Fdd's overnight brief

Afghanistan

After Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government collapsed on Aug. 15, Beijing couldn’t contain its glee at what it described as the humiliation of its main global rival—even though Washington said a big reason for withdrawal was its decision to focus more resources on China. – Wall Street Journal  

President Biden on Tuesday forcefully rejected criticism of his decision to end America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan, hailing what he called the “extraordinary success” of the evacuation of Kabul and declaring the end of an era in which the United States uses military power “to remake other countries.” – New York Times  

The Biden administration on Tuesday began planning for the next phase of the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan, as the State Department scrambled to stand up a remote diplomatic mission and continue working to help those stranded under Taliban rule. – Washington Post 

An eerie quiet settled over Afghanistan’s capital Tuesday following the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. Few cars or pedestrians were on the roads, and crowds of thousands of Afghans around the airport desperate to flee vanished overnight, leaving behind piles of garbage and discarded luggage. – Washington Post 

With Afghanistan under Taliban control, the world is watching to see how the group will govern after having been out of power since 2001. – Washington Post 

Taliban fighters and their supporters rallied across Afghanistan to celebrate the end of 20 years of foreign military presence on Tuesday, while in Washington, President Biden defended his decision to end the conflict as well as the execution of the evacuation and withdrawal. – Wall Street Journal  

Mike, a 29-year-old U.S. green-card holder who was an Afghan interpreter for the U.S. Army and later worked as an Uber driver in Washington, D.C., is now huddled in a hotel outside Kabul with his wife and three young children, his parents, two brothers and a sister, stranded in his own country, running out of money and hope. – Washington Post 

Refugee resettlement organizations across the U.S. are gearing up to resettle tens of thousands of newly arriving Afghans, many of whom are arriving with uncertain immigration statuses and little other than the clothing on their backs. – Wall Street Journal  

The truth of the image, as far as we know it, is precise but limited. While he may have been wearing “the last boots on the ground” by the definition of some journalists and politicians, he was certainly not the last American with feet on the ground. Americans remain in Afghanistan, some willingly, others not, and we will almost certainly be back one way or another. – Washington Post 

Thirteen years ago, Afghan interpreter Mohammed helped rescue then- Sen. Joe Biden and two other senators stranded in a remote Afghanistan valley after their helicopter was forced to land in a snowstorm. Now, Mohammed is asking President Biden to save him. – Wall Street Journal  

In the weeks leading up to President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, a secretive and highly secure compound used by the Central Intelligence Agency became a hub for clandestine evacuations before parts of it were deliberately destroyed, an investigation by The New York Times found. – New York Times 

The United States last week issued a license authorizing it and its partners to continue to facilitate humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, a Treasury Department official told Reuters, after the Taliban, which is blacklisted by Washington, seized control of the country this month. – Reuters 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team will reconstitute the diplomatic mission to aid Americans and at-risk Afghan nationals from afar and manage “a range of functions” once conducted out of the now-shuttered embassy in Kabul from offices in Qatar. – Washington Examiner  

The Taliban called for friendly ties with the U.S. and indicated they were close to announcing details of a new government just hours after the last American soldiers flew out of Kabul to end 20 years of war. – Bloomberg 

In the last call between U.S. President Joe Biden and his Afghanistan counterpart before the Taliban seized control of the country, the leaders discussed military aid, political strategy and messaging tactics, but neither Biden nor Ashraf Ghani appeared aware of or prepared for the immediate danger of the entire country falling to insurgents, a transcript reviewed by Reuters shows. – Reuters  

The Taliban have surrounded Panjshir and brought heavy equipment to the region, utilizing their advantage in numbers and equipment in their offensive. The situation on the ground remains unclear, and each side has claimed victories over the other. – The National Interest  

Crowds seeking to flee Afghanistan gathered on its borders while long queues formed at banks on Wednesday, as an administrative vacuum after the Taliban’s takeover left foreign donors unsure how to respond to a looming humanitarian crisis. – Reuters  

As Afghanistan readies for a future without the presence of U.S. troops, American military officials will most likely combat ISIS-K through the use of drone strikes, said drone expert Brett Velicovich. – Fox News  

The Taliban and other Afghan leaders have reached a “consensus” on the formation of a new government and cabinet under the leadership of the group’s top spiritual leader, and an announcement could come in a few days, an official said. – Bloomberg  

