Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Forces capable of holding turf, Afghan says
But U.S. urged not to rush exit
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan Interior Minister Masoud Andarabi said Saturday that Afghan security forces can hold their ground even if U.S. troops withdraw, challenging a warning from the United States that a withdrawal would yield quick territorial gains to the Taliban.
Andarabi’s comments in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press were the first government reaction to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s warning issued in a letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani last weekend.
In the letter, which pressed Ghani to step up
efforts to make peace with the Taliban, Blinken said, “I am concerned the security situation will worsen and that the Taliban could make rapid territorial gains” after the American military withdraws.
Andarabi said Afghanistan’s National Security Forces could hold territory but would likely endure heavy losses while trying to hold remote checkpoints without U.S. air support.
“The Afghan security forces are fully capable of defending the capital and the cities and the territories that we are present in right now,” he said. “We think that the Afghan security forces this year have proven to the Taliban that they will not be able to gain territory.”
While the Taliban have not attacked American or NATO forces as a condition of an agreement reached with the U.S. during the Trump administration, the Afghan security forces have faced some blistering assaults.
Interviewed at the heavily fortified Interior Ministry, Andarabi also repeated his government’s warning against a hasty U.S. retreat from the war-ravaged country, saying that the Taliban’s ties to al-Qaida remain intact and that a swift pullout would worsen global counterterrorism efforts.
He said the Afghan National Security Forces, with U.S. assistance, have so far put a squeeze on terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, including the local Islamic State affiliate.
A hasty, “uncalculated withdrawal could certainly give an opportunity for those terrorists … to threaten the world,” he said from inside the compound, protected by concrete blast walls, barbed wire and a phalanx of security guards.
The warning comes as Washington is reviewing the deal former President Donald Trump’s administration struck with the Taliban more than a year ago that calls for the withdrawal of the remaining 2,500 U.S. troops by May 1.
That deal also calls for the Taliban to break ties with terrorist groups such as al-Qaida. U.S. officials have previously said some progress has been seen but that more was needed, without elaborating.
No decisions have been made on the review, but Blinken, who is trying to jumpstart a stalled peace process between the Afghan government and Taliban opposition, has warned Afghanistan’s president that all options are still on the table and that he should step up peacemaking efforts.
Violence has spiked since the U.S. signed the deal with the Taliban, with poverty and high unemployment boosting crime. Despite billions of dollars in international aid to Afghanistan since the collapse of the Taliban government in 2001, 72% of the country’s 37 million people live below the poverty line, surviving on $1.90 or less per day. Unemployment hovers at around 30%.
Residents of the Afghan capital, Kabul, are terrorized by runaway crime, bombings and assassinations, and they complain bitterly of security failures.
Andarabi sympathized with citizens’ complaints, but he said nearly 70% of Afghanistan’s police force is battling the Taliban, eroding efforts to maintain law and order. Every day, the police confront more than 100 Taliban attacks throughout the country, he added.
The U.N. Security Council has expressed concern about targeted killings aimed at journalists, lawyers, judges and civil-society activists. The Islamic State has taken responsibility for many, but the Taliban and the government blame each other for the spike in attacks.
At a news briefing Friday, the Security Council “called for an immediate end to these targeted attacks and stressed the urgent and imperative need to bring the perpetrators to justice.”
Andarabi said some progress had been made to stem the violence in the past month, with more than 400 arrests.
But he underlined that Afghanistan very much needs continued support from the international community, including the United States and NATO, in both war and peacetime.
It will take, for example, great effort to reintegrate into a peacetime society the tens of thousands of armed men roving the country — regardless of which faction they hail from, he said. Police face a daunting anti-narcotics battle in a country that annually produces more than 4,000 tons of opium, the raw material used to make heroin — more than every other opium-producing country combined. Peace, said Andarabi, would free the police to fight the drug war that is also fueling the country’s soaring crime rate.
U.S. PRESSURE
Meanwhile, some Afghan officials are warning that the most recent push for a political settlement by the U.S. could backfire by deadlocking talks, undermining the elected government and plunging the country deeper into violence.
Since the Afghan government and the Taliban met in Qatar’s capital, Doha, to begin historic peace talks last year, little progress has been made at the negotiating table.
Although the Trump administration’s focus was on the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, the Biden team is applying greater pressure on the diplomatic front. U.S.-Afghanistan policy is under review, and the U.S. special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, embarked on a regional tour last month to spearhead the new approach.
But Afghan officials fear the tight timeline and the threat of withdrawing all U.S. troops without a political settlement risks repeating the mistakes of the 1990s, when Afghanistan descended into civil war on the heels of the Soviet withdrawal. The battles for power helped give rise to the Taliban movement, which was driven from power by the U.S.-led invasion after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The Afghan officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with journalists. The Afghan officials acknowledged that current levels of violence and the political stalemate in Doha are unacceptable, but they disagreed with the Biden administration’s attempted reset.
“The consequences for us are the collapse of the state, sudden destruction and a very long and intense civil war,” said one Afghan official with knowledge of the talks, referring to the increased U.S. pressure.
“The fact that it has happened in the past once shows it could happen again,” he said.
A second official said that “pushing the peace now with this new initiative very rapidly” risks undermining the country’s military. He said he fears “bringing back the old mujahideen at the expense of the Afghan security forces,” referring to the militia factions and irregular fighters who fought the Soviet forces, then turned on each other during the civil war.