Taliban Appoint al-Qaeda Linked US-Most Wanted Terrorist As Kabul Security Chief

Taliban Appoint al-Qaeda Linked US-Most Wanted Terrorist As Kabul Security Chief

Days after the Taliban declared Afghanistan an Islamic Emirate, terrorists with links to the al Qaeda are emerging as leaders in the newly established regime.

“[S]enior Taliban leaders seen in the capital in recent days include Khalil Haqqani — one of America’s most wanted terrorists with a $5 million bounty on his head for links to al-Qaeda,” The Times of Israel reported on Saturday.

Khalil Haqqani, a senior commander of the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network, has been appointed at the security chief of Afghan capital Kabul, news reports say. “The Taliban has placed security for the Afghan capital, Kabul, in the hands of senior members of the Haqqani Network, which has close ties with foreign jihadist groups including a long-standing association with Al-Qaida,” the Voice of America confirmed. Other top members of the network, including Anas Haqqani, were also playing important role in the formation of a Taliban-controlled Islamist regime.

With the Haqqani Network and other Jihadis taking up positions of power in Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, the new regime is looking more and more like previous one which harbored international terrorists and promoted worldwide jihad.

Meet Khalil Haqqani of the Taliban in #Afghanistan.

He is one of America's most wanted terrorists with a $5 million bounty on his head.

Now he is in Kabul & the Biden admin is requesting from him each day to allow American civilians enter the Kabul airport.

Let that sink in. pic.twitter.com/AvI5AenzeT

— Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) August 21, 2021

Europe Fears Afghan Migrant Wave

As the Taliban consolidate their hold on power in Kabul, European countries fear another wave of illegal immigration along their eastern borders. In 2015, conflict in Syria unleashed a wave of illegal immigrants into Europe. Millions of migrants, mostly young men from various Muslim countries, entered the continent in wake of crisis in Syria.

The Associated Press reported European concerns over a looming migrant crisis:

European Union officials told a meeting of interior ministers this week that the most important lesson from 2015 was not to leave Afghans to their own devices, and that without urgent humanitarian help they will start moving, according to a confidential German diplomatic memo obtained by The Associated Press.

Austria, among the EU’s migration hard-liners, suggested setting up “deportation centers” in countries neighboring Afghanistan so that EU countries can deport Afghans who have been denied asylum even if they cannot be sent back to their homeland.

The desperate scenes of people clinging to aircraft taking off from Kabul’s airport have only deepened Europe’s anxiety over a potential refugee crisis. The U.S. and its NATO allies are scrambling to evacuate thousands of Afghans who fear they’ll be punished by the Taliban for having worked with Western forces. But other Afghans are unlikely to get the same welcome.

Even Germany, which since 2015 has admitted more Syrians than any other Western nation, is sending a different signal today.

Several German politicians, including Armin Laschet, the center-right Union bloc’s candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor, warned last week that there must be “no repeat” of the migration crisis of 2015.

French President Emmanuel Macron stressed that “Europe alone cannot shoulder the consequences” of the situation in Afghanistan and “must anticipate and protect ourselves against significant irregular migratory flows.”

With the next month’s national election in mind, Germany is at the forefront of the effort to avoid a new migrant wave. Six European countries, including Germany, told the EU not to stop the deportation of migrants back to Afghanistan as this would “motivate even more Afghan citizens to leave their home.”

Trump Blasts Biden: “We Could Have Gotten Out With Honor”

Former President Donald Trump slammed his successor for the “greatest foreign policy humiliation” in the U.S. history. At a rally near Cullman, Alabama on Sunday, Trump blasted Biden for not following through on the plan put in place by his administration. “We should have gotten out with honor. And instead we got out with the exact opposite of honor,” Trump said.

Reuters reported Trump’s blistering attack on Biden:

Former President Donald Trump launched on Saturday a sustained attack on President Joe Biden’s handling of the retreat of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, which he called “the greatest foreign policy humiliation” in U.S. history.

Trump, a Republican who has dangled the possibility of running again for president in 2024, has repeatedly blamed Biden, a Democrat, for Afghanistan’s fall to the Islamist militant Taliban, even though the U.S. withdrawal that triggered the collapse was negotiated by his own administration.

“Biden’s botched exit from Afghanistan is the most astonishing display of gross incompetence by a nation’s leader, perhaps at any time,” Trump said at a boisterous rally packed with his supporters near Cullman, Alabama.

