탈레반이 열강에 잘 보이려는 제스춰와 이중노선

*** 거사 해설***

20년만에 정권을 되 찾은 탈레반은 미국이 철수를 마무리한 후에 카불 공항에 진입하였고, 그날 축포를 쏘며 자축을 하면서, 중국의 원나라, 영국, 구 소련 그리고 미국까지 아프가니스탄에서 처참하게 패배하면서 물러났다고 하였다. 그러나 지난 20년동안 전 아프간 정부는 미국의 막대한 재정적 지원에도 불구하고 부패와 나태로 제대로 나라재정을 살피지 못하여 국가 재정상태와 경제는 미약하지만, 다른 무슬림권 나라에서 처럼 여성인권 신장이 크게 이뤄졌고, 또 국민들이 자유롭게 인테넷/ 셀폰등의 사용에 익숙해졌다. 이런 상황에서 20년과는 달리 탈레반 정권은 국내에서 인권탄압, 특히 여성에 대한 구태의연한 탄압을 겉으로는 계속할 수 없을 것이고, 더우기 빈곤탈출을 위해서 경제적인 문제를 감안하여 세계의 열강한테 잘 보이려는 제스춰가 절대적으로 필요하게 되었다. 이 판국에 미국의 떠난 빈 자리에 경제회복 협조등을 내세워서 제일 먼저 달겨든 나라가 중국이다. 신장 위구르 자치구가 탈레반과 같은 수니족이라 그들의 독립을 부채질할 것을 우려해서다. 그렇지 않아도 신장위그르족에 대한 말살적인 인권탄압이 도마에 오른 시국이라 중국은 매우 예민하여 발버둥치는 모양새를 보여준다. 

 

그러나 구 아프가니스탄 정부도 결국 해결못하고 망했지만, 가장 큰 걸림돌은 지역에 따라 토속 주민들의 강한 의식이 복잡하게 얽혀져 단일 정부의 힘이 미치지 못하였다. 지금도 북쪽 험한 산악지대에는 탈래반에 대항하는 반군 세력들이 집결되어있고, 내란의 불씨를 여전히 안고 있다. 그리고 이번 공항근처에서 탈레반도 막지못한 자살 테러를 자행한 ISIS-K 도 골칫거리다.  그러므로 앞으로 모슬람 근본주의자인 신정부가 호전적이고 무식한 7~8만 대원들을 어찌 다스리고 또 경제회복및 인권회복 등 국내외 문제에 대한 행보에 전 세계가 눈여겨 볼일이다.

 

미국이 9/1 까지 완전철수하는데 탈래반 정부는 미국인들의 철수에 도움을 줬다. 그리고 그 이후에도 안전하게 출국할 수 있도록 배려를 한다고 하였다. 결국, 그들은 미국이나 기타 영국/독일/프랑스/덴마크 등의 나라에게도 선의적인 외교를 유지하겠다는 메시지를 보낸 것이다. 그리고 사족을 달자면, 탈래반이 예전같이 치고 산속으로 빠지는 상황이 아니고, 카불에서 정치를 하는데, 더 이상 열강의 심기를 건드리면 그 명분으로 미국및 연합군들이 하시라도 20년전처럼 단 시일내에 박살을 낼 수도 있다는 점이다.

- Taliban cooperation included protecting Americans from possible terrorist attack at airport (NBC)

Not long before the U.S. finished its Afghanistan withdrawal, the Taliban stopped a bus headed to Kabul's airport, saying it might be rigged with bombs.

[Taliban special forces fighters arrive at Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. military's withdrawal in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Tuesday. Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi / AP]

Aug. 31, 2021, 3:20 PM CDT

By Courtney Kube

 

WASHINGTON — Less than 24 hours before the U.S. completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban stopped a bus headed for the Kabul airport and forced all the passengers off, saying the bus might be rigged with explosives and that it had two possible suicide attackers on board, according to the account of a U.S. citizen who was on the bus.

The U.S. citizen, whose name NBC News is withholding for security reasons, was on the bus with his six daughters Sunday when Taliban fighters stopped it at the Panjsher Pumping Station just outside the airport, two people familiar with the account said. The Taliban told everyone to get off.

The U.S. citizen and his daughters hid in a nearby drainage ditch until the Taliban gave them the all-clear.

"The Taliban were absolutely instrumental," said a senior congressional aide familiar with the account. "Without pulling that bus over, there could have been an attack at the airport that could have killed people, including Americans."

U.S. wraps military operation, diplomats depart Afghanistan after 20-year war

AUG. 31, 202110:03

 

The Defense Department has said the U.S. military worked with the Taliban to help Americans and Afghan nationals leave. But the level of coordination and assistance went well beyond what Pentagon leaders have said in public, three senior U.S. defense officials said.

