In less than a week, the Taliban has captured nearly a dozen key cities in Afghanistan. With the departure of US forces, it is poised to take over the country from the embattled Afghan government.

Over the past 20 years, the US has poured trillions of dollars into Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, an effort that was clearly unsuccessful. But a look at the country’s strategic geographic location and the politics of the region (including support for the Taliban) tells us that this outcome was inevitable.

Afghanistan is strategically located between central and south Asia – a region rich in oil and natural gas. It has also struggled with efforts by different Afghanistan-based ethnic groups to create ancestral homelands. The Pashtun population (and to a lesser extent the Baluch population) are particularly implicated in this.

For these and other reasons, Afghanistan has long faced constant meddling from the Soviet Union/Russia, UK, the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India and of course, Pakistan. 

Afghanistan’s relationship with Pakistan has been fraught with tension ever since the former was recognised as a sovereign state in 1919.

When Pakistan gained its independence in 1947, Afghanistan was the sole country to vote against its formation in the United Nations. Some of the tension emanated from Afghanistan’s refusal to recognise the Durand Line – the hastily drawn 1,600 mile border that cut across thousands of Pashtun tribes in 1893.

Fearing calls from Pashtuns in both countries to create a national homeland that would cut through North Pakistan, Pakistan has long sought to turn Afghanistan into an Islamic client state – supporting an Islamic identity (over a Pashtun one) in Afghanistan to gain strategic depth against India.

Pakistan helped to empower the Taliban in 1994 and has been Afghanistan’s most involved neighbour. Through its top intelligence agency the ISI, it has has bankrolled Taliban operations, recruited manpower to serve in Taliban armies and helped to plan and arm offensives. It has also occasionally been involved in direct combat support. The ISI’s support for the Taliban was rooted in its aim to erase Pashtun nationalism. But in doing so it may have created a bigger problem for Pakistan, as Taliban rule has led to an exodus of Afghan citizens into Pakistan. 

Nevertheless, according to the Afghan government, there are elements within Pakistan’s government, namely the ISI, that still support the Taliban, and ongoing instability in Afghanistan. Furthermore, Pakistan does not have a good relationship with other groups in Afghanistan, so it has little choice but to support the Taliban.

For Pakistan’s government, a worst-case scenario is a protracted conflict, which could lead to another large spillover of refugees into Pakistan.

Iran’s relationship with Afghanistan, which borders it to the east, is also complicated by regional dynamics and its relationship with the US. As a Shia country, Iran has had long ideological differences with the Taliban. In the 1990s, it sought to make alliances, including with the US, to counter the threat from the Taliban.

But two decades later, US relations with Iran are at an all-time low, affecting Iran’s stance on how to deal with the Taliban. Iran has mostly been hedging its bets — supporting both the Afghan government and the Taliban to keep them divided. And improved relations with Qatar – home to the Taliban’s political office – have also helped Iran’s relationship with the Taliban.

Russia is mostly concerned with preventing instability at its border with Afghanistan, and with keeping Afghanistan free of US influence. Since the 1990s Moscow has been developing relations with different groups in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, despite misgivings about the Taliban’s possible support for terror groups.

These relations intensified after the emergence of Islamic State in 2015. In the fight to defeat IS in Afghanistan, Russia saw the Taliban’s interests coincide with its own.

Reports surfaced that Russia was arming the Afghan Taliban and directly undermining US efforts there, even paying bounties to kill US and allied soldiers. US intelligence has since expressed low confidence in the bounty claims.

China, meanwhile, has always maintained cordial relations with the Taliban. China’s main concern is with extending its influence westward to gain strategic depth against India and the US.

For the moment, the rise of the Taliban has not translated into a rise in terrorist activity from groups like al-Qaeda against Afghanistan’s neighbours – a concern of the US pulling out of the region. Sensing the inevitability of the Taliban’s ascension, opportunistic alliances have formed with almost all of Afghanistan’s neighbours with the Taliban, except for India.

India has been mostly reluctant to engage with the Taliban, but recently initiated contact, supported by Qatar. However, New Delhi has also made clear it will not support a violent overthrow of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital – not yet controlled by the Taliban.

Currently, the beleaguered Afghan government claims that its neighbours are being too sanguine about the Taliban, its ability to reform and whether it will help Afghanistan achieve stability. Senior Afghan officials have warned that a Taliban victory will result in a consolidation of power of various terrorist groups if the Taliban allows them to set up a base to launch attacks.

More important than the Taliban’s hospitality is its willingness to allow terror groups to engage freely in organised crime – Afghanistan an attractive location for this as well.

The Taliban’s resurgence has created an acute humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan alongside terrible human rights abuses. Amid the chaos, the prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, has accused the US of leaving behind a “mess”. 

