English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For August 20/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are
First Letter of John 03/01-10: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 19-20/2021
All Petitions To Help Lebanon Shall Remain Futile as long as Hezbollah & its occupation are not their core & essence/Elias Bejjani/August 18/2021
Video/Interview from the Middle East Forum wir Dr. Jonathan Spyer addressing Lebanon Crisis/August 18/2021/Click Here Or On The Link Below To Watch the Video
Israel conducts air strikes on targets in Syria through Lebanon's airspace
Israeli Jets, Missiles Overfly Lebanon during New Syria Raid
Shea Says U.S. to Help Lebanon Get Electricity from Jordan, Gas from Egypt
US talking to Egypt, Jordan to help Lebanon’s fuel, energy needs: Senior US diplomat
Iranian fuel shipments to Lebanon purchased by Lebanese Shia businessmen: Nournews
Nasrallah Warns U.S., Israel against Targeting Lebanon-Bound Iranian Fuel Ship
Hezbollah says Iran fuel tanker to sail to Lebanon
Hezbollah says Iranian fuel tanker to sail to Lebanon, threatens Israel, US
Hezbollah Warns Israel, U.S. as Iranian Fuel Sails for Lebanon
Contrary to optimistic expectations, Lebanon’s cabinet formation falters
Lebanon’s crises show the worst and best of humanity/Bahaa Hariri/Arab News/August 19/ 2021

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 19-20/2021
Biden Sees 'Chaos' as U.S. Presses Taliban to Let Afghans Leave
UAE Says Hosting Afghan ex-President 'on Humanitarian Grounds'
Syria's Top Jihadist Group Hails Taliban Takeover
US reactions in Afghanistan do not inspire confidence
G7 foreign ministers: Afghanistan crisis requires international response
Afghan footballer fell to death from US plane
Czech pilot describes ‘demanding’ flight from Kabul
Our dream collapsed’: British Afghans lament Taliban takeover
UAE working with international partners to provide relief efforts in Afghanistan
Greek wildfire burns through pine forest for 4th day
Police investigating 'active bomb threat' near US Capitol
Abbas Kamel holds talks in Israel to prevent new eruption in Gaza

Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 19-20/2021
After fall of Kabul, resistance to Taliban emerges in Panjshir/Bill Roggio/FDD's Long War Journal/August 19/2021
Iran is not serious about rejoining the nuclear deal/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/August 19/ 2021
Strategic dialogue gives Iraq plenty to talk about/Maria Maalouf /Arab News/August 19/2021
This Betrayal of Afghanistan Is Beyond Belief/Tarek Fatah/The Toronto Sun/August 19/2021
Biden's Afghanistan Disaster Has Left the West Defenseless against Islamist Terrorists/Con Coughlin/Gatestone Institute/August 19/2021
Biden's Appalling Mistake is a Watershed for the West/Gwythian Prins/Gatestone Institute/August 19/2021

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 19-20/2021
نطالب بعدم توقيع أي استرحام مهما كان هدفه أو محتواه ما لم يكن التركيز الأول والأخير فيه على احتلال حزب الله والقرارات الدولية الخاصة بلبنان
All Petitions To Help Lebanon Shall Remain Futile as long as Hezbollah & its occupation are not their core & essence
Elias Bejjani/August 18/2021
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/101494/elias-bejjani-camouflaged-futile-petitions-as-long-as-hezbollah-its-occupation-are-not-their-core-essence/
All those Non Profit Organizations (NGO’S) inside occupied Lebanon, or in the Diaspora, are almost every week initiating and circulating petitions on Change.org, and calling Lebanese citizens to sign them, are actually and in reality not helping the Lebanese cause or the occupied Lebanon, even if their intentions are good and not evil. It is worth mentioning the Good intentions only do not Liberate Lebanon, as well as only food, medicine and all other humanitarian needs and supplies.
Why they are not helping with such futile and useless petitions, and most probably are harming, is because they are not focusing on the main cancer that is devouring Lebanon and its people, which is Hezbollah occupation .
All these petitions are not mentioning the occupier Hezbollah, and are not calling for the liberation of Lebanon from its occupation. They are only calling for food, electricity, medicines and other humanitarian domains.
This suspicious track of the NGO’S camouflaging petitions serves the Hezbollah occupation, and totally diverts the focus from its cancerous and devastating occupation.
Therefore, openly and loudly, we call on our Lebanese people, in both occupied Lebanon and the Diaspora, not to sign any petition that does not focus first and foremost on the occupation of Hezbollah, and on the UN Resolutions the Armistice accord with Israel, 1559, 1701, and 1680.

Video/Interview from the Middle East Forum wir Dr. Jonathan Spyer addressing Lebanon Crisis/August 18/2021/Click Here Or On The Link Below To Watch the Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBYJgGRlHAQ

Israel conducts air strikes on targets in Syria through Lebanon's airspace
Rawad Taha, Al Arabiya English/20 August ,2021
Israel has conducted several airstrikes through Lebanon's airspace on targets in Syria, according to local media in Lebanon. Syrian State Media said that Syrian air defenses have confronted targets in the sky of Damascus, launched from the airspace of the Lebanese capital Beirut. The Israeli airstrikes on Syria have targeted the northern countryside of Damascus, Mezzeh's military airport, Homs, and the Qalamoun region. Israeli aircrafts and the missilies launced have been heard across Lebanon. The Director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least three Israeli missiles targeted sites and weapons depot of Lebanon’s Hezbollah in Qalamoun around Damascus’s countryside near the administrative border with Homs governorate. According to Intel Sky airspace tracking platform several civil flights landing in Beirut had been put on hold or delayed due to the Israeli attack from Lebanon’s airspace. Middle East Airlines flight ME419 coming from Abu Dhabi landed safe and sound at Beirut Airport after changing its course and being delayed as a result of the Israeli airstikes on Syria.

Israeli Jets, Missiles Overfly Lebanon during New Syria Raid
Naharnet/August 19, 2021
Israeli warplanes overflew Lebanon at low altitude on Thursday night and missiles were reportedly seen crossing the Lebanese airspace during an airstrike on the suburbs of the Syrian regions of Damascus and Homs. The sounds of the fighter jets and missiles sparked panic in the Lebanese capital and other Lebanese regions. The Syrian air defenses were activated during the strikes according to Syria's state-run media.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights meanwhile said that the raid targeted positions for Lebanon's Hizbullah and Iranian-backed militias.

Shea Says U.S. to Help Lebanon Get Electricity from Jordan, Gas from Egypt
Associated Press/August 19, 2021
Hours after Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah announced that a ship carrying diesel from Iran to Lebanon would arrive within hours, President Michel Aoun's office announced that U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea told him the United States would help Lebanon get electricity from Jordan and facilitate the flow of Egyptian gas through Jordan and Syria to northern Lebanon. Shea told Aoun that negotiations are ongoing with the World Bank to pay for Egyptian gas and to fix cables and pipelines that will be used, according to the statement. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. State Department or the American Embassy in Beirut. Shea, the U.S. ambassador, spoke about the crisis in Lebanon with the English service of the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV on Thursday. "I'm trying to find solutions for the Lebanese people," Shea, told Al Arabiya English. "We've been talking to the governments of Egypt, Jordan, the government here (Lebanon), the World Bank. We're trying to get real, sustainable solutions for Lebanon's fuel and energy needs," she said.

US talking to Egypt, Jordan to help Lebanon’s fuel, energy needs: Senior US diplomat
Joseph Haboush, Al Arabiya English/19 August ,2021
The US is in talks with the World Bank and the governments of Egypt and Jordan to help find solutions to Lebanon’s fuel and energy needs, Washington’s ambassador to Beirut said Thursday. “I’m trying to find solutions for the Lebanese people. We’ve been talking to the governments of Egypt, Jordan, the government here [Lebanon], the World Bank. We’re trying to get real, sustainable solutions for Lebanon’s fuel and energy needs,” Dorothy Shea told Al Arabiya English during an interview from the US Embassy in Beirut. Shea’s comments came shortly after Hezbollah’s secretary-general accused the US of being behind Lebanon's economic and fuel crises.“The United States is as frustrated as the Lebanese are with the situation, and I’ve been working on this for several weeks now. So, to be accused of being the sole source of this problem … ad hominem personal attacks are the weakest form of argument,” the senior US diplomat said.“And if that’s all he can muster to explain the misery that the Lebanese people are living in, then shame on him,” she added. Pushing back against Hassan Nasrallah’s comments, Shea rejected claims that Washington was responsible for the economic collapse. “He [Nasrallah] can try as much as he wants to pin it all on the United States, and he can call me names. Seriously, is that the best he can do?”Asked what the US response would be to Nasrallah’s earlier speech where he said Iranian fuel would be on its way to Lebanon in the coming hours, Shea said Lebanon didn’t need any Iranian tankers. She cited “a whole bunch” of tankers off the country's coast waiting to offload their cargo.The Lebanese government cannot pay due to the current economic crisis and shortage of the US dollar. Shea said she was working the phones with Lebanese officials to help find a solution. But ultimately, she said, “Lebanon can do whatever it wants.”“I don’t think anyone is going to fall on their sword if someone’s able to get fuel into hospitals that need it. But I think the Lebanese people deserve importers of fuel to distribute it equitably. And I ask you, can you count on Hezbollah to do that?”
Al Arabiya English reported last month that the US was being urged by the World Bank, Egypt and Jordan to find a way to avoid sanctions under the Caesar Act.
Shea also said she was in touch with the Treasury Department and the White House. Admitting that the procedure to import via Syria was a tricky matter due to sanctions, she said: “There is a will to make this happen. There will be some logistical things that need to happen too, but I think that it will all fall into place fairly easily.”The Lebanese presidency announced Thursday afternoon that Shea called President Michel Aoun to tell him that the US was going to help with the electricity sector.
“It’s cheaper, it’s cleaner, and it’s more sustainable,” Shea told Al Arabiya English.

Iranian fuel shipments to Lebanon purchased by Lebanese Shia businessmen: Nournews
Reuters/19 August ,2021
Iranian fuel shipments to Lebanon to help ease a crippling fuel shortage were all purchased by a group of Lebanese Shia businessmen, Iran’s semi-official Nournews said on Thursday. The report came hours after the leader of Lebanon’s Iran-aligned Hezbollah group said an Iranian fuel shipment would set sail on Thursday. “Based on information we have received the Iranian fuel shipments that...(Hezbollah’s leader Hassan) Nasrallah mentioned today were all bought by a group of Lebanese Shiite businessmen,” Nournews reported. “The shipments are considered their property from the moment of loading” said the news website, which is close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. Hezbollah’s foes in Lebanon warned of dire consequences from the move, with Sunni Muslim politician Saad al-Hariri, a former prime minister, saying it risked sanctions being imposed on a country whose economy has been in meltdown for nearly two years.

