Category Archives: NATO

The images plastered across our screens in recent days of Afghan civilians at Hamid Karzai airport desperately trying to flee the country, as well as the bombing on Thursday, have been heartbreaking. And, for me, slightly surreal. I lived in that airport while serving as a soldier in the British army.

Watching the scenes of chaos on the tarmac, my first thought was for the civilians who worked inside the airport. I spent many afternoons after work sitting in the Afghan-owned Istanbul Cafe, a ramshackle building of several floors that overlooked the airfield, drinking the strong coffee prepared by woman and men I came to know and respect. Their journey into work every morning was 10 times as dangerous as anything I ever did in Kabul. They ran the gauntlet on bicycles while we took shelter inside armoured vehicles. I cannot help but wonder: are they safe? Did they get out?

As the shock of what had happened subsided, and the Taliban raised their flag above Kabul, I grew resentful and angry, thinking about why the mission in Afghanistan failed and whether it could have gone differently.

I worked as a soldier at the coalface of Natos Resolute Support mission, which was supposed to train, support and assist Afghan security services and institutions. We provided security for advisers while they engaged with their Afghan counterparts in Kabul. Generally, this would mean picking them up, taking them to the meeting, providing security for the meeting and bringing them back to base. From my perspective, there were at least two fundamental errors in the missions approach. The first was the massive outsourcing to the private sector that underwrote the operation.

Let me state categorically, our service people are not to blame. The soldiers I served with, those who fought in Helmand and later safeguarded in Kabul, acted, almost without exception, with the utmost professionalism and valour. To have served alongside them is the great honour of my life. But Natos mission was not fit for purpose.

When I was in Afghanistan, private military contractors numbered almost 30,000. Some were engaged in protection tasks, but many more were responsible for training and mentoring Afghans who held positions of significant influence. They advised on intelligence, war-fighting, diplomacy, policing, you name it. Some of them were doing their best. Many more didnt give a damn. Many were on six figures and had been for years. Afghanistan for them was a cash cow, a way of putting their kids through college (most were American) or paying off a mortgage. In sum, there were too many poorly qualified people working without accountability, getting paid far too much. If you want an answer to the question of why Afghanistans military crumbled in weeks, take a long hard look at their so-called mentors.

Then there was the simplistic assumption that everyone in Afghanistan could fall into two categories, enlightened liberal reformers who would welcome a western presence, and conservative folk susceptible to the Taliban. Needless to say, things were more complicated than that.

There were some pretty unsavoury characters who worked with us in Kabul. One morning, an interpreter who had worked with the British for decades sidled up to me at breakfast and pointed at a young Afghan woman who also worked as an interpreter. In a voice loud enough for her to hear everything, he declared her a filthy whore. His reason? She was wearing a pair of jeans and a bright pink headscarf. This sort of language and these attitudes were commonplace and generally went unchallenged by soldiers and contractors, who didnt want to be seen as undermining locals. And if they were accepted in a Nato base, what hope was there of combating the Talibans brutal misogyny?

Corruption existed at every level. One afternoon I provided protection for a meeting between an Afghan air force lawyer and his US adviser. As I sweated into my body armour, they discussed an investigation relating to unauthorised travel on Afghan air force flights. In brief, the Taliban had been able to board flights reserved for Afghan soldiers and fly across the country with impunity. After several hours of back-and-forth on how best to proceed, the American eventually lost his cool and shouted: You have to get rid of these [corrupt] people! The Afghan lawyer calmly answered: Would you like me to disband the entire Afghan air force? The American had no answer to that. The west has had no answer to that for 20 years.

How Nato believed that these fragile institutions were capable of holding back a group like the Taliban, who spoke with one voice and strove towards one end, is beyond me. In truth, it probably didnt it was accepting of Afghanistans fate and the fate of its hopeful youth.

In what we call the combat estimate, we ask ourselves a number of questions. One of them is, What resources do I need to accomplish each effect? Essentially, troops to task. Nato got this one wrong. It did not need 30,000 self-interested mercenaries who cared more about their bank accounts than the future of Afghanistan. It needed a small and dedicated grouping of experts supported by an appropriately small and well-equipped protection force. This, coupled with virtual engagement (if Covid-19 has taught us something its that we can work at distance), would have had the same impact as the bloated mess that Resolute Support eventually became. Importantly, maintaining boots on the ground, albeit in a limited capacity, would have sent a clear message to the Taliban: these new Afghan institutions do not stand alone.

To those who say that our presence was unwanted and fruitless, to those who claim that we could never hope to help change Afghanistan for the better, I would ask them to take a look at the videos of the young desperately clinging to the undercarriages of C-17s. Take a look at the figures establishing themselves in offices once held by the democratically elected. Take a look at the devastating attack by the Islamic State. Our presence was enough to stop all of this. Sometimes preventing a change is as important as instigating one.

To those whom we promised a future, we must now open our arms. Lives are at stake. Cost is irrelevant. We must do what we can.

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I served with the Nato mission in Afghanistan it was a bloated mess - The Guardian

Historic change is afoot in the Eastern Mediterranean. In years to come, historians will point to this post-pandemic, post-wildfire time as the moment that the deeply idiosyncratic peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean discovered hitherto unrealized abilities to cooperate on a regional level. With interests aligned as never before, the regional powers of Turkey and Israel have the chance to create a platform for regional growth and securitya Mediterranean Union.