And yet, while many may criticise US President Joe Biden for pulling forces out, there is little likelihood, given all these regional forces at work, that the US could ever have achieved stability in Afghanistan – no matter how long it stayed.

Read more:

https://theconversation.com/afghanistan-taliban-victory-inevitable-despite-the-trillions-the-us-poured-in-166060

The influence of the Saudis has been swept under the carpet once again... Note: Gus could be completely wrong about thinking the Saudis have propped up the Taliban... through the Al Qaeda and Daesh networks. But it is an avenue to be vigorously discussed. In my brainless view, the US lost the war because it has never been willing to challenge the Saudis... who have been give "carte blanche" to do any crap they want — including polluting Africa with religious rubbish.

Some people 'could be" questioning my sanity for suggesting that the Saudis rather than Iran are pulling the strings of the Taliban (read from top).

The simple question is: WOULD THE US LEAVE AFGHANISTAN IF THE TALIBAN WAS ALLIED WITH IRAN? 

You know the answer to this: NO. 

Are Iran and Russia worried about the Taliban taking over Afghanistan? 

YES.

Who has been pulling the strings of the Taliban? Despite being "autonomous", the Taliban needs support such as weapons and ammos. The Friend of the Taliban is Al Qaeda "that has mestatized" in Africa et al, according to Joe Biden. WHO HELPS AL QAEDA? If you don't know, here is a clue:

By Nima Elbagir, Salma Abdelaziz, Mohamed Abo El Gheit and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN...

Please ignore the mention of Iran here. It's a way for reporters to cover their arse, because the US Administration has to blame Iran for anything that goes bang... If Iran acquires US hardware is to do "reverse engineering", not to do terrorism.

So in general, these weapons sold to Saudi Arabia end up in the hands of Al Qaeda, etc... But in some perverse way, many of these Terrorist organisations prefer the AK47 to the M16. Thus they need weapon merchants to supply the stock. Not impossible for the Saudis to "secretely" organise this type of business. to their Wahhabi-aligned friends — the Taliban.

Due to its ease of use, the AK-47 — whose inventor, Mikhail Kalashnikov, died this week, at age 94 — is the weapon of choice for many soldiers, freedom fighters and hired guns alike. As its presence permeates the global consciousness, and as conflicts around the world proliferate, we examine the story behind this gun.

The AK stands for “automatic Kalashnikov” — after the inventor. Forty-seven is a reference to the year that it was invented.

There are somewhere between 75 and 100 million AK-47s worldwide — or one for every 60 people on earth.

Each year, some 250,000 people die from wounds inflicted by an AK-47.

In some parts of the world, an AK-47 can be purchased for as little as $10. In most places, one can be bought for $100 – $300, depending upon the level of hostilities in the area. Generally, the more conflict, the higher the price.

Covert actions by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency funneled millions of AK-47s, as well as shoulder-held missiles, to Afghanistan in the 1970s in order to fight Soviet invaders.

Some U.S. soldiers have expressed a preference for the AK-47 — especially in Iraq or Afghanistan, where dust and sand tend to jam their official-issue M-16s, but do not affect the AK.

The new Iraqi army established after 2007 was at first armed with AK-47s — which the United States had to purchase from Jordan. However, the U.S. government later began issuing M-16s because many of the AK-47s were ending up in the hands of insurgent groups.

In 2004 and 2005, more than 350,000 AK-47 rifles and similar weapons were taken out of Bosnia and Serbia to be used in Iraq by private contractors working for the Pentagon — with the approval of NATO and European security forces in Bosnia.

Read more:

https://www.theglobalist.com/20-facts-mikhail-kalashnikov-ak-47/

Now see also: 

https://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34144

Continued:

Hodeidah, Yemen (CNN) – Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have transferred American-made weapons to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other factions waging war in Yemen, in violation of their agreements with the United States, a CNN investigation has found.

The weapons have also made their way into the hands of Iranian-backed rebels battling the coalition for control of the country, exposing some of America's sensitive military technology to Tehran and potentially endangering the lives of US troops in other conflict zones.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, its main partner in the war, have used the US-manufactured weapons as a form of currency to buy the loyalties of militias or tribes, bolster chosen armed actors, and influence the complex political landscape, according to local commanders on the ground and analysts who spoke to CNN.

By handing off this military equipment to third parties, the Saudi-led coalition is breaking the terms of its arms sales with the US, according to the Department of Defense. After CNN presented its findings, a US defense official confirmed there was an ongoing investigation into the issue.

The revelations raise fresh questions about whether the US has lost control over a key ally presiding over one of the most horrific wars of the past decade, and whether Saudi Arabia is responsible enough to be allowed to continue buying the sophisticated arms and fighting hardware.  Previous CNN investigations established that US-made weapons were used in a series of deadly Saudi coalition attacks that killed dozens of civilians, many of them children.

