Pakistan:

Strongly condemning Israel's assault on the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Pakistan said Monday that Tel Aviv is in violation of measures ordered by the UN's top court last month.

The Maldives:

The Maldives on Monday also strongly condemned Israel's "threats to launch a full-scale invasion" on Rafah city. "The forced displacement and inhumane attacks against innocent Palestinians and the obstruction of humanitarian assistance by the Israeli occupation forces is against international laws and regulations and tantamount to war crimes," the said a Foreign Ministry statement from the capital Male.

Afghanistan:

The interim Taliban administration in Afghanistan also joined the chorus against the Israeli attacks on Rafah. "The continuation of brutality of Zionist forces on Rafah city will cause a major disaster and make the ongoing crisis spiral out," the Foreign Ministry in Kabul said.

China:

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that Israel’s actions in Rafah harm civilians and violate international law. China opposed and condemned Israel’s Rafah actions and it is closely following the developments in the Rafah area. It further urged Israel to stop its military operation as soon as possible and warned of a ‘serious humanitarian disaster’ if Israel continues its ground offensive in Rafah.

Venezuela:

In a statement, the Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Ministry condemned "the actions taken by the Government of Israel within the framework of the expansion of the military offensive in the Gaza Strip toward Rafah, in the far south. "The statement added that this "Israeli Zionist plan aims to continue implementing its criminal and expansionist policy in this area that is home to more than one million four hundred thousand displaced Palestinians."

by Jake Wallis Simons

The Gray Lady even contrasted the two incidents in a way that painted the American atrocity favourably while casting Israeli intentions in doubt. The Kabul attack, it said, ‘came after a suicide bombing killed at least 182 people, including 13 American troops, during the frantic American withdrawal from the country. Under acute pressure to avert another attack, the US military believed it was tracking a terrorist who might imminently detonate another bomb. Instead, it killed an Afghan aid worker and nine members of his family.’

The Gaza strike, however, ‘adds fuel to accusations that Israel has bombed indiscriminately’, the New York Times said, pre-empting the results of the independent investigation with breathless speculation and a healthy dose of ‘confirmation bias’ of its own. The assumption could not be clearer: whereas the Americans were acting out of panic and confusion, the Israelis were either acting out of disregard for human life or straightforward bloodlust.

Civilian deaths, including those of aid workers, are a tragic reality of modern warfare. Sixty-two humanitarian workers lost their lives in combat zones last year. Although they were mostly killed at the hands of autocratic regimes and militias, during wartime they are also the casualties of democracies, including Britain.

During the Libyan civil war in 2011, when David Cameron had his hands on the joystick, 13 people were killed by a NATO airstrike, including an ambulance driver, three nurses and some friendly troops. (He did not, surprisingly, subject his own government to the type of rhetoric that he has recently been levelling at the Israelis over the mistaken Gaza strike.) That same week, NATO wiped out a family near Ajdabiya in the north of the country. This year, even the Danish military was forced to admit that its aerial assault had claimed the lives of 14 Libyan civilians.

The difference between attitudes towards most Western armed forces and the Israelis could not be sharper. According to the UN, the average combatant-to-civilian death ratio in war around the world is one to nine. When Britain, America and our allies battled Islamic State in Mosul in 2016-17, we achieved a much more respectable rate of about one to 2.5. In Gaza, Israel has done better still, reaching about one to 1.5, and possibly even less.

The sex-based apartheid against women in Afghanistan cannot be reduced to, "Afghan men saw Afghan women enjoying freedom and got mad, so they established extremist religious governments to stop it." I am really tired of seeing this misconception and oversimplification spread around by leftists, liberals and feminists – it's racist, and simply not fucking true.

The majority of Afghans want a secular government and for the oppression of women to end. The Taliban represent a minority of Afghanistan's people. The deterioration of Afghan society – in particular, women's rights and freedoms – directly results from decades of foreign intervention, imperialism and occupation. Afghans did not destroy Afghanistan, the United States did, and the USSR paved the way for them to do so.

Had Afghanistan never been treated like a pawn in the games played by imperialistic powers, had we not been reduced to resources, strategic importance and a tool for weakening the enemy, extremism would have never come to power.

An overview of Afghanistan's recent history:

The USSR wanted to incorporate Afghanistan into Soviet Central Asia and did so by sabotaging indigenous Afghan communist movements and replacing our leaders with those loyal to the USSR. The United States began funding and training Islamic extremists – the Mujahideen – to fight against the Soviet influence and subsequent invasion, and to help the CIA suppress any indigenous Afghan leftist movements. Those Mujahideen won the war, and then spent the next decade fighting for absolute control over Afghanistan.

During that time period, known as the Afghan Civil War, the Mujahideen became warlords, each enforcing their own laws on the regions they controlled. Kabul was nearly destroyed, and the chaos, destruction and death was largely ignored by the United States despite being the ones who caused and empowered it. This civil war era created the perfect, unstable environment needed to give a fringe but strong group like the Taliban a chance to rise to power. And after two decades of war, a singular entity taking control and bringing 'peace' was enticing to all Afghans, even if their views were objectively more extreme than what we had been enduring up to that point.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they allied with the same warlords that had been destroying our country the decade prior and whom they had rallied against the Soviets – these are the people that made up the Northern Alliance. The 'good guys' that America gave us were rapists, pillagers, and violent extremists, no better than the Taliban. And that's not even mentioning the horrible atrocities and war crimes committed by American forces themselves.