For more than a week, militants who fought the U.S. for two decades drove Americans through checkpoints, cleared streets so Americans could pass safely and even carried luggage to the airport gates, the officials said. They may have also prevented some attacks, officials said, although the three senior defense officials were unfamiliar with the bus incident.

"The Taliban had been very pragmatic and very businesslike as we approached this withdrawal," Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said Monday hours after the last U.S. troops left Kabul. "I do know this, just speaking purely practically, as a professional, they helped us secure the airfield. Not perfectly, but they gave it a very good effort, and it was actually significantly helpful to us, particularly here in the end."

While many Americans passed through Taliban checkpoints, there were also reports that some Americans and Afghans were beaten and turned away by the Taliban.

The close coordination happened because both sides wanted U.S. troops to leave — and because they share an enemy: the Islamic State terrorist group, better known as ISIS. An ISIS-K fighter exploded a suicide vest Thursday outside the Abbey Gate on the southeast side of the airport, killing 13 U.S. service members and dozens of Afghan civilians.

Eager to assert their control over the country, the Taliban made it clear to the U.S. that they did not want ISIS-K fighters to gain access to the airport.

At a briefing Thursday after the attack, McKenzie said he believed the Taliban had prevented some attacks and that the U.S. had been sharing some information with them. "They don't get the full range of information we have," he said. "But we give them enough to act in the time and space to try to prevent these attacks."

U.S. leverages tools to hold Taliban accountable for safe passage, Pentagon says

AUG. 31, 202108:17

 

With the U.S. gone now, "I do believe the Taliban is going to have their hands full with ISIS-K," McKenzie said, adding, "And they let a lot of those people out of prisons, and now they're going to be able to reap what they sowed."

 

The cooperation was launched during a meeting with the Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Doha, Qatar, on Aug. 15. McKenzie said he told Baradar that the U.S. would begin an evacuation mission and defend evacuees if necessary. "While [the Taliban] stated their intent to enter and occupy Kabul," he said, "they also offered to work with us on a de-confliction mechanism to prevent miscalculation while our forces operated in close quarters."

McKenzie said he was blunt with the Taliban about what would happen if things didn't go smoothly, saying, "'If you challenge us, we're going to hurt you.'"

Beginning Aug. 21 and continuing until the final hours of the U.S. military presence, the State Department sent a text message instructing U.S. citizens who needed help to meet at one of two locations in Kabul: the Interior Ministry building on the southeast side of the airport or a Taliban command-and-control location on the far west side of the airport. The text included a pass the Americans were meant to show the Taliban to get through Taliban checkpoints and the gate at the airport.

The Taliban would check the passes against a manifest of names — provided by the State Department — of evacuees eligible to be waved through, the officials said.

 

"The Taliban were essentially processing American citizens," an official said. Defense officials said the Taliban were not allowed to keep copies of the passes or the list of names and that most people on the manifest were out of the country already.

Once they verified the documents, the Taliban would organize the evacuees into smaller groups and escort them to the airport in intervals, at times blocking off and securing the roads leading to the gates to provide safe passage through crowds that often gathered, the officials said.

How can Afghans flee Afghanistan after U.S. completed its withdrawal?

AUG. 31, 202104:01

 

The Taliban began escorting Americans, third-country nationals and some Afghan citizens on Aug. 21 after large crowds began massing around the airport gates, the officials said. Both meeting locations were close to gates staffed by U.S. troops, allowing the military to observe the Taliban actions from inside the walls, the officials said.

Thousands of Afghan civilians trying to enter the airport blocked access to the gates, often making it too dangerous for Americans to pass through. After coordinating with the U.S., the Taliban pushed back the crowds and cleared the way for small groups of Americans to enter the gates.

The U.S. also encouraged the Taliban to push the checkpoints farther away from the airport, which helped disperse the large crowds at each gate. The Taliban continued securing the roads around the gates until the U.S. military had withdrawn.

A U.S. official described the Taliban as being "very cooperative." Just weeks earlier, the U.S. had been conducting airstrikes on Taliban positions.

The family that was on the bus with the alleged explosives, however, still hasn't been able to leave.

Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., said he believes the U.S. will work with the Taliban in the future.

"There's been coordination and communication with the Taliban for several years," he said. Garamendi said the U.S. needs to maintain diplomatic and military relations with the Taliban because Americans and Afghans still need help leaving the country and because of the persistent threat from terrorist groups like ISIS-K and Al Qaeda.

U.S. working with Taliban to continue evacuations after attack

AUG. 27, 202103:21

 

Garamendi said his office has helped several hundred U.S. and Afghan citizens safely out of Afghanistan over the past few weeks. He said he is hopeful the Taliban will continue to help people get out. "I suspect they intend to be a different government," he said.

