Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses. Share the link of this article with your facebook friends

 

Malala Maiwand and her Driver Shot Dead in Jalalabad, the Latest Victims of Assassinating Journalists in Afghanistan

December 12, 2020 

Afghani journalist Malala Maiwand and her driver were killed in their way to work, in Jalalabad, December 9, 2020

 

Afghanistan violence: Journalist Malala Maiwand shot dead along with her driver

BBC, December 9, 2020

A female journalist has been shot dead in eastern Afghanistan, the latest victim of a spate of assassinations across the country.

Malala Maiwand was on her way to work in Jalalabad on Thursday when gunmen opened fire on her vehicle. Her driver, Mohammad Tahir, was also killed.

No group has officially said it carried out the attack.

The killings come after NATO and the EU issued a statement condemning recent targeted killings in Afghanistan.

Maiwand, a journalist at Enikass TV and Radio, was travelling to work when her vehicle was attacked by unidentified gunmen.

The provincial governor's spokesman, Attaollah Khogiyani, told local media the assailants had fled the area.

Maiwand, also a civil society activist, had previously spoken about the challenges of being a female journalist in the country.

Her mother, also an activist, was killed by unknown gunmen five years ago, Reuters news agency reports.

British ambassador to Afghanistan, Alison Blake, called for Thursday's murders to be investigated.

"We join in expressing our condolences and condemnation of the murders of journalist Malala Maiwand and her driver this morning #NotATarget," she wrote.

"We must unite to uphold #PressFreedom, their deaths must be investigated and their killers face justice for this wicked act."

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) condemned the killings.

Journalists, activists and political figures have all been targeted in recent attacks:

Last month well-known former television presenter Yama Siawash was killed along with two others when a bomb attached to his car exploded near his home in Kabul

Aliyas Dayee, a reporter for Radio Liberty, was killed in a car bomb attack in Lashkar Gah.

Saba Sahar, one of Afghanistan's first female directors, was shot in Kabul. She survived the attack

Nai, an organisation that supports media in Afghanistan, said in a statement: "With the killing of Malalai, the working field for female journalists is getting smaller and journalists may not dare to continue their jobs the way they were doing before."

The violence comes as talks between Afghan officials and the Taliban are continuing in Doha, Qatar. The two sides have made some progress on preliminary issues but are yet to begin discussing a ceasefire or power-sharing agreement.

Afghanistan violence: Journalist Malala Maiwand shot dead along with her driver - BBC News

***

Islamic State claims killing of female TV presenter in Afghanistan

DECEMBER 10, 2020

JALALABAD, Afghanistan/KABUL (Reuters) -

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the shooting death of a female TV presenter and women’s rights activist in Afghanistan on Thursday, an attack that underscored an increasing trend of violence against journalists in the country.

Malalai Maiwand, a presenter at Enikas Radio and TV in the eastern province of Nangarhar, was killed along with her driver in the attack on their vehicle in the regional capital Jalalabad, taking the total number of journalists and media workers killed this year in Afghanistan to 10.

“She was on the way to the office when the incident happened,” said Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial governor.

Nangarhar has been a hotbed of militant activity, most notably involving Islamic State, which issued its claim of responsibility via its Telegram communications channel, calling her a “pro-regime” journalist.

Maiwand, who was 25, was not the first in her family to be targeted. Five years ago, her mother, also an activist, was killed by unknown gunmen. Enikas has been targeted before, with its owner, Engineer Zalmay, kidnapped for ransom in 2018.

“With the killing of Malalai, the working field for female journalists is getting more smaller and the journalists may not dare to continue their jobs the way they were doing before,” Nai, an Afghan media advocacy group, said in a statement.

Last month, Elyas Dayee, a Radio Azadi journalist, was killed in a bomb blast in the southern province of Helmand, and Yama Siawash, a former TOLOnews presenter, was killed in a similar blast in Kabul.

The Afghan government, the German Embassy, European Union delegation and Britain’s ambassador condemned growing attacks on journalists and activists.

Afghan interior ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said that in the last decade and a half, the vast majority of journalists killed had been victims of Islamist Taliban militants.

International donors and governments have voiced apprehension about a possible reversal of progress on women’s rights over the last two decades if the Taliban return to any sort of power with the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country scheduled next year.