So, no, Afghan men did not collectively wake up one day and decide that women had too much freedom and rush to establish an extremist government overnight. No, this is not to excuse the misogyny of men in our society – the extremists had to already exist for Americans to fund and arm them against the Soviets – but rather to redirect the bulk of this racist blame to the actual culprits. The religious extremism and sex-based apartheid would not be oppressing and murdering us today if they hadn't been funded and supported by the United States of America thirty years ago. And despite all the abuses and restrictions, many Afghan women prefer the Taliban's current government to another American occupation. I felt safer walking in Taliban-controlled Kabul than I did being 'randomly searched' (sexually assaulted) by American military police in my village as a child.

Imperialism is inextricably linked with patriarchal violence and women's oppression. You cannot talk about the deterioration of Afghanistan without talking about the true cause of said decline: The United States of America. Americans of all political views, including leftists and feminists, are guilty of reducing or outright ignoring Western responsibility for female oppression in the Global South, finding it much easier to place all blame on the foreign brown man or our supposedly backwards, savage cultures, when the most responsibility belongs with Western governments and their meddling games that forced the most violent misogynists among us into power.

(Most of this information comes from my own experience living as an Afghan Hazara woman in Afghanistan, but Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence covers this in much more detail. If you want more on the Soviet-Afghan war and Afghanistan's socialist history, Revolutionary Afghanistan is an English-language source from a more leftist perspective)

Afghan refugees who fled their country to escape from decades of war and terrorism have become the unwitting pawns in a cruel and crude political tussle between Pakistan’s government and the extremist Taliban as their once-close relationship disintegrates amid mutual recrimination.

On Oct. 3, Pakistan’s government announced that mass deportations of illegal immigrants, mostly Afghans, would start on Nov. 1. So far, at least 300,000 Afghans have already been ejected, and more than a million others face the same fate as the expulsions continue.

The bilateral fight appears to center on Kabul’s support for extremists who have wreaked havoc and killed hundreds in Pakistan over the last two years—or at least that is how Islamabad sees it, arguing that it is simply applying its own laws. The Taliban deny accusations that they are behind the uptick of terrorism in Pakistan by affiliates that they protect, train, arm, and direct.

Mass deportations are a sign that Pakistan is “putting its house in order,” said Pakistan’s caretaker minister of interior, Sarfraz Bugti. “Pakistan is the only country hosting four million refugees for the last 40 years and still hosting them,” he said via text. “Whoever wanted to stay in our country must stay legally.” Of the 300,000 Afghans already ejected, none have faced any problems upon returning, he told Foreign Policy. As the Taliban are claiming that Afghanistan is now peaceful, he said, “they should help their countrymen to settle themselves.”

“We are not a cruel state,” he said, adding: “Pakistanis are more important.”

The Taliban—who, since returning to power in August 2021, have been responsible for U.N.-documented arbitrary detentions and killings, as well forcing women and girls out of work and education—have called Pakistan’s deportations “inhumane” and “rushed.” Taliban figures have said that the billions of dollars of international aid they still receive are insufficient to deal with the country’s prior economic and humanitarian crises, let alone a mass influx of penniless refugees.

The expulsions come after earlier efforts by Pakistan, such as trade restrictions, to exert pressure on Kabul to rein in the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani Taliban, whose attacks on military and police present a severe security challenge to the Pakistani state. Acting Prime Minister Anwar ul-Haq Kakar said earlier this month that TTP attacks have risen by 60 percent since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, with 2,267 people killed.

The irony is that Pakistan bankrolled the Taliban throughout their 20-year insurgency following their ouster from power during the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Taliban leaders found sanctuary and funding from Pakistan’s military and intelligence services. When the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, then-Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan congratulated them, as did groups such as al Qaeda and Hamas. But rather than continuing as Islamabad’s proxy, the Taliban have reversed roles, providing safe haven for terrorist and jihadi groups, including the TTP.

“While it’s still too early to draw any conclusions on policy shifts in Islamabad, it appears that the initial excitement about the Taliban’s return to power has now turned into frustration,” said Abdullah Khenjani, a former deputy minister of peace in the previous Afghan government. “Consequently, these traditional [Pakistani state] allies of the Taliban are systematically reassessing their leverage to be prepared for potentially worse scenarios.”

Since the Taliban’s return, around 600,000 Afghans made their way into Pakistan, swelling the number of Afghan refugees in the country to an estimated 3.7 million, with 1.32 million registered with the U.N. High Commission on Refugees. Many face destitution, unable to find work or even send their children to local schools. The situation may be even worse after the deportations: Pakistan is reportedly confiscating most of the refugees’ money on the way out, leaving them in a precarious situation in a country already struggling to create jobs for its people or deal with its own humanitarian crises.

Border crossings between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been clogged in recent weeks, as many Afghan refugees preempted the police round-up and began making their way back. Media have reported that some of the undocumented Afghans were born in Pakistan, their parents having fled the uninterrupted conflict at home since the former Soviet Union invaded in 1979. Many of the births were not registered.

Meanwhile, some groups among those being expelled are especially vulnerable. Hundreds of Afghans could face retribution from the Taliban they left the country to escape. Journalists, women, civil and human rights activists, LGBTQ+ advocates, judges, police, former military and government personnel, and Shiite Hazaras have all been targeted by the Taliban, and many escaped to Pakistan, with and without official documents.

