{"id":192169,"date":"2021-08-23T12:01:07","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T11:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=192169"},"modified":"2021-08-19T05:22:58","modified_gmt":"2021-08-19T04:22:58","slug":"the-islamic-emirate-of-afghanistan-back-with-a-bang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/08\/the-islamic-emirate-of-afghanistan-back-with-a-bang\/","title":{"rendered":"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Back with a Bang"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
The US ‘loss’ of Afghanistan is a repositioning and the new mission is not a ‘war on terror,’ but Russia and China.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n

Wait until the war is over
\nAnd we\u2019re both a little older
\nThe unknown soldier
\nBreakfast where the news is read
\nTelevision children fed
\nUnborn living, living, dead
\nBullet strikes the helmet\u2019s head
\nAnd it\u2019s all over
\nFor the unknown soldier<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/cite>— The Doors, \u201cThe Unknown Soldier<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

Taliban fighters stand guard along a roadside near the Zanbaq Square in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan’s 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city’s airport trying to flee the group’s feared hardline brand of Islamist rule. Photo: AFP \/ Wakil Kohsar<\/p><\/div>\n

16 Aug 2021 –<\/em> In the end, the Saigon moment<\/a> happened faster than any Western intel \u201cexpert\u201d expected. This is one for the annals: four frantic days that wrapped up the most astonishing guerrilla blitzkrieg of recent times. Afghan-style: lots of persuasion, lots of tribal deals, zero columns of tanks, minimal loss of blood.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

August 12 set the scene, with the nearly simultaneous capture of Ghazni, Kandahar and Herat. On August 13, the Taliban were only 50 kilometers from Kabul. August 14 started with the siege of Maidan Shahr, the gateway to Kabul.<\/p>\n

Ismail Khan, the legendary elder Lion of Herat, struck a self-preservation deal and was sent by the Taliban as a top-flight messenger to Kabul: President Ashraf Ghani should step out, or else.<\/p>\n

Still on Saturday, the Taliban took Jalalabad \u2013 and isolated Kabul from the east, all the way to the Afgan-Pakistan border in Torkham, gateway to the Khyber Pass. By Saturday night, Marshal Dostum was fleeing with a bunch of military to Uzbekistan via the Friendship Bridge in Termez; only a few were allowed in. The Taliban duly took over Dostum\u2019s Tony Montana-style palace.<\/p>\n

By early morning on August 15, all that was left for the Kabul administration was the Panjshir valley \u2013 high in the mountains, a naturally protected fortress \u2013 and scattered Hazaras: there\u2019s nothing there in those beautiful central lands, except Bamiyan.<\/p>\n

Exactly 20 years ago, I was in Bazarak getting ready to interview the Lion of the Panjshir<\/a>, commander Masoud, who was preparing a counter-offensive against \u2026 the Taliban. History repeating, with a twist. This time I was sent visual proof that the Taliban \u2013 following the classic guerrilla sleeping cell playbook \u2013 were already in the Panjshir.<\/p>\n

And then mid-morning on Sunday brought the stunning visual re-enactment of the Saigon moment, for all the world to see: a Chinook helicopter hovering over the roof of the American embassy in Kabul.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A US military helicopter flying above the US embassy in Kabul on August 15, 2021. Photo: AFP \/ Wakil Kohsar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2018The war is over\u2019<\/h4>\n

Still on Sunday, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem proclaimed: \u201cThe war is over in Afghanistan,\u201d adding that the shape of the new government would soon be announced.<\/p>\n

Facts on the ground are way more convoluted. Feverish negotiations have been going on since Sunday afternoon. The Taliban were ready to announce the official proclamation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in its 2.0 version (1.0 was from 1996 to 2001). The official announcement would be made inside the presidential palace.<\/p>\n

Yet what\u2019s left of Team Ghani was refusing to transfer power to a coordinating council that will de facto set up the transition. What the Taliban want is a seamless transition: they are now the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Case closed.<\/p>\n

By Monday, a sign of compromise came from Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen. The new government will include non-Taliban officials. He was referring to an upcoming \u201ctransition administration,\u201d most probably co-directed by Taliban political leader Mullah Baradar and Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former minister of internal affairs who was also, in the past, an employee of Voice of America.<\/p>\n

