Afghanistan

At least 28 people are killed in Afghanistan and 17 in Pakistan after heavy rainfall causes severe flooding.

Heavy rain that has caused severe flooding and landslides has killed at least 45 people in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past five days, authorities say.

Afghanistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA) said on Monday that 28 people have been killed in the floods and 49 injured with more than 100 homes destroyed.

Most of the deaths in Afghanistan were reported in central and eastern provinces, including Parwan, Maidan Wardak, Daikundi and Logar, according to ANDMA.

The authority added in a statement that weather conditions remained “unstable” in parts of the country and there is a continued risk of more rain and flooding in some areas.

“In total, 1,140 families have been affected,” ANDMA said.

Police spokesperson Sediqullah Seddiqi told the AFP news agency a 14-year-old boy died after being struck by lightning in the northwestern province of Badghis.

He added that in the same province, three people had drowned while trying to gather driftwood to be used for heating.

At the same time in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which shares a border with Afghanistan, 17 people were killed and 56 wounded, the Provincial Disaster Management Authority said.

Extreme weather

Heavy rainfall has continued to sweep across Afghanistan since Thursday, causing floods and landslides in multiple provinces.

The weather prompted the closure of several highways, according to officials in central and eastern Afghanistan. Further rains and storms are forecast for Tuesday.

Afghanistan’s National Disaster Management Authority has warned citizens to refrain from using “rivers and flooded streams, and follow the weather forecast seriously”.

In the central province of Daikundi, the local disaster management department said a five-year-old was killed when a roof collapsed. A woman was also killed in the same circumstances in the eastern province of Nangarhar, police spokesperson Sayed Tayeb Hamad said.

Afghanistan is vulnerable to extreme weather, particularly heavy rainfall and monsoon seasons, which trigger floods and landslides in remote areas with fragile infrastructure.

In January, flash floods and snowfall caused the deaths of at least 17 people and killed livestock.

This is the April 21, 2021, edition of the Essential Politics newsletter. Like what you’re reading? Sign up to get it in your inbox three times a week.

Outgoing presidents often leave decisions for their successors to take on.

Over the last two decades, and four presidents, how to end America’s longest war — in Afghanistan — has been among the largest open questions. President Biden inherited it from President Trump, who inherited it from President Obama, who took it from President George W. Bush. Unpopular, seemingly unending and unwinnable, the war is a case study in how the choices of one administration echo into the next.

Last week, Biden formally announced a deadline of Sept. 11 — the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that provoked the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan — to end military involvement in the country.

“War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking,” he said.

The prospective exit also has been years in the works. Obama promised to scale back U.S. involvement, but first he sent a surge of troops. Trump vowed several times to withdraw all troops, making chaotic progress that stopped short of a full exit. Biden is now the third president to make a similar commitment.

Whether he will follow through remains to be seen. My colleagues David S. Cloud and Tracy Wilkinson have extensively covered the American involvement in Afghanistan, from Trump’s growing tensions with the Pentagon over withdrawal to the lives of Afghanistan’s youngest generation, which was born into U.S. occupation.

Taken together, their work over the last few years reveals the deep roots of Biden’s promise, and the complicated history that will color his path forward.

The long path to leaving

January 2017: A president who promised peace leaves office after eight years of war

During his first presidential campaign, Obama pledged to end the war in Afghanistan, as well as in Iraq. He ended his presidency as the first two-term president to see U.S. forces at war for all eight years.

Experts saw his legacy as mixed. He did reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan, cutting their ranks to 8,400, and his administration reduced American deaths — if not Afghanis’ — by relying on diplomacy and on drones to launch airstrikes. Yet intelligence officials said the U.S. faced more threats in more places than the country had seen since the Cold War. “We’re now wrapped up in all these different conflicts, at a low level and with no end in sight,” one expert told The Times.

August 2017: Trump presides over a stalemate and negotiated settlement

Trump the candidate ran as a tough-on-the-Taliban leader, promising a hard-fought and fast victory to end U.S. engagement. But Trump the president softened when it came time to reveal formal plans, Cloud and Wilkinson wrote with former Times reporter W.J. Hennigan. Fighting continued — to show U.S. forces could not be pushed out — while Trump promised that the 16-year war might end “some day” in a negotiated settlement. It was an acknowledgment that victory would elude a president who loved to win and refused to concede defeat.

