“What gulag?” I said.
“The construction crew,” he said: the men in blue jumpsuits from China. Their barracks were straight out of a Russian novel, he said, puffing on a cigarette. Didn’t I know I was living smack in the middle of a huge story?
Politico
This is in keeping with the strategies of presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump of reducing U.S. forces in the Middle East in order to minimize risk. Trump, however, increased the United States’ air defense capabilities in the region after Iranian drones struck a Saudi oil facility in 2019. The Biden administration’s withdrawal appears to be driven by the need to deploy these weapons in other regions. Thus, the question is where are these weapons going, and has something happened to make the transfer necessary? It is difficult to believe that the transfer is designed for near-term threats, since the pending public transfer of significant defensive weapon systems might force a potential enemy to speed up the initiation of war, to get first strikes in before the weapons are installed.
George Friedman
Roger Simon writes:
In a sense, the current governor and the editor of the state’s most prominent paper are correct, this recall election is about values. But are they the values of a rich class ….
“And he’s still alive.”
In the call, Biden offered aid if Ghani could publicly project he had a plan to control the spiraling situation in Afghanistan. “We will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is,” Biden said. Days before the call, the U.S. carried out air strikes to support Afghan security forces, a move the Taliban said was in violation of the Doha peace agreement.
Reuters
When Taliban fighters seized control of Kabul two weeks ago, the invading units made a beeline for two critical targets: the headquarters of the National Security Directorate and the Ministry of Communications.
Their aim — recounted by two Afghan officials who had been briefed separately on the raid — was to secure the files of intelligence officers and their informers, and to obtain the means of tracking the telephone numbers of Afghan citizens. That could be disastrous for hundreds of thousands of people who had been working to counter the Taliban threat.
NYT
But it also contains details on the individuals’ military specialty and career trajectory, as well as sensitive relational data such as the names of their father, uncles, and grandfathers, as well as the names of the two tribal elders per recruit who served as guarantors for their enlistment. This turns what was a simple digital catalogue into something far more dangerous, according to Ranjit Singh, a postdoctoral scholar at the nonprofit research group Data & Society who studies data infrastructures and public policy. He calls it a sort of “genealogy” of “community connections” that is “putting all of these people at risk.”
MIT Technology Review
On Saturday night I had just sat down to have a drink with a friend when he got a call. He apologized for having to take it, but it was urgent: it was about the Afghan women’s orchestra. They were stuck in Kabul and desperate to get out. He was involved in the effort to extract them.
Bari Weiss
Joe Biden “will remember” comments about his mental acuity emanating from senior figures in the UK, and will “bear a grudge” against Britain, sources told the Telegraph
Telegraph
President Joe Biden said Friday that China was withholding “critical information” on the origins of Covid-19 after the US intelligence community said it did not believe the virus was a bioweapon — but remained split on whether it escaped from a lab.
Yahoo
Pakistan, nominally a U.S. partner in the war, was the Afghan Taliban’s main patron, and sees the Taliban’s victory as its own. But now what does it do with its prize?
NYT
The US president has also reaffirmed the 31 August deadline for troops to leave Afghanistan and says forces will fly out as many people as possible before that date.
SBS
But with no “smoking gun” and limited access to raw data, discussion of the science has played out in a haze of circumstantial evidence … international scientists tasked with studying the virus’ origins warned Wednesday that another crucial window is “closing fast”: the shrinking opportunity for any thorough scientific study to be completed. As time wears on, potential evidence wanes, and tracing back biologic breadcrumbs will yield diminishing returns, said more than ten of the authors of a World Health Organization-led report that is urging action to “fast-track the follow-up scientific work required” for better answers by the WHO.
ABC News
Kentucky’s Republican congressmen are asking President Joe Biden to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan until all Americans and Afghan allies have been evacuated.
McClatchy
The Biden administration has exposed itself as incapable of making basic prudential decisions, and then compounding it with outrageous statements by the president, Pentagon brass, and the State Department that have many Americans asking, “What were you thinking?”
The Hill
“in light of the New York Attorney General’s report, and Andrew Cuomo’s subsequent resignation as Governor, it is rescinding his special 2020 International Emmy Award. His name and any reference to his receiving the award will be eliminated from International Academy materials going forward.”
Variety
“It was a deep dive, but you can only go so deep as the situation allows,” one U.S. official said. “If China’s not going to give access to certain data sets, you’re never really going to know.”
WSJ
Military advisers have told the White House that the decision must be made by Tuesday in order to have enough time to withdraw the 5,800 troops currently on the ground, as well as their equipment and weapons. If the President agrees, the military anticipates “a few more days” of trying to evacuate as many people as possible before the drawdown of US forces begins, possibly at the end of this week.
CNN