The Weight of History

It is barely possible to escape the weight of history in the Eastern Mediterranean. For over one thousand years, todays Istanbul was the center of the Roman Empire. Even after its fall in 1453, the victorious Ottoman leader Mehmed II retained the title of Kayser-I-Rum (Caesar of Rome), and with it a sense that a strong Eastern Mediterranean could and must dynamically engage with the rest of the world.

More recently, in the 1930s, Atatrks new Turkish Republic shaped the interwar Balkan Pact with Yugoslavia, Greece and Romania as a platform for regional security, anticipating a rise in threat from belligerent and anti-Western neighbors.

Todays time is no less historic. The coronavirus pandemic and a spate of terrifying wildfires have demonstrated to the peoples of Europes Eastern Mediterranean nations that their lives, livelihoods and prospects are more intertwined with their immediate neighbors of Turkey and Israel than with the distant powers of a European Union fixated on Northern European economic and cultural values.

An Attractive Opportunity

To smaller nations and peoples in the region, a Mediterranean Union, built around the Western-aligned powers of Turkey and Israel, working within and alongside NATO, would be attractive. A Mediterranean Union operating under the Western aegis, sponsored by global leaders such as President Joe Biden, French president Emmanuel Macron, Turkish president Recep Erdogan and British prime minister Boris Johnson, would be an engine for growth and security and a counterweight to Russia and Chinas expansionary visions for the region whilst renewing U.S. engagement in regions where lasting Atlanticist impact is feasible.

The onus is, therefore, on the regions strongest leaders to make this change happen. With nearly twenty years of rule under his belt, Erdogan has a unique historical chance to work with others to achieve lasting regional change.

Israel is now recovering from the destabilizing effects of a series of inconclusive general elections. Under its prime minister, Naftali Bennett, Israels newly sworn-in government has a mandate to rip up the old rules that shaped Israels engagement with its neighbors. This ambition is evidenced by Israels firefighters offering to share firefighting technologies and personnel with wildfire-afflicted Turkey in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, over in the West, Macron will be just as keen to capitalize on the opportunities of a revitalized Mediterranean. Natural allies such as Bidens America and Johnsons Britain are also likely to support the project.

Why Now?

In many ways, these opportunities exist because of changes in Turkey. Turkeys constitution has been reformed under the leadership of economist and political kingmaker Dr. Devlet Baheli of the Nationalist Movement Party.

A history of short-term opportunism and unstable parliamentary coalitions has given ground to a political culture capable of planning for long-term growth and deepening relationships with NATO and the West.

With Turkey actively engaged with containing Russian expansionism on three fronts (Black Sea, Middle East and North Africa), NATO membership remains central to Turkeys long-term visions. Indeed, NATO membership is now irrevocably hard-wired into Turkeys constitution.

Militarily, Turkeys ability to project itself beyond its borders has grown under Defence Minister Gen. Hulusi Akar. Turkeys innovative military-industrial sector is rapidly expanding its international sales, particularly with drone technology across Europe and Eurasia.

By appointing Baheli and Akar as his vice-presidents, Erdogan would be able to restructure the state domestically and benefit from their sphere of power as Turkey takes its place in this union.

Turkeys grand infrastructure play, the new Canal Istanbul, will positively affect Turkeys borders. All Mediterranean and Black Sea countries will benefit from the resulting expansion in trade capacity and decreased friction for shipping. Moribund trade routes will revitalize, and the Eastern Mediterranean and Balkan regions will likely regain an economic vibrancy and self-sufficiency not seen for centuries. This in itself will prove an asset to Biden and the Western powers as it will decrease the promise and attractiveness of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

It is this that, perhaps, is the biggest draw of a Mediterranean Union. What is happening in the Eastern Mediterranean will become a showcase for a new model, with attractions far greater than alternative projects such as the BRI. The model will show that countries large and small can grow together to the benefit of all. Its a model that ties together the best elements of history with the practical promise of the present.

Alp Sevimlisoy is the CEO of Asthenius Capital, an emerging-markets-based hedge fund headquartered in London and a Millennium Fellow at the Atlantic Council headquartered in Washington, DC. Sevimlisoyis also an advisory board member at Cass Business School and an internationally published geopolitical strategist on the Mediterranean.

Peter Woodard is a Canadian-British financial technology professional with a geopolitical focus on the moving parts within NATO and the potential for an expanded role within the region. He has spent considerable time consulting stakeholders in Mexico on its role in supporting Western initiatives.

James Arnold has been involved in asset management and finance for approximately twenty-five years notably as an early member of the hedge fund industry. Arnold is also a geopolitical analyst and writes on US foreign affairs.

Image: Reuters

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This Conglomerate of Countries Could Change the Face of NATO - The National Interest

In Tim OBriens celebrated antiVietnam War novel Going After Cacciato, a deserter is pursued by the narrator and his squadmates in a fever dream. The chase breaks out of the southeast Asian country, taking the war on tour around the world. Indeed, after the last helicopter left Saigon, the Vietnam Wars legacy did pursue the United States across multiple continents.

Defeat in Vietnam haunted the military and security establishment but they bounced back stronger. The United States conventional war machine was overhauled, as the Cold War entered a new phase. The inflexible Pentagon buckled enough for theories of maneuver warfare to take root that tried to learn from insurgents. This was combined with a new technological plan for aerial supremacy, realized in Vietnam through blunt instruments like mass defoliation and carpet bombing.