Nasrallah Warns U.S., Israel against Targeting Lebanon-Bound Iranian Fuel Ship
Naharnet/August 19, 2021
Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday announced that a first ship carrying diesel and other essential goods would sail from Iran to Lebanon "within hours," warning the U.S. and Israel against targeting it. "Our first ship will sail from Iran within hours, carrying the needed material," Nasrallah said in a defiant speech marking the last day of the Ashura religious commemorations."More ships will also come from Iran, not only this ship," he noted. "We do not want a confrontation with anyone and we only want to help our people," Nasrallah added. He however warned the U.S. and Israel against targeting the ship.
"I tell the Americans and Israelis that when the ship sails from Iran within hours, we will consider it to be 'Lebanese territory,'" Hizbullah's chief said. He added: "We reject to be humiliated in a military war, political war or economic war." Stressing that Iran "has never let down its allies," Nasrallah said that slain Iranian general "Qassem Soleimani's chopped hand on the land of Baghdad airport is the biggest proof." "Iran has never interfered in Lebanon's internal affairs and we are not tools in the hands of this dear state," Nasarallah said. Describing Lebanon's fuel crisis as "fabricated," Nasrallah called on the state to intervene against monopolists. "If monopolists do not stop their inhumane ways, it will not be enough for security forces to seize their quantities, they must be put in jail," Nasrallah urged. "Had the state intervened from the beginning of the crisis with a courageous decision as it did in the past days, we would not have witnessed the queues of humiliation," he said.Nasrallah also lashed out anew at Washington and the U.S. embassy in Lebanon. "The U.S. embassy is behind all this incitement for the Lebanese against each other," Nasrallah said. "The U.S. embassy present in Awkar is not a diplomatic representation mission, it is an embassy for conspiring against Lebanon's people," he charged. Addressing Hizbullah's foes, Nasrallah added: "Do not try us in any military war, security war or economic war."As for the issue of the new government, Nasrallah said: "Like the rest of the Lebanese, we are looking forward with hope to the outcome of the meetings between the President and the PM-designate." "We call for the formation of a government in Lebanon and we reject vacuum," he said. "Some accuse us of not exerting enough pressures on our allies and friends, but this is meaningless," he added. He also emphasized that Iran "has never interfered in the formation and resignation of governments in Lebanon.""The countries that interfere through their embassies are well-known," Nasrallah said.

Hezbollah says Iran fuel tanker to sail to Lebanon
AP/August 19, 2021
BEIRUT: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday a tanker would set off from Iran “within hours” to bring desperately needed fuel supplies to Lebanon, in defiance of US sanctions. Many questions remain about how the shipment would reach its stated destination, where acute and growing fuel shortages have forced hospitals, businesses and government offices shut amid a crippling economic crisis. But the move, prohibited by US sanctions on Iran’s oil industry, could drag Lebanon into the covert naval war between Tehran and Israel. Nasrallah dared Iran’s foes to stop the shipment.
“The vessel, from the moment it sails in the coming hours until it enters (Mediterranean) waters, will be considered Lebanese territory,” he said during a televised speech to mark the Shiite Muslim commemoration of Ashura. “To the Americans and Israelis, I say: it’s Lebanese territory.”He said a first ship would bring fuel for “hospitals, manufacturers of medicine and food, as well as bakeries and private generators.”More vessels would follow to address shortages that have ground Lebanon to a halt, he added. Neither the Iranian nor the Lebanese governments have confirmed the paramilitary organization’s claim. Nasrallah did not specify where or how the shipment would reach Lebanon and be offloaded. Lebanese energy expert Laury Haytayan said major questions hung over the shipment, including the amount to be delivered, who would pay, where the boat would dock and whether the details of the transaction had been disclosed to the Lebanese government. “It is a possibility that these tankers will go to Syria and shipments will be refined there,” Haytayan said. “But this is all prohibited by sanctions, it’s not that easy, and since Hezbollah is doing it in public, there is a lot of danger on Lebanon, we are in danger of being sanctioned, or being attacked.”Since February this year, Iran and Israel have been engaged in a “shadow war” in which vessels linked to each nation have come under attack in waters around the Gulf in tit-for-tat exchanges. Hezbollah, designated as a terrorist group by much of the West, is a major political force in Lebanon and is the only group to have kept its arsenal of weapons following the end of the country’s 1975-1990 civil war. Hezbollah now has a more powerful arsenal than the Lebanese national army. Former prime minister Saad Hariri warned Thursday that Nasrallah’s remarks could be “dangerous.”“Iranian vessels will carry additional dangers and sanctions for the Lebanese,” he said in a statement released by his office. Lebanon is grappling with an economic crisis branded by the World Bank as one of the planet’s worse since the mid-19th century. The bankrupt state can no longer afford key imports nor subsidise essential goods, leading to crippling and sometimes deadly shortages of electricity, petrol and medicines among other things.
A key oil company in Lebanon said Thursday it would stop supplying its filling stations with fuel for the first time since it started operations in 1926. The Coral Oil Company said its stocks in the country were running out, and that the government had so far failed to take steps to offload shipments that arrived in territorial waters more than a week ago. International donors have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to the country but have conditioned it on the creation of a cabinet capable of spearheading reforms. Lebanon’s bitterly divided political leaders have repeatedly failed to agree on a new government a year after the previous one resigned in the wake of a monster blast in August at Beirut port. Hariri on Thursday accused Iran of blocking the formation of a government, something Nasrallah dismissed. On Sunday, at least 28 people were killed and dozens more injured when a fuel tank exploded as people clamoured for petrol in the north Lebanon village of Al-Tleil. The circumstances behind the blast remain unclear.

Hezbollah says Iranian fuel tanker to sail to Lebanon, threatens Israel, US
The Arab Weekly/August 19/2021
BEIRUT--The leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group said Thursday that an Iranian fuel tanker will sail toward Lebanon “within hours,” warning Israel and the United States not to intercept it. The delivery organised by Lebanon-based Hezbollah, would be an apparent violation of US sanctions imposed on Tehran after former US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers three years ago. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech that the tanker, carrying diesel fuel, will be followed by others to help ease Lebanon’s crippling fuel shortage that has paralyzed the country for weeks. Nasrallah did not say how Lebanon will pay for the fuel but in a previous speech he said Tehran could be paid in Lebanese pounds. The currency has lost more than 90% of its value since the country’s economic crisis began in October 2019. “I would like to say that at the moment the tanker sails, within hours, and moves in the sea, it will be considered in Lebanese territory,” Nasrallah said. He said the West was imposing an undeclared siege on Lebanon, causing the current crisis. Hezbollah and its allies accuse the US and some Arab gulf nations of punishing Lebanon because of Hezbollah’s military activities in other countries, including Syria and Iraq. “I tell the Americans and the Israelis that this is Lebanese territory,” Nasrallah said about the tanker, without elaborating on what his group will do if it is intercepted. Neighbouring Syria has blamed Israel for mysterious attacks that have targeted oil tankers heading from Iran to Syria this past year. For weeks, Lebanese have been waiting in long lines at petrol stations to fill their car tanks. Diesel shortages amid severe power cuts have shut down thousands of private generators, leading to shortages of bread. Some hospitals have warned that patients could die because of the diesel shortage. The shortages are blamed on smuggling, hoarding and the cash-strapped government’s inability to secure deliveries of imported fuel. Lebanon has for decades suffered electricity cuts, partly because of widespread corruption and mismanagement. The Mediterranean nation of 6 million, including 1 million Syrian refugees, is near bankruptcy. The situation deteriorated dramatically last week after the central bank decided to end subsidies for fuel products. The decision will likely lead to a hike in the prices of almost all commodities in Lebanon. Nasrallah said his group does not aim to “defy anyone,” by arranging the fuel shipment from Iran, but added that “we cannot stand idle amid the humiliation of our people whether in front of bakeries, hospitals, gas stations and darkness at night.”The move is likely to anger Hezbollah’s opponents at home, who have warned that such a move could end up putting Lebanon under American sanctions.

Hezbollah Warns Israel, U.S. as Iranian Fuel Sails for Lebanon
Bloomberg/Thu., August 19, 2021,
 Militant group Hezbollah appeared to warn Israel and the U.S. against intercepting an Iranian ship carrying fuel for Lebanon as the country reels from a crippling power crisis. The vessel would sail “in hours,” the Iran-backed group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was cited as saying by Al Jazeera Thursday. “I tell the Americans and the Israelis that as soon as the ship sails, it becomes Lebanese territory.” More such ships would follow, he said.Iranian and Israeli-operated ships have in recent months been targeted in regional waters in unclaimed attacks widely believed to be tit-for-tat actions by the Middle Eastern rivals. Iran’s oil exports are under U.S. sanctions. The Shiite Hezbollah movement also plays a powerful role in Lebanon’s politics. One of its rivals, former premier Saad Hariri, criticized Nasrallah’s intervention for endangering the country. “Considering the Iranian ships as Lebanese territory is the height of compromising of our national sovereignty, and an call to treat Lebanon as if it were an Iranian province,” he tweeted. “We will not, under any circumstances, be a cover for projects to drown Lebanon into futile wars hostile to the Arabs and the world.”The Lebanese central bank last week scrapped a fuel subsidy citing a lack of funds. The move led to longer power cuts and queues at fuel stations, deepening hardship in a country already suffering its worst ever economic crisis.

Contrary to optimistic expectations, Lebanon’s cabinet formation falters
The Arab Weekly/August 19/2021
BEIRUT--Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati faces unexpected hurdles in forming a new government as required by international donors for his crisis-stricken country to receive financial aid. Although Mikati and President Michel Aoun said a “positive atmosphere” has characterised the eleven meetings they have held at the presidential palace since Mikati’s designation, the situation has rapidly soured with the process of cabinet formation faltering. After news of an imminent breakthrough, Mikati clashed again with Aoun over the distribution of ministerial portfolios, hence further delaying the selection of a cabinet, despite the fact that a year has already passed since the resignation of the current caretaker government, headed by Hassan Diab. It has been three weeks since Mikati was tasked with forming a government, succeeding Saad Hariri, who because of after irreconcilable differences with President Aoun over the make-up of the cabinet, stepped down nine months after being given the same task. Similar to what happened with Hariri, Mikati faces major challenges in complying with the Lebanese rule of sectarian quotas in forming his cabinet.
According to sources close to both Mikati and Aoun, the dispute between them has to do with the choice of ministers, with each one expressing reservations about the names proposed by the other, although contacts have not ceased.
According to a Lebanese political source, “the dispute centres on the portfolios of interior and justice, as President Mikati insists that their respective ministers should not be affiliated with any political party.”The source added, “Mikati’s insistence stems from his desire to form a government that can manage the upcoming parliamentary elections (scheduled for 2022) and negotiations with the World Bank.”On July 26, Mikati was tasked with forming the new government, after parliamentary consultations conducted by President Aoun resulted in approval of the new prime minister-designate by 72 MPs. Mikati received the support of the United States, France and the European Union, on condition that he commits to immediate cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, forms a government that guarantees the launch of the reform programme and ensures the organisation of parliamentary elections on time. There have been increasing local and international calls to expedite the setting up of the new government so as to save Lebanon from the danger of total collapse and pave the way for international aid. France had warned the Lebanese political parties that the issue of imposing sanctions on anyone who obstructs the formation could include the president himself this time. Paris fears that the Lebanese situation has become untenable considering the worsening crises, the latest of which is the upheaval caused by the lifting of fuel subsidies. The political system in Lebanon is based on the distribution of key positions among sects. Within this, the presidency of the republic is held by a Maronite Christian, while the prime minister’s job must go to a Sunni Muslim and the parliament is headed by a Shia Muslim. While officials and experts say that the crisis in Lebanon is caused by internal disputes, others argue that it is the result of external pressures, especially since the small and now pauperised Arab country has become an arena of conflict between the interests of regional and Western powers.