Editorial: Mr. Biden’s unapologetic speech also signals that the White House intends to close the books on Afghanistan and pivot to domestic affairs. No one will lose their jobs. They’ll all talk from the same script. Mr. Biden may never speak of it again. All the more reason for Congress and the press to explore the many bad decisions that led to this American security debacle. – Wall Street Journal  

Editorial: The indifference, from Americans who long ago stopped caring about the U.S. project in Afghanistan, may not surprise the Afghans. The contradiction of bigotry and kindness may. – Washington Post 

Josh Rogin writes: The least the U.S. government can do is devise a plan to get these people to safety that does not depend on the good graces of the Taliban — which, according to reports, is already starting to take revenge on its opponents. It is a matter of U.S. honor and credibility, but also a matter of life or death. – Washington Post 

Baktash Ahadi writes: This isn’t just about Afghanistan. When it comes to cultural illiteracy, America is a recidivist. We failed to understand Iraqi culture, too, so that now, many Iraqis see Iran as the lesser of two evils. Before that, we failed to understand Vietnam. And so on. Wherever our relentless military adventurism takes us next, we must do better. – Washington Post 

David Ignatius writes: With the last C-17 flight out of Kabul Monday night, the unvarnished truth is that America’s war in Afghanistan is over. We must keep faith with Americans and Afghans left behind. And we’ll have a season of assessing blame for what happened. But we’ll compound the Afghanistan mistake if we keep fighting this last war. – Washington Post 

Joel Simon writes: The journalists and their families who made it to Doha are being housed in a comfortable and well-run relief center while we work to find them longer-term arrangements. Several countries, including Ireland and Canada, have agreed to accept Afghan journalists for temporary or permanent resettlement. The U.S. needs to step up and accelerate the visa process for the most vulnerable cases. – Wall Street Journal  

Rasheed writes: Afghanistan is no longer the country I loved. There is no guarantee that the Taliban will honor the assurances they gave the United States to allow eligible Afghans to leave the country. Still, I will try any possible way to get me and my family out, even if it means losing my life in the process. I will do so for my children’s future. – New York Times  

Yara Bayoumy writes: There are no easy solutions for Rasheed right now, but his story is essential to understanding the full scope of the repercussions of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, particularly for those Afghans, like him, who have been left behind. – New York Times 

Asfandyar Mir writes: The United States could also choose to do nothing — and let the Taliban, their allies and ISIS-K battle it out. It’s a risky strategy: To demonstrate their strength, Al Qaeda and ISIS-K might try to inspire or launch transnational attacks. But the pressure of the local battlefield will limit the threat to some extent. – New York Times 

Paul Kapur writes: The Biden administration’s hope to succeed where others had failed, finally ending America’s long war in Afghanistan, apparently blinded it to the pitfalls of committing to an unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan by a date certain. The administration’s subsequent attempts to shift blame to the Trump administration have led it to misrepresent the Doha agreement and to claim falsely that it made an avoidable disaster inevitable. This falsehood has exacerbated the current crisis. –Wall Street Journal 

Mark Fisher writes: The administration, which is pursuing an ambitious domestic agenda in a narrowly divided Congress, may be hesitant to divert more political capital to a country that it sees as peripheral. Still, Mr. Biden has seemed to relish rejecting political pressure on Afghanistan. Whether he chooses to privilege geopolitical rivalry, humanitarian welfare or counterterrorism in Afghanistan, he may find himself doing so again. – New York Times 

Anders Fogh Rasmussen writes: The failures in Afghanistan were primarily matters of execution; they do not invalidate the basic model of military intervention that begins with the application of massive force to eliminate terrorists and other hostile elements before drastically reducing the footprint in order to help local authorities build a free and more stable society. – Foreign Affairs  

Constanze Stelzenmüller writes: The outcome of the final, but as yet unfinished, act of the west’s intervention in Afghanistan will determine its legitimacy. And what happens now will affect trust between politicians, civil societies and the armed forces for years to come. Our priority now must be to save Afghans. But we are also saving ourselves. – Financial Times 

