Washington will cut aid to Afghanistan by $1 billion starting immediately, after failing to resolve a fierce dispute between rival Afghan leaders, the State Department said, noting the US military withdrawal would continue.

Lamenting the failure of Afghan leaders to agree on an “inclusive government,” Pompeo said the feud between President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah had “harmed US-Afghan relations,” adding that Washington would review cooperation with the country and make significant cuts to US aid.

"If there remained any doubt that the Trump administration's hostility towards the court is fundamentally punitive and callous in nature, these doubts have now been dispelled."

by Andrea Germanos, staff writer

Amnesty International on Wednesday rebuked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over new comments bashing the International Criminal Court and threatening court staff—and their family members—investigating alleged war crimes committed by United States forces in Afghanistan.

Pompeo suggested retaliatory actions would be in store.

A lawmaker wants answers from the Pentagon about whether coronavirus tests are being sent to military bases worldwide after he said troops in Afghanistan based miles from a town where people have contracted COVID-19 are showing symptoms.

Several U.S. troops in Afghanistan are experiencing flu-like symptoms but have tested negative for influenza, according to Rep. Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat. Now, there are concerns the troops, who are 75 miles from Iran where the coronavirus is rampant, could have COVID-19, he said.

The troops have not yet been tested for the sometimes-deadly virus though, Pocan added. The congressman said he learned of the situation after one of the service members' families contacted his office.

After nearly two decades of military intervention in Afghanistan, the UK finally looks set to depart the country following the US peace deal with the Afghan Taliban.

According to the Times newspaper, “hundreds” of British troops are set to be withdrawn from Afghanistan by “mid-July” as part of the “first phase” of the US-Taliban peace deal.

Altogether, 330 British soldiers are scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of the summer. Currently there are 1,100 “regular” UK military personnel stationed in Afghanistan, most of them in and around Kabul.

The details of how the U.S. military will withdraw from Afghanistan – including the types of attacks U.S. troops and the Taliban have agreed to not conduct – are part of two classified annexes to the recently signed withdrawal agreement, according to the New York Times.

While some members of Congress will be able to read the annexes, the vast majority of the American public will have no idea what their government has agreed to as part of the deal to end the war in Afghanistan, which is in its 19th year.

The U.S. military has “legitimate reasons” why it does not want some information to become public knowledge, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said on Tuesday.

After 19 years of war, over $1 trillion in spending, 2,400 dead and a torrent of lies, the US may now be facing an end to its longest war.

The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001. There were three reasons: 1. to cover up the humiliation of the tough-talking Bush administration for being caught sleeping on guard duty by the 9/11 attacks; 2. To secure oil pipeline routes through Afghanistan from Central Asia down to Pakistan’s sea coast; and 3. To occupy a supposedly empty square on the Asian chessboard before China did.

Since 2001, hardly a word of truth about Afghanistan has come out of Washington. All wars are accompanied by a bodyguard of lies, as Churchill wrote, but the lies and
propaganda about Afghanistan were extraordinary and shameful.

American troops have reportedly begun their initial troop withdrawal as part of the US-Taliban peace agreement, with hundreds of soldiers leaving the country on Monday with no plans for replacements.
Speaking to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, a US official confirmed the beginning steps of the withdrawal process have begun, with plans to drop the number of US troops in the country from 13,000 to 8,600.

According to the signed peace agreement, the withdrawal process for US troops had to begin 10 days within the signing of the agreement, which took place on February 29. Defense Secretary Mark Esper approved the withdrawal on March 2. Once troop levels hit 8,600, the conditions in the country will be reassessed before further troops are pulled.

SOURCE: MINT PRESS
President Trump, who is up for re-election this year, has added another “peace” deal to his credentials, a deal that the president, his re-election campaign and his supporters have promoted as proof that Trump is willing and able to resist the U.S. foreign policy establishment and its ceaseless push to keep the U.S. embroiled in “forever wars.”
Yet, not unlike the much-criticized Israel-Palestine “peace” deal that was recently released by the Trump administration, there is more to the U.S.-Taliban “peace” deal than meets the eye. Indeed, while the deal will reduce and perhaps eventually even end the U.S.’ official military presence in Afghanistan, there is little indication that it will end the bloodshed or the country’s “shadow” economy that is awash in profits from the illegal drug trade and illegal mining.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reacted angrily to the International Criminal Court (ICC) calling to investigate US war crimes, declaring the group “an unaccountable political institution masquerading as a legal body.”

