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The Graphic Truth: Displaced inside Afghanistan
Afghanistan has been mired in war since the Soviet Union invaded the country in the late 1970s. In the post-Soviet era, the vying for influence between different clans and terror groups caused mass migration throughout the landlocked country. This trend continued under the Taliban’s oppressive rule, and the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, which saw millions of Afghans caught in the crossfire of war. But it’s not just conflict that has led to the internal displacement of Afghans. In recent decades, natural disasters – many linked to climate change – have pummeled the country, causing hundreds of thousands to flee. We look at the numbers of internally displaced Afghans since 2008.
Russian invasion: David Petraeus examines Putin’s strategy
At the first in-person Munich Security Conference in two years, world leaders gathered amidst the greatest threat to European peace since World War II. Ian Bremmer sat down with former CIA Director and retired four-star general David Petraeus for an upcoming episode of GZERO World just days before Russia mounted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He knows a thing or two about invasions, having played pivotal roles in both of America's military campaigns in Iraq over the past thirty years. And as he tells Ian Bremmer, invading a country is one thing. Holding onto it is quite another.
And when it comes to NATO, Petraeus says, that Putin has miscalculated — big time. The Russian president shook the tree, and what came out is NATO unity — exactly the opposite of what he was counting on.
"Putin has managed to unite NATO in a way that nothing else has since the end of the Cold War, other than his annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas in 2014," he explains. "He has really given NATO a reason to live again.
"What's more, Petraeus thinks Putin is now digesting the "porcupine" he's eaten, which won't go down easily.
Ian and Petraeus also discuss the latest out of Afghanistan.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Ukraine War: Has Putin overplayed his hand?
What We're Watching: North Korean bluster, EU aid for Afghanistan, Tigray offensive
What We're Ignoring
Kim Jong Un's "invincible" military: North Korea's supreme leader is desperate for American attention these days. At the same time he's showing the South a little more love, Kim is lashing out at the US, now vowing to build an "invincible" army to defend his country from American hostility. The supreme leader, who just two weeks ago tested his first hypersonic missile, is doubling down on his strategy of getting more — and more powerful — weapons to convince President Joe Biden to stop ghosting him and return to the negotiating table. But it hasn't worked so far, and unless Kim has a bigger ace up his sleeve, the talks will remain frozen — as will North Korea's hopes of getting the US to lift economic sanctions in place because of Pyongyang's nuclear program.
What We're Watching
The EU gives money to help Afghans help… the EU: The EU will give crisis-ridden Afghanistan $1.15 billion in humanitarian aid, including 300 million euros previously pledged to address urgent humanitarian needs like food or medicine since the Taliban took over. Ursula von der Leyen says the funds would go to international aid organizations on the ground, like the UN, and not to the Taliban-led government, which Brussels has so far refused to recognize. This means that development aid, which would be directed to rebuild critical infrastructure like roads, remains frozen. But the EU's outreach is, at least in part, motivated by self-interest: the 27-member bloc wants to stave off a massive wave of refugees as was the case in 2015-2016, when millions of displaced Syrians applied for asylum there, giving rise to a right-wing populist wave throughout the continent.
Ethiopia's crackdown in Tigray: In a bid to end a year-long conflict, Ethiopian forces have reportedly launched a "final" ground offensive against the Tigray People's Liberation Front. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed — who came to power in 2018, ending 30 years of rule by ethnic Tigrayans — ordered almost 11 months ago a brutal military attack on TPLF forces for what he said were attacks on government troops (Abiy has since been accused of gross human rights abuses). Back in June it seemed like a ceasefire could hold, but that might have been a way for Abiy to lower the temperature as he faced his first electoral test (which he won!) Made up of dozens of ethnic groups who speak over 100 languages, Ethiopia has long been mired in inter-ethnic strife. But since the government started waging war on the Tigrayans one year ago, at least 2 million people have been displaced, while 400,000 are living under famine-like conditions because Addis-Ababa has blocked access for aid organizations.
