Afghanistan

BELGRADE, Serbia — Austria’s leader says any migration wave from Afghanistan should be handled in neighboring countries.

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Saturday in Belgrade that a potential wave toward Europe must not take place. He adds that “this is why we are in contact with countries in the region.”

Kurz spoke after meeting Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic. Thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Africa or Asia have been stranded in Serbia and neighboring countries situated on the so-called Balkan migration route toward Western Europe.

Afghans should be ‘sent back at the border,’ says AfD lead candidate Tino Chrupalla

One of the two lead candidates for the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Tino Chrupalla, says he opposes offering asylum to the vast majority of Afghans.

Chrupalla complained that of the first 4,000 people who had been flown out by the German military from Kabul airport during the recent multinational airlift, only 136 counted as what he would consider to be local support staff in Afghanistan.

Asked to clarify how he would define the term local support staff, Chrupalla said: “They are for example interpreters who worked for the German military.” When asked if only Bundeswehr staff, he said he did not want “NGOs or anything else diluting the term. Otherwise, it can’t be verified. Who can say for sure which people are truly local staff?”

No one wants a repeat of the Merkel Migrant Fiasco. Well a few virtue signaling morons do, like PM Asshat.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials are looking into reports that in the frantic evacuation of desperate Afghans from Kabul, older men were admitted together with young girls they claimed as “brides” or otherwise sexually abused.

U.S. officials at intake centers in the United Arab Emirates and in Wisconsin have identified numerous incidents in which Afghan girls have been presented to authorities as the “wives” of much older men. While child marriage is not uncommon in Afghanistan, the U.S. has strict policies against human trafficking that include prosecutions for offenders and sanctions for countries that don’t crack down on it.

We’ve been hearing a lot of speculation that the Afghan debacle is more than it seems – that rather than being a typical outcome of activity by some of the dumbest, most ill-informed, and most blinkered individuals ever to occupy places in the U.S government, it is instead a dark, convoluted conspiracy aimed at some goal sinister beyond words.

Some of this is from the usual suspects who see conspiracies every time a cat falls out of a tree, and some by more reputable people. The core concept here can be expressed simply: “There has to be something else going on. Nobody could be that stupid.”

Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban and American forces are withdrawing. As with such ventures, this has resulted in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing their own country. And as night follows day, this has also resulted in calls by many American individuals and organizations to bring in as many of those refugees as possible, because we “owe” it to the Afghans.

To hear such claims, one would think that these many thousands of refugees will immediately become part of America, sharing our values and ideas, and contributing to our communities.

If someone had told you in September 2001, as the Twin Towers fell and people in the Pentagon perished, that on the 20th anniversary of this atrocity America would be contemplating aligning with the guys who helped to do it, you would have thought them insane. And yet here we are, fast approaching 20 years since that grim, apocalyptic day, and a US military chief is saying it’s ‘possible’ his forces will work alongside the Taliban. Yes, the same Taliban that hosted Osama bin Laden as his minions were plotting 9/11. The same Taliban whose ties with al-Qaeda have actually deepened over the past two decades – as a recent UN report said, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are now closely bonded by ideological sympathy and intermarriage. That Taliban. That al-Qaeda, essentially. This is who America’s military chiefs are fluttering their eyelashes at.

Joe Biden came into office inheriting the war in Afghanistan. But unlike previous presidents, he inherited a war that was relatively quiescent by Afghanistan standards, involved few American troops on the ground, and was in a phaseout due to an agreement his predecessor had struck with the Afghan government and the Taliban. Under that deal, the U.S. would remove its troops by May 1, 2021, if the Taliban and Afghan government met certain conditions.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Kathleen Hicks has an op-ed published in The Hill titled “Addressing Racial Disparities in the Military Justice System” last night. The level of tone-deafness coming for the Biden administration cannot be understated. The only reason for such timing for a piece like this from the Pentagon right now is to serve as a distraction from the reporting on the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. It is shameful.

The Taliban showed off dozens of US-made armoured vehicles and weaponry during victory parades today.

One event, in the southern city of Kandahar, even featured a fly-past from a Black Hawk helicopter flying the flag of the Taliban.

The parades of the hardware, captured from Afghan forces during the group’s takeover of Afghanistan, were held just hours after U.S. President Joe Biden defended his decision to end two decades of American presence in the country.

‘It looked apocalyptic’: Crew describes Afghan departure

WASHINGTON (AP) — It looked like a zombie apocalypse.

For the U.S. military pilots and aircrew about to make their final takeoffs out of Afghanistan, the sky was lit up with fireworks and sporadic gunfire and the airfield littered with battered shells of airplanes and destroyed equipment. Stray dogs raced around the tarmac. And Taliban fighters, visible in the darkness through the green-tinged view of night vision goggles, walked the airfield waving an eerie goodbye.