Pompeo said it was reckless to even suggest an investigation after the Afghan peace deal was reached, and vowed the US would take “all necessary measures” to shield US personnel from the investigation.

This is roughly in line with US policy toward war crimes investigations, and in the past the US has threatened military action against the Netherlands, the host of the court, to shield American soldiers from charges.

International Criminal Court appeals judges authorized Thursday an investigation into allegations of war crimes by United States military and intelligence personnel, Afghan forces and the Taliban in Afghanistan, in a case that has triggered a diplomatic backlash from Washington.

“The prosecutor is authorized to commence investigation in relation to alleged crimes committed on the territory of Afghanistan in the period since 1 May 2003,” Judge Piotr Hofma?ski said, adding that other alleged crimes committed on the territory of other states, which are party to the ICC, but that are sufficiently linked to the armed conflict in Afghanistan could also be investigated in the period since July 1, 2002.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has authorised an investigation into possible war crimes committed in Afghanistan, which would include allegations against United States, Afghan and Taliban armed fighters.

"The Appeals chamber considers it appropriate to ... authorise the investigation," said presiding Judge Piotr Hofmanski on Thursday.

Veterans of Britain’s recent costly military campaigns in Afghanistan are killing themselves in record numbers.

According to the Times newspaper, some 14 former and serving army personnel have killed themselves in the past two months alone.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lashed out in an official statement Thursday in response to the International Criminal Court (ICC) announcing it has begun an investigation into alleged US war crimes during the eighteen-year long war. The ICC said it will also probe allegations against all parties in the conflict, including the Taliban and Afghan military.

"This is a truly breathtaking action by an unaccountable political institution, masquerading as a legal body," the statement reads. "It is all the more reckless for this ruling to come just days after the United States signed a historic peace deal on Afghanistan – the best chance for peace in a generation," Pompeo added in reference to the historic US-Taliban peace deal which already appears to have unraveled.

The Trump administration’s peace deal with the Taliban opens the door for an initial American troop withdrawal that Defense Secretary Mark Esper sees as a step toward the broader goal of preparing for potential future war with China.

Esper has his eye on “great power competition,” which means staying a step ahead of China and Russia on battlefields of the future, including in space and in next-generation strategic weapons like hypersonic missiles and advanced nuclear weapons. He sees China in particular as a rising threat to American predominance on the world stage.

The Trump administration will likely seek to sell the U.S.–Taliban deal as both a peace accord and a U.S. military withdrawal. However, the deal President Donald Trump has struck only brings troop levels back to the level they were when he took office three years ago; that is, a reduction to 8,600 troops from the current levels of 13,000.

A fuller withdrawal will only take place if the Taliban fully implements all elements of the deal, effectively giving the Taliban a veto on U.S. troop withdrawals. There are also indications that the U.S. intends to leave special forces troops in the country indefinitely for counterterrorism operations.

America’s longest war finally has an end in sight.

The US and the Taliban signed a peace deal Saturday that could see all American troops withdrawn from Afghanistan by May 2021, ending the conflict that began less than a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

President George W. Bush launched the invasion in pursuit of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, who was sheltered in Afghanistan’s mountains by the Taliban, a militant Islamist group.

Over the years, as the US helped to train Afghanistan’s military and build up the civilian government, the fighting left 2,309 US troops dead and 20,660 injured ?— and cost more than $2 trillion.

Arguments about the Afghanistan peace deal that the US is about to sign with the Taliban continue, with substantial concerns that secret annexes exist to the peace language which would threaten the deal’s sustainability.

Recent reports claimed that among a series of secret annexes, the US included language saying they’re not actually going to leave Afghanistan militarily, and that this seeming deal-breaker was accepted on the grounds it would be a secret.

Pressed on the matter, top Pentagon figures claimed complete ignorance on it. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley both claimed to have no idea if there were ultimately any secret annexes.

Chief of the Iranian Anti-Narcotics Police Brigadier General Masoud Zahedian said that after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the production of narcotics in the country has sorely increased. It has had a 35-fold increase in Afghanistan after the US and its Western allies occupied the poor country and it has reached 6,400 tons from 185 tons, Zahedian told reporters in Rome on Saturday.

The United States has ceased offensive military operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban in accordance with an agreement to reduce violence ahead of a possible peace deal, the top U.S. military commander here announced Saturday.