What We're Watching: Polish state of emergency, Ukraine-US meeting, South African nuclear power, Russia's troll
Poland weighs state of emergency: Poland is weighing whether to declare a state of emergency as thousands of immigrants continue to flood its border with Belarus. The order, which would be invoked for the first time since Communist rule, would allow the government to restrict people's movements in certain regions for 30 days. Poland, along with Latvia and Lithuania, has accused Belarus' strongman President Alexander Lukashenko of facilitating illegal border crossings, particularly for Iraqi migrants, as retribution for EU sanctions on Belarus. Indeed, there's even evidence that Belarusian troops physically pushed migrants to enter EU territory. Poland has registered more than 3,000 attempted crossings this month alone, and has responded by beefing up its border security, including erecting barbed wire fences. There are reports that Minsk is now planning on sending migrants from Morocco and Pakistan, which has absorbed the lion's share of Afghan refugees to date. Knowing that the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015 caused deep fissures within the 27-member bloc, is Lukashenko now trying to weaponize the Afghan refugee crisis to sow divisions within the EU just as the bloc is already concerned about another refugee crisis?
Zelensky at the White House: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet with US President Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday. After navigating a very testy relationship with former President Trump, the Ukrainian leader is surely pleased that there's a new man in charge in Washington. Indeed, Zelensky is likely to find a kindred spirit in President Biden on issues including energy security and Russia. Biden, for his part, has echoed Kyiv's strong opposition to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, saying that the project would allow an already-brazen Kremlin to weaponize gas exports in order to harm Ukraine. So what does Zelensky want? He may ask Biden for more military assistance as a bulwark against the Kremlin, and is likely to again bring up the issue of Ukraine joining NATO, having recently grown increasingly angry at Western allies for excluding Kyiv from the club. More economic support from Washington could also be on Zelensky's agenda, but when Biden headed the Ukraine portfolio as Obama's VP, he said that Kyiv needed to tackle corruption and implement reforms in order to unlock more US assistance.
South Africa's nuclear dilemma: In a bid to address its rolling power outages, South Africa wants more nuclear energy. But the government's recent decision to double its nuclear generation capacity has been met with strong criticism from the country's energy experts, who say that the government should opt for investment in renewables like solar or wind, which can be installed more quickly and are less costly. On the one hand, nuclear plants generally require a high upfront investment, have cost overruns, and can take years to get up and running, not to mention the risk of another Fukushima. On the other hand, however, they produce almost zero direct carbon dioxide emissions, and nuclear power is reliable — exactly what the country needs to fix its spotty electricity problem. Regardless, the move is quite a flip-flop for President Cyril Ramaphosa, who just two years ago scrapped his predecessor Jacob Zuma's deal for Russia to build South Africa's second nuclear plant because it was, you guessed it, too expensive.
What We're Ignoring:
Russia's troll: Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov wins this week's chutzpah awards for warning that the West was seeking to undermine Russia's upcoming elections. From September 17-19, races will be held for the State Duma as well as dozens of regional parliaments. "We have only one answer to all these attempts. We are guided primarily and exclusively by the will of our citizens, the will of our people," Lavrov said about those in the West (presumably referring to the US and EU) seeking to sow doubt in Russia's electoral outcomes.That's a bit thick, coming from the top diplomat of a country that both Americans and Europeans have caught red-handed trying to meddle in their elections.
Europe fears Afghan refugees will cause a political crisis
Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Europe:
What are the fears in Europe stemming out of what is happening in Afghanistan?
Well, there are of course, a lot fears coming, long-term security and other issues, the effect on global politics of this. But more immediate, of course, there is the refugee issue. There's enormous generosity when it comes to full accepting all of those that we've been able to evacuate that have been working with us in force over the years in Afghanistan. But there's also a fear that there will be a repetition of 2015. There are elections coming up in September in Norway and primarily in Germany and in the beginning of next year in France. And you can see the EU internal interior ministers meeting and you can see what President Macron is saying. And I think the reaction is going to be an enormous will to have humanitarian efforts in the region, the hope that the United Nations can stay in Afghanistan and can help in the region. And that is important. But then we also see, of course, that the walls are coming up. The Turks are building a wall on the border with Iran. Greece is building a wall on the border with Turkey. And add to that, of course, we have the problem of the weaponization of refugees. Lukashenko of Belarus is sort of deliberately, a sort of importing, smuggling, and paying for refugees to come to Minsk, and then he is hovering them over the border to Lithuania and Poland and Latvia in order to pressure those particular countries. That has to be reacted to. So, issues are going to be complex when it comes to Afghanistan. We're going to live with the Afghanistan issue for a very long time.
