Taliban Say Won’t Take Revenge, Women’s Rights Respected

US soldiers should not be ‘dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,’ US president says as Taliban denies they seized working American Black Hawk helicopters

[Islamabad] The Taliban held their first official news conference in Kabul on Tuesday evening, just two days after the surprising takeover of the city and the country.

Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesperson, briefed the local and international media about the future of Afghanistan. It was Mujahid’s first public appearance in front of reporters.

“We assure that women will be given all rights within the framework of Islamic law (Sharia). Women can continue their activities, their jobs, their education, keeping in mind the Islamic traditions,” he told reporters.

Mujahid also said that “no harm, no revenge” will be taken against former soldiers and members of the Western-backed Afghan government. And, he said, “We have pardoned all those who fought against us. … We have already granted an amnesty for former government soldiers as well as contractors and translators who worked for international forces.”

This despite reports that members of the Taliban had begun house-to-house searches looking for people who cooperated with the government and reports of targeted killings and lootings in the capital city.

Responding to a question, Mujahid said that the Taliban “assure every foreign worker of his security and safety.”

Mujahid further said, “We want to reassure everyone, especially the US, that our soil won’t be used to attack any state or any individual.”

Mujahid also assured his countrymen and the world community that “from right now Afghanistan will be a narcotics-free country, but we want the support of the international community as well to eradicate it,” and that “we have complete control over our borders, no smuggling or any illicit activities are allowed across the borders.” He added, “It is on the record that in 2001 when our government was ousted there was zero cultivation of opium in Afghanistan.”

Finally, he said, “every media is free to work in Afghanistan.”

We want to reassure everyone, especially the US, that our soil won’t be used to attack any state or any individual

The Taliban on Tuesday denied reports that working American Black Hawk helicopters were among the abundant booty they took in recent days, calling the claim a new version of propaganda against them.

“Indeed, we have seized a huge number of state-of-the-art American military vehicles and sophisticated weapons, but we don’t have an aerial machine. Our fighters also seized about 300 military vehicles which were recently gifted by the US Army to the Afghan National Army,” Muhammed Khalid Waleed, a Taliban field commander, told The Media Line.

Meanwhile, Abu Baker Balkhi, a media official for the Sunni Islamist group, also told The Media Line from an undisclosed location that “such news is baseless and a kind of a new version of propaganda against the Taliban.”

“The [Black Hawk] choppers seen in footage that was uploaded on social media are grounded for technical reasons, and we have nothing to do with them,” Balkhi also said, referring to American helicopters that are likely out of commission due to lack of spare parts.

In recent days, Taliban fighters have uploaded images on social media showing fighters sitting inside the US combat helicopters.

Rumors that the Taliban now have “more Black Hawks than 166 nations” have caused a stir in security circles across the globe.

No official from the Afghan Air Force, which has de facto ceased to exist since the Taliban conquest of Afghanistan, was available to comment.

Taliban fighters on a pick-up truck move around a market area, flocked with local Afghan people at the Kote Sangi area of Kabul on Aug. 17, 2021, after Taliban seized control of the capital following the collapse of the Afghan government. (Hoshang Hashimi/AFP via Getty Images)

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden, in a televised address to the nation on Monday, said the situation unfolded “more quickly than we had anticipated,” adding that “Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight.”

Biden held the regime of President Ashraf Ghani responsible for its incompetent security forces, saying the inability of the US-backed authorities to fend off the Taliban proved he was right to withdraw American troops.

US 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,” Biden said.

“No amount of military force” could establish a “secure Afghanistan,” he added.

Former US President Donald Trump slammed Biden’s decision to quickly and unconditionally withdraw from the conflict.

On Sunday, Trump accused Biden of failure in Afghanistan.

“It is time for Joe Biden to ‘resign in disgrace’ for what he allowed to happen in Afghanistan, along with the tremendous surge in COVID, the [US-Mexican] border catastrophe, the destruction of energy independence, and our crippled economy,” Trump said in a statement.

Former Vice President Mike Pence also criticized Biden, tweeting: “The Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan dishonors the memory of those heroic Americans who gave the last full measure of devotion and all who bravely served there defending freedom these past 20 years.”

Both the Biden and Trump administrations refused to explain to the US public the consequences of withdrawal, and made it seem like a binary choice between leaving and 20 more years of stagnation

Dr. Nimrod Goren, president and founder of Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, told The Media Line in an exclusive interview that “President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan – and especially the way it was conducted – seems to contradict some basic principles of Biden’s foreign policy approach.”

It reflects a disregard for allies and provides “renewed motivation for radical actors in the Middle East to replicate the Taliban’s achievements,” he continued.

“This may frame the withdrawal as a foreign policy failure. To counter this, the US administration may become more motivated to reach achievements on the Iranian issue, which is its No. 1 foreign policy and national security priority in the broader Middle East,” Goren said.

“It will be important for the US to reach out to its allies in the Middle East and assure them of its support, given events in Afghanistan,” he said. “The US will also need to counter the increasingly popular arguments that it is withdrawing from the Middle East altogether.”

“After all, its involvement on the Iranian issue, its support for Israel-Arab normalization, its leadership in reaching an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire in Gaza a few months ago, and its activity in the Eastern Mediterranean all reflect a continued presence and deep interests, which are not likely to go away soon, even after the withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Goren said.