Some efforts have been made to help Afghans regarded as vulnerable to Taliban excess if they are returned. Qamar Yousafzai set up the Pakistan-Afghanistan International Federation of Journalists at the National Press Club of Pakistan, in Islamabad, to verify the identities of hundreds of Afghan journalists, issue them with ID cards, and help with housing and health care. He has also interceded for journalists detained by police for a lack of papers. Yet that might not be enough to prevent their deportation.

Amnesty International called for a “halt [to] the continued detentions, deportations, and widespread harassment of Afghan refugees.” If not, it said, “it will be denying thousands of at-risk Afghans, especially women and girls, access to safety, education and livelihood.” The UNHCR and International Organization for Migration, the U.N.’s migration agency, said the forced repatriations had “the potential to result in severe human rights violations, including the separation of families and deportation of minors.”

Once back in Afghanistan, returnees have found the going tough, arriving in a country they hardly know, without resources to restart their lives, many facing a harsh Himalayan winter in camps set up by a Taliban administration ill-equipped to provide for them.

Fariba Faizi, 29, is from the southwestern Afghanistan city of Farah, where she was a journalist with a private radio station. Her mother, Shirin, was a prosecutor for the Farah provincial attorney general’s office, specializing in domestic violence cases. Once the Taliban returned to power, they were both out of their jobs, since women are not permitted to work in the new Afghanistan. They also faced the possibility of detention, beating, rape, and killing.

Along with her family of 10 (parents, siblings, husband, and toddler), Faizi, now eight months pregnant with her second child, moved to Islamabad in April 2022, hoping they’d be safe enough. Once the government announced the deportations, landlords who had been renting to Afghans began to evict them; Faizi’s landlord said he wanted the house back for himself. Her family is now living with friends of Yousafzai, who also arranged charitable support to cover their living costs for six months, she said.

With no work in either Pakistan or Afghanistan, Faizi said, they faced a similar economic situation on either side of the border. In Pakistan, however, the women in the family could at least look for work, she said; their preference would be to stay in Pakistan. As it is, they remain in hiding, afraid of being detained by police and forced over the border once their visas expire.

Reblog if you didn’t hear about this on the news

KABUL, Afghanistan – Taliban security forces opened fire over the heads of women who staged a rare protest in Kabul on Saturday — a violent crackdown coming just two days ahead of the one-year anniversary of the group sweeping to power in Afghanistan.

There were no immediate reports of injuries. 

About two dozen women marched down a main street of Kabul chanting "bread, work, freedom," "we want political participation" and "no to enslavement."

The protesters unfurled a large banner announcing the anniversary of the Taliban's resumption of power as a day of solidarity with Afghan women. They also demanded the international community step up to help them.

"It was important because it's nearly the first anniversary of the Taliban rule and we wanted to say that we don't consent to this government," said one young woman who spoke to NPR after the protest. She requested anonymity so she couldn't be identified by Taliban authorities. 

"After a year of this government, there is no change in the situation. We are showing that we won't stay silent," she said. "It's important to show the world that Afghans don't accept this. We will stand against injustice."

As the women marched, Taliban security forces began grabbing the phones and cameras of Afghan journalists and male international correspondents. They grabbed the phone of a boy on a bicycle who tried to take a photo.

Then, in what appeared to be a coordinated move, they opened fire in the air above the protesters, quickly dispersing them. Taliban security forces have used live fire to disperse protests in the past. But the fire this time was unusually intense: Multiple gunmen fired rapidly in the air, leaving bullet casings strewn across the street. 

Several reporters were detained, and at least three remain in custody.

The return of the Taliban to power ended four decades of conflict and has largely made the country secure. But they have dramatically curbed women's rights, preventing most girls from attending secondary school, banning women from traveling alone and making it difficult for them to work.

They've also cracked down on those criticizing their rule, which has chiefly been women demanding their equal rights. 

Meanwhile, sanctions have paralyzed the economyand plunged the country into a major humanitarian crisis with many Afghans going hungry. Major aid groups and human rights organizations have pleaded with the international community not to forget the plight of ordinary Afghans, and to allow commerce and trade to continue.

“In August 2021, the world watched with dread as the Taliban swiftly regained control of Afghanistan while U.S. forces exited the country. In those early days, it became clear that an ominous fate awaited America’s most committed Afghan allies. Women and men who fought shoulder to shoulder alongside U.S. troops were left facing inevitable retribution from the Taliban. As the challenges of the U.S.-led operation to evacuate vulnerable Afghan allies became painfully clear, it also became obvious to many of us that some of the most at-risk Afghans were likely to be left behind.

In fact, despite the large number of Afghans evacuated during the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, a report from the Association of Wartime Allies (AWA) in February 2022, showed that of the estimated 81,000 Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants in Afghanistan that had visa applications pending as of Aug. 15, 2021 — the day Kabul fell — some 78,000 were not evacuated in this effort. At least 96 percent of the SIV population remained in Afghanistan and in grave danger of reprisal by the Taliban.