The developments also come as Congress, outraged with Riyadh over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year, considers whether to force an end to the Trump administration's support for the Saudi coalition, which relies on American weapons to conduct its war.

etc...

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BY Philip Giraldi     August 5, 2021

MEK is a curious hybrid creature that pretends to be an alternative government option for Iran even though it is despised by nearly all Iranians.

One might ask if Washington’s obsession with terrorism includes supporting radical armed groups as long as they are politically useful in attacking countries that the US regards as enemies? It is widely known that the American CIA worked with Saudi Arabia to create al-Qaeda to attack the Russians in Afghanistan and the same my-enemy’s-enemy thinking appears to drive the current relationships with radical groups in Syria.

Given the fact that Iran continues to be the Biden Administration’s enemy du jour, it is perhaps not surprising to observe that the US also supports terror groups that are capable of attacking targets in the Islamic Republic. To that end, recently a number of former senior government officials and politicians were involved in cultivating their relationships with the Iranian terrorist group Mojahedin e Khalq(MEK), which held its most recent annual international summit in Paris for three days starting on July 10th. The event was online due to French COVID prevention guidelines and the featured speaker was Michele Flournoy, former US undersecretary of defense for policy under President Barack Obama. Flournoy was once considered a front runner to be President Joe Biden’s defense secretary and she currently heads a consulting firm WestExec Advisors that she co-founded with current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken which has had considerable influence over staffing and other issues in the White House. In her talk, she accused Iran of posing a danger to the security of the Middle East, the United States, and to its own people, elaborating how “Since 1979, every US administration has had to deal with the threat posed by Iran’s revolutionary regime and the Biden administration is no different. Iran is one of the most urgent foreign policy issues on the president’s desk.” She called for an “internal regime change” in the Islamic Republic.

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers also spoke before the online gathering. Speakers included House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senator Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as Democratic Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. Also participating were Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida and both Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. Former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile also spoke as did former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said that the MEK should be “blessed and protected.”

The summit self-described as “the largest-ever online international event dedicated to liberating Iran” with the objective of “inciting uprisings against the government in the Islamic Republic.” Though it would be charitable to suggest that the congressmen and former officials were largely involved to pick up the generous fees paid to speakers, it must also be noted that knowledge of MEK and its history is readily available on the internet and elsewhere. Flournoy in particular should have known better but even she, after the fact, claimed implausibly that she did not know that she was speaking to a former terrorist group that had killed Americans.

It should also be observed that the participating Congressmen all have extremely close ties to Israel and its domestic lobby, which have been assiduous in their efforts to vilify Iran as America’s designated enemy. To be sure, no one at the summit even mentioned Israel’s use of MEK operatives to carry out assassinations of scientists and sabotage operations inside Iran.

MEK is a curious hybrid creature in any event in that it pretends to be an alternative government option for Iran even though it is despised by nearly all Iranians. It is considered to be both irrelevant and ineffective but Iran hatred is so prevalent that it is greatly loved by the Washington Establishment which would like to see the Mullahs deposed and replaced by something more amenable to US and Israeli worldviews.

MEK is run like a cult by its leader Maryam Rajavi, with a number of rules that restrict and control the behavior of its members. One commentary likens membership in MEK to a modern-day equivalent of slavery. A study prepared by the Rand corporation for the U.S. government conducted interviews of MEK members and concluded that there were present “many of the typical characteristics of a cult, such as authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse and limited exit options.”

The group currently operates out of a secretive, heavily guarded 84 acre compound in Albania that is covertly supported by the United States intelligence community, as well as through a “political wing” front office in Paris, where it refers to itself as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). MEK is financially supported by Saudi Arabia, which enables it to stage events in the United States and in Europe where it generously pays politicians to make fifteen-minute speeches praising the organization and everything it does. It’s bribing of inside the Beltway power brokers and its support by Israel proved so successful that it was removed from the State Department terrorist list in 2012 by Hillary Clinton even though it had killed Americans in the 1970s.

As indicated above, MEK made the transition from terrorist group to “champions of Iranian democracy” by virtue of intensive lobbying of Iran haters. A Guardianarticle also describes how “A stupendously long list of American politicians from both parties were paid hefty fees to speak at events in favor of the MEK, including Rudy Giuliani, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Elaine Chao and former Democratic party chairs Edward Rendell and Howard Dean – along with multiple former heads of the FBI and CIA. John Bolton, who has made multiple appearances at events supporting the MEK, is estimated to have received upwards of $180,000. According to financial disclosure forms, Bolton was paid $40,000 for a single appearance at the Free Iran rally in Paris in 2017.”