Tune in to Episode#46 of the SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) show, folks – at least those (few) who still care about America’s longest, ongoing, war. The latest installment just dropped, and I promise it’s a gem: replete with the all the dramatic suspense of “Homeland,” the dark comedy of a rebooted "Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and the sappy tear-jerking of "This Is Us.” OK, maybe I’m overselling that; it’s a pretty abstruse government document, at root. Still, this particular segment from the congressionally-appointed organization charged with "independent and objective oversight of Afghanistan reconstruction projects and activities," is pretty darn profound if anyone bothered to read it. But few will.

So, to hit only the highest of the highlights: let’s review just what’s (sequentially) in, the security section of SIGAR-46 – with particular attention to what it says, doesn’t say, and says it doesn’t say. The darn think begins with a instructive admission from Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, in which he admits the Afghan War is "still" in "a state of strategic stalemate." Not too comforting, that – especially after 19 years of killing and dying. Then, it quotes a January 22, 2020 White House statement that President Trump’s goal is for the Taliban to demonstrate "a significant and lasting reduction in violence…that would facilitate meaningful negotiations on Afghanistan’s future."

The hardest part is yet to come.

Skeptics of the Trump administration's peace efforts have long said the most difficult part will be intra-Afghan talks.

It's also the most critical part, they say, because peace won't happen without political reconciliation in Afghanistan.

The Taliban has previously resisted talks with the Afghan government, which it sees as a puppet of the United States.

Political turmoil within the Afghan government could also complicate talks by giving Afghan President Ashraf Ghani a weakened hand.

Ghani was just declared the winner of the September 2019 presidential elections this past week. But he got only 50.64 percent of the vote, just a smidge above the 50 percent needed to win.

And his chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, is still disputing the election results, claiming victory himself and pledging to form a government of his own.

Lawmakers remain skeptical.

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen reported on Monday that the US and Taliban have finalized the language of the Afghanistan peace deal. The US has not confirmed this yet, but had indicated in recent days that such a deal was imminent.

Afghan CEO Abdullah Abdullah confirmed the deal is finalized, saying that his understanding is that the signature depends on the success of the reduction of violence. If all goes well, the deal should be signed by all sides by the end of February.

The exact language of the deal has never been public, though indications are that it was effectively finalized in October of last year and has not substantially changed. The deal sees the US commit to a withdrawal from Afghanistan, negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and a commitment by the Taliban to fight al-Qaeda and ISIS to keep them out of the country.

When the mainstream media writes about war, even critically, the image that often comes to mind for me is an infant wrapped in plastic. That infant is naked reality, a.k.a., the present moment, suffocating and screaming for its life; the plastic smothering it are the journalistic euphemisms by which murder and terrorism turn into abstract acts of national necessity.

Thus, the recent news that the United States clobbered war-torn Afghanistan with a record number of bombs and missiles in 2019 came to us via Stars and Stripes in language protecting all concerned from raw awareness and flying shrapnel:

American aircraft released 7,423 munitions in the country in 2019, according to figures published Monday by U.S. Air Forces Central Command. Coalition aircraft flew nearly 8,800 sorties during the period, over a quarter of which carried out strikes.

SOURCE: MOON OF ALABAMA
Under the Trump administration U.S. air attacks in Afghanistan have sharply increased. But it now seems that the Taliban have acquired some means to counter them.

Last year the U.S. dropped a record number of bombs on Afghanistan leading to ever increasing casualties among civilians:

According to the Combined Forces Air Component Commander (CFACC) 2013-2019 Airpower Statistics released in late January, 7,423 missions flown in Afghanistan in 2019 resulted in weapons being released. There were more weapon releases in most months of the year than in any corresponding months since records were first released in 2009, with September recording the most for the year at 948.
The previous annual record was 7,362 set in 2018, and the last two years together have seen more weapon releases over Afghanistan than the combined number for 2012 through to 2017.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley sought to defend the Afghan War on Friday, despite the Afghanistan Papers showing systematic official lies about the failed conflict, insisting that the documents were a “mischaracterization” of the war, and that there was no unified decision to deceive the public.

Rather, the position here seems to be that hundreds of Pentagon officials took it upon themselves and each individually decided to deceive the public a little bit, culminating in a colossal lie which couldn’t be explicitly blamed on anyone.