The Taliban’s ultra-hardline rule in 1996-2001 was marked by oppressive laws for women up until the group was toppled following a U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Reporting by Abdul Qadir Sediqi in Kabul and Ahmad Sultan in Nangarhar; Additional reporting by Hesham Abdul Khalek in Cairo; Writing by Gibran Peshimam and Mark Heinrich

Islamic State claims killing of female TV presenter in Afghanistan | Reuters

***

Now Is as Good a Time as Any for the U.S. to Quit Afghanistan

Whether American forces stay or leave, the fighting is guaranteed to continue. Why not cut our losses?

By Gil Barndollar and Sam Long

WSJ, Dec. 10, 2020 6:31 pm ET

It was the shot of a lifetime. A lone Taliban fighter, armed with a cheap rocket-propelled grenade launcher, had destroyed the enormous surveillance blimp tethered to our patrol base. The $500 rocket tore through the blimp from end to end, obliterating $25 million of vital cameras and sensors. The explosion sounded like the sky itself was being ripped apart.

The destruction of the blimp left our little outpost vulnerable at the worst possible moment. The long-planned withdrawal of U.S. Marine units from northern Helmand province was scheduled to begin in weeks. Preparations had been under way for months; the impending operation was no secret to either side. Robbed of our critical eye in the sky, we braced ourselves for what we assumed was the next step in an audacious Taliban plan to maximize our casualties as Marines and allies withdrew from our patrol bases to the relative safety of Camp Leatherneck, a few hours drive south.

Our worst fears never materialized. That cold winter of 2013 witnessed the largely undisturbed departure of thousands of American and allied troops from Afghanistan’s deadliest province. In the end, the Taliban chose to keep most of their powder dry, conserving resources to fight their fellow Afghans rather than sacrificing fighters in high-profile but tactically meaningless attacks against departing foreigners.

In the rest of Afghanistan, whenever American troops finally do depart for home, a similar scenario is likely to play out. Yet President Trump’s decision to commence a new Afghanistan troop drawdown has prompted bipartisan outrage. Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth raised the specter of more “Americans in body bags,” while Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell and Marco Rubio invoked the chaos of Saigon in 1975. Retired generals and journalists added their voices to the chorus, condemning this supposedly precipitous withdrawal. But our own experience suggests that this consternation is overblown.

Mr. Trump’s troop drawdown may well be politically motivated, but it also reflects a realistic appraisal of the facts on the ground. The Taliban are increasingly ascendant on the battlefield; they now control or contest nearly half the country. Civilian casualties in October were the highest in more than a year. Continued civil war is likely to be the next chapter of Afghanistan’s story, whether U.S. forces stay or leave.

Proponents of leaving American troops in place remain unable to articulate a realistic, coherent, and achievable end state for Afghanistan. The U.S. has even been quietly cooperating with the Taliban of late. The arrival of ISIS’ Afghanistan affiliate, Islamic State Khorasan, led the American Joint Special Operations Command to become the de facto “Taliban air force” in 2019, providing airstrikes to support the forces of our longtime enemy against an even nastier newcomer.

It isn’t new to have U.S. politicians who are disconnected from the facts on the ground in Afghanistan. In 2013, two years after President Obama announced that American troops would soon come home, we discovered that the military was still expanding its footprint in Afghanistan. Our team assumed control of a series of bases that had been enlarged in a costly engineering operation only months before. Five months later, when word finally came to withdraw, we tore down many of these newly remodeled outposts. The rest we refashioned into smaller versions of themselves, at significant additional cost, so that the outnumbered Afghan forces would have a chance of holding them in the face of the assaults we knew they would soon face.

Whether it comes this winter, next spring, or even years from now, the final U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan will inevitably be a messy and destabilizing affair. Members of Congress, and America’s generally hawkish foreign policy establishment, need to reject the comforting, now decadeslong illusion that if we stay just a little longer, we can leave under better, cleaner circumstances.

The opposite is closer to the truth: Each passing month increases the odds that the small U.S. force remaining in Afghanistan eventually departs in real haste, either as a result of the collapse of the Afghan state or a dramatic Taliban military breakthrough.

Waiting for the “right time” finally to depart Afghanistan, at an annual cost of nearly $40 billion and a slow trickle of American combat deaths, is a feckless attempt to kick the can down the road. Our troops should not be held hostage to policy makers’ vain hopes for an immaculate withdrawal, or to the calamities conjured up on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Barndollar is a senior research fellow at the Catholic University of America’s Center for the Study of Statesmanship. Mr. Long is a Boston-based small-business investor. They served together as U.S. Marine combat advisers in Afghanistan in 2013–2014.

Now Is as Good a Time as Any for the U.S. to Quit Afghanistan - WSJ 

***

Share the link of this article with your facebook friends