…As with most government programs, the Afghan SIV program is complicated and requires oversight and maintenance. Most acutely, the program does not have an unlimited number of visas available and relies on congressional reauthorization of visas to allow America to continue to bring those left behind in Afghanistan to the safer shores of the U.S. Based on the rate of issuance, there are likely less than 7,000 visas remaining available for Afghan allies, with some 140,000+ SIV applicants waiting to receive one. At the current pace, this supply of visas will be exhausted as early as mid-August of this year.”

you post about how people on tumblr would fall for terrorist propaganda if it sounded whole enough- after the taliban took kabul i genuinely saw people on tumblr say that it was a good thing bc the ANA were rapists and the taliban said they would still allow women to have freedoms (something that predictably did not actually happen)- i was so shocked and outraged to hear genuine taliban support i stopped using this app for like a month- this website is truly Special

I remember seeing shit like that too and every time it happens im somehow, genuinely surprised

If tumblr existed during 9/11 you'd get these idiots saying "actually al qaeda are the good guys because bush is a war criminal" with their whole chests. Do you chucklefucks not hear yourselves

Not everything is a battle between good vs evil. Sometimes both fighting sides of a major conflict can be bad. Oftentimes they are! And that still means that the people getting killed dont deserve to die just because of where they are!

Israel is committing a genocide of palestinians. Hamas is still a terrorist organization. Innocent israelis are not at fault for the actions of their government, being from a country with compulsory military service doesnt mean the people forced into the military by circumstances of birth are complicit fascists by default, AND that government is a fascist military state. All of these things can be true at once. Jesus fucking christ.

Hibatullah Akundzada, the reclusive leader of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, rejected the idea of compromising when it comes to restrictions on women's life in the country this week.

The leader of the Islamic theocracy, which retook Afghanistan in 2021 following the withdrawal of American forces that summer, addressed thousands of worshippers on the holiday of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan.

Speaking and leading prayers at the central mosque of Kandahar, Akhundzada proclaimed that he "will not take even a step away from the Islamic law," according to a report in Voice of America.

Taliban fighters celebrate on the second anniversary of the fall of Kabul on a street near the US embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 15, 2023. (credit: REUTERS)

Taliban has banned women from public parks, gyms

"I am administering God's Hudud," Akundzada said, using an Arabic word that literally translates to "limits," and refers to the sets of laws and punishments prescribed by Islam. "They object to it, saying public stoning and hand-cutting are against their laws and human rights... Islam is a divine religion that deserves respect, but you insult it instead." 

The Taliban has suspended girls' education past the sixth grade and banned many women from the workplace, as well as from public spaces such as parks, gyms, and bathhouses, VOA reported.

There is only one publicly available photograph of Akhundzada, who has led the Taliban since 2016. His speech was broadcast on Taliban radio, according to VOA. 

Major General John Kirk Singlaub (July 10, 1921 – January 29, 2022) was a major general in the United States Army, founding member of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and a highly decorated officer in the former Office of Strategic Services (OSS). [...]

Singlaub headed CIA operations in postwar Manchuria during the Chinese Communist revolution, led troops in the Korean War, managed the secret war along the Ho Chi Minh trail in the Kingdom of Laos and Vietnam, worked with the Contras in Nicaragua, and Afghan resistance during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. [...]

In 1977, while Singlaub was chief of staff of U.S. forces in South Korea, he publicly criticized President Jimmy Carter's proposal to withdraw U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula. On May 21, 1977, Carter relieved him of duty for overstepping his bounds and failing to respect the President's authority as Commander-in-Chief.[7][8][9] [...]

After retiring [sic] from the army, Singlaub, with John Rees and Democratic Congressman from Georgia, Larry McDonald founded the Western Goals Foundation. [...] it was intended to "blunt subversion, terrorism, and communism" by filling the gap "created by the disbanding of the House Un-American Activities Committee".[12] [...] Singlaub was founder in 1981 of the United States Council for World Freedom, the U.S. chapter of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). The chapter became involved with the Iran–Contra affair,[13] with Associated Press reporting that, "Singlaub's private group became the public cover for the White House operation".[14] The WACL was described by former member Geoffrey Stewart-Smith as allegedly a "largely a collection of Nazis, Fascists, anti-Semites, sellers of forgeries, vicious racialists, and corrupt self-seekers." Singlaub is credited with purging the organization of these types and making it respectable.[15]

U.S. Army General William Westmoreland described Singlaub as a "true military professional" and "a man of honest, patriotic conviction and courage."[citation needed][sic][...]

He personally knew William Casey, Director of Central Intelligence during the Reagan Administration, as well as Oliver North, and was involved in the Iran–Contra affair. Singlaub was President Reagan's administrative chief liaison in the Contra supply effort to oppose Moscow's and Fidel Castro's advances in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the Cold War and their support for armed Marxist revolutionary guerrilla movements. Through his chairmanship of the world Anti-Communist League (WACL) and its U.S. chapter, the U.S. Council for World Freedom (USCWF), he enlisted Members of the US Congress from both political parties, Washington, D.C. policymakers, retired U.S. military officials, paramilitary groups, foreign governments, and American think tanks and conservatives in the Contra cause. He often met on Capitol Hill with members of the U.S. Congress, including Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-TX) about U.S. support and funding for the Contras and anti-communist resistance forces in Afghanistan opposed to the Red Army invasion of Kabul in 1979 [...]