In the end, there was no Battle for Kabul. Thousands of Taliban were already<\/em> inside Kabul \u2013 once again the classic sleeper-cell playbook. The bulk of their forces remained in the outskirts. An official Taliban proclamation ordered them not to enter the city, which should be captured without a fight, to prevent civilian casualties.<\/p>\n

The Taliban did advance from the west, but \u201cadvancing,\u201d in context, meant connecting to the sleeper cells in Kabul, which by then were fully active. Tactically, Kabul was encircled in an \u201canaconda\u201d move, as defined by a Taliban commander: squeezed from north, south and west and, with the capture of Jalalabad, cut off from the east.<\/p>\n

At some point last week, high-level intel must have whispered to the Taliban command that the Americans would be coming to \u201cevacuate.\u201d It could have been Pakistan intelligence, even Turkish intelligence, with Erdogan playing his characteristic NATO double game.<\/p>\n

The American rescue cavalry not only came late, but was caught in a bind as they could not possibly bomb their own assets inside Kabul. The horrible timing was compounded when the Bagram military base \u2013 the NATO Valhalla in Afghanistan for nearly 20 years \u2013 was finally captured by the Taliban.<\/p>\n

That led the US and NATO to literally beg<\/em> the Taliban to let them evacuate everything in sight from Kabul \u2013 by air, in haste, at the Taliban\u2019s mercy. A geopolitical development that evokes suspension of disbelief.<\/p>\n

Ghani versus Baradar<\/h4>\n

Ghani\u2019s hasty escape is the stuff of \u201ca tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing\u201d \u2013 without the Shakespearean pathos. The heart of the whole matter was a last-minute meeting on Sunday morning between former President Hamid Karzai and Ghani\u2019s perennial rival Abdullah Abdullah.<\/p>\n

They discussed in detail who they were going to send to negotiate with the Taliban \u2013 who by then not only were fully prepared for a possible battle for Kabul, but had announced their immovable red line weeks ago \u2013 they want the end of the current NATO government.<\/p>\n

Ghani finally saw the writing on the wall and disappeared from the presidential palace without even addressing the potential negotiators. With his wife, chief of staff and national security adviser, he escaped to Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. A few hours later, the Taliban entered the presidential palace, the stunning images<\/a> duly captured.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A screengrab from a video showing Taliban leader Mullah Baradar Akhund, front, center, with his fellow insurgents, in Kabul on August 15. Born in 1968, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, also called Mullah Baradar Akhund, is the co-founder of the Taliban in Afghanistan. He was the deputy of Mullah Mohammed Omar.
Photo: AFP \/ Taliban \/ EyePress News<\/p><\/div>\n

Commenting on Ghani\u2019s escape, Abdullah Abdullah did not mince his words: \u201cGod will hold him accountable.\u201d Ghani, an anthropologist with a doctorate from Columbia, is one of those classic cases of Global South exiles to the West who \u201cforget\u201d everything that matters about their original lands.<\/p>\n

Ghani is a Pashtun who acted like an arrogant New Yorker. Or worse, an entitled Pashtun, as he was often demonizing the Taliban, who are overwhelmingly Pashtun, not to mention Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, including their tribal elders.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if Ghani and his Westernized team had never learned from a top source such as the late, great Norwegian social anthropologist Fredrik Barth (check out a sample of his Pashtun studies here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Geopolitically, what matters now is how the Taliban have written a whole new script, showing the lands of Islam, as well as the Global South, how to defeat the self-referential, seemingly invincible US\/NATO empire.<\/p>\n

The Taliban did it with Islamic faith, infinite patience and force of will fueling roughly 78,000 fighters \u2013 60,000 of them active \u2013 many with minimal military training, no backing of any state \u2013 unlike Vietnam, which had China and the USSR \u2013 no hundreds of billions of dollars from NATO, no trained army, no air force and no state-of-the-art technology.<\/p>\n