“This entire effort is intended to put pressure on the Taliban, to have the Taliban understand you will not win a battlefield victory,” then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said. “We may not win one, but neither will you. So at some point, we have to come to the negotiating table and find a way to bring this to an end.”

By February 2018, the Trump administration proposed a defense budget that increased spending in Afghanistan by almost $2 billion, for a total of $48.9 billion in the next fiscal year.

December 2018: Trump presses for peace talks and announces a withdrawal of half of troops

That month, a series of announcements signaled Trump’s growing dissatisfaction with involvement in Afghanistan. Increased Taliban attacks had caused hundreds of Afghan civilian and military casualties a month, prompting Trump administration officials to press for a cease-fire agreement, but with dim prospects, Cloud wrote.

Less than two weeks later, administration officials announced a drastic plan: withdraw up to half of the 14,000 American troops serving in Afghanistan, potentially by summer. The backlash was swift from U.S. lawmakers, allies and even the Pentagon. Defense Secretary James N. Mattis was so furious that Trump would abandon allies in Syria and Afghanistan that he resigned in protest, as Cloud reported.

February-May 2020: A truce and a landmark agreement to withdraw

With 12,000 troops still in Afghanistan, the Trump administration brokered a temporary deal with the Taliban to reduce violence for a week in February, Wilkinson reported. The test was a success, and on Feb. 29, U.S. and Taliban officials signed an accord to end the war. The Taliban would prevent Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups from using Afghan territory to threaten the U.S., without renouncing its terrorist ties. In return, the U.S. would withdraw its troops within 14 months, setting a deadline of May 1, 2021.

The plan again drew backlash, from former Trump and Obama administration officials, who warned a complete withdrawal could backfire, Cloud, Wilkinson and Stefanie Glinksi reported. Even as conflict continued between the Taliban and the Afghan government into May, the Trump administration remained committed to removing troops.

November 2020: Hopes of exiting before the election dashed

Trump, hoping that a full exit in 2020 would boost his reelection prospects, made clear to advisors that he cared little about conditions in Afghanistan, Cloud and Wilkinson reported. He wanted out, period. By July, the number of troops on the ground had shrunk to 8,600.

But as the peace talks the U.S. hoped to broker struggled to get off the ground, administration officials said about 4,000 troops would have to remain into November. The Pentagon said too rapid a withdrawal would doom the talks, invite violence and cause American forces to have to abandon valuable equipment. Trump said he wanted a withdrawal by the end of his term in January, and in November — as he refused to concede his loss to Biden — he ordered troop levels reduced in Iraq and Afghanistan, to 2,500 in each country.

Trump’s relationship with Congress further deteriorated in December, in part over the bipartisan pushback to his withdrawal plans. It was among the reasons he cited in vetoing the annual National Defense Authorization Act, Cloud and Jennifer Haberkorn wrote.

April 2021: Biden says it’s “time to end the forever war.”

When Biden took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2,500 troops remained in Afghanistan. But the new president faced the decision of whether to honor Trump’s May 1 deadline for withdrawing them — the final exit from the war, Cloud wrote. Once again, Defense Department officials pressured the president to delay a full withdrawal as the deadline the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban approached.

On April 14, Biden made his decision public: The drawdown would proceed, but not so quickly. The U.S. would fully exit by Sept. 11, Cloud and David Lauter wrote.

“I am now the fourth United States president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans. Two Democrats,” Biden said. “I will not pass this responsibility onto a fifth.”

The top half of the front page of the Los Angeles Times on Oct. 9, 2001.

(Los Angeles Times)

Policing, policy and the Minneapolis verdict

— The conviction of former Police Officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd reenergized a push for sweeping criminal justice reform by President Biden and leading Democrats, who said Tuesday’s verdict was just the first step on the path to national healing, report Evan Halper, Eli Stokols and Sarah D. Wire.

— Anticipating an uproar, Facebook said it would crack down on violent content, hate speech and harassment ahead of the Chauvin verdict. But as Brian Contreras reports, critics are wondering why the platform doesn’t take those precautions all the time.

The latest on the environment

— China, Japan and South Korea are the world’s biggest funders of coal-fired power plants around the globe — and the Biden administration is looking to win their agreement to deep cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade, write Anna M. Phillips and Wilkinson.

— Biden will convene leaders from around the world on Thursday and Friday as he marks the United States’ return to the global fight against climate change, Chris Megerian writes. Three people with knowledge of the White House plans say Biden will pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at least in half by 2030.

— Solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars will go far in helping California and the Biden administration meet their aggressive climate goals — but not far enough. As time runs short, scientists and government officials say the moment to break out the giant vacuums has arrived, Halper writes.

More from Washington

— Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to North Carolina on Monday to talk about economic opportunities and electric school buses as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to promote its roughly $2-trillion infrastructure, clean energy and jobs plan, Noah Bierman writes.

— The Supreme Court is weighing whether immigrants granted temporary protected status can get green cards — and if the Biden administration will make that decision, David G. Savage reports.

— The Justice Department has brought charges against hundreds of people who stormed the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, but one of its most pivotal potential cases involves a man who never set foot inside the building, writes Del Quentin Wilber.

— After Jan. 6, many of the nation’s largest corporations pledged that they would suspend donations to elected officials who opposed the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, hindered the peaceful transfer of power or incited violence. The vast majority kept their word, report Seema Mehta, Maloy Moore and Matt Stiles.

— What is there left to say about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi? Plenty, it turns out. In a new biography, Pelosi dishes on chiding Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and using the nickname “Moscow Mitch,” writes Wire.

Afghan officials say a suspected Pakistani air strike hit a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul, killing hundreds of patients and staff and leaving the facility in ruins. Pakistan denies targeting civilians, as tensions escalate between Islamabad and Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government.

Afghan authorities say a Pakistani attack killed hundreds of civilians; Islamabad rejects claim as ‘false’.

Families have gathered outside a drug treatment centre in the Afghan capital, Kabul, looking for their loved ones after it was hit in a Pakistani air strike, which Taliban authorities said killed 408 people.

The attack on Kabul’s Omar Addiction Treatment Hospital took place at about 9pm local time (16:30 GMT) on Monday.

Baryalai Amiri, a 38-year-old mechanic, was at the 2,000-bed facility on Tuesday to look for his brother, who was admitted about 25 days ago.

“We are not given the proper information,” Amiri told the AFP news agency, as rescuers picked through the rubble nearby. “So far, we don’t know where he is.”

Afghanistan and Pakistan have been in conflict for months, with Islamabad accusing its neighbour of harbouring armed groups that have mounted deadly cross-border attacks.

The latest round of violence that began last month⁠, two days before the world’s focus shifted sharply to the US-Israel war on Iran, is the worst ever between the neighbours.

The two nations share a 2,600km (1,600-mile) border. The conflict had ebbed amid attempts by friendly countries, including China, to mediate and end the fighting before flaring up again.

Pakistan denied Afghan claims that its latest attack targeted civilians, instead insisting that it carried out precision strikes on “military installations and terrorist support infrastructure”.

“Pakistan’s targeting is precise and carefully undertaken to ensure no collateral damage is inflicted,” the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said. Islamabad dismissed the claim as “false and aimed at misleading public opinion”.

The health authorities said there were about 3,000 patients from across Afghanistan at the clinic at the time of the attack, which triggered panic in Kabul just after residents had broken their daily Ramadan fast.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said he was “dismayed” by reports of the air raids and civilian casualties.

“I urge parties to de-escalate, exercise maximum restraint & respect international law, including the protection of civilians and civilian objects such as hospitals,” he posted on X.

‘It was like doomsday’

A spokesman for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior Affairs said on Tuesday that the attack killed 408 people and injured 265.

Witnesses said they heard three explosions just as people in the hospital were completing evening prayers. Two of the bombs struck rooms and patient areas, they said.

“The whole place caught fire. It was like doomsday,” 50-year-old Ahmad told the Reuters news agency.

“My friends were burning in the fire, and we could not save them all,” he said, giving only his first name as he was under treatment at the facility.

Ambulance driver Haji Fahim told Reuters that he arrived at the site shortly after the air raids.

“When I arrived [last night], I saw that everything was burning, people were burning,” Fahim said on Tuesday. “Early in the morning, they called me again and told ⁠me to come back because there are still bodies under the rubble.”

The clinic was established in 2016 and has treated hundreds of people, also providing them with vocational training, such as tailoring and carpentry, to make them employable, according to local media reports.

Rescuers are combing through the wreckage of a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul where Afghan officials say a Pakistani strike has killed at least 400 people.

Islamabad hits Kandahar facility after Taliban drones strike civilian areas and military sites as conflict intensifies.