He was a member of the advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.[16] [...] In January 2020 Singlaub used the "America's Future" of Phyllis Schlafly to plead with Attorney General William Barr to "free Mike Flynn, drop the charges".[18] He turned 100 in July 2021, and died on January 29, 2022.[19][20]

Anne Frank's diary gives comfort to Afghan girls in secret book club : Goats and Soda : NPR

In the year since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, they have used their muscle to restrict the education and curiosity of girls. They've been banned from high school, told to cover up and stay home. But in one secret book club in Kabul, about a dozen teenagers are defying the Taliban to continue learning – and along the way have connected to a girl from a different time and place who was also forced to live her life in secret.

"She had hope. She was fighting. She was studying. She was resisting her fate," says Zahra. She's in the basement of a building on a side alley on the outskirts of Kabul where the book club met on a recent August day with two young volunteers who act as facilitators, steering the conversation and asking questions.

Zahra is speaking of Anne Frank.

The girls are reading and discussing the teenager's famous diary, which she began writing at age 13. And they are struck by the parallels: Just like them, Anne was only a kid – one who was starting to learn about the world – when she was forced into hiding because of a violent, oppressive government.

Members of the Khost Protection Force, a CIA backed Paramilitary originally made up of soldiers of the former Afghan Communist government. KPF operated independently of the Kabul government. 2010s, Afghanistan

Iranian-backed militias have attacked American installations and forces in Syria, Iraq, and Jordan some 170 times.

Ostensibly, these terrorist groups claim they are hitting US forces to coerce America into dropping its support of Israel and demanding a cease-fire in the Gaza war.

In reality, these satellite terrorists are being directed in a larger effort by Iran to pry the US. out of the Middle East, in the manner of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing.

That way, Iran will be free to fulfill its old dream of becoming a nuclear shield for a new Shiite/Persian terrorist axis from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut to the West Bank and Gaza—surrounding Israel and intimidating the Gulf regimes and more moderate states like Jordan and Egypt into concessions.

These Iranian appendages have made a number of unfortunately correct assumptions about America in general and the Biden administration in particular.

One, after the recent serial humiliations of the flight from Afghanistan, the passivity of watching a Chinese spy balloon traverse with impunity the continental United States, the mixed American signals on the eve of the Ukraine war, the troubled Pentagon’s recruitment and leadership lapses, and the destruction of the US southern border, both Iran and its surrogates feel that the United States either cannot or will do much of anything in response to their aggression.

They see the U.S. military short thousands of recruits, its leadership politicized, its munition stocks depleted by arms shipments to Ukraine and Israel, and the massive abandonment of weapons in Kabul.

Two, they view Joe Biden’s serial appeasement as a force multiplier of these perceptions of American weakness. After entering office, the Biden administration begged for a renewed Iran deal from a preening theocracy. It sought to ensure calm by delisting the Houthis from global terrorist designations and sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas and radical Palestinians to buy good behavior.

Biden may have agreed that Iran was the spider in the center of the Middle East Islamic terrorist web, but only thereby to win over it with bribes such as lifting embargoes and sanctions to ensure an Iranian windfall of $90 or more billion in oil sales revenue.

Biden greenlighted a bribery payment of $6 billion to Iran to return American hostages, thereby ensuring more will be taken. It loudly distanced itself from the Netanyahu government. The gulf encouraged radicals to believe they could coerce Israel into accepting radical Islamic states on the West Bank and Gaza.

Three, after hitting American stations and bases 170 times and seeing little sustained, much less disproportionate, responses, Iran and its satellites now feel they are winning proxy wars with the US.

They have all but shut down the Red Sea as an international shipping route—damaging Europe, Egypt, and Israel, which all depend on Red Sea commerce for vital imports and exports.

Iran has forced Biden to publicly alienate the Netanyahu government and push a ceasefire down Israel’s throat. And it has helped to spark international pro-Hamas protests throughout Europe and the US that timid and compliant left-wing governments fear could lose them close elections.

But most damaging are administration spokesmen who mouth the same empty script after each serial attack: 1) The US will respond at the time and place of its own choosing. 2) The US finds no direct evidence of Iranian involvement, although it clearly has supplied the attackers; 3) The US does not wish a wider war and has no plans to attack Iran itself.

Translated to our enemies, it means an 80-year-old non-compos-mentis president is in no position to prevent, much less win, a theater-wide Middle East war that his own serial appeasement has now nearly birthed.

Biden and the Democratic Party know, as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan pointed out just prior to the October 7 attacks on Israel, that the administration inherited a deterred and quiet Middle East. And then it blew up on their appeasing watch.

Now they are terrified of a theater-wide conflict breaking out during an election year—a fact known to all of America’s Middle East enemies.

Biden and company have forgotten the ancient wisdom that preparing loudly only for peace guarantees war. To prevent war, it should return to oil sanctions on Iran, embargo its banking transactions, slap a travel ban on Iran and its allies, cut off all aid to Hamas and the West Bank, and restore a true terrorist designation for the Houthis.

US officials must stop aimlessly babbling. If the administration must speak, Washington should do so by conveying disproportionality and unpredictability. And if, and when, America were to strike, it should do so in silent and devastating fashion.

When serially attacked, loudly responding that we will only proportionally strike back and wish no wider war will only ensure a big, ugly one.

"One unexpected blowback from the medieval Hamas’s barbaric murdering of hundreds of Israeli civilians is the revelation of current global amorality. More than 20 Harvard University identity politics groups pledged their support to the Hamas murderers — to the utter silence for days of Harvard President Claudine Gay.