At the rally, Trump blamed the situation on Biden not having followed the plan his administration came up with and bemoaned U.S. personnel and equipment being left behind as troops withdrew.

“This is not a withdrawal. This was a total a surrender,” he said. (…)

Trump said the Taliban, with whom he had negotiated, respected him. He suggested the quick takeover of Afghanistan would not have happened if he was still in office.

“We could have gotten out with honor,” Trump added. “We should have gotten out with honor. And instead we got out with the exact opposite of honor.”

After the Botched Afghanistan Exit, Biden Admin Struggles to Get Thousands of Americans Out

As Fuzzy Slippers reported in her Saturdays post: “ISIS is gearing up to attack Americans amid the humiliating and chaotic disaster created by the Biden administration’s epic failures in conducting an honorable, clean, organized allied withdrawal from the country.”

This will further complicate the aleady deasaterous evacuation effort being overseen by the Biden administration.

“A security alert on Saturday told US citizens to stay away due to possible “security threats outside the gates”,” the BBc reported. “Only those individually told to make the journey by a US government representative should do so, it said.”

Even for those Americans who manage to reach the airport — braving the taliban check-points — there are no gurantees for a safe passage back home. “All gates at the Kabul airport were closed Saturday because of a backup at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, according to a Defense Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly,” the USA Today reported.

Media reports over the weekend estimate up to 15000 U.S. and dual nationals are stranded in the Taliban-held country. “Tens of thousands of people remain to be evacuated ahead of the deadline,” UK’s Sky News reported on Saturday.

Nearly 6000 American soldiers were on the ground in Afghanistan aiding the rescue effort. These troops are due to leave the country by August 31 deadline set by the Biden administration.

With terrorist threat to the stranded Americans and U.S. troops rising by the day, President Biden admitted the precarious nature of the rescue operation his administration is running in Afghanistan.

On Saturday, Biden warned that the evacuation of Americans from Kabul was “not without risk of loss” and his administration “cannot promise what the final outcome will be.”

“[T]his evacuation mission … involves risks to our armed forces and it’s being conducted under difficult circumstances. I cannot promise what the final outcome will be,” the president added.

Merkel Seeks Putin’s Help

With the Biden administration struggling to get Americans out, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Russian Vladimir Putin for assistance in airlifting German nationals.

“German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for support in rescuing local Afghan forces after the Taliban takeover,” German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported.

Just like China, Russia is tying the establish relations with new Islamist rulers of Afghanistan. “Moscow … is seeking to open channels of communication with the Islamist group and appears to be looking to foster some sort of relationship with the Taliban,” German news outlet added.

The NATO may also be holding back channel talks with the Taliban. On Friday, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg spoke of “tactical operational contacts” with the Islamist group to get Western nationals out of Afghanistan.

UN Calls for Humanitarian Aid to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan

Taliban’s newly declared Islamic Emirate would not only be a jihad-promoting state, it will likely to end up again as a economic basket case — depending on billions of dollars of aid from the ‘infidel’ U.S. and Western countries.

United Nations and other international agencies are urging the U.S. and Western countries to consider the resumption of aid to the Taliban-held country, media reports say.

‘Senior figures [including UN officials] in Kabul warned that the latest chaos is combining with drought, huge displacements of people and economic paralysis to create a disaster requiring immediate international action,” British newspaper The Guardian reported on Sunday. “With growing anger over Britain’s chaotic evacuation effort and people killed in a crush around Kabul airport yesterday, a meeting of G7 leaders has been hastily arranged for early this week,” the newspaper added.

Anti-Taliban Opposition Gains Gound in North

There are reports of the forces loyal to the deposed Afghan government making territorial gains in the north of the country. After regrouping in the Panjshir Valley — just 80 miles from Kabul, the anti-Taliban militia has taken three more districts under its control.

The French broadcaster EuroNews reported the rebel gains:

Forces holding out against the Taliban in northern Afghanistan say they have taken three districts close to the Panjshir valley where remnants of government forces and other militia groups have gathered.

Defence Minister General Bismillah Mohammadi, who has vowed to resist the Taliban, said in a tweet that the districts of Deh Saleh, Bano and Pul-Hesar in the neighbouring province of Baghlan to the north of Panjshir had been taken.

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