foreign troops, journalists and other non-governmental workers is being carried out with great vigour despite the central Taliban leadership promising a general amnesty to former government officials and soldiers. Safe houses operated by a German charity meant to give haven to Afghan nationals connected with coalition forces, were shut down by necessity because they had become "death traps".

 

Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, August 22, 2021 [Rahmat Gul/AP Photo]

 

"The Taliban are going door-to-door looking for local forces. This was foreseeable and there has already been a visit to one of the safe houses by the Taliban. Thank God it was empty", said Marcus Grotian, a German soldier who operates the safe-house network. Footage has emerged of Taliban fighters on the streets of captured cities taking aside anyone they suspect of 'disloyalty' to be abused and arrested. The Taliban have reverted to form despite assurances to an international audience that all would be well.

The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation has issued a formal statement that now is the time for all 'sides' in Afghanistan to reach a conciliation agreement, for order and good government to prevail and peace to set in. Afghanistan, they declared, should never again become a safe haven for terrorists. A confusing statement at the very least, since the Taliban is, in and of itself a terrorist group, one that enjoys quite collegial relations with al-Qaeda, and permits the presence of ISIL on Afghan soil.

With the OIC recognition of the Taliban as the new-and-improved government as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Islamic world confers recognition of legitimacy on a terrorist group that has succeeded in short order -- through sowing terror in violent bombings and assassinations -- to oust the constitutional government of the country, prepared to set up another, under strict sharia law that will effectively ban the quality of life for Afghans. As for peace and harmony, it will not be achieved.

A desperately cowed and fearful public destined once again to adjust to their reduced position from free human beings to indentured theists suffering the oppressive tyranny of Byzantine-era armed-and-dangerous thugs who are able to mete out instant punishment over perceived sharia infractions resulting in public floggings and murder, will return Afghanistan to the stone age. But there is a reckoning on the sidelines as former members of the Northern Alliance regroup in the Panjshir Valley to eventually march in opposition to the Taliban to  return some semblance of liberty to a suffering population.

Ahmad Massoud, son of Afghanistan’s slain anti-Soviet resistance hero Ahmad Shah Massoud [File: Mohammad Ismail/Reuters]