Americans knew higher education practiced racist admission policies. It has long promoted racially segregated dorms and graduations. And de facto it has destroyed the First Amendment. But the overt support for Hamas killers by the diversity, equity and inclusion crowd on a lot of campuses exposes to Americans the real moral and intellectual rot in higher education.

Democratic Socialist members of the new woke Democratic Party openly expressed ecstatic support for Hamas’s bloodwork. Their biggest fears were not dead fellow Americans or hostages, or some 1,000 butchered Jewish civilians. Instead they were fearful that righteous Israeli retaliation might destroy the Hamas death machine. Palestinians for years fooled naifs in Europe and the Obama and Biden administrations into sending billions of dollars into Gaza. These monies were channeled to tunnel into Israel, to obtain a huge rocket arsenal and to craft plans to wipe out Jews. The Biden administration has blood on its hands. As soon as President Joe Biden took power, he resumed massive subsidies to radical Palestinians, canceled by the prior Trump administration. He ignored warnings from his own State Department that such fungible cash would soon fuel Hamas terrorism. His administration dropped sanctions against Iran, ensuring that Tehran would enjoy a multibillion-dollar windfall to be distributed to Israel’s existential enemies — another fact well known to the Biden administration. If the Biden administration had announced overtly that it was rabidly anti-Israel, it would be hard to imagine anything it could have done differently from its present nihilist behavior.

Biden and company quickly restarted the defunct Iran appeasement deal — a leftover from the anti-Israeli Obama administration. No surprise, they appointed radical pro-Iranian activist Robert Malley to head the negotiations. Malley allegedly has leaked American classified documents to Iranian officials and is under investigation by the FBI. He did his best to place pro-Iranian, anti-American activists into the high echelons of the U.S. government. Biden was intent on forcing South Korea to release to Iran $6 billion in sanctioned frozen money. That expectation of cash ensured Iran would be reimbursed for its present terrorist arming spree. Secretary of State Antony Blinken shamefully tweeted that Israel should settle for an immediate cease-fire. No wonder he soon withdrew his unhinged posting. That idiocy would be the moral equivalent of an American ally in December 1941 urging the United States to seek negotiations with imperial Japan after its surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor — to avoid a “cycle of violence.” The Biden team has drained strategic arms stockpiles in Israel, designed to help the Jewish state in extremis. It recklessly abandoned a multibillion-dollar arms trove in Kabul, some of which reportedly made its way from Taliban killers to the Hamas murderers. Once the mass murdering started, the amoral clarity of our “allies” was stunning. NATO partner Turkey openly sided with the killers. It — along with Blinken — called for a cease-fire at the moment the Hamas death squads had finished and Israel was ready to hold Hamas to account.

Qatar, where the U.S. Central Command is based, proved little more than a Hamas front. It offers sanctuary to the architects of Hamas killing. And Qatar ensures a safe financial pipeline to Hamas from Iran and the radical Arab world. Some of the most vehement current supporters of the Hamas death squads were immigrants to America from the Middle East. Oddly, they apparently had fled just such illiberal Middle East regimes to reach a tolerant, democratic and secure United States. Yet they now endorse the Hamas butchering of Jewish civilians. Its savagery is aimed at executing, raping and beheading Jews and then mutilating their bodies. Hamas apparently hopes to shock the Israeli government into voluntarily committing suicide — in line with the ancient Hamas agenda to destroy the Jewish state. In a strange way, this reign of death has become a touchstone, an acid test of sorts that has revealed the utter amorality of enemies abroad and quite dangerous people at home."

-Victor Davis Hanson, Tribune Content Agency, October 14, 2023

Divorced Afghanistan women forced to return to abusive ex-husbands

When Taliban forces swept into power in 2021, her husband claimed he had been forced into a divorce and commanders ordered her back to his clutches.

KABUL: Abused for years by her ex-husband who broke all of her teeth, Marwa has retreated into hiding with her eight children after Taliban commanders tore up her divorce.

Marwa was one of a small number of women who, under the previous US-backed government, were granted a legal separation in Afghanistan, where women have next to no rights and domestic abuse is endemic.

When Taliban forces swept into power in 2021, her husband claimed he had been forced into a divorce and commanders ordered her back to his clutches.

"My daughters and I cried a lot that day," Marwa, 40, whose name has been changed for her own protection, told AFP.

"I said to myself, 'Oh God, the devil has returned'."

The Taliban government adheres to an austere interpretation of Islam and has imposed severe restrictions on women's lives that the United Nations called "gender-based apartheid".

Lawyers told AFP that several women have reported being dragged back into abusive marriages after Taliban commanders annulled their divorces.

For months Marwa endured a new round of beatings, locked away in the house, with her hands broken and fingers cracked.

"There were days when I was unconscious, and my daughters would feed me," she said.

"He used to pull my hair so hard that I became partly bald. He beat me so much that all my teeth have broken."

Gathering the strength to leave, she fled hundreds of kilometres (miles) to a relative's house with her six daughters and two sons, who have all assumed fictitious names.

"My children say, 'Mother, it's okay if we are starving. At least we have got rid of the abuse'," said Marwa, sitting on the cracked floor of her bare home, clasping a string of prayer beads.

"Nobody knows us here, not even our neighbours," she said, fearing her husband would discover her.

'Islam permits divorce' In Afghanistan nine in 10 women will experience physical, sexual or psychological violence from their partner, according to the UN's mission in the country.

