Answering New York Times' article framing the fall of Afghanistan as caused by Afghan militias
On 24 Dec. 2024 U.S. paper the New York Times published an article with the title “Behind Afghanistan’s Fall, U.S.-Backed Militias Worse Than the Taliban”. Author of the article is Azam Ahmed, international investigative correspondent for The New York Times, who is of Pakistani descent.
This title is in fact self-revealing and the article is an audacious attack against all Afghans who fought the Taliban:
calls Afghan anti-Taliban General a monster - 22 May 2024
Three main conclusions can be drawn from the mentioned article “Behind Afghanistan’s Fall, U.S.-Backed Militias Worse Than the Taliban” on the NYT:
1) Afghans
who fought the Taliban were not worse than the Taliban (which is wrongly claimed)
2) USA's role is described wrongly by the author
3) Pakistan's (not mentioned) role
This
article is meant to refute the basic claims of Azam Ahmed as written in his
article in the NY Times
1) Afghans
who fought the Taliban were not worse than the Taliban (which is wrongly claimed)
Not only is this claim the main message of the author through this article. He also mentions this nonsense repeatedly:
To prove his points, Azam Ahmed uses weak witnesses, like “an old man”:
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” an old man stood up and said, according to four people at the meeting. “We have seen this before. The militias will become a bigger problem than the Taliban.”
Then the author moves on by making bold claims:
“For years, the Americans supported militias in the north to fight the Taliban.”
That’s even a wrong claim, because the militias, who defeated the Taliban in 2001 as part of the Northern Alliance, following pressure by the USA. Afghan political analysts criticize this move until this day. Strong decentralized militias could have fought the Taliban more effectively who demoralized the Afghan National Army (ANA) with their terrorist attacks and roadside bombs.
Another wrong claim by the author is:
“But the effort backfired — those groups preyed on the populace with such cruelty that they turned a one-time stronghold of the United States into a bastion of the insurgency. People came to see the militias, and by extensions the Americans, as a source of torment, not salvation.”
“But more than 50 interviews, conducted in Kunduz over 18 months, showed how American support for the militias spelled disaster, not just in the province but also across the rest of northern Afghanistan.”
The author continues to make wrong claims throughout his article, without mentioning even one (trustful) source or statistics:
“And he was just one of thousands of militia fighters unleashed in northern Afghanistan by the Americans and their allies — openly, covertly and sometimes inadvertently.”
Then Azam Ahmed starts mentioning a mysterious warlord named Mohammad Omar, whom he later just refers to as Mr. Omar, who shall be the main theme in the whole article:
“Mr. Omar, for example, who was known as the Wall Breaker, became the poster child of an abusive militia commander, marauding his way into local lore by robbing, kidnapping and killing rivals and neighbors under the auspices of keeping them safe from the Taliban.”
The regions plundered by Mr. Omar and other warlords were active battlefields during the war, mostly off limits to outsiders.”
“And one of the earliest efforts involved Mr. Omar, the Wall Breaker.”
“He decided that activating Mr. Omar’s group was worth the risk.”
All in all, he mentions the mysterious Mr. Omar not less than 25 times in his article, just to prove his point that the militias were corrupt. The author mentions that Mr. Omar died after the fall of Afghanistan.
First you can’t prove the corruption of one group (here various groups) by mentioning one corrupt person.
Second the discussion is about the defeat of the Taliban, not the corruption of militias. So, was it possible to defeat the Taliban with a more decentralized Afghanistan and better equipped and more autonomous militias? Many analysts reply in the affirmative. But Ahmad Massoud, leader of the National Resistance Front, recalls that the USA even prevented the local militias to fight autonomously:
"The other thing was once again the intervention of our friends and the intention of the government and creating initiative to prevent it local resistance was something we proposed to the government of Afghanistan, to our friends, international friends, especially Americans. Americans told me and Kabul: “we are against local resistance; we do not want to create militias against the government of Afghanistan”. And I explained: “it has nothing to do with being against the government of Afghanistan. It is about saving Afghanistan. we are way past that time to think about the stability or the legitimacy of just the government. We are going to lose everything. I understand the background and the history and a lot of issue with Dostum, but he's very popular, use him in the north. Ismail Khan, he's ready with his white beard and he's on the street. Help him. Use him in the West. Create these local resistances from these powerful figures to prevent the fall of the government, to reduce the pressure from Afghanistan army, because Afghanistan’s army is the backbone of the government. It should not break. So, reduce the pressure. Let the Afghan Army to breathe, because at the end stage, probably last two years the Commandos in Afghanistan army were stretched. It was stretched to the point that they couldn't breathe what they were like suffocating because of so much using."
2) USA's
role is described wrongly by the author
The author tries to blame the USA for supporting local militias and leads the reader to wrong direction with his article:
“The consequences came to a head during the chaotic American withdrawal in 2021. The north was expected to be America’s rear guard, a place where values like democracy and women’s rights might have taken hold. Instead, it capitulated in a matter of days — the first region to fall to the Taliban.”
When talking about blaming the USA, it doesn't specifically mean to highlight the guilt of the presidents. What's more important is the guilt of the US intelligence, US war strategists and masterminds of US foreign policy.
Ahmad Massoud describes the events before the fall of Kabul/Afghanistan:
“This time I was at the ministry of Defense with Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, the Minister of Defense of Afghanistan. The phone was on the table and one of the things that they were thinking and talking to, a lot of those sort of the regional commanders of the army, that we had to retreat from the big cities and concentrate on Kabul and cities and provinces around Kabul all the way to Hindu Kush to create a geography which is defendable. However, our American friends told Bismillah Khan that “no you need to keep the cities, so your forces must stay in Herat, in Kunduz, in Mazar, in Kandahar to defend the cities”, which was absolutely wrong in terms of military thinking or tactic, because what would they do? Defend what? Defend just cities, buildings? It was an absolute wrong tactic.”