They relied only on Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades and Toyota pick-ups \u2013 before they captured American hardware these past few days, including drones and helicopters.<\/p>\n

Taliban leader Mullah Baradar has been extremely cautious. On Monday he said: \u201cIt is too early to say how we will take over governance.\u201d First of all, the Taliban wants \u201cto see foreign forces leave before restructuring begins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abdul Ghani Baradar is a very interesting character. He was born and raised in Kandahar. That\u2019s where the Taliban started in 1994, seizing the city almost without a fight and then, equipped with tanks, heavy weapons and a lot of cash to bribe local commanders, capturing Kabul nearly 25 years ago, on September 27, 1996.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Mullah Baradar fought in the 1980s jihad against the USSR, and maybe \u2013 not confirmed \u2013 side-by-side with Mullah Omar, with whom he co-founded the Taliban.<\/p>\n

After the American bombing and occupation post-9\/11, Mullah Baradar and a small group of Taliban sent a proposal to then-President Hamid Karzai on a potential deal that would allow the Taliban to recognize the new regime. Karzai, under Washington pressure, rejected it.<\/p>\n

Baradar was actually arrested in Pakistan in 2010 \u2013 and kept in custody. Believe it or not, American intervention led to his freedom in 2018. He then\u00a0relocated to Qatar. And that\u2019s where he was appointed head of the Taliban\u2019s political office and oversaw the signing last year of the\u00a0American withdrawal deal.<\/p>\n

Baradar will be the new ruler in Kabul \u2013 but it\u2019s important to note he\u2019s under the authority of the Taliban Supreme Leader since 2016, Haibatullah Akhundzada. It\u2019s the Supreme Leader \u2013 actually a spiritual guide \u2013 who will be lording over the new incarnation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada posing for a photograph at an undisclosed location in 2016. Photo: AFP \/ Afghan Taliban<\/p><\/div>\n

Beware of a peasant guerrilla army<\/h4>\n

The collapse of the Afghan National Army (ANA) was inevitable. They were \u201ceducated\u201d the American military way: massive technology, massive airpower, next to zero local ground intel.<\/p>\n

The Taliban is all about deals with tribal elders and extended family connections \u2013 and a peasant guerrilla approach, parallel to the communists in Vietnam. They were biding their time for years, just building connections \u2013 and those sleeper cells.<\/p>\n

Afghan troops who had not received a salary for months were paid not to fight them. And the fact they did not attack American troops since February 2020 earned them a lot of extra respect: a matter of honor, essential in the Pashtunwali code.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to understand the Taliban \u2013 and most of all, the Pashtun universe \u2013 without understanding Pashtunwali. As well as the concepts of honor, hospitality and inevitable revenge for any wrongdoing, the concept of freedom implies no Pashtun is inclined to be ordered by a central state authority \u2013 in this case, Kabul. And no way will they ever surrender their guns.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, that\u2019s the \u201csecret\u201d of the lightning-fast blitzkrieg with minimal loss of blood, inbuilt in the overarching geopolitical earthquake. After Vietnam, this is the second Global South protagonist showing the whole world how an empire can be defeated by a peasant guerrilla army.<\/p>\n

And all that accomplished with a budget that may not exceed $1.5 billion a year \u2013 coming from local taxes, profits from opium exports (no internal distribution allowed) and real estate speculation. In vast swaths of Afghanistan, the Taliban were already, de facto, running local security, local courts and even food distribution.<\/p>\n

Taliban 2021 is an entirely different animal compared with Taliban 2001. Not only are they battle-hardened, they had plenty of time to perfect their diplomatic skills, which were recently more than visible in Doha and in high-level visits to Tehran, Moscow and Tianjin.<\/p>\n

They know very well that any connection with al-Qaeda remnants, ISIS\/Daesh, ISIS-Khorasan and ETIM is counter-productive \u2013 as their Shanghai Cooperation Organization interlocutors made very clear.<\/p>\n

Internal unity, anyway, will be extremely hard to achieve. The Afghan tribal maze is a jigsaw puzzle, nearly impossible to crack. What the Taliban may realistically achieve is a loose confederation of tribes and ethnic groups under a Taliban emir, coupled with very careful management of social relations.<\/p>\n