In the 1991 Gulf War, this finally produced a devastatingly effective war machine involving satellite technology, fast-moving armored columns with close air support, more destructive and accurate munitions, and the ability to manipulate the broadcast media (e.g. through providing weapon camera footage) to present an idealized version of the war. This gap between image and reality led sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard to declare that The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.

Military innovation following the defeat in Vietnam was combined with geopolitical responses. Struggling in Asia, the United States ramped up attempts to retain control in its own backyard. This meant embarking on a renewed decade of sponsoring right-wing terror in South America, adapting and deploying the lessons from torture and murder projects in Vietnam like the infamous Phoenix Program.

At the same time, the United States took steps to safeguard its post-1975 position in the rest of Asia. As communists began to tip the balance of power in Afghanistan during 1978s Saur Revolution, the US intervened to undermine the Afghan state and support the reactionaries insurgency before the full-scale Soviet intervention arrived. Taking a more hands-off approach, it attempted to remotely turn the country into the Soviets own Vietnam, empowering local proxies, many of whom later fought for the Taliban, working with and through regional powers like Pakistan, and developing key tactical headaches for opponents like providing anti-air missiles. (Some scholarship argues that the impact of the latter is overrated attributing the insurgents success primarily to their organizational form, a reading supported by recent events.) Albeit with some trepidation, liberal screenwriter Aaron Sorkin still treated this as an essentially heroic episode in his 2007 Charlie Wilsons War.

NATOs defeat in Afghanistan will have similar long-range implications. Vietnam comparisons like the Wall Street Journal breathlessly describing Kabul as Saigon on steroids are overwrought, but there are some broader similarities. As in Vietnam, the spectacle of departure is being made into a case for developing the power to never experience defeat again. As in Vietnam, refugees leaving the country in droves are seized on by humanitarian interventionists as an argument for more muscular policy, even if the great powers are doing almost nothing about refugees beyond trying to stop them, or creating more of them. And as in Vietnam, defeat in Afghanistan will contribute to a reassessment of how best to wield military power. In short, they are already preparing for the next war.

The stated motives for the Afghan War catching Osama Bin Laden, then defeating the Taliban, then building a stable country with Western-style institutions were in constant flux. But with political direction confused, a similar choose-your-own-adventure approach took place in warfighting as well. Military traditionalists who believed that the army was there to kill bad guys and little more often found themselves arguing for a less expensive and less protracted war than liberal militarists who wanted to use an expanded army to enforce their conception of the good.

These contradictions persisted. The 2010 troop surge escalated and expanded the war, supposedly to bring it to a swifter end. Units in some areas would focus on battlefield aggression, others on hearts and minds. Field Manual 3-24, the counterinsurgency (COIN) document circulated by David Petraeus and James Mattis became gospel. The Commanders Emergency Response Program involved an unprecedented militarization of aid, with $2.6 billion disbursed between 2004 and 2011 through US field commanders identifying and funding schemes designed to win over local populations.

Such approaches squared poorly with the torture regime at Bagram Air Base and beyond (extensively documented by Human Rights Watch [HRW]). They were also belied by the routine drone strikes on civilian targets including a Mdecins Sans Frontires hospital in 2015, and a number of incidents of individual or unit-level criminality from the Panjwai massacre to recent revelations about Australian special forces.

The military utterly failed to build sustainable partners. Between strategic confusion about which Afghan groups to support; stories of Afghan rivals accusing each other of Taliban links; unpleasant or unreliable figures backed by US forces through various supposed lesser-evilism strategies; and even reports of farmers making pretend Taliban camps to collect the scrap metal from US airstrikes, identifying friend from foe became impossible. From combat troops to Donald Rumsfeld, the same exasperation was repeatedly voiced; we have no idea who the bad guys are.

Joe Bidens story of Afghan National Army (ANA) recalcitrance is unfair Afghan troops fought and died in huge numbers and miserable circumstances, comprising the overwhelming majority of overall allied military death figures. But it was incapable of even paying its troops and collapsed instantly without its American umbrella. Finally, Taliban forces advanced into Kabul with hundreds of captured US military vehicles and even stolen biometric tools that could provide access to data the military collected on its Afghan staff and contractors.

The civilian operation didnt go much better. Veteran war reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran provides an enlightening account of how billions in public money were pumped into farming to discourage opium growth and reduce farmers dependence on the Taliban with little to show for it. In one case, a seed distribution program was derailed swiftly by United States Agency for International Development (USAID)s strange ideological obsession with forcing farmers to grow melons rather than the cotton they were used to.

This obsession arose in part from a capitalist aversion to the state-run cotton gin (which conveniently ignored the involvement of vast quantities of US state money and power in shaping outcomes.) USAIDs analysis claimed the gin was inefficient and unproductive. Unfortunately, the analysis was based on figures which accidentally substituted kilos for pounds and confused refined and unrefined cotton.

Andrew Mackay, the British officer who directed an effective 2007 offensive in Musa Qala but resigned after just months as a divisional commander, would brand the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) institutionally incapable of warfighting and influence-wielding. US three-star general and Bush/Obama adviser Doug Lute meanwhile privately posed a question which would never be answered: What are we trying to do here?

Simon Akams The Changing of the Guard a forthcoming book fiercely critical of military leadership in Afghanistan and Iraq has prompted frightening intervention in the publishing process, with Penguin Random House canceling Akams contract and removing his advance after he refused to be subject to MoD sign-off.

