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US sends more warplanes to protect troop withdrawal
Washington has deployed a dozen additional warplanes to bolster protection of American and coalition troops making a final withdrawal from Afghanistan as Taliban insurgents step up pressure on Afghan government forces, top Pentagon officials said Thursday.
AP reported that General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said F-18 attack planes have been added to a previously announced package of air and sea power — including the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the North Arabian Sea and six Air Force B-52 bombers based in Qatar.
Also, several hundred Army Rangers have also been deployed to Afghanistan as part of the support package.
“There continue to be sustained levels of violent attacks” by the Taliban against Afghan security forces, Milley said, speaking alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at a Pentagon news conference.
However, he said there have been no attacks against U.S. or coalition forces since they began pulling out of the country on May 1, and he described the Afghan forces as “cohesive,” even as speculation swirls around Kabul’s ability to hold off the Taliban in the months ahead.
“They’re fighting for their own country now, so it’s not a foregone conclusion, in my professional military estimate, that the Taliban automatically win and Kabul falls, or any of those kinds of dire predictions,” Milley said.
“That’s not a foregone conclusion. There’s a significant military capability in the Afghan government. We have to see how this plays out.”
Milley said the Pentagon is considering options for continued support of Afghan government forces after the troop withdrawal is complete, including possibly training Afghan security forces in another country, AP reported.
That would be in addition to urging the Congress to authorize continued financial assistance to the Afghan forces, which has been in the range of $4 billion a year for many years, and possibly providing aircraft maintenance support remotely from another country.
“We haven’t figured that out 100% yet,” Milley said.
Milley said Afghanistan’s air force is central to the strategy for holding off the Taliban, but the durability of those planes is in some doubt.
The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said in an April 30 report that without continued foreign contractor support, none of the Afghan air force’s airframes can be sustained as combat effective for more than a few months.
Austin acknowledged that holding off the Taliban without American support on the ground “will be a challenge” for the Afghans.
“We’re hopeful that the Afghan security forces will play a major role in stopping the Taliban,” Austin said. “What we’re seeing unfold is what we expected to unfold — increased pressure” on the Afghan forces.
He confirmed that government forces launched a counterattack this week against the Taliban in Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand province, and that they were “performing fairly well.”
Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Islamic Emirate’s Foreign Minister, met with Gholamreza Nouri Ghezeljeh, Iran’s Minister of Agriculture Jihad, in Kabul on Thursday.
Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry said the two sides held comprehensive discussions on bilateral relations, expanding economic and transit cooperation, and holding the seventh meeting of the Joint Economic Commission between the two countries.
Muttaqi welcomed the progress in practical economic and transit cooperation between Afghanistan and Iran, saying there are further opportunities to expand bilateral ties.
Iran’s agriculture minister also stressed the importance of making use of existing opportunities for cooperation in various sectors and called for expanding current areas of cooperation.
Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) has unveiled a new visa card and HesabPay mobile application as part of efforts to expand digital financial services in Afghanistan.
The new products were introduced at an event in Kabul on Thursday, where Ahmad Shahpoor Mia Khail, the bank’s deputy governor for supervision, urged Afghans to use digital cards for payments and cash withdrawals.
Mia Khail said improving public trust and providing better financial services remain among the bank’s priorities, describing the digitization of the financial system as a key step toward electronic transactions.
“Our sole objective is to enable every Afghan to make payments using a card, mobile phone or other means,” he said.
Officials from several companies said around one million active customers in Afghanistan currently use HesabPay services, adding that they are committed to expanding access to financial services.
Ahmad Khalid Wadan, the owner of one of the companies, said the initiative aims to help build “a strong, secure and reliable digital financial system” in Afghanistan.
Da Afghanistan Bank has repeatedly called for the digitization of monetary and commercial transactions, saying it can improve transparency and efficiency and help expand economic activity.
Human Rights Watch in a statement on Wednesday called for the release of two UN staffers and six NGO workers in Afghanistan.
HRW said that six male staff working with the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation (WCLRF) had been “forcibly disappeared” from the NGO’s Kabul office last month. The NGO has been involved in aid programmes and advocacy on women’s and children’s rights, HRW said.
In a separate incident, Human Rights Watch also called for the release of two Afghan staff members of the UN’s Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), who were detained by IEA officials in the western city of Herat on Sunday.
The IEA’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told Reuters that he was “trying to gather details” about the recent detentions, but had “not received final clarity.”
The UN confirmed the detention of two of its staffers earlier this week. “UNAMA has not been informed of the charges against them and has not been permitted to visit them,” Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, said in a briefing on Wednesday.
Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan Researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that the detentions of UNAMA staff threatened the UN’s “ability to deliver lifesaving aid.”
As the UN’s political mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA is involved in human rights monitoring and data gathering. Its reports have frequently been criticised by the IEA government in the past.
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