Initial impressions point to increased maturity. The Taliban are granting amnesty to employees of the NATO occupation and won\u2019t interfere with businesses activities. There will be no revenge campaign. Kabul is back in business. There is allegedly no mass hysteria in the capital: that\u2019s been the exclusive domain of Anglo-American mainstream media. The Russian and Chinese embassies remain open for business.<\/p>\n

Zamir Kabulov, the Kremlin special representative for Afghanistan, has confirmed that the situation in Kabul, surprisingly, is \u201cabsolutely calm\u201d \u2013 even as he reiterated: \u201cWe are not in a rush as far as recognition [of the Taliban] is concerned. We will wait and watch how the regime will behave.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New Axis of Evil<\/h4>\n

Tony Blinken may blabber that \u201cwe were in Afghanistan for one overriding purpose \u2013 to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9\/11.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every serious analyst knows that the \u201coverriding\u201d geopolitical purpose of the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago was to establish an essential Empire of Bases foothold in the strategic intersection of Central and South Asia, subsequently coupled with occupying Iraq in Southwest Asia.<\/p>\n

Now the \u201closs\u201d of Afghanistan should be interpreted as a repositioning. It fits the new geopolitical configuration, where the Pentagon\u2019s top mission is not the \u201cwar on terror\u201d anymore, but to simultaneously try to isolate Russia and harass China by all means on the expansion of the New Silk Roads.<\/p>\n

Occupying smaller nations has ceased to be a priority. The Empire of Chaos can always foment chaos \u2013 and supervise assorted bombing raids \u2013 from its CENTCOM base in Qatar.<\/p>\n

Iran is about to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a full member \u2013 another game-changer. Even before resetting the Islamic Emirate, the Taliban have carefully cultivated good relations with key Eurasia players \u2013 Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran and the Central Asian \u2018stans. The \u2018stans are under full Russian protection. Beijing is already planning hefty rare earth business with the Taliban.<\/p>\n

On the Atlanticist front, the spectacle of non-stop self-recrimination will consume the Beltway for ages. Two decades, $2 trillion, a forever war debacle of chaos, death and destruction, a still shattered Afghanistan, an exit literally in the dead of night \u2013 for what? The only \u201cwinners\u201d have been the Lords of the Weapons Racket.<\/p>\n

Yet every American plotline needs a fall guy. NATO has just been cosmically humiliated in the graveyard of empires by a bunch of goat herders \u2013 and not by close encounters with Mr Khinzal<\/a>. What\u2019s left? Propaganda.<\/p>\n

So meet the new fall guy: the New Axis of Evil. The axis is Taliban-Pakistan-China. The New Great Game in Eurasia has just been reloaded.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian independent geopolitical analyst. He is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for <\/em>Asia Times Online. He has been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9\/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of <\/em>Globalistan<\/a> (2007),<\/em> Red Zone Blues<\/a> (2007), <\/em>Obama Does Globalistan<\/a> (2009), <\/em>Empire of Chaos<\/a> (2014) and <\/em>2030<\/a> (2015), all by Nimble Books.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Go to Original \u2013 asiatimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16 Aug 2021 – In the end, the Saigon moment happened faster than any Western intel \u201cexpert\u201d expected. Four frantic days of the most astonishing guerrilla blitzkrieg of recent times, Afghan-style: lots of persuasion, lots of tribal deals, zero columns of tanks, minimal loss of blood. The US ‘loss’ of Afghanistan is a repositioning and the new mission is not a ‘war on terror,’ but Russia and China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":192172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219],"tags":[93,867,94,244,133,1061,267,1126,1050,504,91,86,112,278,880,484,639,95,70,126,492,481],"class_list":["post-192169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-asia-2","tag-afghanistan","tag-anglo-america","tag-central-asia","tag-china","tag-cia","tag-cold-war-ii","tag-geopolitics","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-international-relations","tag-nato","tag-occupation","tag-pentagon","tag-russia","tag-state-terrorism","tag-taliban","tag-uk","tag-us-military","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-war-on-terror","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}