Gen. Milley insisted the war had been a success in that there hadn’t been any specific terror attacks out of Afghanistan for the war’s duration, and particularly objected to the idea that anyone had died “in vain” in the conflict.

SOURCE: NICOLAS DAVIES VIA COUNTERPUNCH

The trove of U.S. “Lessons Learned” documents on Afghanistan published by the Washington Post portrays, in excruciating detail, the anatomy of a failed policy, scandalously hidden from the public for 18 years. The “Lessons Learned” papers, however, are based on the premise that the U.S. and its allies will keep intervening militarily in other countries, and that they must therefore learn the lessons of Afghanistan to avoid making the same mistakes in future military occupations.

The Washington Post has just released a trove of previously secret records documenting that the U.S. war in Afghanistan has been based on a multitude of lies and deception. It is beyond dispute that the Pentagon and other elements of America’s deep state were determined to keep those records secret from the American people.That’s because it took three years and two federal lawsuits to force deep-state officials to finally release the records.

No one is accusing the Post of publishing lies. It is undisputed that what the Post has published is the truth.

Why then did the deep state oppose release of the records? Why was the deep state so insistent that they be kept secret?

The answer is: Because the deep state knew that the records recounted the truth, and the last thing the deep state wanted was for the American people to know the truth about its war in Afghanistan — that “Operation Enduring Freedom” was built on lies, just like the Vietnam War was.

Congress and especially Congressional leadership of both parties are all as guilty as the three lying Administrations. They were part of the big lie, falsely presenting to the American people as “expert” witnesses only those bought-and-paid-for Beltway neocon think tankers.

What is even more shocking than the release of this “smoking gun” evidence that the US government wasted two trillion dollars and killed more than three thousand Americans and more than 150,000 Afghans while lying through its teeth about the war is that you could hear a pin drop in the mainstream media about it. Aside from the initial publication in the Washington Post, which has itself been a major cheerleader for the war in Afghanistan, the mainstream media has shown literally no interest in what should be the story of the century.

This week, The Washington Post published the Afghanistan Papers, an extensive review of thousands of pages of internal government documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. Like the Pentagon Papers, which showcased the lies underpinning the Vietnam War, the Post’s investigation shows that U.S. officials, across three presidential administrations, intentionally and systematically misled the American public for 18 years and counting. As Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1974, told CNN earlier this week, the Pentagon and Afghanistan Papers revealed the same dynamic: “The presidents and the generals had a pretty realistic view of what they were up against, which they did not want to admit to the American people.”

What we learned in what is rightly being called the “Pentagon Papers” of our time, is that hundreds of US Administration officials – including three US Presidents – knowingly lied to the American people about the Afghanistan war for years. This wasn’t just a matter of omitting some unflattering facts. This was about bald-faced lying about a war they knew was a disaster from almost day one.

Remember President Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld? Remember how supremely confident he was at those press conferences, acting like the master of the universe? Here’s what he told the Pentagon’s special inspector general who compiled these thousands of interviews on Afghanistan: “I have no visibility into who the bad guys are.”

After a lengthy legal battle, the Post got hold of documents compiled by SIGAR, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. John Sopko, the Inspector General, interviewed over 600 people connected to the Afghan war effort to prepare a series of reports called “Lessons Learned,” which purported to explain what had gone wrong since America’s invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The “Lessons Learned” reports were critical, but “left out the harshest and most frank criticisms from the interviews,” the Post wrote.

The Post sued to get hold of the underlying material, finally obtained it, and is now releasing its contents.

The war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history, is based on lies made by top U.S. officials and was “idiotic” as there was no clear plan, according to the documents published by the Washington Post, dubbed the ‘Afghanistan Papers.’ According to the papers, the U.S. has wasted nearly $1 trillion of taxpayers money in war against Afghanistan, with it expecting to cost trillions more. Effectively, it is the taxpayer’s money being wasted to maintain the war and occupation so that shareholders in U.S. military industries can profit while millions of Americans remain in poverty.

Such as that it was the US-backed Mujahedeen, rather than the US-backed Yeltsin, who smashed the government the Soviets had left behind

Even those with qualified praise for Trump’s decision complained about the haphazardness of his policy-making and its implementation, and of his departure from the “norms” of American foreign policy.

