An Afghan national, brought to the United States as part of President Joe Biden’s massive resettlement operation over the last year, has been charged with violently attacking and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Afghanistan
Canada must loosen Taliban sanctions amid multiple Afghanistan crises: aid groups
Major humanitarian groups are urging the Trudeau government to loosen its restrictions on working with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Canadian Red Cross, Oxfam Canada and Amnesty International are among 18 groups arguing that Ottawa has fallen behind its peers in finding loopholes for humanitarian aid while isolating the Taliban regime.
They say the Canadian sanctions are blocking their response to a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan.
Mark Frerichs: US hostage swapped for Afghan leader linked to Taliban
The Taliban have released a US engineer they had held hostage since 2020 in exchange for an Afghan tribal leader held in US custody since 2005.
Mark Frerichs was handed over at Kabul airport on Monday, the Taliban said.
In return they received Bashir Noorzai, a Taliban ally serving a life sentence for drug trafficking.
US President Joe Biden said that the swap required “difficult decisions” that he did not take lightly.
Christians ‘Face Routine Torture’ in Afghanistan
The estimated 15,000-20,000 Christians who remain in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover “face routine torture and persecution from both the government and their own friends, families and communities,” according to a new report.
This is not a new development. From the start on August 15, 2021, matters significantly worsened for Christians when the Biden administration abruptly surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban. The poorly-planned defeat of U.S. troops caused the Central Asian nation to fall right back into the grips of the Taliban, one of the Islamic terrorist groups complicit in the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.
Taliban posts ISIS-style execution videos
Taliban posts ISIS-style execution videos showing prisoners being shot dead by cheering fanatics as they copy terror group’s tactics to instil fear among Afghan resistance fighters
The Taliban have summarily executed members of a resistance group fighting against their harsh rule in Afghanistan.
A video filmed and shared on the Taliban’s group chats shows a group of five blindfolded fighters who have their hands tied behind them before they are executed by cheering members of the Taliban.
In a move that echoes ISIS’s social media strategy, Taliban shared their battlefield atrocities to spread fear among their enemies.
Meta Oversight Board objects to removing positive newspaper report on Taliban
‘We Did That’: Afghanistan a Year after the US Surrender
Afghanistan is a Terror State, Al Qaeda Is Thriving
July 31st 2022. Kabul, Afghanistan. Ayman al-Zawahiri is killed by an American drone strike. His death is described as a victory against Islamic terrorism and a success for the Biden administration. Zawahiri was an Islamic terrorist, head of al-Qaeda; his death was good news. America’s intelligence services showed they still could obtain precise intelligence in hostile countries and strike enemies of the United States wherever they are. Was the elimination of Zawahiri, however, really a victory against Islamic terrorism?
It was right to have left Afghanistan.
Homeland Security May Have Allowed Dangerous, Unvetted Afghans Into United States: Inspector General
During the evacuation of Afghanistan from July 2021 to January 2022, the United States brought nearly 80,000 Afghan citizens into the United States, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to fully vet some of the evacuees, potentially allowing individuals who pose a national security risk into the country, according to a recent report.
The DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted an audit to determine the extent to which the DHS screened, vetted, and inspected the evacuees.
Video: Afghan woman cries for help after torture, forced marriage to Taliban official
A young woman cries and pleads for her life. In a 19-minute video published by Afghan media on August 30, a former medical student named Elaha showed images she says came from being beaten, raped and tortured by Saeed Khosty, a former Taliban official, during the past six months. She says Khosty threatened her family and forced her to marry him.
Taliban say they’ve not found body of al Qaeda leader
KABUL, Aug 25 (Reuters) – The Taliban have not found the body of Ayman al-Zawahiri and are continuing investigations, group spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said on Thursday, after the United States said they killed the al Qaeda leader in an airstrike in Kabul last month.
Canada’s spy agency concerned Afghanistan will increase the risk of religiously motivated extremism in Canada: docs
Canada’s domestic spy agency warned the government in October that the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan could increase the risk of religiously motivated extremism in Canada, documents reviewed by Global News suggest.
Additional newly released documents also suggest Canadian government officials were caught off guard by the speed of the Taliban’s takeover last summer, although the terrorist organization’s resurgence was seen as a foregone conclusion by Canadian intelligence officials as early as May 2021.
Freeing of terrorist who killed Australian soldiers shows how the US gave Taliban leverage despite allies’ objections
Many of the Taliban freed under the Doha Agreement took up arms, providing a deadly illustration of how the US-Taliban deal undermined the viability of the Afghan republic.
Hekmatullah, a Taliban infiltrator serving as a sergeant in the Afghan National Army, was involved in a so-called “green on blue” turncoat attack that killed three Australian soldiers in Uruzgan in 2012.
Afghanistan and the Collapse of Normals’ Faith in the System
I don’t want to hear any more about how there is a two-track justice system in America, or about how the media consists of lying regime toe-suckers, or about how our institutions are garbage entities run by garbage people producing garbage results. I know all that, and so do you. We’re based, conservative woke, and we know what time it is. It’s Backlash O’clock and it is time to party.
So it’s actually getting to be a cliché to point out the utter incompetence, corruption, and unsupported self-regard of our would-be betters.
A year after the fall of Kabul, Canadian veterans urge Ottawa not to abandon Afghans trying to flee
It’s been one year since Kabul fell to the Taliban after American and allied troops — including Canadians — left the country.
Video footage showed Afghans streaming onto the tarmac at the Kabul airport, desperate to escape, as a U.S. air force plane took off. Some fell to their death trying to hold on.
“We watched that terrible situation unfold … we saw that tremendous catastrophe that happened in Kabul,” said Brian Macdonald.
While Canada certainly shoulders some of the blame for the Afghan debacle the deal was only to assist those who helped our efforts directly i.e. Interpreters and not massive numbers of refugees ill-suited to our culture.
US kept Britain in dark over deal that led Taliban back to power
The white flag with its black Arabic lettering flies everywhere in Kabul. The symbol of the Taliban’s triumph flutters on the American Humvees in which long-haired fighters cruise around sporting purloined Oakley sunglasses and M16 rifles; above Aimuddin’s ice-cream shop in the bazaar; atop Wazir Akbar Khan hill.
One year after the takeover it is hard to absorb the fact that 20 years of international efforts to reinvent Afghanistan at a cost of a trillion dollars and tens of thousands of western and Afghan lives lost, led only to the Taliban returning to power.
In and done from now on. No more bothering with “nation building” which seems to be code for plundering the tax payer.
Biden Administration Stonewalls Inspector General on Afghanistan on Terror Cash
In June, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s office (SIGAR), dispatched letters to Secretary of State Blinken and Samantha Power complaining that the State Department and USAID were stonewalling its investigation of waste, corruption and terror cash.
“Two SIGAR audits are also being hindered by a lack of cooperation from State and USAID. The first evaluates your agencies’ compliance with the laws and regulations prohibiting transfers of funds to members of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network,” the letter to Power complained.