Afghanistan

BOSTON (AP) — Over two decades, the United States and its allies spent hundreds of millions of dollars building databases for the Afghan people. The nobly stated goal: Promote law and order and government accountability and modernize a war-ravaged land.

But in the Taliban’s lightning seizure of power, most of that digital apparatus — including biometrics for verifying identities — apparently fell into Taliban hands. Built with few data-protection safeguards, it risks becoming the high-tech jackboots of a surveillance state. As the Taliban get their governing feet, there are worries it will be used for social control and to punish perceived foes.

Putting such data to work constructively — boosting education, empowering women, battling corruption — requires democratic stability, and these systems were not architected for the prospect of defeat.

Our politicians and media are treating the Taliban’s pronouncements as if the group can be held to account

There were some curious juxtapositions in Afghanistan last week. On the one hand, the under-19 Afghan cricket team was allowed to leave for a planned tournament in Bangladesh, as if things were normal, while on the other there was a sinister military parade taking place in Kandahar this week. After the lines of horsemen in flowing white robes, a deliberate image of Islamic warrior superiority, came the fleets of captured Humvees. And at the side of the procession lay a car packed with a bomb, suicide vest, and large plastic bottles of explosives from a roadside bomb.

The same grifters who lied for 20 years have found a new lie.

The Taliban has begun to fill government positions following its successful conquest of Afghanistan. Among the names are people still on the UN Security Council sanction list and a minister with a $5-million US bounty on his head.

Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, a co-founder and head of the Taliban’s leadership council, was named acting Prime Minister of Afghanistan on Tuesday, with other senior Taliban leaders approving his nomination. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, considered the militant group’s de-facto leader, was named Deputy Prime Minister, according to a Taliban spokesman.

Joe Biden’s self-touted evacuation of more than a hundred thousand Afghans, presumably allies, might just have been a migrant-lift instead of an evacuation of Americans and allies, an open border of a different sort, with NGOs and left-wing lawyers involved in who got in.

In the arts, the writer must craft a fictional work to induce the willful suspension of disbelief: the audience must deny the fact the work isn’t real; immerse themselves in the imaginary settings and manufactured situations; and be emotionally invested in the fictional characters’ lives. When the fictional story is over, the audience returns to reality, edified—or at least entertained—by the experience.

By contrast, applying fictional narratives to actual foreign affairs and national security induces the suicidal suspension of disbelief. And no one is safe.

In early May, as US and Nato forces began their final withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban stepped up their military offensive against Afghan national security forces.

But they also did something less common in the group’s history of conflict in the country – they launched a comprehensive social media campaign to go with it.

A network of social media accounts highlighted the alleged failures of the Kabul government while lauding the Taliban’s achievements.

Tweets boasted about the group’s recent victories – sometimes prematurely – and pushed several hashtags, including #kabulregimecrimes (attached to tweets accusing the Afghan government of war crimes); #westandwithTaliban (an attempt to drive grassroots support) and #ﻧَﺼْﺮٌ_ﻣٌِﻦَ_اللهِ_ﻭَﻓَﺘْﺢٌ_ﻗَﺮِﻳﺐٌ (help from God and victory is near). The first of the hashtags at least trended in Afghanistan.

President Trump?

Two of the Afghan men evacuated from the Taliban-run country with their wives and children under the government’s generous refugee programme have called for extended families to be brought over as well, with one complaining that it was taking too long to get permanent accommodation.

That didn’t take long.

Tony Blair today took a swipe at Joe Biden as he said the US withdrawal from Afghanistan will embolden the West’s enemies and give them a ‘belief our time is over’.

The former prime minister said ‘it is clear now’ the US has decided that for the ‘foreseeable future’ it has a ‘very limited appetite for military engagement’.

Mr Blair suggested Europe and NATO should therefore ‘develop the capability to act’ when the US is ‘unwilling’.

I don’t care much for either dog in this fight, but Blair is right about Biden.