What, you might ask, were those norms producing for us? Forever war or isolation is a false choice, they say. But cast your eyes over to Afghanistan, where it really does seem like the alternative to leaving is staying endlessly. At least that’s how policymakers in three administrations have thought about the Afghan conflict, to judge from the Washington Post’s latest scoop, a huge tranche of documents recording the candid, occasionally emotional assessments of the U.S. War in Afghanistan made by White House officials, generals, and policymakers.

The Washington Post has published clear, undeniable evidence that US government officials have been lying to the public about the war in Afghanistan, a shocking revelation for anyone who has done no research whatsoever into the history of US interventionism.

In all seriousness it was a very good and newsworthy publication, and those who did the heavy lifting bringing the Afghanistan Papers into public awareness deserve full credit. The frank comments of US military officials plainly stating that from the very beginning this was an unwinnable conflict, initiated in a region nobody understood, without anyone being able to so much as articulate what victory would even look like, make up an extremely important piece of information that is in conflict with everything the public has been told about this war by their government.

Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

This week saw the Washington Post published a bombshell report titled “The Afghanistan Papers,” highlighting the degree to which the American government lied to the public about the ongoing status of the war in Afghanistan. Within the thousands of pages, consisting of internal documents, interviews, and other never-before-released intel, is a vivid depiction of a Pentagon painfully aware of the need to keep from the public the true state of the conflict and the doubts, confusion, and desperation of decision-makers spanning almost 20 years of battle.

here is a laundry list of reasons for why the U.S. foreign policy establishment comes up short on so many occasions. A total and complete absence of accountability in the industry ensures that those who demonstrate poor judgment are protected from punishment and allowed to repeat it. In this harsh political climate, politicians have an incentive to double down on the status-quo rather than admit mistakes. And an aversion to the smallest reform in Washington, D.C. means that it’s easier to simply go along to get along—even if doing so compounds failure.

Lawmakers, veterans and experts have expressed shock and resignation after a Washington Post report Monday unveiled 18 years of distortion by U.S. officials over the prosecution of the war in Afghanistan.

The documents involved — more than 2,000 pages of confidential notes and interviews from more than 400 people, from ambassadors to troops on the ground — exposed a constant parade of failures while three presidential administrations insisted the war was moving in the right direction.

We must end the vicious, lethal cycle of misinformation and unspecified, unsupported strategies,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in response, calling for public hearings with Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and other officials.

In what's already being hailed as a defining and explosive "Pentagon papers" moment, a cache of previously classified documents obtained by The Washington Post show top Pentagon leaders continuously lied to the public about the "progress" of the now eighteen-year long Afghan war.

The some 2,000 pages of notes from interviews of senior officials who have shaped US strategy in Afghanistan confirm that “senior US officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false... hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable," according to the bombshell Post report.

How to Commit War Crimes—and Get Away With It
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How to Commit War CrimesU.S. President Donald Trump sacked his Navy secretary on Twitter. The main reason is that the Navy secretary did not follow Trump’s advice regarding Navy Special Warfare Operator Edward Gallagher. Trump wanted Gallagher to retain his position as a Navy Seal. Gallagher was accused of stabbing to death a wounded fighter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) in 2017; he was also accused of other incidents of murder (of a schoolgirl and an elderly man), and then of obstruction of justice. In July 2019, a military court acquitted Gallagher of most of the charges but found him guilty of posing with the body of the fighter who had been stabbed to death.

The US-led war in Afghanistan turned 18 in October, and those two decades of fighting and rebuilding appear to have yielded little progress.

The counternarcotics effort there, for example, "has just been a total failure," John F. Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, in November.

The U.S. Army announced Thursday upcoming winter deployments of two infantry brigade combat teams to Afghanistan and Korea.

Soldiers from the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, stationed at Fort Drum, New York, will deploy in early 2020 to Afghanistan to replace the 3rd BCT, 82nd Airborne Division, as part of a regular rotation of forces to support Operation Freedom's Sentinel, according to a Dec. 5 Army news release.

President Trump’s announcement on Thursday that Afghanistan peace talks have resumed came as a surprise to many, because while there was an apparent process already going on, it wasn’t being made public by anyone.

Taliban officials confirmed that the talks are ongoing, with spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid saying that they are ready for talks, but that their position is the talks resume where they were previously suspended by President Trump.

Taliban negotiator Suhail Shaheen said much the same thing, saying that it is up to the US to get back to the table to resume the talks that were already nearly successful, and that their positions haven’t changed.