There was a period when it was widely accepted in military circles that the chaos of Iraq and Afghanistan was an inevitable result of maintaining an unpopular long-term occupation without viable local partners, outside the usual sphere of influence, and with few cultural ties. But it is easy to pick targets for blame, whether its coalition partners blaming each other (as in the 2009 row over allegations of Italian troops bribing the Taliban), blaming the ANA (who cant really fight back in Western media), hawks blaming doves (who had no actual control over anything), or the Atlantics op-ed pages blaming you. If some group or individuals ineptitude or malice is to blame, then things could have gone differently. And for some commentators, if things could have gone differently, then one last heavily armed heave in Afghanistan could work.

If things could have gone differently, then the onus is on the military to adapt, la Vietnam. The United States post-2014 army shakeup and the UKs current Defence Review both engage with new concepts such as regionally aligned forces in other words, maintaining a permanent military presence in countries across the globe so armies have the cultural and geographical know-how to start and scale warfare anywhere.

The British document explicitly calls for more, longer, and bigger deployments. The drone warfare machinery and tactics developed in Afghanistan remain at the heart of strategic thinking the contemporary answer to the massive strategic bomber wings of the first Cold War. Various other new toy strategies from space domination to new air combat systems are also floated as means of avoiding future defeat.

In sum, there is a growing implicit account of the Afghan defeat that focuses on correcting past mistakes through hybrid tactics, cultural depth, leaner use of force, and technology to aid both intelligence-gathering and offensive action. But weapons are little but inert objects until they are wielded in a specific way in the pursuit of specific aims. And the broad political and strategic conclusions drawn from the Afghan War are even more concerning than the straightforwardly military ones.

Technically, this isnt a war, boss.

No? Soldiers. Bombs. It does feel quite warry.

Around the time this exchange was aired in Bluestone 42, the British comedy about a bomb disposal unit in Afghanistan which this exchange comes from, American and British operations were formally ending. But sixteen thousand NATO personnel were to remain deployed across Afghanistan, and there is enough material on Green Beret operations alone since 2014 to fill war reporter Jessica Donatis recently-released book.

Most viewers in the West who are not directly imbricated in the war have largely experienced it as a background hum. It has conferred upon us a siege mentality, a vague sense of unease and threat, but never the sense of a full-blown war. It has even generated surprisingly little war fiction even of the propagandistic kind, and what does exist has tended to zero in on vignettes, whether the kitchen-sink British grit of Kajaki or Hollywoods Zero Dark Thirty, rather than trying to define the war in the sense that post-Vietnam cultural output did.

In short, despite more access to detailed and constant information than at any point in history, viewing publics in the West have either been told that the war is not happening or been given a deeply disingenuous account of it. As Baudrillards Gulf War essay put it, no one will hold this expert or general or that intellectual for hire to account for the idiocies or absurdities proffered the day before, since these will be erased by those of the following day. Politicians remain ill-informed; a British MP this week raised concerns about the Taliban potentially making Afghanistan a safe haven for ISIS a group they have been shooting at for several years.

If nothing else this lack of good information is because throughout the Afghan War, the powers-that-be lied consistently, unabashedly, and industrially. From the 2010 WikiLeaks documents, which revealed the cover-up of hundreds of civilian deaths and injuries, to the 2019 Afghanistan Papers in which successive figures across the military and civilian hierarchies frankly and repeatedly admit they have no idea what they are doing while reporting boundless progress to the public.

But deception aside, the disastrous nature of the conflict was always clear. Too few journalists took those responsible to task, and those who did found it hard to make their stories stick. And of course, more efficient procedures for controlling the media are another legacy of the post-Vietnam learning period.

This con was as efficient off the battlefield as on it. Routinely, wells would be built and torn down a day later so the contractors could get themselves hired to repair it, schools would be opened with no teachers to staff them, and a great many press releases about progress would be churned out from these events. Insofar as the war was presented at all, portrayals often took the form of an aid mission in uniform. Undoubtedly huge sums of aid money were spent but Afghanistan remains among the worlds poorest countries, with poverty having risen.

The combination of lying and downplaying represent a clear strategy. Invisible wars do not generate protests or scrutiny. This will inform future policy too. The use of small special forces operations not subject to public scrutiny or parliamentary accountability has been rising and will continue to. The British government are openly preparing for a series of permanent conflicts operating just below the level of war. The millenniums first Forever War seems over, but many of its children have yet to be born.

Vietnam was a test bed for technologies of force and power that would shape future conflict. Afghanistan has been a test bed for redefining war itself.

A recent account by a former Pentagon analyst during the Afghan War period paints an unsettling portrait of collapsing legal distinctions between war and nonwar. For the first time, the state maintained specific kill lists of individuals presumed but not proven guilty, marked for extrajudicial assassination even in states with which the United States is not at war.

The White Houses lawfare documented by HRW and brought frighteningly to life in Adam McKays Dick Cheney biopic Vice provides blueprints and strategies for authorizing torture and tearing through laws, rules, and norms. These days, much commentary talks about the rules-based order having changed, and Western powers needing to catch up lest China and Russia exploit such confusion.

Of course rules are now more contested in a more multipolar world, but such commentary tends to ignore how US-led powers ripped up the rules in Afghanistan, and granted themselves both the political and legal space and technical capability to strike at any time and in any place without accountability either to other countries or their own voters.

Conventional warfare, information warfare, and economic rivalry now exists in a continuum without boundaries, and an increasing multidisciplinary school of thought is beginning to regard essentially everything as warfare. There was always a military-industrial complex, but in Afghanistan it struck gold, with a war that cost $300 million-a-day in public money delivering 1,200 percent returns on stocks to the biggest arms conglomerates. (Meanwhile the outsourcing of the war is now being used an excuse not to settle refugees employed by contractors.)