Lebanon’s crises show the worst and best of humanity
Bahaa Hariri/Arab News/August 19/ 2021
Lebanon historically has been associated with commerce, culture and tradition. The “Switzerland of the Middle East” was a land of beauty, with a strong financial sector and stable governance. I do not recognize my country today. One word encapsulates the state of affairs in Lebanon: Crisis.
Chief among this is the economic crisis, which affects every aspect of life in the country. The World Bank has called it one of the worst crises on the planet since the mid-19th century. Inflation has seen the price of everyday goods soar, with the consumer price index increasing by more than 208 percent, while the cost of food and drink has risen by 670 percent. Meanwhile, salaries are becoming increasingly worthless by the day. Even the military is unable to pay our soldiers, eroding Lebanon’s last pillar of stability.
My country has also suffered from a familiar public health crisis. On top of battling the pandemic, the shortage of fuel in Lebanon presents a new challenge for hospitals in keeping COVID-19 patients alive. The economic freefall has also hit medical supplies. Like our military, health professionals are fleeing the country as the value of their paychecks shrinks. The public is praying for an end to the pandemic, and for vaccinations. But while they wait for salvation, the elites jump the queue for lifesaving jabs. And then there is the political crisis. Lebanon has been paralyzed without a government for over a year, while self-serving politicians squabble in presidential palaces. Prime minister designates come and go, while the country starves.
Hezbollah plays war games on the Israeli border, threatening to take the country into a conflict that the population completely opposes. Warlords fire rockets into Israel — stunts costing thousands of dollars that should be used to support the poorest in society. Then there are the tragedies, avoidable tragedies that are tearing families apart. On Aug. 4, 2020, hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in Beirut port, killing 218 innocent people.
To commemorate the anniversary of the blast, I lamented Lebanon’s “never-ending cycle of suffering.” Little did I know that just over a week later we would be mourning again, this time for the 28 who died in the Akkar fuel tank explosion in the north of the country. Again, victims of negligence and man-made crises.It is easy to lose faith when discussing the string of crises Lebanon faces, the masses living in unacceptable conditions or without a fair paying job, the babies going hungry, and the elderly who have seen their savings wiped out. It is easy to get angry at those who have orchestrated the crises — the corrupt officials, power-hungry politicians and blind fanatics — for they are the worst of humanity.
On World Humanitarian Day, I want to celebrate those who have not given up on Lebanon. But on World Humanitarian Day, I want to celebrate those who have not given up on Lebanon — the best of humanity. In the absence of functioning public services, which is the responsibility of the government, we can take comfort in the strength and selflessness of the Lebanese people. Communities are nobly coming together to help one another. All across Lebanon, we hear stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Even amid the horror of the Beirut port blast, the Lebanese showed the world who they really are. Among those killed were firefighters who gave their lives trying to keep us safe. Ten firefighters — Najeeb Hati, Charbel Hati, Ralph Malahi, Charbel Karam, Joe Noun, Rami Kaaki, Joe Bou Saab, Elie Khouzami, Mathal Hawa and Sahar Fares — made the ultimate sacrifice, and will never be forgotten. Ordinary Beirut residents offered shelter to neighbors whose homes were destroyed, and cleared rubble from the roads to make way for ambulances. Organizations such as Sawa Li Lubnan continue to support communities affected by the blast and worsening economic crisis. During Ramadan, Sawa collaborated with 200 volunteers to distribute over 10,000 food boxes to families facing financial hardship and food insecurity.
Lebanon’s friends in the international community have also remained by our side. At least $370 million was raised by donors during a recent international conference, while hundreds of thousands of vaccines have been donated. Following the Akkar tragedy, Kuwait and Jordan were quick to fly in medical supplies, to ensure our healthcare system did not collapse under the pressure of another explosion. The UN has also played its part, with a development program helping municipalities across Lebanon to professionalize their municipal police and capacity to serve their communities.
While these stories are a welcome relief from the tales of corruption and neglect, the best humanitarian aid the Lebanese can receive is a new generation of leaders to put the country back on track.
That is why Sawa Li Lubnan has expanded its operations from giving communities food parcels to offering them a path to recovery. A clear alternative to the current establishment, the organization’s mission is to create a non-sectarian system that will root out corruption and deliver economic prosperity. They are visionaries, challenging the political elites who are presiding over a Lebanon in decline. This will take time, but I am confident that Lebanon’s future is brighter than where we are today.
In the meantime, what Lebanon urgently needs is a government of experts, one that can unlock International Monetary Fund support that will slam the brakes on the economic freefall. A fully functioning government can take the baton from the heroes and humanitarians who have kept the flame of Lebanon burning in our darkest hour.
**Bahaa Hariri is the eldest son of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Twitter: @bahaa_hariri_

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 19-20/2021
Biden Sees 'Chaos' as U.S. Presses Taliban to Let Afghans Leave
Agence France Presse/August 19/2021
Taliban fighters have manned checkpoints around Kabul's airport as concerns built they were blocking Afghans from reaching evacuation flights, with the United States demanding safe passage. Tens of thousands of people have tried to flee Afghanistan since the hardline Islamist militants swept into the capital on Sunday, completing a stunning rout of government forces and ending two decades of war. Taliban leaders have in recent days repeatedly vowed not to seek revenge against their opponents, while seeking to project an image of tolerance. They have also sort to portray growing political authority, with Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar returning from exile and other senior figures meeting ex-president Hamid Karzai. But the United States said Wednesday the Taliban were reneging on pledges to allow Afghans who worked with the United States and its allies out of the country. "We have seen reports that the Taliban, contrary to their public statements and their commitments to our government, are blocking Afghans who wish to leave the country from reaching the airport," Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told reporters. "We expect them to allow all American citizens, all third-country nationals and all Afghans who wish to leave to do so safely and without harassment."
Desperate to leave
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Tuesday that the new regime would be "positively different" from their 1996-2001 stint. Their rule then was infamous for an ultra-strict interpretation of Sharia law, featuring deaths by stoning, girls being banned from school and women from working in contact with men. The United States ultimately led the invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban because they continued to provide sanctuary for al-Qaida after the September 11 attacks. "I am desperate to leave, I have bad memories of their regime," a 30-year-old person who worked for a foreign NGO and tried but failed to reach Kabul airport on Wednesday told AFP. "They hate people who have worked for other agencies rather than their movement." The person recounted hearing shots being fired, and crowds of people trying to reach the airport. "Despite that (the shooting) people were moving forward just because they knew a situation worse than death awaited them outside the airport."The United States said it had airlifted out nearly 5,000 U.S. citizens and Afghans, while France, Britain and other nations have also organized evacuation flights. But the Taliban have not been solely to blame for Afghans being unable to flee. The Netherlands said Wednesday its first evacuation flight returned without a single Dutch or Afghan national as U.S. troops blocked them from entering the airport. At the start of the week, before the U.S. military took greater control at the airport, there were scenes of tragic desperation with mobs of people trying to board planes. Some footage showed hundreds of people running alongside a U.S. Air Force plane as it rolled down the runway, with some clinging to the side of it. One person was later found dead in the wheel well of the plane.
Political authority
President Joe Biden -- under pressure at home and abroad over his handling of the withdrawal of U.S. forces after 20 years of war -- said Wednesday that some soldiers could remain past the August 31 deadline to ensure all Americans get out. In an interview with ABC News, Biden also issued another defense of the withdrawal. "The idea that somehow there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens," Biden said in an ABC News television interview. On the political front, the Taliban continued to edge towards establishing a government, meeting with senior Afghan figures from the past two decades. Taliban negotiator Anas Haqqani met with Karzai, the first Western-backed leader of Afghanistan after the Taliban's ouster in 2001, and Abdullah Abdullah, who had led the government's peace council, the SITE monitoring group said. In the United Arab Emirates, ousted president Ashraf Ghani -- who fled on Sunday as the insurgents closed in on the capital -- said he supported negotiations between the Taliban and former top officials, and was in his own talks to return home. But Sherman said Ghani was "no longer a figure" on the country's complex political stage.

UAE Says Hosting Afghan ex-President 'on Humanitarian Grounds'
Agence France Presse/August 19/2021
The United Arab Emirates has said that it is hosting former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani "on humanitarian grounds", after he fled his country amid a Taliban takeover. Ghani's whereabouts had been unknown after he fled Afghanistan at the weekend in the face of a sweeping advance by the Taliban. "The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation can confirm that the UAE has welcomed President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds," the ministry said in a brief statement. Ghani left Afghanistan on Sunday as the Taliban closed in on Kabul, before the insurgents walked into the Afghan capital unopposed. In a Facebook post, Ghani said the "Taliban have won" and that he fled to avoid a "flood of bloodshed." Until Wednesday, unconfirmed reports said that the 72-year-old had fled to Oman, Tajikistan, or Uzbekistan. Some even speculated that he had escaped to Lebanon, where his wife hails from. The Taliban capped a staggeringly fast rout of Afghanistan's major cities in just 10 days, achieved with relatively little bloodshed, following two decades of war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. The collapse came as U.S. President Joe Biden moved to complete the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Biden admitted Monday the Taliban advance had unfolded quicker than expected but defended his decision to leave, and criticized Ghani's government. Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, on Tuesday declined to answer questions about Ghani, who he said "is no longer a factor in Afghanistan." The United States, however, has continued to refer to "President Ghani", with the State Department saying that there has not been a formal handover of power. U.S.-led forces invaded the country following the September 11 attacks in 2001, in response to the Taliban giving sanctuary to Al-Qaeda, and toppled them.
UAE refuge
This is not the first time that the United Arab Emirates -- an oil-rich Gulf country -- has opened its arms to former leaders and their relatives, now persona non grata in their own country. In 2017, the emirate of Dubai hosted former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who was sentenced in absentia in his homeland to five years in prison. Spain's king Juan Carlos went into self-exile in the UAE in August last year as questions mounted over the origins of his fortune, and the UAE was Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto's home during her eight years in exile before she was assassinated in 2007. The UAE is one of three nations, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which recognized the previous hardline Taliban regime, which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. This time around, the Taliban have sought to project an air of restraint and moderation. Ghani was elected in 2014 on promises to remake Afghanistan. But the former president may ultimately be remembered for making little headway against the deep-rooted government corruption that underwrote his demise. In his last years in office, Ghani watched as he was first cut off from talks between Washington and the Taliban that paved the way for the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, and then forced by his American allies to release 5,000 hardened insurgents to lock down a peace deal that never materialized. Dismissed as a "puppet" by the Taliban, Ghani was left with little leverage during his final months in the presidential palace, and resorted to delivering televised diatribes that did little to improve his reputation with Afghans.