Anthony H. Cordesman writes: Working with America’s major European and Asian trading partners through another lead country might offer major benefits. And, if the Taliban will not negotiate on a reasonable basis, the U.S. and its allies will gain far more credibility with the more moderate elements that survive in Afghan politics, with the Afghan people, and the outside world. – Center for Strategic and International Studies  

William Danvers writes: The collapse of the Afghan government is a blow to the U.S. and its NATO allies, and a tragedy for the Afghan people. But it also will be problematic for China, Russia and Iran. These nations have taken advantage of the security that the U.S. and NATO have provided in Afghanistan, and the Taliban ascendancy now becomes an existential problem for them. – The Hill 

Michael Kofman, Aaron Stein and Yun Sun write: Leaders in Beijing, Ankara, and Moscow likely shed no tears while watching Ghani’s American- and NATO-backed regime crumble, taking with it any lingering hope that the two-decade mission in Afghanistan could create in the troubled country a durable regime sympathetic to America and the West. But the rise of the Taliban creates its own set of challenges for leaders in China, Turkey, and Russia, each of which see themselves as important regional powerbrokers. – War on the Rocks   

Eli Lake writes: Now Biden is about to find out whether the U.S. can prevent domestic terrorist attacks without any troops in Afghanistan, from where those last attacks originated. For his sake and the nation’s, he should remember the lesson that cruise-missile diplomacy doesn’t prevent terrorism from happening. It only punishes it after the fact. – Bloomberg 

Syria

As U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan, precipitating the chaotic collapse of its government, another American ally watched warily and hoped that its fate will be different. The painful memories of an earlier American military drawdown are still fresh for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northeastern Syria. – Washington Post 

Syrian elite forces aided by pro-Iranian militias stepped up an offensive on Tuesday against a rebel enclave in a southwestern pocket bordering Jordan and Israel, according to residents, military and opposition sources. – Reuters 

An oil spill that originated from Syria’s largest refinery is growing and spreading across the Mediterranean Sea, and could reach the island of Cyprus by Wednesday, Cypriot authorities have said. Syrian officials said last week that a tank filled with 15,000 tons of fuel had been leaking since August 23 at a thermal power plant on the Syrian coastal city of Baniyas. They said they had been able to bring it under control. – CNN  

Israel

Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank overnight, the Palestinian health ministry said on Wednesday. Village residents said there were no disturbances or clashes in the area at the time of the shooting, which occurred near the village of Beit Ur Al-Tahta, west of the city of Ramallah. – Reuters  

Israel should use the positive meeting last week between Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and US President Joe Biden to stop Iran’s march toward hegemony in the Middle East and toward a nuclear weapon, former Mossad director Yossi Cohen wrote on Wednesday. – Jerusalem Post 

Israel must investigate the brutal assault on a Palestinian teen by right-wing Jewish extremists that took place earlier this month, urged United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland. – Jerusalem Post 

Israel announced it was rolling out a series of goodwill gestures toward the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, expanding its fishing zone to its furthest point in years and allowing into Israel thousands more workers from the enclave, despite ongoing nightly riots along the border. – Times of Israel 

Editorial: Israel and the Gulf states are celebrating the first anniversary of the Abraham Accords. As important as these accords undoubtedly are, they do not void the need for Israel to maintain relations with its Palestinian neighbors. The PA is far from perfect but Israel cannot afford for it to completely collapse. Nor can Israel allow Hamas to continue to give the impression that terrorism and the threat of more rockets attacks are the best way to make economic gains. – Jerusalem Post 

Khaled Abu Toameh writes: Abbas’s political enemies, including Hamas, are now exploiting the Gantz-Abbas meeting to incite against the PA leadership. Their main argument is that Abbas has chosen to align himself with the Israelis and Americans instead of working to reunite the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and end his conflict with Hamas. – Jerusalem Post 

Lazar Berman writes: The “new spirit” of cooperation is nice, but Bennett will have to start expressing his government’s principles and goals if he wants to be a leader worthy of the name. – Times of Israel 

Marek Siwiec writes: Israel and Poland can do so much good together. Our recent history has proven this. However, the only way to return to the optimistic horizons of yesteryear is to embrace dialogue, open those channels of diplomacy and go back to investing in education, education, education. – Times of Israel 