Despite the coordination during the evacuation, however, none of the three senior U.S. defense officials believe the Taliban will become a partner, and all expressed skepticism that the Taliban had changed their brutal ways.

"This is not a new Taliban," one of the officials said. "They have a long way to go to build confidence with the U.S."

McKenzie said Monday: "I can't foresee the way future coordination between us would go. I would simply say that they wanted us out, we wanted to get out with our people and with our friends and partners. And so for a short period of time, our issues, our view of the world, was congruent, it was the same."

- Taliban members escorted Americans to gates at Kabul airport in secret arrangement with US (CNN)

By Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent

Updated 4:30 PM ET, Tue August 31, 2021

 

(CNN)The US military negotiated a secret arrangement with the Taliban that resulted in members of the militant group escorting clusters of Americans to the gates of the Kabul airport as they sought to escape Afghanistan, two defense officials told CNN.

 

One of the officials also revealed that US special operations forces set up a "secret gate" at the airport and established "call centers" to guide Americans through the evacuation process.

The officials said Americans were notified to gather at pre-set "muster points" close to the airport where the Taliban would check their credentials and take them a short distance to a gate manned by American forces who were standing by to let them inside amid huge crowds of Afghans seeking to flee.

The US troops were able to see the Americans approach with their Taliban escorts as they progressed through the crowds, presumably ready to intervene in case anything happened.

 

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the arrangements, which have not been disclosed until now because the US was concerned about Taliban reaction to any publicity, as well as the threat of attacks from ISIS-K if its operatives had realized Americans were being escorted in groups, the officials said.

The ISIS offshoot, a sworn enemy of the Taliban, claimed responsibility for a suicide attack at a gate to the Kabul airport last week that killed 13 American service members and more than 170 Afghans.

 

The US has had military and diplomatic contact with the Taliban for years through political talks and deconfliction efforts, but the secret evacuation arrangement between the militant group and the US military reflects an unprecedented level of tactical coordination. While it's not known whether there is any connection, CIA Director William Burns paid a highly unusual visit last week to Kabul, where he met with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar as the Biden administration struggled to get airlift operations running smoothly.

 

Throughout the evacuation, Biden administration officials stressed that the Taliban were cooperating and senior officials repeatedly emphasized that the militant group had committed to provide "safe passage" for Americans.

The Taliban escort missions happened "several times a day," according to one of the officials. One of the key muster points was a Ministry of Interior building just outside the airport's gates where nearby US forces were readily able to observe the Americans approach. Americans were notified by various messages about where to gather.

"It worked, it worked beautifully," one official said of the arrangement. As of Monday, when the US completed its withdrawal, more than 122,000 people in total had been airlifted from Hamid Karzai International Airport since July and more than 6,000 Americans civilians evacuated.

 

It is not clear if the Taliban who were checking credentials during these efforts turned away any of the Americans. There have been numerous reports that some Americans with passports and US green card holders were turned away from Taliban checkpoints close to the airport and sometimes beaten.

 

In another separate secret arrangement not disclosed until the operation was over, troops from the elite Joint Special Operations Command and other special operations units were also on the ground helping Americans escape by contacting them through "call centers," one of the officials said.

Special operations forces set up their own secret gate at the airport and were at times in direct communication with Americans telling them exactly where to walk to find the gate and be able to get inside the airport.

The secret gate allowed the US military to offer some protection to Americans by avoiding the publicly known and highly vulnerable gates to Afghanistan's only airstrip for international flights.

As the evacuation got underway, thousands thronged to the airport gates hoping to get inside and onto flights, raising concerns about a terrorist attack focused on one of those entrances.

On Sunday, August 22, as he confirmed his decision not to extend the evacuation deadline beyond August 31, President Joe Biden acknowledged the growing threat ISIS-K posed to the airport.

'Threats outside the gates'

"Every day we're on the ground is another day we know that ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both US and allied forces and innocent civilians," Biden said.

Last Wednesday, a US defense official told CNN that based on a very specific threat stream, it seemed clear that ISIS-K planned to attack crowds outside the airport. The US Embassy in Kabul warned US citizens at airport gates to "leave immediately" and noted "security threats outside the gates."

 

On Thursday, the ISIS offshoot struck with its suicide bomber.

Commander of US Central Command Gen. Frank McKenzie first publicly revealed the involvement of special operations forces at a Monday press conference saying those forces helped evacuate more than 1,000 American citizens and more than 2,000 Afghans "via phone calls, vectors, and escorting."

Special operations forces "reached out to help bring in more than 1,064 American citizens and 2,017 SIVs or Afghans at risk, and 127 third-country nationals all via phone calls, vectors, and escorting," he said. But in public comments, McKenzie did not specify the involvement of JSOC which includes forces that carry out the most dangerous counterterrorism missions such as the Army's Delta Force and Navy SEALS. (-)