Syria's Top Jihadist Group Hails Taliban Takeover
Agence France Presse/August 19/2021
The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) alliance, led by al-Qaida's former Syria affiliate, has welcomed the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, saying it hoped Syria's jihadists would also be victorious. The armed group that formally broke ties with Al-Qaeda years ago is considered to be the most prominent jihadist group in Syria after a decade of war. HTS controls nearly half of the Idlib region -- the last remaining opposition bastion in Syria -- alongside other less influential groups. It said the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan following two decades of U.S. occupation was an example to follow. "We congratulate our Taliban brothers and our people in Afghanistan for this clear conquest, and ask God to also grant the Syrian revolution victory," it said in a statement released on its social media channels. HTS formally cut ties with al-Qaida in 2016 in a rebranding effort that saw it move closer to Syrian rebel groups in the country's northwest. But it is still widely seen as a hardline jihadist outfit by activists and Idlib residents who have been subject to arbitrary arrests, forced disappearances and brutal killings at the hands of HTS fighters. The Syrian government controls two thirds of the country after 10 years of war. The conflict has killed nearly half a million people and forced half of Syria's pre-war population from their homes.

US reactions in Afghanistan do not inspire confidence
The Arab Weekly/August 19/2021
The reactions of the Joe Biden administration to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Kabul included, do not inspire much confidence. The Taliban did what they wanted after suggesting to the Americans with whom they negotiated, in Doha and elsewhere, that they were ready to deal in a calm and rational fashion with the US military withdrawal. Well, the Biden administration offered every justification that made a military withdrawal from Afghanistan seem logical, citing the failure to establish a viable political system and a strong, cohesive army. It has also invoked the amount of money spent in Afghanistan and the human losses incurred, which did not serve the American political project that got under way in 2001 during the era of President George W Bush. The administration’s reactions suggest naivety or indifference to the future of Afghanistan and its people. It is inaccurate on the part of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to say that America achieved its goals in Afghanistan, since it only wanted to eliminate terrorism. Blinken did not take into account that the terrorism of the Taliban goes beyond the relationship it established with Al-Qaeda and its harbouring of the terrorist Osama bin Laden, who was behind the so-called “conquests of New York and Washington.” He completely ignored the fact that Taliban’s terrorism victimises the Afghan people and women in particular. Is not depriving women of education a form of terrorism? Isn’t imposing a certain dress on women a form of terrorism?
What fuels many fears in the region extending from Afghanistan to Mauritania and from the Gulf and the Middle East, is that we find outselves in front of an American administration that does not seem to understand the basics and complexities of the Middle East region.
There is fear of the Biden administration being an extension of the Barack Obama administration, which failed abysmally with Iran. The American failure in the Syrian test was resounding, after Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons in his war against his people in 2013. Obama’s failures provided evidence that the Arabs have no choice anymore but to take matters into their own hands. If the Arabs had relied, for example, only on the goodwill of the American administration, Egypt would have been lost … Egypt would now be in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, who are ready to conclude every kind of deal with Iran and with others besides Iran in order to stay in power and contribute to the fragmentation of the region .From Carter to Joe Biden to Barack Obama, there are precedents that do not inspire confidence in the current US administration, especially since all the words that the US president uttered about the Taliban before surrendering to them were plainly not true. Biden insisted that the Taliban are not the North Vietnamese who reached Saigon in April 1975. Sooner or later, he will discover that the Taliban have not changed and cannot change and are certainly well organised.
The only advantage from the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the ensuing state of affairs in that country may be the unmasking of the Biden administration.
One cannot fathom how this administration can be so ignorant of what is going on inside Afghanistan or of the organisational capabilities of the Taliban, the legitimate offspring of the Pakistani Military Intelligence. It is also not logical that there was no US knowledge of what is going on inside the Afghan armed forces, whose reconstruction had been overseen since 2001 by American and other NATO officers. Theoretically, there were 300,000 Afghan soldiers. They evapourated soon after the US president announced that his country will withdraw from Afghanistan militarily before the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. It became clear that the existing regime in Afghanistan, headed by Ashraf Ghani, was corrupt and that the Afghan president, just like his predecessor Hamid Karzai, was not competent to take charge of the country. Ghani rushed to escape as soon as the Taliban fighters knocked on the doors of Kabul.
In any case, the question that arises now that the Taliban have laid their hands on Kabul, is who will fill the American vacuum in Afghanistan and the region as a whole? It is certain that America’s surrender to the Taliban is not good news, but it is also certain that the terrorists showed in the way they entered Kabul that they are well-organised and that their leadership knows exactly what it wants. It is not yet known whether the American surrender in the face of Taliban is final. All that we know is that the Afghan people are facing a major dilemma called Taliban rule, which will not hesitate to impose a culture of death on a country that has been in internal collapse since the fall of the monarchy in the mid-seventies of the last century. America tried its luck with Afghanistan. Before that, the Soviet Union tried its luck and also failed miserably. The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was one of the reasons for the collapse of the world’s second superpower. The Taliban succeeded where America and the Soviet Union failed … The problem is that they do not have their own political and economic project. The Taliban are similar to the Houthis in Yemen. All they can do is take Afghanistan into the unknown after they succeeded in exposing the weakness of the Biden administration, which claims it has other concerns than Afghanistan.

G7 foreign ministers: Afghanistan crisis requires international response
Reuters/August 19, 2021
LONDON: G7 foreign ministers called on Thursday for the international community to unite in its response to the crisis in Afghanistan to prevent it from escalating further, a statement issued by British foreign minister Dominic Raab said.
“The G7 Ministers call on the international community to come together with a shared mission to prevent the crisis in Afghanistan escalating,” said the statement, issued by Raab following a meeting of G7 foreign ministers. Britain currently holds the rotating leadership of the G7, which also includes the United States, Italy, France, Germany, Japan and Canada. “The crisis in Afghanistan requires an international response including intensive engagement on the critical questions facing Afghanistan and the region: with the Afghans most affected, parties to the conflict, the UN Security Council, the G20, international donors, and with Afghanistan’s regional neighbours,” the statement said. G7 foreign ministers also urged the Taliban to provide safe passage for those trying to flee Kabul, in the group's first formal statement on the crisis. The ministers "called for the Taliban to guarantee safe passage to foreign nationals and Afghans wanting to leave", according to Britain's foreign office. G7 countries are "continuing efforts to do everything possible to evacuate vulnerable persons from Kabul airport", they added. The meeting was chaired by British foreign minister Dominic Raab, who is under fire at home for reportedly being on holiday and "unavailable" to make a phone call to his Afghan counterpart as the crisis unfolded. The G7 leaders said they were "deeply concerned by reports of violent reprisals" and "discussed the importance of the international community providing safe and legal resettlement routes".
They agreed "to seek to secure an inclusive political settlement, enable life-saving humanitarian assistance and support in Afghanistan and the region, and prevent any further loss of life in Afghanistan and to the international community from terrorism," added the statement. Taliban fighters were at checkpoints around Kabul's airport on Thursday as concerns built they were blocking Afghans from reaching evacuation flights. Tens of thousands of people have tried to flee Afghanistan since the hardline militants swept into the capital on Sunday, as US-led forces withdrew after 20 years in the country.

Afghan footballer fell to death from US plane
AFP/August 19, 2021
KABUL: An Afghan footballer who played for the national youth team fell to his death after trying to cling to a US plane airlifting people out of Taliban-controlled Kabul, a sports federation said Thursday. The General Directorate of Physical Education and Sports of Afghanistan, a government institution that worked with sporting groups, confirmed the death of Zaki Anwari in the mayhem that erupted at the airport in the capital this week. “Anwari, like thousands of Afghan youths, wanted to leave the country but fell off a US plane and died,” the group said in a statement posted on Facebook. Thousands of Afghans have flocked to the airport this week in a bid to flee the country, following the Taliban’s lightning offensive that ended with them assuming power when president Ashraf Ghani fled. In a harrowing video from the airport on Monday, hundreds of people were seen running alongside a US Air Force plane as it gathered speed on the runway — several men desperately holding onto the side. Further clips on social media appeared to show two people falling to their deaths from a C-17 aircraft after it took off. Human remains were later found in a wheel well, the US military confirmed, adding that it was investigating the reported deaths linked to the C-17. “Before the air crew could offload the cargo, the aircraft was surrounded by hundreds of Afghan civilians,” US Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said. “Faced with a rapidly deteriorating security situation around the aircraft, the C-17 crew decided to depart the airfield as quickly as possible.” US President Joe Biden has come under pressure at home and abroad to explain how his administration was seemingly unprepared for the Taliban’s quick assault — and the way in which US troops are retreating from Afghanistan. Memories of the Taliban’s brutal regime of the 1990s — which saw music and television banned, people stoned to death and women confined to their homes — have caused panic about what lies ahead, prompting many Afghans to try to flee.

Czech pilot describes ‘demanding’ flight from Kabul
AP/August 19, 2021
PRAGUE: A Czech army pilot returning from Kabul described the difficult conditions in Afghanistan on Thursday — with barely any air traffic control, no refueling and take-offs “at own risk.”Identified only as “Major M M” on the Czech defense ministry website that published his account of the flight, the army pilot brought 62 people to Prague from Kabul on Wednesday. “I have done a few non-traditional flights, but this one was demanding and damn long,” said the pilot, who joined the army 20 years ago. His Airbus carried Czech soldiers, Afghan interpreters and their families, as well as four Afghans whose return had been requested by neighboring Slovakia. In total, the Czech army flew 195 people from Kabul to Prague on three flights between Monday and Wednesday. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis told reporters on Thursday that the third flight was also the last one. The major, who flew to Kabul via Baku, had to do without air traffic control in Afghan airspace.“We had to keep the distance in the air and land in an order, one plane after another. We looked for frequencies to communicate with each other,” he said.“We could not expect to get fuel in Kabul, so we filled up the tank in Baku.”His Airbus spent four-and-a-half hours at Kabul airport. Despite the difficult conditions, the Airbus captain said departures at the chaos-stricken airport were well-organized. “We considerately formed queues to taxi and take off. I followed the Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), just like the others,” he said. “We could see the distances between us on the TCAS display and that was, besides direct communication among the crews, the main way to communicate,” he added. He said the provisional air traffic control system at Kabul was barely audible, with controllers adding “at own risk” to each piece of information. “We did not feel danger, but the situation was really difficult because of the conditions in Kabul. It was an experience,” the pilot added.