It apparently has never occurred to the congressmen and senior officials that the MEK group had a whole lot of history before it appeared on the scene in Washington and began buying American politicians. MEK, which consisted of a group of dissident students having Marxism inspired anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist roots, had a bloody falling out with the Iranian revolution leaders in 1979, forcing it to resettle at Camp Ashraf, near Baghdad. It was protected by Saddam Hussein and used to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran. It was also fiercely anti-American beginning back in the 1970s when it was still in Iran, to include attacks on US businesses and denunciations of the United States presence in Iran under the Shah. In 1979 it supported executing the US Embassy hostages rather than negotiating their release. One of its songs went “Death to America by blood and bonfire on the lips of every Muslim is the cry of the Iranian people. May America be annihilated.”

Within the US government, MEK was notorious for its assassination of at least six US Air Force officers and civilian defense contractors. One particularly audacious ambush in which two air force officers were murdered by MEK while being driven in from the airport was reenacted for each incoming class at the Central Intelligence Agency training center in the late 1970s to illustrate just how a perfectly executed terrorist attack on a moving vehicle might take place.

Given how currently nearly every news cycle includes stories about fake news on social media, it is surprising that MEK is never mentioned. Its current Albanian operational center uses banks of computers manned by followers, some of whom are fluent in English, who serve as bots unleashing scores of comments supporting regime change in Iran while also directing waves of criticism against any pro-Iranian pieces that appear elsewhere on social media, to include Facebook and Twitter. By one account, more than a thousand MEK supporters manage thousands of accounts on social media simultaneously. The objective of all the chatter is to convince the mostly English-speaking audience that there is a large body of Iranians who are hostile to the regime and supportive of MEK as a replacement.

It is an indisputable fact that over the past ten years, members of both major parties in Congress have either traveled to the group’s compound in Albania or spoken via video messages or live appearances in exchange for hefty speaking fees. The support provided by prominent officeholders and policymakers to include effusive praise of a terrorist group that is viscerally anti-American and has killed US officials is a disgrace. It is also a symptom of deeper problems in terms of how our foreign policy has been developed through the ascendancy of special interests. That America’s Iran policy should lead to praise of a radicalized extremist cult that is funded by authoritarian Saudi Arabia and politically supported by apartheid Israel ignores US actual interests at our peril.

Read more:

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/08/05/washington-terrorist-friends-prominent-americans-continue-support-murderous-cult/

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“A GOVERNMENT THAT HAS KILLED PEOPLE FOR LESS”: PRO-SAUDI SOCIAL MEDIA SWARMS LEAVE CRITICS IN FEAR

Before he was murdered by Saudi Arabia, Jamal Khashoggi faced online harassment from influencers and bots. Their new targets are worried

BY Murtaza Hussain

GEOFF GOLBERG WATCHED his own face flicker across the screen in disbelief. A short video clip posted to YouTube and Twitter this March characterized him as a mortal enemy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The narrator, Hussain al-Ghawi, alleged Golberg’s “entire work aims at smearing Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE” — the United Arab Emirates — “by publishing fake analytics banning patriotic accounts and foreign sympathizers.”

Posted in Arabic with English subtitles, the eight-minute video, overlaid with fiery graphics and sound effects, was part of a regular series posted by al-Ghawi, a self-proclaimed Saudi journalist. A clip showed a photo of Golberg’s face, incorrectly describing him as a CNN journalist. Al-Ghawi said that Golberg’s work mapping state-directed social media manipulation had put Golberg in league with the kingdom’s top adversaries — namely the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Turkey, and the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. It was an accusation that Golberg found shocking, as well as frightening.

“Seeing that video, with those types of accusations against me, it made me feel like my life might be in danger,” said Golberg, an expert on tracking social media manipulation and the founder of Social Forensics, an online analytics firm. “At the very least it made me feel like it’s not safe for me to be doing the type of work that I do, even in the United States.”

In the hands of an authoritarian state, social media can indeed be deadly. No more harrowing example of this was seen in the campaign of Saudi state-directed online attacks that preceded the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. In the months before he was killed inside Istanbul’s Saudi consulate, Khashoggi was the subject of an intense campaign of online harassment orchestrated by a Saudi government-backed network of political influencers and bots.

Referred to inside the kingdom as “the flies,” the network swarmed Khashoggi with threats and defamation, an effort that was documented in the 2020 documentary “The Dissident.” They painted him on social media as a treasonous enemy of the Saudi state — no small matter in a country where public discourse is tightly controlled and Twitter is the primary outlet for political conversation. Al-Ghawi himself has been accused of helping instigate the online campaign that marked Khashoggi as an enemy of the state.

