Tag: Afghanistan news

25 years after Sept. 11 attacks, Taliban rules Afghanistan again, but now with $7 billion in U.S. firepower

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As Americans reflect this week on the 25 years that have passed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, CBS News has returned to Afghanistan, where the war those attacks triggered ended five years ago with the Taliban’s stunning return to power.  When the last U.S. and allied soldiers left after a brutal two-decade war, the Taliban’s fighters seized billions of dollars worth of American-purchased military hardware.

President Trump, whose first administration negotiated the deal to end the war with the Taliban, has accused the Biden administration of “totally botching” the withdrawal. Five years later, the hardware of America’s longest-ever war is still easy to spot on the streets of Kabul. Taliban fighters patrol in armored vehicles once supplied to Afghan forces, wearing American tactical gear and carrying American weapons.

CBS News saw one Humvee in the Afghan capital still adorned with a faded Green Bay Packers decal — a remnant from its past operators.  President Trump has been fiercely critical of the former Biden administration, accusing his predecessor of allowing the U.S. military to abandon billions of dollars in military hardware. Mr. Trump has demanded that the Taliban hand it back. But the Taliban has proudly shown off its American-funded arsenal, even staging military parades through Kabul’s streets.

Pentagon figures released last year show some $7 billion in hardware and weaponry fell into the group’s hands when the Afghan National Army collapsed. Shortly after the 2021 withdrawal, CBS News filmed as “Badri 313,” an elite Taliban special forces battalion, patrolled in their American vehicles, American commando gear and with their American weapons. Asked about President Trump’s determination to reclaim the equipment, Taliban Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi told CBS News the hardware now belongs to “the state of Afghanistan, and we are not in the business of doing transactions and deals on the assets of the state of Afghanistan.”

When it was pointed out that American taxpayers purchased the equipment, Balkhi said: “The Americans did a lot of things. Americans killed a lot of people, destroyed the majority of the country. Should they not be paying for that first?” The Taliban waged a vicious insurgency during a war that killed more than 2,400 U.S. service members and tens of thousands of innocent Afghans.  But critics of the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S. withdrawal say it’s allowed the Taliban to transform from insurgents into a state military force armed with billions of dollars in American-funded firepower. 

They have used those weapons to impose a draconian interpretation of Islamic rule on Afghanistan’s people, almost completely depriving women and girls of the right to work and study, and restricting life for everyone in the country in ways that some analysts say are even harsher than during the group’s previous reign.  Biden has offered little public commentary on the Afghanistan withdrawal, but he said in September 2021, a month after the Taliban took back control, that he “was not going to extend this ‘forever war,’ and I was not extending a ‘forever exit.'”

“If anything, the developments of the past week reinforce that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision,” said the then-president in August 2021, as the Taliban reasserted their rule 20 years after being ousted by the U.S.-led military campaign. “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.” In 2023, the Biden White House released a 12-page summary of a classified review of the Afghanistan exit that largely blamed the Trump administration for the deal it struck with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces from the country by May 2021. 

The so-called Doha Agreement brokered by the first Trump administration laid out a series of conditions for the Taliban to fulfill in order for U.S. forces to leave. Another report partially declassified and released by the State Department in 2023 faulted both the Trump and Biden administrations for “insufficient” planning surrounding the withdrawal.

Source: 25 years after Sept. 11 attacks, Taliban rules Afghanistan again, but now with $7 billion in U.S. firepower – CBS News

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Afghanistan earthquake kills refugee family as a baby survives

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rescue team after earthquake

ITTEFAQ, Afghanistan — For several minutes after the earthquake struck, he could hear their screams. Then there was silence. Mohibullah Niazi, a neighbor who helped in the rescue efforts, said Saturday that the eight people killed on the outskirts of Kabul after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck northern Afghanistan the previous night were a refugee family recently returned from neighboring Iran. There was only one survivor: a boy of around 3 years old, who was injured and has been hospitalized in Kabul.

Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat on Saturday increased the overall death toll from the quake to 12, with another four people injured. Fitrat said five homes were destroyed and another 33 significantly damaged, affecting 40 families in the provinces of Kabul, Panjshir, Logar, Nangarhar, Laghman and Nuristan. The Afghanistan Disaster Management Authority put the overall death toll at nine. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear. The family near Kabul was among the millions of Afghan refugees who have recently returned from Iran and Pakistan, after both countries launched crackdowns in 2023 on foreigners — particularly Afghans — living in their countries. They had arrived 15 days ago and were living in a tent on land next to Niazi’s home. The family head, Najibullah, who was about 50 years old, “had no other shelter,” Niazi said. “He was a very poor person.”

Source: Afghanistan earthquake kills refugee family as a baby survives – WFTV

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Pakistan says it killed 67 Afghan force members

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Afghanistan’s ground forces attacked Pakistan’s military positions at 16 locations along the southwestern border early Tuesday and fired on multiple points in the northwest

Source: Pakistan says it killed 67 Afghan force members | AP News

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‘Open war’: Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban claim major casualties

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Both sides say Pakistan has bombed targets in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktia in an escalation of recent tit-for-tat attacks.

Source: ‘Open war’: Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban claim major casualties | Military News | Al Jazeera

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World News in Brief: Civilian casualties in Afghanistan, migrant deaths off Crete, call for justice in Brazil trial

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The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has received credible reports of civilian casualties following airstrikes carried out by Pakistan inside Afghanistan late on 21 February and into the

Source: World News in Brief: Civilian casualties in Afghanistan, migrant deaths off Crete, call for justice in Brazil trial | Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs

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