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Does Biden’s deadline really mean anything?
Well, deadlines are deadlines. That, for now, seems to be the Biden administration's position on Afghanistan. On Tuesday, the White House announced it would not extend the current August 31 deadline for the full withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan.
The decision flies in the face of efforts by US lawmakers from both parties and foreign allies, who have pressed the White House to extend the deadline. Seeing the chaos in Kabul airport and the Biden administration's botched handling of the withdrawal so far, they want more time to get Americans and other Western nationals out of the country, as well as the thousands of Afghans who supported the NATO mission or the former government and now face reprisals from the Taliban.
So is this decision the final word? Hardly. For one thing, deadline or not, it would be a political disaster for President Biden to leave any Americans behind. It's pretty simple, says David Gordon, a former State Department Policy Planning chief who currently advises Eurasia Group: "If you're the president of the United States and you have the military capability to get the Americans out, you just can't take that capability away until you've gotten the Americans out."
And leaving Afghanistan before all of the British and French citizens are evacuated would risk a big rift with two close US allies who are already jilted by Biden's unilateral and bungled withdrawal plan. While the British have conducted some of their own flights, both they and the French depend on the US for security at the airport itself.
Washington's increasing pace of evacuations means it's at least possible that most Westerners could be out by next Tuesday — but with an estimated 10,000-15,000 Americans left, plus thousands of Afghans and other foreign nationals waiting to get out — while some interim destinations for these people are already at capacity — we'd bet the US will have to stick around in some way after August 31 after all.
Staying beyond August 31 could lead to an interesting dance with the Taliban. Officially Afghanistan's new rulers have threatened unspecified "consequences" if the Americans stay beyond August 31. But they may in fact be a little more flexible on this issue than they are claiming to be.
"The Taliban are clever, sophisticated, really smart people," says David Sedney, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the region under the Obama administration. "They clearly have the complete upper hand right now, so the bargaining position is very much on their side."
And bargaining they may certainly be: earlier this week CIA director William J. Burns was in Kabul to meet with the Taliban, presumably about precisely this issue.
So what might the Taliban want in exchange for keeping cool about an extended US presence? No one is quite sure, but Ibraheem Bahiss, an Afghanistan specialist at International Crisis Group, says the most important thing, from their perspective, is ensuring that their de facto government is recognized by the international community, and that any talks with Western officials will likely focus on that goal.
Clearly, obstructing the West's ability to get its own people out certainly wouldn't help that cause.
But the Taliban's tolerance at the departure lounge seems to be limited to foreign nationals. When it comes to the Afghans who are trying to leave, the Taliban is clearly cracking down.
"We are past the high point of Afghans leaving the country," says Gordon. The Taliban, he points out, have yet to establish a stable government, and they are worried about brain drain: losing hundreds of thousands of qualified people who are both the country's most capable technocrats, as well as those most likely to cause problems for the Taliban in exile. The Mariel Boatlift this is not.
All of which presents a series of dilemmas for Biden in the coming days. If the deadline is impossible to meet, will his administration arrange a quid pro quo of some kind with the Taliban to extend? And if the Taliban let Americans leave but stop Afghans from departing, should Biden put American lives on the line to help get them out?EDITOR'S NOTE: After we went to press, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Wednesday announced that the Taliban would allow Americans and at-risk Afghans to continue to leave Afghanistan after 31 August, and that there were approximately 1,500 Americans left in the country.