The avalanche of attacks online culminated with Khashoggi’s murder at the consulate by an assassination squad believed to have been dispatched directly by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Golberg was well aware of the history. So when he showed up in al-Ghawi’s video, he was deeply alarmed: The threatening manner of the message felt not so different from the way Khashoggi was discussed before his death. Coming from a state where all media is tightly controlled, Golberg thought al-Ghawi’s video seemed calculated to send a message on behalf of the Saudi government to its perceived enemies in the United States.

Golberg said, “Characterizing my work as defending Hezbollah or Qatar — these are the types of baseless accusations from a government that has killed people for less, that make me want to look over my shoulder when I’m walking.”

GOLBERG WASN’T THE only one to come in for al-Ghawi’s ire. The same clip characterized several Saudi activists with ties to the West as traitors and denounced a number of American activists and think-tank experts. Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, also known as DAWN, a Washington think tank focused on democratic norms in the Middle East, made an appearance, as did Ariane Tabatabai, a State Department official and American academic of Iranian descent who had worked for the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit that does frequent research work for the U.S. government.

Online harassment and disinformation have become political issues in the U.S., but in authoritarian countries the threat can be more immediately grave. Under the control of ruling regimes, the public sphere, including social media, can be completely weaponized. Saudi Arabia, ruled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has in particular demonstrated a willingness to go the distance and back up its online threats and intimidation by actually abducting and killing its perceived critics, even those living abroad.

“An important thing to keep in mind is that free expression in Saudi Arabia has been totally crushed under MBS,” DAWN’s Whitson said, referring to the crown prince by his initials. “These online messages are not coming from independent actors inside Saudi Arabia. There are no independent voices left coming out of that country today.” (Neither al-Ghawi nor the Saudi embassy in Washington responded to requests for comment.)

GOLBERG WASN’T THE only one to come in for al-Ghawi’s ire. The same clip characterized several Saudi activists with ties to the West as traitors and denounced a number of American activists and think-tank experts. Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, also known as DAWN, a Washington think tank focused on democratic norms in the Middle East, made an appearance, as did Ariane Tabatabai, a State Department official and American academic of Iranian descent who had worked for the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit that does frequent research work for the U.S. government.

Online harassment and disinformation have become political issues in the U.S., but in authoritarian countries the threat can be more immediately grave. Under the control of ruling regimes, the public sphere, including social media, can be completely weaponized. Saudi Arabia, ruled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has in particular demonstrated a willingness to go the distance and back up its online threats and intimidation by actually abducting and killing its perceived critics, even those living abroad.

“An important thing to keep in mind is that free expression in Saudi Arabia has been totally crushed under MBS,” DAWN’s Whitson said, referring to the crown prince by his initials. “These online messages are not coming from independent actors inside Saudi Arabia. There are no independent voices left coming out of that country today.” (Neither al-Ghawi nor the Saudi embassy in Washington responded to requests for comment.)

Saudi Arabia was just one interest among many — Golberg previously published analytics studies of social media manipulation by supporters of XRP, a popular cryptocurrency, as well as supporters of President Donald Trump — but the kingdom’s pushback proved different. Nothing has triggered as much backlash or fear as his work on the Saudis, Golberg said. Worse still, when faced with these threats, which included a previous tweet from al-Ghawi in September 2020 accusing him and others of working for the government of Qatar and Hezbollah, the platforms themselves did nothing to help him.

“I wish that I were a celebrity or someone with a large, verified account, so that if I were to start sharing information about attacks against me on Twitter and YouTube, the platforms would feel compelled to remove it,” Golberg said. “People with big platforms have the power to get things like doxxing and death threats removed. But for the average person, when this happens, there is not much they can do.”

Golberg, for now, plans to keep documenting the phenomenon of online harassment networks. Yet the threats and attacks against him have had a deep psychological and emotional impact and left him conflicted about whether to continue. “I feel it’s important to keep shining light on the underbelly of platform manipulation,” Golberg said, “but the work I have been doing the past few years has really started taking a toll on me. It can be harrowing.”

IN THE SUMMER of 2020, a report published in the New Yorker highlighted another target of al-Ghawi: former FBI agent Ali Soufan. After Soufan was alerted to credible threats against his life by the CIA that May, he also found himself being targeted by a virulent campaign of online threats and defamation. Soufan hired a cybersecurity firm that determined at least part of the online campaign involved officials of the Saudi government and that “the effort was started by Hussain al-Ghawi, a self-proclaimed Saudi journalist.”

According to the New Yorker, the analysis found that al-Ghawi had also played a key role in leading the online campaign against Khashoggi in the months before his death.

Soufan, who declined to comment for this story, is a decorated former FBI agent with close ties to current and former U.S. government officials. His stature and relationships might make Soufan a costly target for the Saudis. Other Americans who have come onto the radar of their defamatory social media campaigns, however, are more vulnerable, as are their families.