Divorce, however, is often more taboo than the abuse itself and the culture remains unforgiving to women who part with their husbands.

Under the previous US-backed government, divorce rates were steadily rising in some cities, where the small gains in women's rights were largely limited to education and employment.

Women once blamed their fate for whatever happened to them, said Nazifa, a lawyer who successfully handled around 100 divorce cases for abused women but is no longer permitted to work in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

As awareness grew, women realised that separating from abusive husbands was possible.

"When there is no harmony left in a husband and wife relationship, even Islam permits a divorce," explained Nazifa, who only wanted to give her first name.

Under the ousted regime, special family courts with women judges and lawyers were established to hear such cases, but the Taliban authorities have made their new justice system an all-male affair.

Nazifa told AFP that five of her former clients have reported being in the same situation as Marwa.

Another lawyer, who did not want to be identified, told AFP she recently witnessed a court case where a woman was fighting against being forcefully reunited with her ex-husband.

She added that divorces under the Taliban government are limited to when a husband was a classified drug addict or has left the country.

"But in cases of domestic violence or when a husband does not agree to a divorce, then the court is not granting them," she said.

A nationwide network of shelters and services that once supported women has almost entirely collapsed, while the Ministry of Women's Affairs and the Human Rights Commission have been erased.

'Knock on the door'

Sana was 15 when she married her cousin, 10 years older than her.

"He would beat me if our baby cried or the food was not good," she said as she prepared tea on a gas stove at a home where she has been living in secret.

"He used to say that a woman does not have the right to talk."

With the help of a free legal service project, she won a divorce from her husband in court -- but her relief was shattered when Taliban commanders came knocking.

Threatened with losing custody of her four daughters, she returned to her ex-husband who by then had also married another woman.

She escaped after he announced the engagement of her daughters to Taliban members.

"My daughters said, 'Mother, we will commit suicide'," Sana said.

She was able to gather some money and escape with her children, and with the help of a relative found a one-room house, furnished only with a gas stove and some cushions for sleeping.

"Whenever there's a knock on the door, I fear that he's found me and come to take the kids away."

Ordeal for children

A Taliban official told AFP the authorities would look into such cases where previously divorced women were being forced to return to their ex-husbands.

"If we receive such complaints, we will investigate them according to sharia," said Inayatullah, spokesman for the Taliban supreme court, who like many Afghans goes by one name.

When asked whether the Taliban regime would acknowledge divorces granted under the previous government, he said: "This is an important and complex issue."

"The Dar al-Ifta is looking into it. When it arrives at a uniform decision, then we will see," he said, referring to a court-affiliated institution that issues rulings on sharia.

For Marwa and her daughters, who survive by sewing clothes, the trauma has left deep psychological wounds.

"I'm afraid I won't be able to get them married," said Marwa, looking at her daughters.

"They tell me, 'Mother, watching how bad your life has been, we hate the word husband'."

The mass shooting and fire at the Crocus City Hall concert venue outside Moscow on March 22 was the deadliest terrorist attack Russia has seen since the 2004 Beslan school siege. The gunmen’s actions claimed at least 137 lives and injured 180 others. The four suspects currently in custody are citizens of Tajikistan. But Russian authorities are doing their best to connect the attack to Ukraine. Sources in Western intelligence, meanwhile, say it was the work of the Islamic State-Khorasan, a branch of the Islamic State also known as ISIS-K. Experts note that ISIS-K has declared Russia among its main enemies (along with the U.S. and China). Meduza breaks down what you need to know about ISIS-K and why the group has Russia in its sights.

What is ISIS-K?

ISIS-K, or the Islamic State-Khorasan, is a branch of the Islamic State that operates primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Formally, the organization governs an ISIS province (wilayah, in Arabic) and reports to the ISIS caliph. Currently, this position is held by Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, whose four predecessors were killed in U.S. operations.

According to ISIS ideology, its caliphate, or state, aims to span the entire globe. The organization has divided the world into provinces, some of which are headed by local Islamist movements that operated before ISIS came into existence (for instance, ones connected to Al-Qaeda). In fact, ISIS itself emerged when the Al-Qaeda branch in Iraq severed ties with the global Al-Qaeda leadership.

Similarly, the Afghan-Pakistani branch of the Islamic State, ISIS-K, emerged in 2015 as a local movement. Initially, the group was composed of several thousand opponents of Afghanistan’s pro-American government, mostly Pashtuns, who were disillusioned with the Taliban. ISIS-K immediately started engaging in armed conflicts with the U.S. army, the Afghan government, and, even more brutally, with the Taliban.

The Taliban’s ideology fundamentally differs from that of ISIS. The Taliban aim to establish a national Islamic State in Afghanistan, while ISIS supporters advocate for world domination and the defeat of all “infidels.” Islamic nationalism won out in Afghanistan (and neighboring Pakistan), and by 2018, the Taliban (with the unofficial help of U.S. air support) had virtually destroyed ISIS-K’s organized resistance in the eastern provinces. U.S. forces killed several of the group’s leaders and, according to experts, the organization’s numbers were severely depleted, going from several thousand to a few hundred people.

