The D Brief: Kabul summons warlords; INDOPACOM’s China warning; Troops to Haiti?; Germany creates space command; And a bit more...
By Bradley Peniston and Jennifer Hlad
July 13, 2021 10:56 AM ET
Afghanistan security forces are collapsing faster than expected, The Guardian’s Emma Graham-Harrison reports from Kabul. “There is an acknowledgment on our side that we didn’t foresee this [Taliban] advance, we weren’t comprehensively prepared,” said one official with access to President Ashraf Ghani.
Writes Graham-Harrison: “In its desperation to stem the losses, the government has summoned one of the darker spectres from the country’s recent past, urging warlords and regional strongmen to call up militias that fought the Taliban—but also each other—during the all-out civil war of the 1990s. As recently as last year, Ghani had been trying to disband these groups.”More Afghans are fleeing their homes as the Taliban advance. Some 270,000 Afghans have been displaced since January, U.N. officials estimate, “bringing the total population forced from their homes to more than 3.5 million,” Reuters writes.
“Afghanistan is on the brink of another humanitarian crisis,” warns Babar Baloch, spokesman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, but that can and should be avoided by reaching a peace agreement, he told reporters on Tuesday in Geneva. Read on, here.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/07/the-d-brief-july-13-2021/183709/