Maurice Hirsch writes: The PA, and only the PA, is responsible for its financial distress. The PA payment of the terror rewards has made the US, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands cut financial aid to the Authority, while other countries have limited their aid to certain PA projects. If the PA were to abandon its terror rewarding policy, the decision would not only relieve the PA’s financial crisis, but it would also open a door to other changes in PA priorities and values, which are all prerequisites for peace. – Algemeiner 

Libya

Countries neighboring Libya wrapped up their meeting Tuesday in Algeria, with calls for foreign fighters and mercenaries to be pulled out from the conflict-stricken North African nation. The two-day meeting also urged Libyan parties to stick to a political road map that ended hostilities last year and set parliamentary and presidential elections in December. – Associated Press  

The head of Libya’s state energy company rejected an attempt by the OPEC nation’s oil minister to have him suspended and the board disbanded. – Bloomberg  

Clashes erupted at a government building in central Tripoli on Tuesday after a dispute over the leadership of a state institution, its head said, underscoring the volatility and insecurity in Libya months before a planned election. – Reuters 

Korean Peninsula

There has been a great deal of controversy about North Korea, coronavirus, and vaccines. North Korea has claimed repeatedly, including as recently as this week, that it is entirely free of the coronavirus, despite taking stringent measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. – The National Interest  

South Korea’s parliament on Tuesday approved a first-of-its-kind law aimed at decreasing the dominance of the major app stores operators. The bill, expected to be signed by President Moon Jae-in, would ban Apple and Google from forcing developers to use their proprietary payment systems. – The Hill 

One of Asia’s biggest shipping companies is facing the threat of imminent worker strikes, risking further disruption to global supply chains that are already battling surging costs and shortages of containers and computer chips. – Financial Times 

Bruce Klingner writes: Diplomacy and deterrence are not mutually exclusive. North Korea is unlikely to intimidate or attack South Korea if it perceives that the U.S.-South Korean alliance is strong and that the U.S. commitment to defend South Korea is beyond doubt. The U.S. should make absolutely clear to friend and foe alike that it will defend its allies and maintain current levels of U.S. forces until the North Korean nuclear, missile, and conventional force threats have been sufficiently reduced. – The Daily Signal  

South Asia

India’s economy is growing at a record pace but still digging out from one of the deepest recessions to hit any major economy during the pandemic. The country’s gross domestic product grew 20.1% in the three months ended June, a period when India suffered through one of the world’s worst Covid-19 surges of the pandemic. – Wall Street Journal  

India’s ambassador in Qatar met with the deputy head of the Taliban’s political office to discuss regional security, India’s foreign ministry said in a statement. – Bloomberg  

There is growing concern among Pakistani officials about security in neighbouring Afghanistan, as the Taliban tries to form a government and stabilise the country following the departure of U.S. and other foreign forces. – Reuters  

Michael Rubin writes: That Price dismisses such concerns by implying India does not border Afghanistan is disingenuous. At the very least, it also suggests that Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s talk of putting diplomacy first is empty. Simply put, Biden, Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and his deputy Jon Finer owe India a huge apology and must accept personal responsibility for the bloodshed that is sure to come. – 19fortyfive 

Andy Mukherjee writes: Cheery spin can’t hide the mass suffering across the country. Nor should it detract from the long road to recovery ahead. The number policy makers should focus on is minus 20%, for that’s the shortfall in production from India’s pre-coronavirus growth path. – Bloomberg  

Russia

BBC journalist Sarah Rainsford left Russia on Tuesday after Moscow abruptly refused to extend her permission to work in what it said was a tit-for-tat row with Britain over the treatment of foreign media. – Reuters  

Violetta Grudina, an opposition activist in Russia’s Arctic port city of Murmansk, says the intimidation began after she said she would run for the city council in local elections being held alongside a federal parliamentary vote on Sept. 17-19. – Reuters  

Russia will hold a new round of talks with the United States on nuclear strategic stability next month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday. – Reuters  

The Russian Navy continues to develop how it intends to deploy its latest strategic weapon – a bus-sized torpedo tipped with a nuclear warhead. – USNI News 

On August 20, 2021, the independent Dozhd TV was placed on the list of “foreign agents”. This joins a series of steps against independent voices in Russia, who have been labeled “extremists” (supporters of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, or “foreign agents.” – Middle East Media Research Institute 