After Afghanistan there is now military involvement in everything from producing games and fiction to training judges. The Afghan War locked aid and force tighter together than ever before, and the UK government now talks more openly than ever about aid as a geopolitical tool in general terms.

States always had the ability to trade at gunpoint but not to use counterterrorism rubric to access all internet traffic coming in and out of the United States, or to block access to global financial systems like the SWIFT interbank loan system not only from hostile states but from any of their trading partners. Every power always attempted strategic dominance, but not the development of a global technological panopticon capable of identifying and weaponizing almost anything.

Afghanistan and Iraq have not only defined the foreign wars of the future, but have also defined the transformation of Western cities and borders into battle spaces. The war on terror understood the enemy as essentially the same everywhere, meaning a continual exchange of ideas between the battlefield and the home front. Surveillance technology used to filter supposed combatants from supposed civilians in war is now an everyday feature of domestic policing. The contractors that made tens of billions from the Afghanistan war now sell their battle-tested wares, from AI and biometrics to drones and straightforward killing machines, to police and border forces.

In The New Military Urbanism, Stephen Graham has reproduced an advert for thermal sensors from the mid-2000s which claims that their products would have your back whether in Baghdad or Baton Rouge. On one side of the image is an Army gunship, on the other a police helicopter.

The forever war has followed us home.

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After the Afghanistan Disaster, NATO Is Already Planning the Next War - Jacobin magazine

Ukrainian soldiers marched through Kiev Tuesday alongside servicemen of NATO member countries as the country marked the 30th anniversary of itsindependencefrom the Soviet Union.

The show of solidarity came after Ukraine and its Western allies agreed in a summit in Kiev on Monday to work towards ending Russia's "occupation" of Crimea.

Ukraine is not a member of NATO, despite wanting to join.

More than 5,000 Ukrainian servicemen saluted President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during the parade, marching with dozens of soldiers from countries including the United States, Britain and Canada.

Polish PresidentAndrzej Duda, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda and FrenchForeignMinister Jean-Yves Le Drian were in attendance.

Most of the marching Ukrainian soldiers had fought against pro-Russia separatists in an ongoing conflict in the eastern Donbass region that broke out in 2014 after Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula.

"On this holiday we need to remember those who have made it possible for us to be here. These are our defenders of Ukraine, our independence," Zelenskiy said at the parade.

"It is possible to temporarily occupy territories, but it is impossible to occupy people's love for Ukraine," he said, adding that the Donbass and Crimea "will come back."

Thousands of spectators waving Ukrainian blue-and-yellow flags watched as more than 400 tanks and armored vehicles rolled past.

As part of the show, some 100 helicopters and jets including Polish F-16fighters and British Eurofighter Typhoonjets flew over the Ukrainian capital.

Ukrainian Navy ships also took part in a paradein the Black Sea around the port city of Odessa as part of the commemorations.

The conflict in the east, which has claimed more than 13,000 lives, has seen at least 45 Ukrainian soldiers killed since the start of the year compared with 50 in all of 2020.

Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Russia of sending arms to back the separatists, which Moscow denies.

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Ukraine Marches With NATO Allies on 30th Independence Anniversary - The Moscow Times

Jens Stoltenberg, 13th Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is talks to the media at the NATO headquarter on February 11, 2020 in Brussels, Belgium.

Thierry Monasse/ Getty Images

WASHINGTON NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg placed the blame squarely on the Afghan national government Tuesday for thestunning and swift Taliban takeover, echoing remarks President Joe Biden made a day earlier.

"Ultimately the Afghan political leadership failed to stand up to the Taliban and achieve the peaceful solution that Afghans desperately wanted," Stoltenberg told reporters at NATO's headquarters in Brussels.

"Despite our considerable investment and sacrifice over two decades, the collapse was swift and sudden. There are many lessons to be learned," he said, adding that "the failure of Afghan leadership led to the tragedy we are witnessing today."

In April, the 30-member military alliance alongside the U.S. announced the withdrawal of Afghanistan-based troops. The inception of the NATO mission in Afghanistan stems from the groups' mutual defense clause, known as Article 5.

The alliance has only invoked Article 5 once in its history in defense of the United States in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

American forces toppled the Taliban in 2001 after the group harbored Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders who carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Two years later, U.S. troops invaded Iraq, a move aimed at removing then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"NATO allies and partners went into Afghanistan after 9/11 to prevent the country from serving as a safe haven for international terrorists to attack us. In the last two decades, there have been no terrorist attacks on allied soil organized from Afghanistan," Stoltenberg said.

"Today's Afghanistan is very different from Afghanistan of 2001," he added.

Stoltenberg's remarks come one day after Biden criticized Afghanistan's political leadership for allowing rapid Taliban gains across the country amid the departure of U.S. and NATO forces.

"The truth is this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated," Biden said in a speech from the White House, adding that he had been assured by now-deposed PresidentAshraf Ghanithat the U.S.-trained and equipped Afghan troops would hold their positions.

"Mr. Ghani insisted the Afghan forces would fight, but obviously he was wrong," Biden said.

Despite being vastly outnumbered by the Afghan military, which has long been assisted by U.S. and coalition forces,the Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday.

Earlier on Sunday, Ghani fled the country as Western nations rushed to evacuate embassies amid a deteriorating security situation.

"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," Biden said. "We gave them every chance to determine their own future. We could not provide them with the will to fight for that future."