Our dream collapsed’: British Afghans lament Taliban takeover
AFP/August 19, 2021
LONDON: Safir Khan shed tears after watching the Taliban regain power in his native Afghanistan, sending thousands fleeing to Kabul airport in a desperate bid to escape.
“There’s no life in our country. The Taliban never help people — they only know how to kill people,” the 31-year-old asylum seeker told AFP. He is among thousands of Afghans in Britain watching their stranded compatriots try to flee, many of them with bitter memories of the abuses carried out by the Taliban during its last stint in power between 1996 and 2001. The sight of a government propped up for two decades by Western money and troops falling to Taliban insurgents within two weeks has left many British Afghans despondent. “We never thought the Taliban would return. The dream we had for the future of Afghanistan has collapsed,” said Nooralhaq Nasimi, who reached Britain in a refrigerated lorry after fleeing Afghanistan in 1999.
“It’s a desperate situation — there’s no bright future. Afghanistan is left behind once again by the international community,” added Karim Shirin, director of the Afghan Association of London. Western leaders — particularly US President Joe Biden — have been criticized for withdrawing troops too hastily and abandoning Afghanistan to the hard-line Islamists. “Building a nation, a democracy, is a long-term solution. Twenty years is not enough. The US decision wasn’t logical and reasonable,” said Nasimi, director of London’s Afghanistan and Central Asian Association.
Fahima Zaheen, head of London-based Afghan refugee association Paiwand, said those fleeing to the UK need urgent support from groups like hers, which would in turn need help from the authorities. “The government had the past 20 years to prevent this situation,” she said, accusing officials of ignoring the plight of Afghans. Fears are growing that the Taliban could take action against those who worked for Western military forces, or others who were employed by the government, in the army, journalists and activists. Kabul-born Homed Mohammad claimed asylum in Britain in 2001 and remembers when the Taliban chopped off the hands of thieves, terrorized women and banned music and football. “All I care about is my family over there — I don’t know what is going to happen,” he said.The UK government on Tuesday announced it would take 20,000 refugees “in the long-term” and 5,000 in the first year, prioritising women, children and those most vulnerable to Taliban reprisals. Adris Tokhi, an immigration solicitor at Paiwand, has been inundated with an “unimaginable” number of inquiries from worried Afghans and said the commitment did not go far enough. “The first year is the important year — people want their family members out as soon as possible,” he told AFP. Undocumented Afghan refugees often suffer from mental trauma and discrimination and cannot work or receive welfare payments, excluding them from society. Khan has been trying to obtain asylum in Britain since arriving from Jalalabad, east of Kabul, in 2008 and suffers from persistent mental health problems. “It’s really depressing — whenever I think about it, I lose my control. You ask a disabled guy to walk, but he can’t walk — that’s the feeling,” he said. The fate of Afghan women has become a key issue.
The Taliban previously barred girls from school and women from work and imposed wearing the full-face veil, the burkha, under their strict interpretation of Islamic law.
“I’m worried about the future. There’s been a vast amount of progress and it would be unfortunate if we start from zero,” said Paiwand advocacy service manager Mariam Baraky. But Shirin believes the Taliban cannot reverse 20 years of educational, political and civil society development in Afghanistan. “People cannot cope with another atrocity by the Taliban,” he said.

UAE working with international partners to provide relief efforts in Afghanistan
Arab News/August 19, 2021
LONDON: The UAE said on Thursday that it was helping to facilitate the evacuation of foreign nationals from Afghanistan. “As part of its ongoing support on humanitarian grounds, the UAE has worked with its international partners to contribute to global relief efforts in Afghanistan,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation said in a statement issued by state news agency WAM. Sultan Mohammed Al-Shamsi, assistant minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation for international development affairs, said that the UAE’s focus in recent days has been to support the efforts made by a number of countries and NGOs to safely evacuate their officials and employees, including some Afghan citizens. He said: “The UAE is a committed and steadfast member of the international community and is exerting significant effort to safeguard those in need,” adding that the support provided by the Emirates is evidence of its commitment to strengthening international cooperation during crises. “Guided by our principled support for peaceful, multilateral solutions, the UAE is also working with its international partners to advance efforts to achieve the aspirations of the Afghan people for peace, development, and stability,” he added. Al-Shamsi also said that the UAE joins international calls “for a peaceful solution that meets the hopes and aspirations of the Afghan people.”Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Sunday as the Taliban closed in on the capital, Kabul, and subsequently took control of the presidential palace, following a lightening offensive that saw the group capture the country’s major cities in 10 days. Ghani arrived in the UAE on Wednesday where he is being hosted on “humanitarian grounds,” according to UAE officials. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed received a phone call from Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, who thanked the UAE for helping to evacuate Australian nationals from Afghanistan, in addition to evacuating members of diplomatic missions from a number of other countries.

Greek wildfire burns through pine forest for 4th day
AP/August 19, 2021
THEA, Greece: Hundreds of Greek and Polish firefighters, backed by more than two dozen helicopters and planes, battled a major wildfire ravaging a pine forest for a fourth day Thursday northwest of the Greek capital. The fire near the village of Vilia, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Athens, has already burned through thousands of hectares and led to evacuation orders being issued for several villages in the area. Across the country, the fire department said 55 new forest fires had broken out in the 24 hours between Wednesday evening and Thursday evening, with most tackled in their early stages. Reinforcements were sent to the main blaze in Vilia, with 22 helicopters, including two from Russia and one from the United Arab Emirates, and 11 planes providing air support to 451 firefighters and 166 vehicles. The ground forces include 143 Polish firefighters sent as assistance to Greece, which has been battling hundreds of wildfires across the country this month. The Polish firefighters would remain in the country for another two weeks, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Twitter. The blaze burned several houses and summer homes in and near the nearby village of Thea, including the home of local resident Nikolaos Loanas. “This house that burned to the ground is mine. I’ve had it for about 40 to 45 years and it was built through hardship, with a lot of effort, sweat and stress,” he said. “It was 45 years’ worth of memories. .... My wife and I moved here when we were young, my two children grew up here, played here, had fun here, my three granddaughters liked it here.”Greece’s wildfires come in the wake of a heat wave — the country’s most severe in about three decades — that left shrubland and forests parched. The causes of the fires have not been officially established, although more than a dozen people have been arrested on suspicion of arson. The blazes have stretched the country’s firefighting capabilities to the limit, leading the government to appeal for international help, including through a European Union emergency response system. About 24 European and Middle Eastern countries responded, sending planes, helicopters, vehicles and hundreds of firefighters. Most have since returned home. “The situation we are facing is unprecedented for the country,” government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou said during a press briefing. “The fight we are waging on this front is threefold: extinguishing the fires, preventing new outbreaks, and repairing damage and compensating those affected.” Intense heat and wildfires have also struck other Mediterranean countries. Firefighters in France worked to contain a forest fire along the French Riviera on Tuesday, and recent wildfires have killed at least 75 people in Algeria and 16 in Turkey. Worsening drought and heat have also fueled wildfires in the western United States and in Russia’s northern Siberia region. Scientists say there is little doubt that climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving more extreme events.

Police investigating 'active bomb threat' near US Capitol
AP/August 19, 2021
WASHINGTON: Police were investigating a report Thursday of a possible explosive device in a pickup truck outside the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill and have evacuated multiple buildings on the sprawling Capitol complex, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.
US Capitol Police said officers were “responding to a suspicious vehicle near the Library of Congress,” and that it was an “active bomb threat investigation.”The building is near the Capitol and the Supreme Court. Police have also evacuated congressional offices nearby, encouraging people to remain calm and use the underground tunnels if necessary to leave the area. Congress is on recess this week. The law enforcement officials said investigators on the scene were working to determine whether the device was an operable explosive and whether the man in the truck was holding a detonator. Police were sending snipers to the scene, according to the officials. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. The area was blocked off by police cars and barricades, and multiple fire trucks and ambulances were staged nearby. Also responding were the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police, FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The White House said it was monitoring the situation and was being briefed by law enforcement. The incident comes months after a pipe bomb was left at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee in Washington a day before thousands of pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol in January.

Abbas Kamel holds talks in Israel to prevent new eruption in Gaza
The Arab Weekly/August 19/2021
CAIRO--Cairo dispatched the head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, Major General Abbas Kamel, to Israel on Wednesday to prevent the situation in Gaza from spinning out of control over the current stalemate.
Egyptian sources told The Arab Weekly that “Cairo senses the danger of the current stalemate. Since the ceasefire, there has been no progress in any of the issues that were discussed, whether it is the reconstruction of Gaza, the resolution of the issue of Israeli prisoners, or putting an end to Palestinian divisions.”
The sources added that “Cairo is seeking to salvage the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which Egypt reached last May. The ceasefire restored warmth to Cairo’s relationship with the US administration, paved the way for overtures by the new Israeli government and contributed to booting the Bennett government’s role on the Palestinian issue.”
Israel announced that Abbas Kamel’s visit, during which he met Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Defence Minister Benny Gantz, discussed “the political, security and economic aspects of Israeli-Egyptian relations and mediation over the security situation in the Gaza Strip.”
Kamel carried an invitation from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Wednesday to the Israeli prime minister to visit Cairo soon, without specifying a date.
Kamel’s trip came two days after a homemade rocket was intercepted after being launched from Gaza towards the town of Sderot in southern Israel. No casualties were reported.
It was the first time that a rocket had been fired from Gaza since Egypt announced a ceasefire agreement between the Palestinian factions and Israel on May 21, ending a round of fighting that caused the death of about 250 Palestinians and 13 Israelis and destroyed homes and devastated infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. A member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Fouad Anwar, pointed out that Abbas Kamel’s sudden visit to Israel reflects Cairo’s desire to consolidate the ceasefire agreement in Gaza and prevent its collapse.
He explained to The Arab Weekly that “the new Israeli government has entrenched itself politically and was able to pass the budget. It has an inclination to use more violence towards the Palestinians since the era of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with all its confusion, is now over.”
The Israeli army warned that incendiary balloons sent from Gaza will be treated as if they were rockets, indicating that the Bennett government intends to treat all such acts as a test to its resolve.
Missiles intermittently launched from Israel since the cease-fire have caused the death of a number of Palestinians, which means that a full blown explosion leading to the collapse of the ceasefire cannot be ruled out. The situation has been a source of concern for Cairo and convinced it to move fast.
Egyptian researcher in Palestinian affairs, Abdel Alim Mohammed, stressed that Kamel’s visit is a serious attempt to firmly anchor the truce between Israel and Hamas, after the fall of Netanyahu and the formation of a new government that can pave the way for opening a new page with Egypt.
Talking to The Arab Weekly, he added that “the Bennett government differs from that of Netanyahu. Major General Abbas Kamel faces the uphill task of pushing forward with the reconstruction issue, completing the prisoner exchange deal agreement and bridging the gap between Tel Aviv and Hamas on outstanding issues where they have so far diverged.”
He pointed out that Egypt could break the stalemate through unambiguous US assistance, because Cairo’s efforts alone will not succeed in consolidating the truce, as the situation is liable to explode at any moment. This has created an urgent need for the resumption of negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Israel has allowed the partial opening of the Gaza Strip crossings and the admission of basic humanitarian needs, while maintaining many restrictions on imports and exports and refusal to allow Qatari financial grants into Gaza.
But Israel has agreed to permit the import and export of products through the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, including building materials and various goods that were not allowed before.
Kamel visited Ramallah after meeting Bennett and met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss preventing any future eruptions.
New Israeli National Security Adviser, Eyal Holata, visited Egypt on August 8 to discuss developments in the Gaza Strip, one day after Israeli warplanes launched raids on Gaza targeting a camp and a rocket launch site after incendiary balloons were lobbed from the Strip.
Some Palestinian factions in Gaza warned of local tensions, saying that Israel’s continued closure of the coastal sector exacerbated the situation and reiterated their “determination to continue resistance to the siege and the struggle to break it.”