Africa

Forces from Ethiopia’s Tigray region in recent weeks looted warehouses belonging to the U.S. government’s humanitarian agency in the Amhara region, USAID’s mission director in Ethiopia said on Tuesday. – Reuters  

Ethiopia plans to form a national government on Oct. 4 following a general election that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s party won by a landslide. Tagesse Chafo, speaker of the Ethiopian House of Peoples’ Representatives, made the announcement on Tuesday. – Bloomberg  

The Nigerian air force has about a squadron worth of light attack aircraft — their pilots and maintainers trained by U.S. Air Force personnel — to fight terrorists in the African nation. – Defense News 

Daniel F. Runde and Conor M. Savoy write: Incorporating SMEs into supporting alternative renewable energy sources is a positive step. This will help channel SMEs’ contributions to the nationally determined contributions of the sub-Saharan African countries, which are at the heart of the Paris Agreement and a step toward achieving long-term goals. It will also establish distribution channels and funding streams from social impact investors. – Center for Strategic and International Studies 

Bobby Ghosh writes: Anticipating a ratcheting up of Western pressure, Abiy is seeking support elsewhere: He got some from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on a visit to Ankara earlier this month. But the combined clout of the U.S. and Europe remains substantial, and it should now be deployed to save millions of Ethiopians from calamity. – Bloomberg  

United States

Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy , a California Republican, assembled a group of GOP lawmakers and military veterans to press the Biden administration to put forward a plan to repatriate the hundreds of Americans stranded in the country. Republicans also seek an assessment of the massive stockpile of U.S. weapons, aircraft, and tanks left to the Taliban. – Washington Examiner 

President Joe Biden’s new mission to hold the planners of the deadly terror attacks at the Kabul airport accountable throws an unexpected wrinkle into congressional attempts to limit the president’s war powers — something Biden himself has voiced support for in the past. – Washington Examiner 

Ira Stoll writes: The New York Times, which was publishing frequent op-eds and even letters to the editor from Afrasiabi denouncing “Israel’s neocolonial expansionism” and “the growing apartheid-like cantonization of Arab areas manned by some 700 Israeli checkpoints, not to mention alarming signs of growing violence by vigilante Jewish settlers against the Palestinians,” has yet to publish a word about the criminal case against Afrasiabi. […]The Times failed to disclose to its readers that Afrasiabi was being paid by the Iranian UN Mission, and it hasn’t appended notes to Afrasiabi’s articles, which remain readily available on the paper’s website. – Algemeiner 

Michael Rubin writes: Make no mistake: I am no fan of Carter. His naive progressivism enabled dictators like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Somalia’s Siad Barre. It diminished America on the world stage. But Carter also held deep convictions and sought to be true to them. His advisers did not hesitate to present him with cold, hard facts, and he listened to reality. Biden is the opposite. His career shows that he pivots on a whim and lets the wind and ego guide his policy rather than principle. – Washington Examiner 

Defense

The Israeli Navy participated in a combined maritime security patrol with the US Naval Forces Central Command’s 5th Fleet in the Red Sea for the first time on Tuesday. – Jerusalem Post 

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall recently announced construction and renovation to Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota, solidifying its position as the future of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions for the service. – Defense News 

Sparring over the size of the defense budget and partisan recriminations over the U.S. exit from Afghanistan are expected to dominate the House Armed Services Committee’s marathon markup of its annual policy bill on Wednesday. – Defense News 

Nearly four-and-a-half years after his indictment, a former U.S. 7th Fleet official on Tuesday admitted he traded classified ship schedules in exchange for luxury hotel stays, meals and entertainment while helping a Singapore-based company secure inflated Navy ship husbanding contracts. – USNI News 

Questioning the $12 billion price tag of new aircraft carriers, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said “presence still matters” in reassuring allies in the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea so they have a role in future strategy. – USNI News 

Olivia Letts and Stephen Rodriguez write: Getting intellectual property policy right is another challenge that must be solved in order for OTAs to support the goal of protecting U.S. national security interests. The broad liberties enjoyed by contractors to retain their IP rights in the OTA process poses potential national security risks. If the whole purpose of using more OTAs is to improve the U.S. military’s technological advantage, then we could end up paradoxically hurting ourselves by allowing cutting-edge, OTA-developed products to be sold to malicious actors. – Defense News