So, the USA played its part in the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban but far differently from how Azam Ahmed tries to suggest.
He mentions the US budget for Afghanistan in 20 years:
“That state-sponsored misery was central to how the United States and its Afghan partners lost the north — and how, despite two decades and $2 trillion in American money, Afghanistan fell.”
This $2 trillion budget is a wide-spread rumor but seems very far-fetched. The $2 trillion in development of a country, which fought against major international terrorist organizations, is not a big deal. Much of the amount went into the salaries of US soldiers, advisors and thinktanks, anyways. And some of it went to the bank accounts of corrupt politicians cooperating with the USA.
3) Pakistan's (not mentioned) role
This article comes at a time, when Pakistan itself is now afflicted with the curse, which it created, Taliban.
Azam Ahmed states:
“For years, the Americans helped recruit, train and pay for lawless bands of militias that pillaged homes and laid waste to entire communities. The militias tortured civilians, kidnapped for ransom, massacred dozens in vendetta killings and razed entire villages, sowing more than a decade of hatred toward the Afghan government and its American allies.”
Again, there’s no proof whatsoever in this claim. It seems as if the author tries to hide the role of Pakistan in the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, through the terrorist madrassas inside Pakistan. Those madrasas in Pakistan, like the Darul Uloom Haqqania, from which many of today’s leaders of the Taliban graduated, were funded by money given to Pakistan by the US government. Instead there are baseless claims without proof. Pakistani seminary leader Samiul Haq Haqqani was called the father othe the Taliban by media in 2018, when he was killed:
The Guardian reported about Samiul Haq's assassination on 2 November 2018 and mentioned: "Sirajuddin
Haqqani, the leader of the Haqqani network, a US-designated terrorist
organisation, was one of dozens of Taliban leaders who graduated from Haq’s
seminary, located in the conservative Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the border
with Afghanistan."
Pakistan’s (then) president, Arif Alvi, and the (then) prime minister, Imran Khan, condemned Haq’s killing according to media reports.
Moreover, Azam Ahmed fails to mention the role of corrupted Pakistani military and political leaders, General Qamar Bajwa, former ISI chief Faiz Hameed, Benazir Bhutto, Pervez Musharraf, Asif Ali Zardari, Imran Khan, just to name a few, who diverted money meant for fighting terrorism and deposited it in their offshore bank accounts in Dubai and elsewhere.
Pakistan had an old rivalry with Afghanistan, which is why it prefers the Taliban regime in Afghanistan but not in Pakistan. So while this journalists meddles in Afghanistan's affairs, while the Taliban regime is already a Pakistani proxy, he could do some investigative journalism on the severe corruption in Pakistan. It is by the orders of Pakistani ideologist that girls' schools in Afghanistan are shut down to keep Afghans uneducated and thus keep its economy weak. It was Pakistani, which sent suicide attackers to Afghanistan to bomb hospitals, embassies (like the German embassy) and hotels (like Serena Hotel) in Kabul until Afghanistan was ready for a second takeover by Taliban.
Conclusion
Although Azam Ahmed's article contains many more unsubstantial claims, these were the main three arguments to be refuted. All the
author uses in his article published on the renowned mainstream paper NY Times
is basically one corrupt militia man called Mr. Omar. He presents no sources or
statistics to strengthen his points. But the damage is done and people who don't have much knowledge on Afghanistan will believe much of his presumably made-up stuff.
Besides Mr. Omar, he uses another mysterious source, whom he calls “a diplomatic cable”:
“The United States knew about the debacle unfolding in Kunduz. A diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in November 2009 emphasized the importance of controlling the militias. If left to their own devices, they could “divide Afghan communities and spark additional violence,” the cable noted.”
He mentions
the “cable” twice, without specifying who behind the cable is and what kind of
military expertise is behind it. The author of the article conceals the fact that thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed by the Taliban, far more than any Afghan militia could have killed, prior to their takeover of Afghanistan. Moreover he conceals the fact that thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed by the Taliban within the system of the Taliban. Besides preventing women from education and work and torturing and raping them, which the Taliban do on a regular basis, is often far more severe than killing the.
He misleads the readers by even quoting the Taliban as a trustworthy source, who are known for being notorious liars besides being terrorists and war criminals:
“Even the Taliban, normally eager to boast of battlefield exploits, credit their victory in the province to American missteps. “The U.S. empowered bandits and murderers in the name of counterinsurgency,” said Matiullah Rohani, a former Taliban commander and the current minister of information and culture in Kunduz. “But it only pushed more people into the hands of the Taliban.”
And his motivation seems to be making the readers believe that many Afghans prefer the Taliban over the militias (which is not the case at all):
“Some Afghans were so disgusted by the predatory militias that they began to see the Taliban as their defenders and joined the insurgency.”
Even if all
of the Afghan militia members had been corrupt, which they hadn't been, most of them were not as
discriminatory towards the women, oppressive and racist as the Taliban (which
we have witnessed from 1 Sept 2021 till now). And the average citizen of Afghanistan is well aware of this fact.
All in all, Western mainstream media cannot be trusted anymore to receive proper information. They are more concerned with spreading their own opinions and agendas, while good journalists, like Peter Bergen and Richard Mackenzie, who had a thorough expertise on Afghanistan, are getting more and more scarce.
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