Sanaullah Ghafari, who took over ISIS-K’s leadership, shifted the group’s strategy from direct armed confrontations to increasingly ruthless acts of terrorism against the Taliban, religious minorities, and Americans. During the U.S. troop withdrawal from Kabul in August 2021, he allegedly orchestrated a suicide bombing at the airport gate through which refugees fleeing Taliban rule were trying to enter. The attack killed 182 people, including 13 U.S. servicemen.

ISIS-K later expanded its list of enemies to include Russia, among others. On September 5, 2022, an explosion near the Russian embassy in Kabul killed five people, including two embassy staff. ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the attack. In January 2024, more than 90 people were killed in twin explosions in Kerman in Iran. U.S. intelligence confirmed ISIS-K orchestrated the attacks. However, Taliban agents allegedly killed Ghafari in 2023, and it’s unclear who’s currently at the helm of ISIS-K. That said, judging by the Iran attacks, its strategy remains unchanged.

Why Russia?

Radical Islamists have long accused Russia of being a state that “oppresses Muslims” both at home and abroad. ISIS propaganda regularly mentions Russia’s past military campaigns in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and Moscow’s intervention in support of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria put an even bigger target on its back.

ISIS-K leadership has seen the initial success of ISIS leadership, which capitalized politically on the global struggle against “infidel empires” such as the United States, China, Iran, and Russia. Prioritizing “external operations” could yield far greater political and financial benefits (in the form of donations) than working with local resources.

There are also deeper reasons for the particular hostility towards Russia. In recent years, ISIS-K has been trying to expand the movement’s ethnic base — both in Afghanistan and beyond. In the northern regions of Afghanistan, where many ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks live, its numbers are growing. ISIS-K regularly threatens Central Asian authorities, calling them “puppets of the Russian empire.” In this sense, the struggle against Russia is a fight for resources: primarily for radically minded supporters in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and neighboring countries.

Was ISIS-K behind the attack?

There’s still no publicly available indisputable evidence that ISIS-K organized the attack. However, ISIS has claimed responsibility, and sources told CNN that the U.S. is in possession of intelligence confirming these claims. The New York Times also reported that Washington considers ISIS-K to be behind the attack.

Ruslan Suleymanov, a Middle East expert, expressed skepticism to Meduza about whether ISIS-K currently possesses the necessary resources to organize such a large-scale terrorist attack on the outskirts of Moscow. However, the attack doesn’t appear to have been “high-tech” in nature: the perpetrators clearly had problems with their escape plan, as well as with weapons. (In a video from the attack, sparks are seen flying from the barrel of one of the machine guns, which could indicate that either the ammunition or the weapons themselves were in poor condition.)

Suleymanov said it’s also difficult to confirm whether messages on ISIS Telegram channels are authentic as the group’s accounts are regularly blocked, forcing it to create new ones. The posts about the Moscow attack come from ISIS-linked Amaq News Agency, not from ISIS-K directly. In one picture, the four alleged “participants in the operation” are shown with blurred faces against the backdrop of the Islamic State flag. Amaq later released a first-person body-cam video that clearly shows the attack on Crocus City Hall, corroborating the Islamic State’s involvement.

Ariana Afghan Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-10 On the eve of British withdrawal “west of Suez” in the late 1950s, several nations that previously relied on British airline services began setting up their own flag carriers. The kingdom of Afghanistan was no different, and in January 1955, Aryana Airlines was established, with the government of Afghanistan owning a controlling interest. Operations began shortly thereafter with a fleet of three Douglas DC-3s. In 1957, Pan American Airways bought a 49% share in Aryana, which was subsequently renamed Ariana Afghan Airlines as it began expanding its routes with the help of Pan American. To further expand its fleet, Ariana was given $1.1 million in US aid. In 1967, the Afghani government split off Ariana’s domestic routes to a new airline, Bakhtar Alwatana. Ariana then relied on three Boeing 727s and a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 for international routes. The Soviet-Afghan War (1980-1988) hurt Ariana, but it was able to continue its international routes, though it was forced to sell the DC-10 under Soviet pressure to buy Tupolev Tu-154s. Bakhtar took over Ariana in 1985, but this was short-lived; once the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1988, Bakhtar ceased operations and became Ariana Afghan once more.  The collapse of the civil order in Afghanistan after the takeover of the Taliban had a similar effect on Ariana. UN sanctions reduced Ariana to domestic operations in Afghanistan and flights to Pakistan and Dubai; making matters worse was Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network using Ariana as essentially a courier and transportation service. Al-Qaeda terrorists, using false Ariana employment papers, were able to gain access to several nations to commit terrorist acts, including the 1999 Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings. Following the September 11 attacks and the United States’ subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, most of Ariana’s surviving fleet was destroyed in October 2001 by airstrikes on Kabul airport.   With the Taliban removed from power, UN restrictions on Ariana Afghan were lifted, and Air India donated three Airbus A300s for international operations; Ariana relied on its surviving 727s for domestic operations, and later acquired A310s as well. Ariana resumed international flights in 2002. However, in 2006, the EU banned Ariana from flying to Europe, citing maintenance and security concerns. As of this writing, the ban has yet to be lifted, and with Afghanistan’s continued political turmoil, Ariana’s future remains in doubt.  YA-LAS was delivered to Ariana in 1979 and flew with them until 1985, when it was sold to British Caledonian. It was converted to a cargo aircraft and started a new career with Centurion Air Cargo from 2004 to 2010, was retired, and was last known to be in storage at Opa-Locka Airport in 2016.