Countries that hosted the highest number of Afghan refugees in 2020(millions of refugees)
The Graphic Truth: Who hosts the most Afghan refugees?
Afghanistan has been mired in conflict — spanning the Soviet invasion, civil war, and the US occupation — since the late 1970s, prompting a decades-long refugee crisis. In 2020, after the Trump administration announced the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and inked a subsequent deal with the Taliban, Afghans began leaving the country in droves, fearing exactly what we are seeing today: a Taliban takeover. Most have gone to neighboring Pakistan, as well as Iran. We take a look at which countries hosted the most Afghan refugees as of December 2020, and how that compares to their broader refugee populations.
People wait outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.
No exit from Afghanistan
While much of the world watches the tragic and deadly chaos around Kabul's airport, a potentially much bigger migration crisis has already begun, and will only get worse in the coming weeks and months: huge numbers of Afghans desperately trying to flee the country as refugees or asylum-seekers.
How many refugees are we talking about? More than half a million Afghans had already fled violence and instability in their country this year alone, even before the Taliban swept back to power a week ago. But an equal number of new refugees could very well hit the road in the next few months, despite Taliban efforts to stop people from leaving.
Many more Afghans now want to get out either because they fear reprisals for collaborating with US forces — Taliban amnesty offer notwithstanding — or because of the new regime's awful record on human rights, especially for women and girls.
But where will they go? Good question. Most will likely try to head to Europe, but few countries anywhere along that route seem willing to take them in. Here are three examples on the way.
Border country: Iran. Iran — which offers the most direct path for Afghans trying to reach Europe — currently hosts 780,000 Afghan refugees, second only to Pakistan, along with about two million undocumented Afghans. Tehran is worried that the Taliban, who are Sunni extremists, may intensify a long history of persecution of Afghanistan's Shia minorities, pushing even more refugees to the Iranian border.
But the last thing new President Ebrahim Raisi wants right now is a large refugee influx that could inflame social tensions at a time when public discontent against the regime is running high, the economy is crippled by US sanctions, and COVID is still raging. That means he'd probably rather not antagonize the Taliban (who almost went to war with the Iranians in 1998) by giving asylum to fleeing Afghans. So far, Iran has set up tents for Afghan refugees in three border provinces, but has no plans to do much more for them.
Transit country: Turkey. If Afghans are able to make the perilous journey across Iran, they'll arrive at the border with Turkey, where authorities are already setting up barriers to keep out all migrants, including Afghans. Turkey already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees under a six billion euro ($7.04 billion) deal with the EU, but the Turks insist their country won't become a staging point for Europe-bound Afghans — no matter how much the Europeans are willing to pay this time.
Still, smugglers will always find ways to get people in. The problem is, where do they go from there?
Not here, says neighbor, bitter enemy, and EU member state Greece. The Greeks, who are also beefing up their border security, consider Turkey to be a "safer place" for Afghan refugees, mainly because almost 118,000 are already there.
Destination country: Germany. Germany is by far the European country that hosts the most Afghan refugees, with 181,000. But Chancellor Angela Merkel, who championed the EU's 2015-2016 highly controversial effort to take in more than a million mostly Syrian asylum-seekers, knows there's zero appetite in Germany — and elsewhere in the bloc — to do the same with Afghans at the moment. What's more, Merkel is stepping down after next month's federal elections, a vote in which immigration has already become a prickly campaign issue.
The main German political parties, including Merkel's own CDU/CSU coalition, all have a similar message: we empathize with the plight of Afghans fleeing the thuggish Taliban, so we won't deport you right now, but please don't come here unless the entire EU agrees to share the burden (which seems very unlikely given most individual EU member state commitments so far).
This all raises the question: What happens if possibly millions of people who fear persecution get trapped inside their own country? They will probably join the ranks of the 3.5 million vulnerable Afghans who are already internally displaced. After that, no one knows.
"The inability to seek safety could be a matter of life and death," Kathryn Mahoney, global spokesperson at the UN High Commission for Refugees, told GZERO Media. "As of today, the vast majority of those who may be in danger have no clear way out."
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