Citizen Cartwright

America ends its longest war

The last planes took off from Kabul airport at one minute before midnight Kabul time on Monday.

 

Many words have been brandished in recent days for political purposes and by media needing clicks, and I don’t want to add more. Let’s for now just note the magnitude of what’s happened.

 

A war that began 20 years ago under President George W. Bush as a hunt for Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader who oversaw the 9/11 attacks on the United States, has cost more than 170,000 lives and more than $2 trillion, according to The New York Times.

 

Al Qaeda was driven out and Bin Laden was killed by an American SEAL team in Pakistan in 2011. America gave Afghans "a shot at democracy and freed many women to pursue education and careers,” as the Times puts it.

 

But now the United States has left Afghanistan to the same militants it swiftly drove from power in 2001.

 

As a member of this human family, it’s heart-rending to see Afghans' desperation and fear of what’s next, especially those who helped us and have been left behind.

 

And the desperation and fear of what’s next among those Afghans who did manage to get on a plane — sometimes separated from their loved ones in the chaos. Officials haven’t said whether all the Afghan evacuees who made it to the United States will be allowed to stay, according to The Washington Post.

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Republican questioning of the outcome of the 2020 presidential race has led to voting system breaches that election security experts say increase the threat to future elections.

 

Copies of the Dominion Voting Systems software used to manage elections were distributed at a South Dakota event this month organized by Trump ally Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, says The Associated Press.

 

“It’s a game-changer in that the environment we have talked about existing now is a reality,” says Matt Masterson, a former top election security official in the Trump administration. “We told election officials, essentially, that you should assume this information is already out there. Now we know it is, and we don’t know what they are going to do with it.” 

 

The software copies came from voting equipment in Mesa County, Colo., and Antrim County, Mich., where Trump allies unsuccessfully challenged last fall's results.

The Dominion software is used in about 30 states.

 

U.S. election technology is dominated by three vendors with 90 percent of the market, so election officials can't easily swap out their existing technology. Release of the software copies essentially provides a blueprint for people trying to interfere with the way elections are run. They could sabotage the system, change ballot design or even try to change results, says election technology expert Kevin Skoglund.

 

The release gives hackers a “practice environment” to probe for vulnerabilities they could exploit and a road map to avoid defenses, says election security pioneer Harri Hursti. “The door is now wide open,” he says.

 

All hackers would need is physical access to the systems because they're not supposed to be connected to the internet, says AP.

 

Security researcher Jack Cable says he assumes U.S. adversaries already had access to the software. He says he's more concerned about the release increasing distrust among the growing number of people not inclined to believe in the security of U.S elections.

“It is a concern that people, in the pursuit of trying to show the system is insecure, are actually making it more insecure,” says Cable, who recently joined a cybersecurity firm run by former U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs and former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos.

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What is Kabul airport attacker ISIS-K?

The Afghanistan affiliate of the Islamic State, Islamic State Khorasan, claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack. It takes its name from the Khorasan Province, a region that covered much of Afghanistan, Iran and central Asia in the Middle Ages, says The Associated Press.

 

The affiliate emerged in the months after the group’s core fighters swept across Syria and Iraq, carving out a self-styled caliphate, or Islamic empire, in the summer of 2014. In Syria and Iraq, it subsequently took local and international forces five years of fighting to liberate the territory.

 

The group began as several hundred Pakistani Taliban fighters, who took refuge across the border in Afghanistan after military operations drove them out of their home country, says AP. Other like-minded extremists joined them there, including disgruntled Afghan Taliban fighters unhappy with what they saw as the Taliban’s overly moderate and peaceful ways.

 

As the Taliban pursued peace talks with the United States in recent years, discontented Taliban increasingly moved to the more extremist Islamic State. Most were frustrated that the Taliban was in negotiations with the United States at a time they thought the movement was on its way to a military victory, AP says.

 

Many were attracted to the Islamic State’s violent and extreme ideology, including promises of a caliphate to unite the Islamic world — a goal never adopted by the Taliban.

 

The Taliban have confined their struggle to Afghanistan, but the Islamic State group in Afghanistan and Pakistan has embraced the Islamic State’s call for a worldwide jihad against non-Muslims.

 

The group hasn’t conducted attacks against the U.S. homeland, but the U.S. government believes it represents a chronic threat to U.S. and allied interests in South and Central Asia, says AP.

 

The Taliban have waged major coordinated offensives against the Islamic State group in Afghanistan. Taliban insurgents at times joined both the United States and U.S.-backed Afghan government forces to rout the Islamic State from parts of Afghanistan’s northeast.

The Thursday attack killed 28 Taliban, according to the group now ruling Afghanistan.

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Pakistan’s ‘problematic’ win in Afghanistan

The Russian and British empires fought over Afghanistan in the 19th century, the United States and the Soviet Union in the 20th. Now, as the Taliban take over in the nation, Pakistan is in control, with its ally China seeking to cement its grip on the region, says a Reuters analysis.

 

Pakistan has deep ties with the Taliban and has been accused of supporting the Islamist group as it battled the U.S.-backed government in Kabul — charges Pakistan denies, says Reuters. Yet when the Taliban captured Kabul, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said Afghans had broken the "shackles of slavery.”

 

Pakistan’s army Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate has backed the Taliban since the group’s origin in the mid-1990s, says Brookings Mideast expert Bruce Riedel. Under intense pressure in September 2001, the ISI briefly removed its experts and aid, creating the same panic and flight for the Taliban that U.S. withdrawal just did for the Afghan army. But the ISI quickly renewed its support and that assistance continues. 

 

"The Taliban/ISI victory in Afghanistan will have significant consequences for Pakistan,” Riedel says.

 

As the Taliban hold discussions on a government model, media reports have said some Pakistani officials are involved.

 

China says its main aim in reaching out to the Taliban is to protect its western Xinjiang region from anti-Beijing East Turkestan Islamic Movement militants, who could seek sanctuary within Afghanistan.

 

Pakistan also faces risks from the Taliban ascendancy if a wave of refugees seeks sanctuary in Pakistan and terror groups within Pakistan are emboldened, says The Conversation.

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House passes $3.5 trillion budget resolution

The vote Tuesday is a major step in Democrats’ effort to enact their top priorities — including huge investments in education, child care, health care, paid leave, and tax increases on wealthy people and corporations — over united Republican opposition, says The New York Times. 

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., negotiated a compromise with moderates, agreeing to hold a vote on separate bipartisan infrastructure legislation no later than Sept. 27 — before surface transportation authorizations are to expire Oct. 1.

 

Pelosi had been saying for months that the House wouldn't vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill until the Senate passed the $3.5 trillion package. But the House is expected to vote on the $3.5 trillion package before the Senate, and the Senate may not have time to vote on on it before the Sept. 27 deadline for the House infrastructure vote.

 

The House now has recessed until Sept. 20. When it returns, it also will need to pass appropriations legislation to keep the government funded before the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, as well as a measure to raise or suspend the debt limit, Roll Call notes.

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