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A crisis relief charity is being drafted in to ease the suffering of lorry drivers in post-Brexit queues. RE:ACT Disaster Response usually respond to help after earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.

The charity also works in war-torn Afghanistan and Ukraine. Now it has signed a deal with Kent County Council to help with the gridlock at the Port of Dover.

Drivers have been stuck in extremely long queues, often waiting for several hours because of the mountain of red tape post-Brexit. Truckers have been left without access to toilets, food or drink on the M20 and M2, The Independent reports.

READ MORE:Driver stopped on M20 with doors open and two sofas rammed inside

KCC has signed a 158,000 six-month contract with RE:ACT, which was set up by a former army commander. A Kent County Council (KCC) spokesperson said: Kent is a key gateway to Europe and a county with many tourist attractions so our roads can get very busy.

As a responsible local authority and key member of the Kent Resilience Forum (KRF) we have long had plans in place for delivering aid to drivers caught in significant disruption, where it is safe and practical to do so.

To do this we routinely work with organisations experienced at working in emergency situations, and on live motorways, including South East 4x4, British Red Cross, Kent Search and Rescue and the Coastguard and most recently RE:ACT.

A spokesperson for the charity said it would help in the rare times traffic is held so long the occupants need additional food and water.

The Road Haulage Association has raised concerns that it will be "dangerous" to approach traffic while it is slow-moving.

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Crisis charity called in to help post-Brexit lorry queues - Kent Live

Taliban's senior leader Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai came out in support of women's education rights and said that it is the responsibility of the government to provide a safe education to them in the country.

Addressing a gathering to mark the death anniversary of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, a former Islamic Emirate leader, Stanikzai said that women should be provided with their rights based on Afghan culture and Islamic values, Tolo News reported.

"Women can't even ask for their inheritance. They are deprived of the right to education. Where will women learn Shariah's lessons? Women make up half of Afghanistan's population," he said.

Stanikzai was critical of the small budget for development in economic sectors and also said that due to the economic challenges, people were forced to leave the country.

"We don't have a chair in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), we don't have a chair in the United Nations and we don't have a political office in Europe," he said.

Speaking at the same gathering, another Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Yaqub criticized the economic sanctions on Afghanistan, reported Tolo News.

"They imposed economic sanctions on Afghanistan and made a plot against us in Afghanistan," he said.

The Taliban's decision to ban female students above grade six from going to school has drawn widespread criticism at the national and international levels.

Further, the Taliban regime which took over Kabul in August last year has curtailed women's rights and freedoms, with women largely excluded from the workforce due to the economic crisis and restrictions.

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Taliban leader says women must have their rights based on Islamic values - Hindustan Times

Hundreds of people gather near a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane at the perimeter of the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 16, 2021. SIGAR, released its interim report Wednesday detailing why Afghanistan's government and military collapsed immediately after the U.S. withdrawal. Shekib Rahmani/AP hide caption

Hundreds of people gather near a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane at the perimeter of the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 16, 2021. SIGAR, released its interim report Wednesday detailing why Afghanistan's government and military collapsed immediately after the U.S. withdrawal.

Morale across Afghanistan's military ranks was "destroyed" when then-President Trump reached a deal with the Taliban in 2020 and President Biden affirmed the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, according to a new report on the calamitous fall of the Afghan government.

That dynamic is the single most important reason behind the Taliban's rapid takeover last August but "there's a lot of blame to go around," John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, told NPR's Morning Edition.

"We should learn from this," Sopko said.

Sopko's office, known as SIGAR, released its interim report Wednesday detailing why Afghanistan's government and military collapsed immediately after the U.S. withdrawal and after the U.S. spent 20 years and nearly $90 billion to build a new Afghanistan that could withstand the Taliban.

According to the report, other factors behind the failure include:

"Afghan soldiers knew they were not the winner" after the Doha agreement was signed in early 2020, according to SIGAR, citing a senior Afghan military official. The "psychological impact was so great that the average Afghan soldier switched to survival mode" and they became open to other options, a former Afghan commander said.

"Basically, it left the Afghan soldiers in the lurch," Sopko told NPR.

Taliban soldiers stand guard in Panjshir province northeastern of Afghanistan last September. Mohammad Asif Khan/AP hide caption

Taliban soldiers stand guard in Panjshir province northeastern of Afghanistan last September.

The outcome should not have surprised anyone, particularly the U.S. government: the watchdog group has issued hundreds of dire reports on Afghanistan, repeatedly warning that Afghanistan's government and military weren't ready to sustain themselves and were still reliant on U.S. help.

Analysts had predicted that Afghanistan's air force its biggest advantage against the Taliban wouldn't be self-sufficient until at least 2030.

"Within a matter of weeks after the contractors left, 60% of the Blackhawks that we had provided to them were grounded because they couldn't maintain them," Sopko said. "So it was a house of cards to start with. But once the contractors were pulled out, it was like pulling all the sticks out of a Jenga pile."

His remarks echo a former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who told SIGAR: "We built that army to run on contractor support. Without it, it can't function. Game over."