"I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years I've learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces," Biden said in a memorable speech delivered from the East Room of the White House.

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NATO blames the 'failure of Afghan leadership' for Taliban's swift takeover - CNBC

Dutch forces at the Battle of Chora.

Back in the summer of 2007 when I first landed in Afghanistan to cover the war, I assumed I was too late.

The U.S.-led occupation was six years old. Fighting was sporadic. The Bush administration was surging forces into Iraq in a desperate bid to quell violence it had unleashed in that country. Attention was elsewhere.

For the United States, Afghanistan was a strategic afterthought. That soon would change.

What wouldnt change were the basic conditions on the ground. Even in 2007, signs were everywhere pointing to fragmentation, insecurity, an illegitimate and essentially powerless central government and an enduring insurgency.

I was too young at the timejust 29to understand what I was seeing. Looking back 14 years later, it all makes more sense. After the years-long draw-down of U.S. and NATO forcessteady at first, swift in the endthe Taliban easily recaptured Afghanistan last week.

U.S. and allied troops fell back to Kabuls airport. A last toehold in an new Islamic emirate.

An emergency airlift began hauling out thousands of embassy staff, foreign contractors and Afghans who had worked for occupying countries. Tens of thousands of other Afghans mobbed the airport and chased taxiing planes, hopingmostly in futilityfor rescue.

An Australian soldier in Tarin Kowt.

Back in June 2007, I rode a NATO helicopter to Tarin Kowt, a dusty town in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan. A contingent of Dutch soldiers patrolled the town, glad-handed with provincial officials and trained a local warlords gunmen as auxiliary police. An Australian reconstruction team ran a trade school.

On the afternoon of June 15, I drove into Tarin Kowt with the Australians. An infantry squad kept guard as engineers built a soccer field for the local kids.

Nearby, a Dutch convoy threaded along the towns narrow streets for a meeting with some local officials. I couldnt see the Dutch troops from where I stood. But when the bomb exploded alongside the convoy, I sure as hell saw that. And heard it, too. A deep crack sound.

The blast killed Pvt. Timo Smeehuijzen, a popular young Dutch soldier, along with several Afghan school children. Later, I watched video of the attack. The children, their bodies shattered by the bomb, died slowly, moaning like something out of a horror movie.

The Australians raised their weapons. But the ambush was over. In truth, the bomb merely was a preview of things to come. The next day, scores of Taliban attacked the nearby town of Chora. The fighting would continue for several days and kill nearly 200 people.

Dutch troops hunkered down at the district center. An American Apache helicopter fired a missile, killing dozens of Taliban hiding in a farmhouse. Dutch F-16s dropped bombs. A Dutch howitzer fired shells.

Warlord Rozi Khan offered to help the NATO troops. Col. Hans van Griensven, the Dutch commander, was skeptical. Warlords such as Khan had a bad habit of switching sides. But the situation in Chora was dire. There were reports the Taliban were forcing local men to fight.

A rocket struck an American convoy in Tarin Kowt, killing U.S. Army staff sergeant Roy Lewsader Jr. I picked on him and teased him about his hair, the way he ate or slept, just about anything I could think of, his younger brother Mark said. I dont claim him as a hero, I claim his as a brother.

A piper plays as Dutch troops move Timo Smeehuijzen's remains.

Dutch and Australian troops seized a strategic road. Afghan reinforcements arrived by helicopter. A mortar shell malfunctioned and exploded, killing Dutch sergeant-major Jos Leunissen. At one time, six F-16s were in the air over Chora.

The bombing broke the Taliban force. On June 19, Khan and the NATO troops counterattacked and recaptured Chora.

Officials tallied the dead. One American. Two Dutch. Sixteen Afghan fighters. Seventy-one Taliban. Sixty-five civilians. A NATO inquiry blamed many of the civilian deaths on the alliances F-16s and artillery.

Khans fighters, some of them wearing the uniform of the Afghan National Auxiliary Police, had helped win the battle for NATO. But it was a pyrrhic victory. It was clear the cops answered to Khan, not to NATO or the Afghan government.

The auxiliary police force was barely trained, had poorly defined rules of engagement, underwent minimal vetting and was famously corrupt, Human Rights Watch explained. They were abusive, hijacked by warlords and open to infiltration by the Taliban.

NATO quietly shut down the auxiliary police program, only to restart it under a different nameAfghan Local Policea few years later. The rebranding did not solve the fundamental problem. The most important fighters in Afghanistan answered to unelected local leaders with local agendas.

Hundreds of Dutch and Australian troops gathered for Smeehuijzens memorial service. I dont speak Dutch, so I didnt understand the words. But the words were beside the point. All around me, men wept.

Australian troops accidentally shot and killed Khan during a nighttime operation in 2008. The Dutch left Uruzgan in 2010. The Taliban seized the provinceincluding Chora and Tarin Kowton Friday.

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In 2007, NATO Needed A Warlord To Beat the Taliban. Signs Of Eventual Collapse Were Everywhere. - Forbes

MOSCOW, August 18. /TASS. Observers from four NATO countries will take part in the Army-2021 International Army Games that will run for the seventh time, Russian Defense Minister Army General Sergei Shoigu said in an interview with the Defense Ministrys Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper on Wednesday.

"This year, we will have 11 groups of observers who will arrive for the Games and four of them will be from NATO countries," Russias defense chief said.