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials published on August 19-20/2021
After fall of Kabul, resistance to Taliban emerges in Panjshir
Bill Roggio/FDD's Long War Journal/August 19/2021
The Taliban’s lightning offensive, which began immediately after President Joe Biden’s announcement of withdrawal on April 14, 2021, has resulted in a near total takeover of Afghanistan. However, resistance to the Taliban rule has emerged in the remote and mountainous province of Panjshir.
The Taliban will likely seek to crush this last bastion of resistance, the so-called last “free” region in Afghanistan.
Prospects for this resistance, led by former Vice President and National Directorate of Security chief Amrullah Saleh, make it a decided longshot. Saleh has a formidable task ahead of him and his prospects are bleak. The Taliban dominates the security situation and has been infused with an arsenal of weapons as spoils from the now-defunct Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, which were supplied by the United States and NATO allies. Additionally, the Taliban holds strategic terrain and Panjshir is surrounded. Morale in the rank and file of the Taliban’s army is also buoyed by its stunning victory that saw 32 of 34 provinces and their capitals collapse in the span of just 11 days.
Only Panjshir remains, while the status of neighboring Parwan province is unclear. Saleh’s forces have reportedly attempted to expand their control beyond Panjshir in the neighboring province of Parwan.
The Taliban, while ascendent, has its own challenges. It is attempting to secure Kabul, a city of 4.5 million people flooded with refugees. The Taliban must commit significant resources to do so. There are reports of fighting in western Kabul, and that will tie down Taliban military assets. The Taliban must decide if wants to divert forces from Kabul and elsewhere to put down the emerging threat in Panjshir. The Taliban does not want a repeat of the 1990s, when it battled the Northern Alliance, which halted the Taliban’s goal of dominance in all of Afghanistan’s provinces.
It is unclear if Saleh and his Panjshir resistance has any support from the outside. The U.S. is fearful of upsetting the Taliban as it evacuates American citizens via Hamid Karzai International Airport, which is inside Taliban-controlled Kabul. Additionally, President Biden signaled in his Aug. 16 speech that he no longer has the desire or will to help the Afghan people. Russia and China have extended ties to the Taliban; Iran has been friendly with the group and has provided aid; and Pakistan has always been the Taliban’s prime sponsor. Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are at the mercy of following Russia’s lead.
While the power brokers in Panjshir no doubt stock up on critical supplies such as fuels, weapons, ammunition and food, those provisions will deplete up over time. Without outside support and supplies, the Panjshir resistance will be hard pressed to sustain itself. Unconfirmed reports indicated that the Panjshir resistance has taken control of Chahikar and is fighting for the strategic Salang Pass, which would give Saleh a lifeline to the outside world.
Saleh fled to Panjshir after the fall of Kabul and the collapse of the Afghan government on Aug. 15. He joined Ahmad Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the famed commander of the Northern Alliance who was assassinated by Al Qaeda suicide bombers just two days prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Two days later, he declared himself president when Arshif Ghani, the last president, fled the country.
As per the constitution of #Afghanistan, in absence, escape, resignation or death of the President the Firsf VP becomes the caretaker President. @AmrullahSaleh2 is now the caretaker President of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/htdL35AVSN
— Office of President Amrullah Saleh (@AfghPresident) August 17, 2021
Saleh said that he would “under no circumstances bow” to the Taliban and will continue to fight.
The nascent Panjshir resistance has been bolstered by remnants of Afghan forces that refused to surrender and fled the Taliban takeover of the provinces of Kunduz, Badakhshan, Takhar, and Baghlan. Many of these forces regrouped in Andarab district in Baghlan. Andarab is a known hub for anti-Taliban activity. In 2011, The New York Times Magazine described Andarab as “an entirely Tajik district that is staunchly anti-Pashtun,” the ethnic group that makes up a significant portion of the Taliban.
In addition to keeping supply lines open, Saleh is staring down the tall task of rebuilding Afghan security forces that were ground down by years of fighting with the Taliban. As former NDS chief, Saleh is in possession of contacts throughout the country. Tens of thousands of former soldiers and NDS personnel are in danger of Taliban reprisals. The Taliban has already executed numerous soldiers, policemen, intelligence personnel, interpreters, and a host of Afghans who have helped the former Afghan government and the U.S. It remains to be seen if Saleh organize them to resist an ascendant Taliban.
The first step for Saleh is to hold Panjshir.
*Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

Iran is not serious about rejoining the nuclear deal
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/August 19/ 2021
A predominant theory on Iran’s stance toward the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or nuclear deal, has been anchored in the belief that the Tehran regime is desperate for a revival of the agreement.
This argument is buttressed by the regime’s financial hardships and the significant pressure it faces inside the country. After the former Trump administration began imposing sanctions on the regime following its withdrawal from the deal in 2018, the Iranian leadership faced two major uprisings at home. The regime is now bankrupt, both politically and economically. In addition, Tehran is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain funding for its militias and forces inside and outside the country.
The ruling mullahs are also facing one of the worst budget deficits in the four decades since they seized power. This deficit will increase inflation and devalue the currency even further.
As a result, the revival of the nuclear deal would lift the primary and secondary US sanctions on Iran’s energy, banking and oil sectors. With a return to the agreement, the Tehran regime would also see billions of dollars flow into its treasury, as trade with the EU and Western investment in the country would also increase. But what if the regime is no longer interested in rejoining? In fact, Iran’s actions and policies suggest that the regime does not want the nuclear deal. During the Rouhani administration and after the Biden administration assumed office, Iranian leaders kept creating hurdles, declining to rejoin the deal and effectively preventing its revival.
From the outset, the Biden administration made it clear to the leadership that the US wants to return to the nuclear deal, and even announced that it would lift all sanctions linked to the agreement that were imposed by the Trump administration.
The regime could have easily returned to full compliance and immediately rejoined the nuclear agreement. But it dragged out the talks for six rounds and Iranian leaders kept demanding additional concessions from the West.
The regime also ratcheted up its nuclear threats and increased its attempts to extort greater concessions from the Biden administration, as it also did with the Obama administration. Iran’s former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif admitted to a forum organized by New York’s Council on Foreign Relations that he did not want the 2015 nuclear deal, but instead wants a new agreement. “A sign of good faith is not to try to renegotiate what has already been negotiated,” he said, adding in the same speech that the US must “compensate us for our losses.” Iran’s top judicial body had already demanded that the US pay $130 billion in “damages.”
Iranian leaders also demanded that the US lift other non-nuclear sanctions leveled by the former US administration over Iran’s human rights violations or terrorist activities. The Biden administration agreed to lift many curbs, including some that were not linked to the nuclear program, but Tehran wanted more. Top Iranian negotiator Abbas Araqchi acknowledged: “The information transferred to us from the US side is that they are also serious on returning to the nuclear deal and they have so far declared their readiness to lift a great part of their sanctions. But this is not adequate from our point of view and, therefore, the discussions will continue until we get all our demands.”If Iran really wanted to rejoin the nuclear deal, it would have done so under the Rouhani administration. Then the Iranian regime put the nuclear talks on hold, saying that the Security Council’s P5+1 should wait for the new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to take office. If Iran really wanted to rejoin the nuclear deal, it would have done so under the Rouhani administration because the final decision-maker in such matters is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, not the president or the foreign minister.
Meanwhile, Iran kept violating the nuclear deal and made further advances in its nuclear program during the talks. Now it is enriching uranium to 60 percent purity. It has also begun the process of producing enriched uranium metal. The Iranian parliament also passed a law requiring the government to expel International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear inspectors.
So, if the Iranian regime really wants to rejoin the nuclear deal, why is it refusing to cooperate with the IAEA or answer the agency’s questions concerning three undeclared nuclear sites? Also, if Tehran really wanted to revive the nuclear deal, it would not have insisted on holding indirect talks with the US? From 2013-2015, Iran held direct talks with the Obama administration. Iran’s actions indicate that the regime is not interested in rejoining the nuclear agreement.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh

Strategic dialogue gives Iraq plenty to talk about
Maria Maalouf /Arab News/August 19/2021
In the lead-up to Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi’s US visit last month, many Iraqi politicians called for talks on a timetable for reducing the US advisory forces, effectively returning Iraqi-American relations to a stage before the fall of Mosul in 2014. They also called on the Iraqi leader to work on transferring Iraqi-American relations from a military framework to a more comprehensive political-economic arrangement.
This important visit was accompanied by an increase in political voices opposing the US military presence in Iraq, an exchange of attacks between the Iraqi militias loyal to Iran and the US forces, and an increasingly fragile security situation.
Al-Kadhimi visited Washington hoping to discuss the future of US-Iraq relations and to resolve the controversy over the presence of US forces in the country in order to provide him with political opportunities before the early parliamentary elections, scheduled for next October.
Following the summit, Iraq appears to be putting more pressure on the pro-Iran Shiite militias. The talks proved that the militias’ opposition to even an advisory role for US troops is futile. The summit established the framework for deterrence to prevent anti-American militias from striking US targets inside Iraq.
It could be said that the results of the Iraqi-US dialogue were based on Washington’s security goals in the Middle East, which include preventing Iraq from becoming a haven for extremists, eliminating terrorist hotspots and ensuring the continued defeat of Daesh.
The Biden-Al-Kadhimi summit elevated US-Iraqi relations into a genuine strategic partnership.
The US also wants to stop any domination of Iraq by Iran and other hostile countries. Iraq remains the sixth-largest oil producer in the world, the second-largest exporter in OPEC, and a key part of the global energy market. Any threat to its production or export capability would severely threaten the world economy. Al-Kadhimi’s view is that the strategic dialogue unified the political position on Iraqi sovereignty — a historic day for Iraq and an important achievement in Iraqi-US relations.
The Biden-Al-Kadhimi summit elevated US-Iraqi relations into a genuine strategic partnership. It boosted the political fortunes of the Iraqi prime minister and will allow him to have a major influence on events. He was able to demonstrate that his government is a strategic asset to Washington.
Iraqi militias loyal to Iran have not announced their position on the US withdrawal and may wait for instructions from Tehran, their sponsor. However, many observers inside Iraq have been quick to praise Al-Kadhimi for the apparent success of the summit.
Nevertheless, the dialogue session failed to discuss the development of a strategy that accurately defines what Iraq needs from the US. Therefore, any judgment regarding the success or failure of the summit is premature, and we should wait to see actual results on the ground. Until this is clear, what was achieved can best be described as a redeployment to facilitate the Iraqi elections in October and to strengthen Democrats’ hopes in the US midterm elections in 2022.
Ultimately, Iraq should begin planning a road map outlining its strategic options after the US military withdrawal. This can be achieved by creating a national consensus on the country’s foreign and defense policies. It should retain the parliamentary resolution to pull all US forces out of Iraq as “non-binding.” It must also be sufficiently flexible to deal with any new development such as war between Israel and Hezbollah or the signing of a nuclear deal between the US and Iran. This should serve Iraq’s national interests well.
*Maria Maalouf is a Lebanese journalist, broadcaster, publisher and writer. She holds an MA in Political Sociology from the University of Lyon. Twitter: @bilarakib