John E. Pike is director of GlobalSecurity.org, which focuses on innovative approaches to the emerging security challenges of the new millennium, and is an Alexandria, Virginia-based leading defense and intelligence expert.

“The drug trade created a climate of corruption that rendered the Afghan government hopelessly corrupt,” Pike told The Media Line. “Troops will not fight for commanders who steal their paychecks. Troops cannot fight if they have no bullets or food.”

“The US policy was to destroy al-Qaida and discourage the Taliban from hosting them. The first policy succeeded and I think the Taliban is probably gun-shy on the second. The liberation of women and kite flying were bonus goals,” he added.

(When the Taliban previously ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, it forbade females to attend school or to go outside without a male relative escort. It also outlawed kite flying, saying it distracted young men from praying and other religious activities.)

“The Afghan Army was trained but has very high desertion rates. They were poorly supplied due to theft by their officers,” Pike said.

Taliban political spokesperson Suhail Shaheen told The Media Line: “We will not allow anyone else to use Afghan soil,” in a reference to Western concerns that the movement will once again allow other terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaida, to use the country as a base of operations.

“We are going to establish an Islamic welfare state in the coming days that will be an example for the whole world,” Shaheen said. “We will make Afghanistan the epicenter of the [global] economy,” he added.

“The rights of women, minorities and lady health workers will be fully protected,” Shaheen claimed. “No restrictions will be imposed on the education of boys and girls.”

It will be important for the US to reach out to its allies in the Middle East and assure them of its support, given events in Afghanistan

Gen. (ret.) Abdul Qayyum, a former Pakistani senator and chairman of the government’s Senate Defense Committee, told The Media Line the “Americans wasted time, money and lives in Afghanistan and failed to win the hearts and minds of Afghans.”

“The US-led forces did not have any moral cause for invasion, but the Taliban have a strong reason to defend their motherland,” he said. “The Taliban’s ideology is based on their unconquerable faith, which furnished them with an abundant ‘will to fight’ for two decades.”

“Unfortunately, some US leaders hide facts from the taxpayers and patriotic US citizens by continually telling them blatant lies,” Qayyum said.

Kamal Alam, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center in Washington, told The Media Line, “The main reason for the failure of American policy in Afghanistan is that the US had chosen the wrong partner, Ashraf Ghani, in Afghanistan.”

“Ghani spent his whole life working and studying in academia in America. He was an economist but not a politician,” Alam said. “People like Ghani had fancy degrees and they wrote amazing papers, but they had zero experience in handling a war-torn country.”

“Ghani had designed his structure to rule the country before stepping in. Ghani led a corrupt political system in the country,” he continued. “There was no political strategy and, even with the strongest army in the world, you lose without a political approach, and that’s why America lost. Actually, Ghani lost it for America,” Alam said.

“One of the major reasons for the failure of the Afghan Army and sister security forces is the massive-scale corruption of senior officials, unfortunately a lasting legacy of both Ashraf Ghani’s government and the US involvement,” he said.

“No matter the criticism of President Biden, he was right to pull the plug on the Afghan government. They were hated as much as the Taliban, if not more. Biden is right: Twenty years is not a sudden withdrawal. US soldiers should not die for a corrupt political leadership,” Alam said.

Irina Tsukerman, a New York-based national security expert, told The Media Line, “Both the Biden and Trump administrations refused to explain to the US public the consequences of withdrawal, and made it seem like a binary choice between leaving and 20 more years of stagnation.”

There were several factors which contributed to the bipartisan failure in Afghanistan, says Tsukerman, adding, “The Pentagon’s misrepresentations of the extent of the Taliban’s gains; the unwillingness to confront government corruption; lack of investment into understanding the local culture and mindset; lack of engagement with allies; and lack of clear objectives are at the top of the list.”

Adeeb Z. Safvi, a Karachi-based leading defense analyst, told The Media Line, “While invading Afghanistan, the US policymakers did not keep in view the defeat of the USSR in 1989 and the earlier defeat of Britain in 1842 in Afghanistan. Thus, their miscalculation led to another superpower’s defeat in 2021. Indeed, Afghanistan is a graveyard of superpowers.”

“Yes, it is due to the failure of US intelligence and its regional policy as well that China is now emerging as a vibrant decision-maker in the region,” Safvi said.

“It is because of yet another failure of US foreign policy that now Russia and even Iran are joining the China-Pakistan economic corridor. Meanwhile, China’s preemptive dialogue with the Afghan Taliban furnishes clear proof of how the security of the region is going to change in coming days,” he said.

“Afghan troops were not properly trained and operated as second fiddle to mercenaries,” Safvi added.

No matter the criticism of President Biden, he was right to pull the plug on the Afghan government. They were hated as much as the Taliban, if not more. Biden is right: Twenty years is not a sudden withdrawal

Adil Faroque, an Islamabad-based defense and security analyst who formerly worked as a NATO coordinator, told The Media Line, “The US investment in winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people could never materialize into benefits for the majority of Afghan people, who live in rural areas.”

“Corruption by US cronies wasted billions of dollars. The displeasure of the Afghan people gave the Taliban the power to reclaim their support,” he said.

“The Taliban played upon people’s discontent by introducing their flawed but speedy judicial system,” Faroque further claimed, adding that the Taliban “are now conscious about their public image; they have learned a lot from their past mistakes.”

And, “a major portion of the US-trained Afghan security forces existed only on paper,” Faroque said.