The 7th Army-2021 International Army Games will run on August 22-September 4, 2021. Apart from Russia, competitions in some categories will run on the territory of 11 states, Shoigu said.

Some stages of the International Army Games will run in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, China, Iran, Uzbekistan, and also Algeria, Vietnam, Serbia and Qatar that will host the competitions for the first time. The international Army Games will bring together over 280 teams from 43 states. Six countries will send their teams for the first time. These are Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cyprus, Malaysia, Cameroon and Ecuador.

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Observers from four NATO countries to take part in International Army Games Shoigu - TASS

Former Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachevon Tuesday said he believes thatNATO and the United States had no chance of garnering success from entering Afghanistan.

Gorbachev, who previously oversawthe withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989, said that while he now regards the Soviet presence in Afghanistan as a mistake, Americans and NATO have mishandled their campaign in the country as well.

"They should have admitted failure earlier,"Gorbachev, 90, told RIA. "The important thing now is to draw the lessons from what happened and make sure that similar mistakes are not repeated."

Gorbachev told the the Russian state-owned news outlet, according to Reuters,that the U.S. goals in Afghanistan were unrealistic.

"[The U.S. campaign] was a failed enterprise from the start even though Russia supported it during the first stages," he added. "Like many other similar projects at its heart lay the exaggeration of a threat and poorly defined geopolitical ideas. To that were added unrealistic attempts to democratize a society made up of many tribes."

The United States entered Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks during the administration of President George W. Bush. It initially was a campaign to go after al Qaeda, the terrorist group behind the attacks, but was criticized over the years as a nation-building effort.

In ending the campaign, President BidenJoe BidenUtah 'eager' to assist with resettling Afghan refugees: governor Pelosi presses moderate Democrats amid budget standoff Democrat on Biden's claim some Afghans didn't want to leave earlier: 'Utter BS' MORE, who has come under fierce criticism for his handling of the U.S. exit, said he would not hand the war to a fifth U.S. president.

Afghanistan's Soviet-backed officials governed for three years after Soviet troops left the country. That government fell three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which led to aid being cut off from Moscow,Reuters noted.

Biden defended his decision on Monday despite the increased criticism.

I stand squarely behind my decision, Biden said at the time. After 20 years, Ive learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.

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Gorbachev says US, NATO had no chance of success in Afghanistan | TheHill - The Hill

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN) The Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan in December, 1979 and withdrew, exhausted and demoralized, 10 years later. In Moscow a joke had long circulated: Why are we still in Afghanistan? Answer: We are still looking for the people who invited us.

The same is true for the Americans and NATO who are now moving through the exit door. They came to obliterate Al Qaeda after 9/11, 2001.

There was certainly no invitation issued by the Afghani government, then controlled by the militant Taliban. The US was angry that Afghanistan sheltered Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, and didnt have the time of day or desire to discuss an invitation.

After an air and ground campaign the outsiders savaged Al Qaedas fighters. Its rump, including bin Laden, fled to the barely accessible mountains of Pakistan. Ordinary Afghans had never really liked al-Qaeda and they certainly never equated their home-grown Islamist movement, the Taliban, with the Arab-led extremists.

Yet the US and its allies were not prepared to declare victory and leave. They changed the goalposts and stayed on to confront the Taliban, determined to drive them into the ground and to nurture the creation of a democratic government. But there was still no invitation from the people at large. Only after the longest war in American history are the US and NATO now leaving. The tail is between their legs as diplomats, chosen Afghanis and aid people scramble on to the military planes packed to the gills. Some Afghanis who have supported the NATO and American-implanted government have been filmed clinging to the wheels and wings of an enormous transporter as it taxied down the runway.

As Jonathan Steele writes in his seminal book, The Ghosts of Afghanistan, The principal ghosts are the dead on every side. In 35 years of unfinished civil war, made worse by foreign intervention, close to 15,000 Soviet dead, over 1,500 Americans, nearly 400 British and 500 from other countries. Above all, the sons and daughters of Afghanistan itself: some 20,000 troops and as many as two million civilians. Hundreds, if not thousands, of aid workers have also been killed.

American involvement began with President Jimmy Carters decision, fashioned by his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to send in covert military aid to the mujahedin that were trying to end the Soviet occupation. They did. Brzezinskis ambition was, in his words, to give the Soviets their Vietnam and to undermine the political stability of the USSR. Seen from this vantage point, Brzezinskis strategy was a brilliant success.

The victorious mujahedin, always a fissiparous group, despite US and Saudi Arabian military aid, were eventually dominated by the Taliban who imposed a peace that lasted until the massive bombing launched by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11. Then the Taliban was forced out of Kabul and has continued ever since to wage war with the Western invaders. Despite all the blows received from much superior forces it has emerged victorious. The Taliban always said: The Americans have the watches, we have the time.

As the Westerners leave, we have to recognize that some good has been done thanks to Western governmental and NGO aid. Afghanistan now has some good roads, electricity, many more hospitals, clinics and schools, (including girl pupils), with a fast-declining infant mortality rate, increased longevity, and much increased economic activity. But no one can honestly say that it was right to achieve all this by wielding the sword. It could have been done and should have been done by working with a Taliban-led government. This work should continue.

The US leaves Afghanistan in a better state than it did Vietnam or Iraq. However, it took the long road round the mountain20 years of warfare to do what could have been done with a good, well thought out, aid program, in half the time. (Ive seen the speed and efficiency of a fast aid program at work in Uganda after the fall of President Idi Amin who had devastated the country.)