Mohamed Soltan is an Egyptian American who spent nearly two years in an Egyptian prison in the aftermath of a 2013 military coup, coming to the brink of death behind bars during a hunger strike that lasted over a year. Following an international outcry, he was finally released and returned to the United States in May 2015. Despite being a U.S. citizen living at home, his freedom from prison has not meant freedom from further harassment and threats, he said, whether by Egyptian officials or their Saudi allies — including Hussain al-Ghawi.

This March, al-Ghawi released a video on Twitter and YouTube as part of the Jamra series that described Soltan as an extremist who had plotted to carry out attacks against the Egyptian government. Al-Ghawi also painted Soltan as an enemy of the Saudi kingdom who was defaming its rulers through his support of U.S.-based human rights organizations. As evidence, al-Ghawi displayed an old photo of Soltan with Qatar-based cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a cleric often associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which Saudi sees as a threat.

Soltan, who had been personal friends with Khashoggi in Washington and has familiarity with the modus operandi of dictatorial Arab governments, viewed the character attacks against him by al-Ghawi and others as a straightforward attempt to retroactively justify any future harm that he may suffer.

“These attacks are pretexts that they create so that later it plants seeds of doubt in the mind of the public,” Soltan said. “They pick a target and then character assassinate them to such a degree that if anything happens later, people will refrain from speaking about it. This is what they did to Jamal. They paint as much of a negative picture as they can in order to make people later say, ‘It’s complicated’ — if and when something does happen.”

TWITTER’S TIES TO Saudi Arabia have come under scrutiny in the past. In 2020, two employees at the company were the subjects of an FBI complaint: They were accused of spying inside the firm’s office on behalf of the Saudi government, including passing along the phone numbers and IP addresses of dissidents.

Twitter periodically launches removal campaigns of pro-Saudi accounts found to be abusing the platform. In December 2019, several thousand pro-Saudi accounts were removed for violating Twitter’s “platform manipulation policies” shortly after public allegations about the two spies came to light. Last year, another 20,000 accounts said to be linked to the Saudi, Egyptian, and Serbian governments were also purged from the site.

Both Twitter and YouTube, however, seem content to allow ongoing campaigns of pro-government platform manipulation in English. The lack of moderation is even more pronounced in Arabic and other non-English languages. Golberg, the social media analyst featured in one of al-Ghawi’s videos, estimates that the ongoing pro-Saudi information campaigns on Twitter involve “tens of thousands of inauthentic accounts.”

“I’ve identified entire Saudi-based marketing firms that are helping run inauthentic accounts for the Saudi government,” he said. “Judging from the messages they’re amplifying, they are working with the government to not just push certain narratives but also to continue character assassinating journalists and members of civil society that the government dislikes. With those prior suspensions of pro-Saudi accounts, Twitter wanted to give the appearance that they cleaned up their platform a little bit. And they did, but there is still an incredible amount of the same activity taking place today.”

Al-Ghawi has continued to regularly broadcast his Jamra program, posting it on Twitter and YouTube. In early July, he released another video targeting the Quincy Institute, a noninterventionist think tank based in Washington, D.C. Like many of the other Jamra videos, the one on Quincy obsessively listed off individuals working for the organization who al-Ghawi said were of “Iranian-origin.” He also maintained his characteristic looseness with facts, falsely accusing at least one Quincy Institute employee, Eli Clifton, of having previously worked in the Iranian capital.

“It’s concerning to see a prominent Saudi Twitter troll, who played a central role in the social-media campaign against Jamal Khashoggi, targeting staffers at a U.S.-think tank with outright lies and fabrications,” Clifton, who has contributed to The Intercept, said in response to his inclusion in the latest episode of Jamra. “But it’s downright shocking that American tech companies — Twitter and Google — are knowingly hosting and assisting in the dissemination of this content.”

“Protecting the safety of people who use Twitter is of paramount importance to us,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. “We have clear policies in place on abusive behavior, hateful conduct and violent threats on the service. Where we identify clear violations, we will take enforcement action.” According to Twitter, al-Ghawi’s tweets did not violate any policies. (YouTube did not respond to a request for comment.)

In the video on Whitson, al-Ghawi accused the DAWN executive director of taking “$100,000 to criticize Saudi Arabia and Egypt” — an accusation that she described as ludicrous. Whitson said that the online campaign directed by al-Ghawi and others has been a clear attempt to silence outside criticism of the kingdom over its foreign policy and human rights abuses, including the murder of Khashoggi.

The Biden administration has made public some of its own intelligence pointing to the Saudi crown prince’s role in the Khashoggi murder, but earlier this year stopped short of directly imposing sanctions on Crown Prince Mohammed and other high-level officials believed responsible for the killing. The failure to impose serious accountability, alongside the continued threats leveled by the Saudi regime against Americans and Saudi dissidents abroad, appear to be signs that the crown prince is unchastened and potentially willing to strike out at his critics with violence again. Pro-government influencers, prominent among them Hussain al-Ghawi, seem to be favored tools.

