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In this mailing:
* Giulio Meotti: Western Diplomacy: Imploring the Terrorists
* Amir Taheri: Night Falls on Afghanistan: Again


** Western Diplomacy: Imploring the Terrorists ([link removed])
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by Giulio Meotti • August 22, 2021 at 5:00 am
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fer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gatestoneinstitute.org%2F17670%2Fwestern-diplomacy-imploring-terrorists&pubid=ra-52f7af5809191749&ct=1&title=Western+Diplomacy%3A+Imploring+the+Terrorists [link removed]
* Born in the years of the Cold War, the German Army was the backbone of NATO forces in Europe. Today, it is... "a quasi-humanitarian organization, a kind of Médecins Sans Frontières with guns".
* Meanwhile.... American officials, not humiliated enough, were trying to obtain assurances from the Taliban that, in exchange for aid, they would not attack the US Embassy in Kabul.
* Afghan feminists counted on the solidarity of their German colleagues. But the Green Party was apparently too busy deleting male politicians from official photos for their feminist propaganda. Well, what about the Swedish Army, then? It was busy waving the LGBT flag.
* Meanwhile, the US military was busy teaching "critical race theory" at West Point. All great on the Western front ...
* In the so-called "free world" there is the thick, unhealthy air of betrayal.

American officials, not humiliated enough, have been trying to obtain assurances from the Taliban that, in exchange for aid, they would not attack the US Embassy in Kabul. Pictured: A wall mural painted on the wall of US Embassy in Kabul, on July 30, 2021. (Photo by Sajjad Hussain/AFP via Getty Images)

"What we've witnessed this week in Afghanistan is a watershed moment in Western decline", Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote. "America cares more about pronouns than the fate of Afghan women."

You could see it from the Western diplomatic response after the Taliban conquered Kabul without firing a shot and arrived in the capital as tourists.

"The Afghan government should engage with the Taliban to reach an inclusive agreement". Even before Afghanistan had fallen into hands of the Taliban, that intrepid EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was already begging the Afghans to reach an agreement with the Islamists.

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** Night Falls on Afghanistan: Again ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • August 22, 2021 at 4:00 am
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* Rival Islamist groups are already present, controlling chunks of territory. The so-called ISIS is planted in Konar and Loghar while another outfit known as Khorasan and promising to create a new caliphate covering parts of Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran is also busy recruiting. The Taliban itself is a far from united outfit with Pakistan, Islamic Republic in Iran and, it seems even Turkey, China and Russia having their respective "contacts" in the movement.
* More importantly, Taliban may face an urban people-based opposition that was often absent in Afghan politics. The experience of the past four decades, especially the past 20 years, cannot be wiped out with a stroke. Millions of Afghans have had a taste, albeit furtive, of a different way of life and are unlikely to put the clock back 1,400 years as Taliban demand.
* In other words, Taliban are doomed to fail, leaving Afghanistan as an ungoverned land. And that is bad news for the whole world, as an ungoverned land is ideal location for terrorist groups of all denominations.

The Taliban are doomed to fail, leaving Afghanistan as an ungoverned land. And that is bad news for the whole world, as an ungoverned land is ideal location for terrorist groups of all denominations. Pictured: A Taliban patrol in Kabul on August 19, 2021. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images)

With President Ashraf Ghani's hasty flight from Kabul, we are now witnessing the fall of the second of five regimes that label themselves "Islamic Republic" in just over two years.

The first to fall was the Islamic Republic of the Sudan and what we have left are Islamic Republics in Pakistan, Iran and Mauritania. If we include the Islamic State created in parts of Iraq and Syria a few years ago and still lingering as a bad smell, we might conclude that, despite Taliban's latest success, the label "Islamic" is not as invulnerable as some suggest.

The difference is that in Sudan the Islamic Republic was replaced by a timid, though no less sincere, attempt at democratization while the Islamic Republic in Afghanistan signals the return of the Islamic Emirate or a more radical version of Islamism.

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