This Betrayal of Afghanistan Is Beyond Belief
Tarek Fatah/The Toronto Sun/August 19/2021
Just one day after Kabul fell, Taliban 2.0 along with their American and Pakistani sponsors reassured us that the fresh version of the Islamist terrorist group was 'new and improved.' Then we witnessed the work of the barbarians.
After Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed that his government would "honour women's rights, within Islamic law," Taliban fighters shot and killed a woman for not wearing a burqa.
A photo emerged of a woman in Takhar province lying in a pool of blood, with loved ones crouched around her, after she was killed by insurgents for being in public without a head covering.
For the Biden and Kamala Harris types of this world, beholden to the hijab-promoting 'Squad' in the U.S. Congress and among the guilt-ridden Feminists of the #MeToo world, this "Islamic Sharia 101" lesson may yet escape their attention.
Behind the cause of the calamity in Afghanistan, one name stands out as one gambled the lives of tens of million while locked inside expensive conference halls of Doha in Qatar (Iran's closest ally in the region).
Experts on Afghan affairs in India believe that the biggest 'credit' for this plight of Afghanistan and the loss of the country to the Taliban goes to the shadowy American Afghan diplomat, Zalmay Khalilzad, better known for his pro-Pakistan policies.
As early as March 2019, the American news outlet Politico ran a story with the sub-heading: "Under peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. Administration seems poised to give away everything America has fought for in Afghanistan since 9/11."
An example of this was recently seen in April 2021. At a time when the Taliban were rampaging in Afghanistan through Pakistan's support, Khalilzad defended Pakistan during a hearing at the US Senate's Committee on International Relations, denying Pakistan's role in supporting the Taliban.
Khalilzad assured the Senate committee that the Pakistani leadership has given assurances that it does not support the Taliban and stressed, "I think Pakistan understands the implications of the civil war in Afghanistan."
Much has been written on the 'Fall of Kabul' and the 'Victory of Islam' over 'non-believers' such as the West and India, and celebrations have broken out among India's Muslim community as well as Pakistan's. However, these celebrations of Islam's victory over the 'kufaar' is not restricted to jihadis and their admirers in South Asia.
Sam Westrop of the Middle East Forum has listed major Muslim figures in the West who have expressed their joy at the Taliban victory in Kabul.
Among them is Yasir Nadeem Al Wajidi, Islamic cleric in the U.S., director of Darul Uloom Online, and lead teacher of the Institute of Islamic Education Elgin IL. He tweeted: "Congratulations to #Taliban and the people of Afghanistan on the rebirth of the Islamic Emirate! Allah has once again given you the opportunity to present to the world the Islamic system based on justice and fairness. Your blessed entry into #Kabul is reminiscent of the Prophetic era."
Kamil Ahmad, a Canadian Islamic cleric who lectures at TV channels Peace TV and Huda TV, and teaches at the Islamic Online University, said: "Whether you like the #IslamicEmirateOfAfghanistan (aka #Taliban) or not, they are now in power. As long as their mandate is to rule by Islam and not man-made ideologies and systems of governance, they should be supported."
I asked the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) for its statement on the Taliban takeover of Kabul, since the Canadian Muslim community has a large Afghan population, but I received no response. There were other Canadian Islamic groups that did not release with their position on the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. On Tuesday, I sat on numerous Indian TV networks discussing Afghanistan and was shocked to see the glee and joy of Pakistanis and Indian Muslims celebrating the Taliban victory.
On the approaching 20th anniversary of 9/11 — while Joe Biden may not realize — the forces of Islamism will be celebrating the deaths in the United States, wherever proponents of Islamism reside, be it in Kabul, Karachi or Kashmir.
*Tarek Fatah is a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, and a columnist at the Toronto Sun.