In one Jamra video, responding to allegations that he was marking out enemies of the kingdom for future harm, al-Ghawi characterized himself as merely a journalist performing a public service. “A journalist does not threaten, nor assassinate, nor kill,” al-Ghawi said. “A journalist’s ammunition is information, and their weapon is words.”

The language of al-Ghawi’s reassurance did little to comfort the Americans and others who are on the receiving end of his online campaigns, broadcast from an authoritarian country with a track record of killing its critics, wherever they may be.

“The Biden administration should ask itself what it is going to do to protect Americans from these attacks,” said Whitson. “As long as the Saudis feel that they have this uncritical U.S. backing, they’re going to continue to believe that they have a license to attack their critics in whichever way that they like. These coordinated attacks against people they dislike that begin online have already proven that they can be deadly in the real world.”

Read more:

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/01/saudi-arabia-twitter-harassment-jamal-khashoggi/

Read from top.

See also: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/40604

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In this article, Laura Tingle mentions everyone and the kitchen sink — BARELY MENTIONING THE SAUDIS as THE MAIN supporter of/weapon supplier to the Taliban while firmly dunking Iran into the crap. Back to the keyboard. Read from top. As well, few people will recognise that the Pakistan/Afghanistan border is an artificially created border between people of the same ethnic background. A large portion of Pakistan is Pashto (mostly Taliban), like a large portion of Afghanistan. Many Taliban schools are in Pakistan.

Laura Tingle writes:

The Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan raises crucial questions about Australia's longest war

Australians probably mostly still know of Imran Khan from his days as an international cricketer.

These days, he is Pakistan's prime minister and this week, he endorsed the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, saying Afghans had "broken the shackles of slavery".

He wasn't the only one to not be expressing the horror at the fall of Kabul that has been expressed in the West. There were lots of others — all with big stakes in the geostrategic game in Central Asia — who we rather blithely overlook when we think about Afghanistan.

We see it mostly through the Australian prism of the reason we committed troops there in the first place — as a breeding ground for terrorism — and through the lens of the United States' interests.

But Afghanistan shares borders with Pakistan, China, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. India, Russia and Turkey are not far away and have much invested in what happens in Afghanistan, as does Saudi Arabia.

India doesn't like the idea of its bitter strategic rival Pakistan gaining even more influence in Afghanistan, for example. The country is a mineral resource rich prize — including oil, gas, copper, iron and gold and rare earths — estimated to be worth more than $US 1 trillion.

It has always been a place of geostrategic influence at the crossroads of the world, but never more so at a time when China has been engaged in its hugely ambitious belt and road initiative (BRI) of infrastructure developments.

Once again, while we think of the BRI more in its maritime implications, its spending on terrestrial infrastructure across Central Asia in the past decade — to bring raw materials and energy and access markets for its goods — has been eye watering.

The Chinese, as well as the Russians, have therefore got huge interests in what happens there, just as Iran does, given its long land border with the country.

It's not in the interests of anyone in the neighbourhood if Afghanistan is either unstable, or becomes a home for Islamic terror that is exported back into their own countries — or which sustains ethnic minorities for whom there is no tolerance at home.

Yet the collapse of the US-backed government, and army, in Afghanistan this week was celebrated either as a coup for Muslims everywhere, in China as a sign, as it should be, of US declining influence, and in Iran as "an opportunity to restore life, security and lasting peace to the country".

Why does this all matter to Australia? Aren't we just concentrating for now on getting Australians — and those who supported us — belatedly out of the country?

Well, it matters because of who will have influence in Afghanistan from now on, and the uneasy allegiances and hostilities between countries in its region. Their relative power and economic might have shifted profoundly in the 20 years since Australia first committed troops there after the September 2001 terror attacks in the United States.

Australia, like other western countries, has muttered darkly about how the Taliban need to behave well — and treat women and minorities well — and warned we will all be exerting influence to bear to make sure they do. The question is: how is that going to work exactly?

The argument seems to be that, whatever their brutal history, the Taliban understand the pragmatic need for foreign aid and investment and that this can be used as a lever to ensure that the freedoms won in Afghanistan in the past 20 years, particularly those for women, will not be crushed.

That in turn raises two further questions. The first is whether the changing and competing interests in the region itself will mean the Taliban don't have to look very far afield for that aid and investment, so that there will no levers to pull.

The second question goes to whether a Taliban-based government in Kabul is officially recognised by other countries. It is hard to provide aid and investment to a regime that is not officially recognised.

When the Taliban was last in power, the regime was recognised only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Most western countries have suggested they will not recognise the new regime, certainly not on a bilateral basis, or that at best it is highly unlikely or will depend on the regime's behaviour.