Pakistan has carried out strikes on an Afghan military facility in Kandahar after Taliban drones targeted civilian areas and military installations across the country.

The strikes on Saturday came after Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the overnight drone attacks, warning Kabul it had “crossed a red line by attempting to target our civilians”.

Pakistan’s military said the drones, described as locally produced and rudimentary, were intercepted before reaching their targets, though falling debris wounded two children in Quetta and civilians in Kohat and Rawalpindi.

A security source told the AFP news agency that airspace around the capital, Islamabad, had been temporarily closed when the drones were detected.

Islamabad said the Kandahar facility had been used both to launch the drone attacks and as a base for cross-border rebel activity.

The exchange marks the sharpest single escalation yet in a conflict that has been building since late February, when Pakistan launched military operations against what it said were Pakistan Taliban fighters sheltering on Afghan soil.

Islamabad also accuses Kabul of harbouring fighters from the ISIL (ISIS) group’s Khorasan province affiliate.

The Taliban government has denied both charges.

The drone attacks followed Pakistani strikes on Kabul and eastern border provinces in Afghanistan overnight on Thursday into Friday. The Pakistani attacks killed four people in the capital, women and children among them, and two more in the east.

In the Pul-e-Charkhi neighbourhood of Kabul, one resident described being buried under rubble after his home was hit, saying he lay there believing it was his “last breath” before neighbours pulled him free.

A local representative told AFP that those killed were “ordinary people, poor people” with no involvement in the conflict.

Pakistani aircraft also struck a fuel depot belonging to the private airline Kam Air near Kandahar airport, which an airport official said supplied aid organisations, including the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The official added that there were “no military installations” at the site.

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defence claimed that its forces had captured a Pakistani border post and killed 14 soldiers.

Islamabad dismissed the assertion as baseless, with the prime minister’s spokesman accusing the Taliban of “weaving fantasies” rather than dismantling rebel networks on Afghan territory.

The UN mission in Afghanistan says at least 75 civilians have been killed and 193 injured since hostilities intensified on February 26, a toll that includes 24 children.

According to the UN refugee agency, about 115,000 people have been forced from their homes.

The crisis is unfolding as the wider region remains engulfed by the US-Israeli war with Iran, which began just two days after the Pakistan-Afghanistan clashes escalated.

Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi has urged both sides to pursue dialogue, warning that further force would only deepen the crisis, though his appeal came as Pakistani jets were already in the air over Kandahar.

Women and children were among those killed in the attacks, according to the Taliban.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government has accused Pakistan of targeting civilian homes in overnight air attacks in the capital Kabul and the southern province of Kandahar, as fighting between the two neighbours entered its third week, overshadowed by the United States-Israel war on Iran igniting the middle East.

Women and children were among those killed in the attacks, according to the Taliban.

Government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on X Friday that Pakistan’s aircraft also struck fuel depots belonging to the private airline Kam Air near Kandahar airport.

There was no immediate comment from Pakistan’s military or government.

Calls for restraint from the international community have gone unheeded by both sides.

On Thursday, the Taliban government said four members of the same family, including two children, were killed by Pakistani artillery and mortar fire in eastern Afghanistan.

The deaths reported on Thursday brought the toll to seven people killed in Afghanistan since Tuesday in cross-border clashes, according to authorities in Kabul. That could rise with the latest attacks on Friday.

Fighting between the two countries intensified on February 26 when Afghanistan launched an offensive along their shared border in retaliation for earlier Pakistani air attacks on the Pakistan Taliban, just two days before the US and Israel attacked Iran, starting a sprawling regional war.

Pakistan maintains that it does not target civilians, and casualty claims from both sides are difficult to verify independently.

Islamabad accuses Kabul of harbouring fighters from the Pakistan Taliban, which has claimed responsibility for a series of deadly attacks inside Pakistan, and from the ISIS (ISIL) affiliate in Khorasan province. Afghan authorities deny the charge.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan has said 56 civilians have been killed there, including 24 children, by Pakistani military operations from February 26 to March 5.

Pakistani officials have confirmed about 12 soldiers were killed and 27 wounded in the latest bout of fighting, while the Taliban claims to have killed more than 150.

About 115,000 people have been forced to leave their homes, according to the UN.

WASHINGTON — As Congress responds to President Trump’s attack on Iran, lawmakers who served on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan are making their voices heard in a war debate that has taken on intensely personal meaning.