Biden's Afghanistan Disaster Has Left the West Defenseless against Islamist Terrorists
Con Coughlin/August 19/2021
The fear now is that, as Western intelligence agencies are no longer able to monitor the activities of Islamist extremists both in Afghanistan and in neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Iran, the West will find itself increasingly vulnerable to high profile terror attacks as a direct consequence of Mr Biden's disastrous withdrawal plan.
An important first step for the security of the United States would be immediately to shut its southern border.
The alarming implications, in terms of Western security, of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan are clearly an issue the Biden administration failed to take into consideration when deciding to abandon Afghanistan to its fate. It is an oversight that adds to the scale of the disaster that Mr Biden has just inflicted on the security of the Western alliance.
The ability of U.S. security officials to monitor and disrupt the activities of Islamist terror groups will be severely diminished as a consequence of the Biden administration's catastrophic decision to end America's military involvement in Afghanistan.
The ability of U.S. security officials to monitor and disrupt the activities of Islamist terror groups will be severely diminished as a consequence of the Biden administration's catastrophic decision to end America's military involvement in Afghanistan.
One of the most notable achievements of the US-led coalition's presence in Afghanistan during the past two decades has been its relentless campaign to destroy the terrorist infrastructure of Islamist terror groups such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation.
In the years immediately following the September 11th attacks in 2001, American and other intelligence agencies estimated that around 80 percent of Islamist-inspired terror plots against the West originated from Afghanistan or the lawless tribal territories on the Pakistani border.
Today that figure has been reduced to almost zero, as the highly successful counter-terrorism campaign mounted by the U.S. and key allies like Britain against Afghan-based Islamist terror cells has seen their infrastructure destroyed, and their ability to wreak havoc against the West curtailed.
The success of the American-led campaign has resulted in groups like al-Qaeda, as well as more recent Islamist organisations like ISIS, being forced to locate their operations to other failed states, such as Syria and Libya.
Following this week's dramatic collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani and its replacement by the Taliban, senior Western intelligence officials are becoming increasingly concerned about their ability to continue monitoring the activities of Islamist terror cells in Afghanistan, as well as neighbouring countries.
Reports have already surfaced in recent days of al-Qaeda supporters flocking to join the Taliban as it intensified its campaign to seize control of the country through force of arms.
ISIS terror cells are also known to be actively involved in Afghanistan and have been accused of carrying out some of the most deadly attacks against civilian targets, including the 2020 joint attack on a hospital maternity ward and funeral procession in Kabul that left 56 dead and more than 100 wounded.
The fear now is that, as Western intelligence agencies are no longer able to monitor the activities of Islamist extremists both in Afghanistan and in neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Iran, the West will find itself increasingly vulnerable to high profile terror attacks as a direct consequence of Mr Biden's disastrous withdrawal plan.
Of particular concern for Western intelligence and security officials is the fate of Afghanistan's highly respected intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), whose officers have played a central role in the U.S.-led coalition's long-running campaign against the Taliban and its terrorist affiliates.
Unlike Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, which has actively supported the Taliban and famously provided al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden with a safe house, the NDS has won many plaudits from American and other Western intelligence agencies for the bravery and courage they have displayed in taking the fight to the Taliban during the past two decades.
But now that the Islamist militants control the entire machinery of the Afghan government, NDS officers and their families have been abandoned to an uncertain fate by the Biden administration, one where their lives are at risk of reprisals by the Taliban.
As one senior Western intelligence officer told Gatestone after the Taliban seized power earlier this week, there is a great deal of anger and resentment within Western intelligence circles at the way their erstwhile Afghan allies have been abandoned to their fate. "These guys risked their lives on a daily basis for the coalition cause, and now the Biden administration is treating them as though they did not exist.
"The fact that we will no longer able to work with our former Afghan colleagues to monitor the activities of the Taliban and Islamist terror groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda leaves the West wide open to attack from terror cells based in Afghanistan and surrounding countries."
An important first step for the security of the United States would be immediately to shut its southern border.
The Taliban's dramatic seizure of power this week has certainly been a cause for celebration among jihadi extremists if their reaction to the power grab on social media is anything to go by.
Social media accounts sympathetic to al-Qaeda, for example, published an unsigned message shortly after the Taliban takeover congratulating "the brothers" in the movement on their victory. "Afghanistan is Conquered and Islam has won", read the message which was translated by the SITE intelligence group, which monitors extremist media. Western counter-terrorism officials are also concerned that militant groups like al-Qaeda will be boosted after the Taliban released thousands of prisoners held at Kabul's Bagram Air Base, once the nerve centre of the coalition war effort, as well as Pul-e-Charkhi, another Afghan prison on the outskirts of Kabul.
The alarming implications, in terms of Western security, of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan are clearly an issue the Biden administration failed to take into consideration when deciding to abandon Afghanistan to its fate. It is an oversight that adds to the scale of the disaster that Mr Biden has just inflicted on the security of the Western alliance.
*Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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Biden's Appalling Mistake is a Watershed for the West
Gwythian Prins/Gatestone Institute/August 19/2021
The main mission was and should have remained one of self-defence. Once this was forgotten, muddle and a sapping of will set in. Moral ambivalence about our values and ourselves, which our enemies do not have about themselves, expressing itself as an embarrassment about using force in our self-defense, meant that softer edges were attached.
We needed strategic patience of the sort that has kept US forces on the Korean peninsula, or British forces in Cyprus, for a lifetime of decades. Our leaders, and mainly one, lacked the vision to have that patience and we shall pay a heavy price.
This withdrawal is therefore a set-back for the Free World as we square off to defend our way of life against Xi Jinping's communist command group which, like the Taliban, does not understand win-win. "We win, you lose" is the next game.
[O]ur political class ... was utterly naïve at "12/11" when the PRC was let into the WTO, expecting it to become like us. This was like letting the fox into the hen-house in the expectation that it would behave like a hen.
What is needed now is a swift cold shower of geo-strategic reality in our political classes. The time for self-harming distractions with "wokus pocus," obsessing about sexual dysmorphia, Marxist "critical race theory" and "climate catastrophism" ... -- all of which the Chinese Communist Party is glad to encourage -- must end. We needed strategic patience of the sort that has kept US forces on the Korean peninsula, or British forces in Cyprus, for a lifetime of decades. Our leaders, and mainly one, lacked the vision to have that patience and we shall pay a heavy price. Pictured: US and South Korean soldiers stand guard in the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing North and South Korea on September 16, 2020.
Of course we, the Western Alliance, were going to withdraw from Afghanistan sometime. But not now and not like this. The twenty-year expedition in Afghanistan has been a litany of strategic and tactical errors starting with the failure to follow through on the success of Task Force Dagger to crush the Taliban when we most easily could have done so. The operationally brilliant first intervention by the Green Beret Special Forces "Horse Soldiers" of Alpha 595 (known to cinema-goers from the film "Twelve Strong" and now immortalised in an equestrian statue at 9/11 ground zero in New York), partnered with the Northern Alliance at the end of 2001, vectoring in modern Air Force fire-power from horse-back.
The Taliban were out of Kabul and on the run by November 2001 and Osama Bin Laden was on his way to the Tora Bora caves. US President George W. Bush's decision to open up war in Iraq before the Afghan job was done was a costly deflection. In the second phase, the Afghanistan mission lacked focus. Crushing terrorist bases? Nation-building? Narcotics suppression? Educational programmes for girls? Which? All?
Our mission should have been kept perfectly clear and the maintenance of aim should have been constant. It should have been about our national security first and last. Security from Islamist terrorist attacks was to be maintained by dominating these hard lands to the exclusion of others, as the British had done with some success for decades after General "Bobs" Roberts culminating victory over Ayub Khan in September 1880 at Kandahar in the Second Afghan War. This was called the Great Game. Geo-politics are facts on the ground. It is the Great Game still.
This week, not in military defeat but by just walking away, the West surrendered its hard-won dominance over this strategic space -- this pivotal crossroads -- in the modern version of that same old Great Game. The tactical expression of our strategic mission was to exclude the influence of our enemies, Russia, Iran and now Communist China, plus that of our "frenemies" Qatar and Pakistan, both active supporters of the Taliban. The Pakistani ISI intelligence service was the Taliban's great enabler -- with Chinese Communist support -- along the longest contiguous border. Remember that Osama Bin Laden was eventually found and killed hunkered down in the Pakistani military cantonment of Abbottabad. Now, maybe in a fit of absent-mindedness, President Biden has ceded our position in the most humiliating and morally indefensible way possible. The doctrine of R2P - "The Responsibility to Protect" - which was an honourable motif of twenty-first century Western military interventions, died in those mountains and deserts on the weekend 14-15th August 2021.
Now our enemies, who were enemies of each other, seem to be cutting deals with each other simply because they are our enemies. Shi'a Iranians from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force are reported to have been assisting Sunni Taliban at their countries' common frontier. Has Communist Chinese oblique military support channelled both ways to the Taliban, through Pakistan and through Iran, and prompt diplomatic recognition, bought their silence and even their active support against their co-religionists, denying them sanctuary (for which there is some evidence) in the on-going Uighur genocide in Xinjiang? Neither the Taliban nor the Chinese Communists care a whit about human rights. They do not figure at all because the rights of the individual are entirely subordinate to those of their respective all-dominating ideologies.
Yet, having been silent over the fatal weekend, in his first statement British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab misjudged the moment. He talked in traditional diplomatic bureaucratese that is wholly disconnected from the changed facts on the grounds after the fall. Sounding like one of his professional diplomats, he spoke of "contact groups", of G7 "pressure", of "sanctions" when there is now zero leverage. He even mused about increasing "development aid" to the Afghan people next year, to be supplied independent of the Taliban. What has he been smoking? We read authoritative reports that the Taliban may be preparing to boost poppy production next planting season to flood the West with heroin.
Taliban Afghanistan will now join the next empire, the People's Republic of China's Belt and Road form of neo-imperialism, which thereby deprives us and gives to the PRC access to un-mined gold reserves and the wealth of Afghanistan's minerals, including rare earths and enormous lithium deposits. The PRC uses them as part of a developed strategy to put a strategic economic arm-lock on us through the current self-harming western obsession with the thermodynamically incompetent orphan technology of lithium-ion battery electric vehicles. Meanwhile the PRC hoovers up oil supplies from our traditional suppliers -- it is already the world's leading oil importer -- and plans to double its oil consumption and its internal combustion engine vehicle fleets by 2040 using our primary intellectual property. Through "Net Zero" we are also giving away to the PRC western dominance of global transport systems too. Everything is interconnected in strategic terms.
Make no mistake, the educational and other benefits to the Afghans from the Western presence these last two decades -- and the benefits were immense but will now be erased along with the hopes and life chances of a rising young generation -- were a most welcome collateral, but they were collateral. The main mission was and should have remained one of self-defence. Once this was forgotten, muddle and a sapping of will set in. Moral ambivalence about our values and ourselves, which our enemies do not have about themselves, expressing itself as an embarrassment about using force in our self-defense, meant that softer edges were attached. These came to confuse and obscure the primary mission. It also appears that there was also an almost unbelievable intelligence failure in assessing the readiness of Afghan government forces to stand and fight. How did that happen? If it was indeed so, and not simply Biden ignoring the advice that he was given, it must rank as one of the greatest such failures in US intelligence history. Biden's withdrawal order had also swept away the "enablers" -- the people who kept helicopters and critical air support for Afghan Government ground forces flying. No wonder they gave up.
We needed strategic patience of the sort that has kept US forces on the Korean peninsula, or British forces in Cyprus, for a lifetime of decades. Our leaders, and mainly one, lacked the vision to have that patience and to understand that the insurance premium to keep western dominance of the Afghan strategic space in the modern Great Game was modest compared to the geo-political benefits it bought us. Conversely, the cost of suspending that insurance payment means that we shall henceforth pay a heavy price in diminished reputation and influence around the world, as well as in increased risks of future conflict - and ironically heavier costs. This defeat was not inevitable, and the assumption being peddled that it was, must be firmly rebutted.
President Biden's decision to cut and run has given the world the image of the Chinook helicopter evacuating US Embassy Staff from Kabul in a replay of Saigon in 1975 and then, far worse, the images of desperate Afghans who had trusted us but were now swarming over and clinging to a USAF Globemaster transporter airplane, even as it rolled on the runway, so frantic were they to escape the enveloping darkness that the return of the Taliban to Kabul has brought them. Two fell to their deaths. The era of the Twin Towers ended as it had begun with innocent bodies falling from the sky. President Biden's decision to cut and run has mercifully avoided the bloody chaos of the retreat from Kabul in 1842, but without Biden's decision none of this would have happened; and Elphinstone's memory would have remained in obscurity.
Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the initial responses to 9/11, was completely correct in saying that the signal of the Taliban's return for the 20th anniversary of that attack is the worst possible: not just for Afghanistan but for the credibility and perceived reliability of the Free World. Although the British disapproved of Biden's order, we could not resist it and knowing that it was the wrong thing to do, we too have had to evacuate. Biden has damaged us as well, for this humiliation will make building "global Britain" after the liberation of "Brexit" that much harder.
In Afghanistan, late in the day the British and US Governments seem to have accepted a moral responsibility to evacuate all our interpreters and their families, as our rightly furious former field commanders demand. But it now may be too late for many, as Ben Wallace, a former soldier and British Secretary of State for Defence admitted. In addition, as with Hong Kong, we have a duty to open an escape route for all the educated Afghan democrats -- an entire young generation -- and especially for the young women. Like the Hong Kongers, we would be lucky to receive them. Again, the speed of the collapse brings this all into question.
What lessons should we learn? First, that the responsibility for this terrible self-inflicted defeat lies squarely with President Biden. Trump had many successes in his foreign policy (the Abraham Accords; preparing to deter Xi Jinping) but failings also, of which his naive attempt to "cut a deal" with the Taliban was one of the worst. The Taliban do not do negotiation, nor keep any word, and Trump should have known, or have been made to understand, that. The "Doha deal" and draw-down was a grave error: it disheartened the Afghan government and it encouraged the Taliban. So Trump does have his share of the blame, but not in the way some would suggest. A strong narrative is building in the usual anti-Trump quarters that tries to blame the current catastrophe entirely on Trump. Biden, who has so far distanced himself from all of Trump's other policies, tried that line in an apparent attempt at self-exculpation by teleprompter on 16th August. After reading it out, he marched off, refusing all questions, perhaps wisely. Last weekend's disaster cannot be laid principally at Trump's door. Biden's 8th July Press Conference will go down as one of the most damaging ever by any President. His petulant refusal to heed his own military and intelligence advisers -- or maybe to understand them -- and the assertion that we would never see what we have just seen five weeks later, a repeat in Kabul of the 1975 helicopter airlift from the Saigon US Embassy, have indelibly defined his Presidency.
In the USA, another slow fuse has also been lit this week. The Democratic Party will soon have to explain how it foisted such a manifestly impaired candidate as Biden upon the American people and by extension upon the Free World at any time and most especially at a time of such strategic transformation. There will be a great reckoning within our greatest ally. The American people want their troops home, as is normal and natural, but not in such circumstances that render the Free World in even more danger than before 9/11, not to mention the utter humiliation wrought at the hand of no enemy, but that of their own President.
Suzanne Raine, the formidable former Head of the British Joint Terrorism Assessment Centre and now at the University of Cambridge, has been at the epicentre of the fight against Islamist terrorism for the last twenty years; her words carry much weight. Her first public assessment on 18th August is that when the President argued that we should focus on today's threats, not yesterday's threats, there is a "logical inconsistency" in Biden's justification of his withdrawal. As she crisply observed, yesterday's threats are only not today's -- and tomorrow's -- threats by dint of all that has now been surrendered. We have lost our eyes and ears by surrendering dominance of the Afghan space in the modern Great Game (my words); and specifically she observes the known links between individuals in the current senior Al Qaeda leadership and the new rulers of Kabul. Under the western dominance of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda was pushed to the failed state spaces in Libya and Iraq but will now have the option of flowing back. The escape route from Afghanistan to Libya and Iraq was through Iran; so Iran can be the route of return, about which we can now do nothing. We are once more in a more passive than active mode. In sum, Ms Raine's view is the old message: that we should trust deeds not words. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and Biden has just made that task immensely more difficult.
Biden's unexpected announcement of US withdrawal by an arbitrary date against the advice of Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as Central Intelligence Director William Burns, will be the most consequential decision of his presidency. Nor can it be denied that Biden's failure to consult his closest allies has weakened the Western alliance.
The US withdrawal has, in addition, precipitated the worst failure in British foreign policy since the Suez debacle of 1956, when the unilateral action of the Eisenhower administration, threatening to trigger a run on the British Pound, strong-armed British abandonment of its military operation on the very cusp of success. The Chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat, has correctly made that comparison. It was creditable of the UK government, after the shock announcement, to seek to assemble a rump alliance without Biden's America, but the chances of this succeeding were always slim. The real fighters like the Scandinavians, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia were too few and the paper tiger of the EU's ambition to present itself as a military power was exposed for what it was.
Suez was followed by an era of anti-Americanism and of "declinism" -- learned helplessness -- in the British establishment which became one of the groundwater springs that nourishes still the unreconciled remainer/remoaner/rejoiner losers of the 23 June 2016 referendum to leave the EU. We must guard against this resurgence at a moment when the solidarity of the anglosphere is more important than ever.
Second, this withdrawal is therefore a set-back for the Free World as we square off to defend our way of life against Xi Jinping's communist command group which, like the Taliban, does not engage in deal-making nor understand win-win. "We win, you lose" is the next game. The Chinese are highly organized and strategic -- as we must swiftly become after this defeat. They understand us incredibly well. They have sent their leadership cadres through our universities for three decades. In comparison we know hardly anything about China because we do not have that depth of experience in our political class which was utterly naive after "12/11" when the PRC was let into the WTO, expecting it to become like us. This was like letting the fox into the hen-house in the expectation that it would behave like a hen.
We are, however, not without resources for this Great Power contest which is already in train as a "grey war," with PRC "ghost attack" by economic means, in which it encourages us to follow policies -- notably "Net Zero" fantasy green economics -- that they think, correctly, are disadvantageous to both our economy and defence, and hence in their strategic interest. The Five Eyes intelligence alliance is still peerless. Our combined military deterrence, grounded in the world's leading military cultures, still gives us superior capability across the full spectrum of future conflict so long as we do not compromise it further in worrying ways, for example by allowing "woke" identity irrelevances or green virtue-signalling to distract commanders and injure the chains of command. Furthermore, in democracies, however flawed, power derived from the ballot box is always more legitimate in the eyes of those governed than rule by fear in autocracies.
Third, with the loss of Afghanistan we cross a watershed. What is needed now is a swift cold shower of geo-strategic reality in our political classes. The time for self-harming distractions with "wokus pocus," obsessing about sexual dysmorphia, Marxist "critical race theory" and "climate catastrophism" built on Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness that mistakes hypothetical scenario projections for real data -- all of which the Chinese Communist Party Ministry of State Security United Front Work Department is glad to encourage -- must end.
Biden's terrible mistake must be turned into the wake-up call for the Free World to pull itself together after two years in which, one way or another, the Chinese Communists made the world sick, causing the deaths of more than four million people and injuring the economies of many nations -- all, to date, with no accountability. We must clear for action, which means that to defend ourselves by credible deterrence, we must start by dumping overboard all extraneous impediments.
The challenge of the defence of Taiwanese freedom -- first, by strong deterrence -- plainly approaches. The regional democracies Japan, India, and Australia stand ready as the 2021 Japanese Defense White Paper shows; and the USA must once again stand tall.
*Gwythian Prins is Research Professor Emeritus at the LSE and a past member of the British Chief of the Defence Staff's Strategy Advisory Panel
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