But it is hard to see how that would be a huge concern just now for the Taliban given China, Russia and Iran have kept their embassies in Kabul open as everyone else has fled.

The three countries have courted and hosted the Taliban leadership in recent times, with China describing the Taliban's "decisive military and political force".

Iran has also become closer to the Taliban, providing funding and weapons, despite a Sunni-Shia divide and the fact Iran cooperated with the initial push against the Taliban led by the US in 2001. Turkey and India have also spoken with them.

All these countries have an interest — as do the smaller 'stans — in Afghanistan not exporting radical Islam to its neighbours. But that is likely to be their main interest, rather than how a new regime treats its people.

No one quite knows yet how the Taliban plan to rule this time around: not just in terms of their imposition of Sharia law, or whether they will make any attempt at power sharing.

But it is equally unclear how they will technically transform themselves into a governing body with a bureaucracy that functions. They have done it in regional capitals but running a country is a different thing.

If groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic State — which are still in Afghanistan — were to be revived under the new regime (or any others for that matter) and wished to engage in terror activities elsewhere in the world, what could be done about it?

There have be blithe assurances this week, including from Australian government ministers, that the US has the airstrike capacity to target such terror cells. But apart from the logistical difficulties of doing this when you no longer have a nearby airbase, you would think there would be questions in international law about conducting bombing raids in someone else's sovereign state.

Which brings us back to whether the West — and Australia — will recognise the Taliban regime and, if they don't, how they will exert any influence to ensure that the gains that have been made for the Afghan people over the past 20 years are preserved.

They all sound like pretty distant questions in a time of pandemic, when some of our governments seem to have completely lost the plot on keeping COVID-19 under control.

But they will be crucial in determining the strategic aftermath of what has been Australia's longest war.

Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-21/taliban-takeover-afghanistan-crucial-questions-australia-war/100395160

Read from top. Read also: the teleprompter lied... and more hidden history...

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An article on DW, also sees the influence of Saudi Arabia being minimal on the Taliban... see:

But the way the DW article is expressed actually show how the Saudi are cleverer in secretly dishing out their influence (read from top). Qatar, despite their recent "sanction" biffo with the Saudis is part of the same troop: The Wahhabi/Sunni/Saudi side of the road. The Taliban is Pashto which is Wahhabi/Sunni/etc... Thus despite the Saudis being loved by the USA, and actually because of it, the USA might be able to maintain a political influence in Afghanistan, via the Saudis. ALL THIS cannot be seen, but it will be managed...

Here is the conclusion of DW:

....

Despite this, there were still ongoing connections between "governmental, religious and private actors," analysts at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) wrote in a 2013 research paper on regional tensions.

"[Saudi] fundraisers for the Taliban … are believed to extensively exploit networks and use old mechanisms dating back to the times of Saudi cooperation with mujahedeen and Taliban functionaries," they concluded.

Today, the Saudis officially remain distant from their old allies. Although at one stage they were seen as potential mediators in negotiations between the Taliban and the ousted Afghan government, the smaller Persian Gulf nation of Qatar stepped into that role over the past few years.

This month, after the Taliban took control of the Afghan capital, Kabul, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry released a cautious statement saying, "The kingdom stands with the choices that the Afghan people make without interference."

It's unlikely that Saudi Arabia's historical influence on the Taliban will be revived in any hurry, experts told DW.

The Saudi-US alliance remains important, and the country's ongoing cultural changes also play a part in this. Saudi's controversial crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is trying to modernize his country and the idea of a more liberal and open Saudi Arabia doesn't sit well with lending support to Islamist extremists in other countries.

Read more:

https://www.dw.com/en/saudi-arabia-and-taliban-unlikely-to-revive-old-alliances/a-59004881

Hello? Al Qaeda, Daesh, Al Nusra are by-products of the US-Saudi alliance, all designed to upset the Shia side of Iran/Iraq/Lebanon/Syria and Russia in the same step... But as mentioned before, these by-products are a bit like a spy being caught by another country. The country where the spy comes from will deny that the fellow/sheila is a spy... or just abandon them to their fate: "we don't know you exist..."

Note that Saudi Arabia is a fiefdom owned by the Royal Family...

Of course some of these ISIS/Daesh become beyond "Saudi control" like IS-K in Afghanistan... The US just bombed a car in Kabul to prevent "another bombing" at the airport. But the US "intelligence" would have to know that for one IS-K member killed, 10 will rise — more imbecilic and committed than the dead ones — raising the danger level by a factor of 5X... In these ops, secrecy and discretion is needed... And there will be "unhappy" collateral damage compounding the risks... As well when you bomb someone carrying a bomb, the damage done is far more intense...

assange