Many admit mixed feelings, taking satisfaction in seeing vengeance taken on the leadership of an Iranian regime that has targeted U.S. service members for decades, yet fearful that another generation of soldiers could soon face the same combat experiences that they did.

“Do I take gratification? You know there’s the Marine side of me: Yeah, of course,” said Arizona Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego, whose company suffered some of the heaviest losses on the U.S. side during the Iraq War. “I know they killed a lot of American soldiers, American Marines. But do I also understand that I have a responsibility not to let my lust for revenge drive my country into another war?”

Experiences in the post 9/11 wars are also coloring the decisions of the Trump administration, given that top officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were once deployed to Iraq.

Gallego, like others on Capitol Hill, leaned heavily on his firsthand experience of fighting in the wars after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as he assessed the Iran conflict. Lawmakers wore bracelets etched with the names of friends killed in battle, told stories of coming under attack from Iran-backed militant groups and reflected on their own life-changing injuries suffered during combat.

Veteran lawmakers are wary of war

While the initial votes on Iran saw Congress divide mostly along party lines, with Republicans backing Trump’s actions and Democrats warning of an extended conflict, veterans in both parties share deep reservations about entering the conflict.

“As somebody who knows a lot of friends that didn’t come home and a lot of Gold Star families, that’s why the week before the attack, I was actually one of the ones that was talking about caution and why we needed to avoid at all costs getting into another long, drawn-out Middle Eastern war,” said Republican Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, a former Navy SEAL who left college to enlist the week after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Crane said his concerns were partially assuaged by briefings from the Trump administration that indicated to him the president is not planning a drawn-out war. He voted against a war powers resolution that would have halted attacks on Iran unless Trump got congressional approval.

But Crane said wars are never straightforward. “I’ve been on military operations that did not go to plan many times, and so I understand the nature,” he said, adding that he was calling for the Trump administration to approach the conflict with “humility and caution.”

Gallego and other Democrats worried that it was too late for that approach. They paid tribute to the six U.S. military members who were killed in a drone strike in Kuwait and worried that there could soon be more American casualties. A seventh service member died on Sunday from wounds suffered during a March 1 attack in Saudi Arabia.

“War is dirty, and mistakes happen,” Gallego said. The longer the conflict drags on, he added, the greater the chance there will be for U.S. military members to be killed. He experienced that firsthand in Iraq when friends would be killed by seemingly random shots from enemy combatants.

Still, many Republicans argued that it was necessary to attack Iran to stop a regime that for decades has helped train and arm militant groups throughout the Middle East. Republican Rep. Brian Mast, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led the debate on the House floor against the war powers resolution.

Mast, who served as an Army bomb disposal expert, now uses prosthetic legs after receiving catastrophic injuries from an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. “Me especially, many of my other colleagues, no one wants to see our military go into combat or war,” he said.

Then he added, “But Iran’s terror, which has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans, it has to stop.”

Trying to push soldiers to forefront of war debate

Important questions loom for Congress as the conflict with Iran unfolds and spreads to other parts of the Middle East. The price of the operation is already likely running into the billions of dollars, likely forcing the Trump administration to soon seek billions in funding from Congress. The outbreak of war has also scrambled global alliances and the future of U.S. foreign policy.

Shadowing it all is the potential of another drawn-out conflict. Lawmakers said they owe it to their fallen comrades to ensure that doesn’t happen.

“To me, it’s to speak out. It’s to say another generation should not go fight in an open-ended, ill-conceived regime change war in the Middle East,” said Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, his hand moving to a bracelet etched with the names of friends who were killed during his two Army combat tours in Iraq.

Others remembered how frustrated they became with Washington during their service, especially as soldiers tried to fight with insufficiently armored vehicles and not enough troops.

“I know what it was like to be on the very end of the receiving line of the decisions made in Washington,” said Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, who entered the Army as a private before being promoted to a captain and deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Crow said that front-line soldiers often suffered “because people stopped asking tough questions. People stopped being held accountable. Congress stopped voting on it.”

Another veteran, Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, said that was one of the reasons she sought a congressional seat in the first place. As a Blackhawk helicopter pilot with the Illinois National Guard, Duckworth lost her legs when her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq.

“I ran for Congress so that when the drums of war started beating once again, I’d be in a position to make sure that our elected officials fully considered the true cost of the war,” she said. “Not just in dollars and cents but in human lives.”

Groves writes for the Associated Press.