Afghanistans future, to say the least, is unclear. The new Taliban-led government must face the fact it has to forge a kind of power-sharing deal with the secularized middle class of Kabul.

The country is awash with guns. It has been traumatized by war. The omens are not good.

Afghanistan remains one of the worlds messes. If only the US and NATO had limited themselves to destroying Al Qaeda, Afghanistan would have remained an introverted Islamist backwater, slowly but steadily developing with outside aid, capable of harming no one but itself.

About the author: The writer was for 17 years a foreign affairs columnist and commentator for the International Herald Tribune, now the New York Times. He has also written many dozens of columns for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times. He is the European who has appeared most on the opinion pages of these papers. Visit his website: http://www.jonathanpowerjournalist.com [IDN-InDepthNews 17 August 2021]

Photo: NATO Allies decided on 14 April 2021 to start withdrawing forces from the Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan by May 1, with plans to complete the drawdown of all troops within a few months. Credit: NATO

IDN is the flagship agency of the Non-profit International Press Syndicate.

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After US and NATO Withdrawal, Afghanistan's Future Is Unclear - IDN InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

Thomas Catenacci

Leaders of the U.K., Germany and other Western nations bemoaned the stunning fall of Afghanistan, while foes such as China and Iran criticized the role the U.S. played in the war-torn Middle Eastern nation.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jens StoltenbergsaidTuesday that there were many lessons to be learned from the swift and sudden collapse of Afghanistan. Led by the U.S.,thousandsof NATO service members have fought in Afghanistan since 2001.

We were always aware of the risks that Taliban could regain control. That was stated clearly when we made the decision to end our military presence, Stoltenberg told reporters during a press briefing. But it was a surprise, the speed of the collapse, and how swiftly that happened.

Prior to the briefing, NATO convened an emergency meeting with leaders of several of its 30 member states to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, the Taliban invaded andcapturedKabul, Afghanistans capital, the culmination of the groupsmulti-week effortto take control of the country. The complete fall of the government, which the U.S.helped put in placein 2002, came mere months after President Joe Bidenannouncedhis administrations plans to pull all of the remaining American troops out of the country by Sept. 11, 2021.

Janez Jansa, the prime minister of NATO member Slovenia, characterized the rapid collapse of Afghanistan as the greatest defeat for NATO in history on Monday,accordingto the Associated Press. Jansa noted themassive handoverof NATO weaponry, equipment and vehicles to the Taliban.

The situation remains very difficult and its clear that there is going to be a new government in Kabul or a new political dispensation, however you want to put it, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnsonsaidin a video statement Sunday. I think its very important that the West collectively should work together to get over to that new government, be it by the Taliban or anybody else, that nobody wants Afghanistan once again to be a breeding ground for terror.

Johnson held calls withStoltenberg,French President Emmanuel MacronandGerman Chancellor Angela Merkelover the last few days. The leaders all agreed the West had a role to play in preventing a humanitarian crisis and facilitating the evacuation of thousands of foreign nationals from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan must not become the haven for terrorists that it once was, Macron told the French public on Monday, Reutersreported. It is a challenge for peace and international stability, against a common enemy.

He added that France would welcome its fair share of Afghan refugees fleeing out of concern for their safety.

Since the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan we have had to watch the Taliban, with breathtaking speed, province for province, town for town, reconquer the entire country, Merkel said Monday in a national address of her own,accordingto Reuters. This is an absolutely bitter development: Bitter, dramatic and awful, especially for the people in Afghanistan.

We need to make sure that the many people who have big worries and concerns, even though they have not worked with German institutions, have a secure stay in countries neighboring Afghanistan, she continued.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau echoed the British, French and German leaders and committed to welcoming thousands of refugees, CTV Newsreported. Trudeau described the situation as extremely dire, saying Canada has already accepted 500 refugees and plans to accept hundreds more.

We take very seriously the situation, Trudeau said.

Biden hasnt discussed Afghanistan with any world leaders yet, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivansaidon Tuesday.

To be honest, people have been shocked by the chaotic scenes at the Kabul airport on television and the internet since yesterday, especially the video clips capturing some unfortunately falling to their deaths after clinging to the landing gear of a U.S. aircraft to evacuate, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunyingtoldreporters Tuesday.

The U.S. launched the Afghan War in the name of counterterrorism, she continued. But has the U.S. won? For 20 years, the number of terrorist organizations in Afghanistan grew to more than 20 from a single digit.

China would respect the Talibans authority and Afghanistans sovereignty, Hua Chunying said.

An editorial published in the Chinese state-controlled media outlet Global Timessaidthe fall of the Afghan government represented a complete failure by the U.S.

A separate articlesuggestedthe U.S. would abandon other global allies like Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory.

The Islamic Republic of Iran believes that the reign of the will of the wronged people of Afghanistan has always created security and stability, Iranian President Ebrahim RaisitoldAl Jazeera on Monday. While consciously monitoring developments in the country, Iran is committed to neighborly relations.

He also said the Talibans victory may revive life, security and lasting peace.

Russia, which recentlyhostedTaliban officials for a peace conference, has stopped short of officially recognizing the Taliban government,accordingto Agence France-Presse. However, senior Russian officials said that the Taliban has been cooperative in recent talks.

They are currently engaged in restoring order in the city and have succeeded in this, Russian ambassador to Afghanistan Dmitry Zhirnov said Tuesday, AFP reported. They behave in a responsible, civilized manner.

China, Iran and Russia said they would keep their Kabul embassies open, according toReutersandFrance 24.

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