"We never really trained them on logistics," Sopko said. "Their logistics were horrible. Now, this isn't to mean that the average Afghan soldier or police officer didn't fight. They fought very hard to the end. But they felt abandoned and they were basically abandoned, by their own government."

Afghanistan's leaders, especially the final administration led by Ghani, "didn't appreciate the peace negotiations" with the Taliban, Sopko said.

"They believed the Biden and the Trump administration weren't going to go through with it," he said. As a result, he added, "the Ghani government failed to develop a national security strategy until it was too late."

Ghani got an early warning about the pending U.S. withdrawal in an intelligence briefing in April of 2021, former interior minister Masoud Andarabi told the SIGAR team. But the intelligence was ignored, after then-vice president told Ghani the story was merely a U.S. plot, according to the report.

With his country facing an existential security crisis, Ghani turned away from U.S.-trained military leaders and abruptly replaced dozens of district commanders and police chiefs. He was "a paranoid president" who believed that in the wake of the Taliban peace deal, the U.S. wanted to oust him perhaps by a military coup, according to former Afghan Army General Sami Sadat.

Ghani was "changing commanders constantly [to] bring back some of the old-school Communist generals who [he] saw as loyal to him, instead of these American-trained young officers who he [mostly] feared," Sadat said in the report.

Instead of relying on U.S.-trained military leaders, Ghani's national security advisor dictated troop deployments and targets from Kabul, despite having no military experience, SIGAR said.

While the central government foundered, the Taliban got a huge boost when 5,000 fighters were released from Afghan prisons in 2020. The release was part of the Trump administration's deal with the Taliban, and a source of conflict between the U.S. and Ghani. The Afghan government only agreed to release the prisoners after intense pressure, including a threat to cut off U.S. aid.

The prisoner release lowered Afghan soldiers' morale even further. It also quickly raised the Taliban's fighting and organizing capabilities, as most prisoners ignored their pledges not to resume fighting government forces.

Citing Sadat, the report states, "most of the released prisoners were group leaders, commanders, and chiefs. That meant if sent into a province or a village, they could recruit and mobilize their groups quickly."

The U.S. had called the prisoner release a way to build trust. But the Taliban's promise not to send the prisoners back into the fight was "a deliberate deception," several former prisoners told SIGAR.

The interim report, with more than 60 pages and more than 500 footnotes, was compiled from interviews with U.S. and Afghan former government officials and military leaders, as well as SIGAR's own accounting of years' worth of problems and expense in the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

SIGAR plans to release a final version of its report in the fall.

Lisa Weiner produced and Amra Pasic edited the audio version of this story.

Read more:
The U.S. deal with the Taliban destroyed Afghans' military morale, a new report says - NPR

Kabul Taliban authorities on Tuesday said they had dissolved Afghanistan's independent human rights commission as it was "not considered necessary." The hardline Islamists have closed several bodies that protected the freedoms of Afghans, including the electoral commission and the ministry for women's affairs, since they seized power last August.

"We have some other organizations to carry out activities related to human rights, organizations that are linked to the judiciary," deputy government spokesman Inamullah Samangani told AFP, without elaborating.

The work of the rights commission, which included documenting civilian casualties of Afghanistan's two-decade war, was halted when the Taliban ousted a U.S.-backed government last year and the body's top officials fled the country. The National Security Council and a reconciliation council that promoted peace were also shut down at the weekend as the government announced its first annual budget.

"These departments are not considered necessary, so they have been dissolved. But in the future if they are needed then they can resume their operations," Samangani said.

The de-facto Taliban government still not formally recognized by any major nations is facing a financial deficit of about 44 billion afghanis (about $500 million) in a country almost entirely dependent on foreign aid.

In February, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to split the $7 billion in Afghan government funds held in the United States between some families of victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and programs providing humanitarian relief and help with other basic needs in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has over $9 billion in reserves including just over $7 billion in reserves held in the United States. The rest of the money is largely in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland and the UAE. Most of the assets that are in the U.S. comes from assistance that the U.S. and international donors provided to the Afghan government over the past two decades. The Taliban has been demanding access to the money, unsuccessfully.

Heather Barr, associate women's rights director at Human Rights Watch, said it was shocking to see Afghanistan backslide with the closures.

"It mattered enormously to have somewhere to go, to ask for help and to demand justice," she tweeted.

The Taliban previously promised a softer rule than their first regime from 1996 to 2001, but the group has steadily eroded the freedoms of many Afghans, particularly women, who face restrictions in education, work and dress.

In addition to the financial pressure it is under, the hardline regime is also facing an armed resistance based in the Panjshir valley, north of Kabul. As CBS News' Ahmad Mukhtar reports, heavy clashes last week claimed a significant number of lives on both sides and have sent civilians fleeing the region.

Ahmad Massoud, the son of an iconic Afghan anti-Taliban hero from the 1990s, is leading the National Resistance Forces of Afghanistan, and while they are not receiving any overt support from outside the country, the movement has vowed to liberate Afghans from the Taliban's repressive rule.

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Taliban dissolves Afghanistan's human rights commission, says it was "not considered necessary" - CBS News

Whats the difference between Afghanistan and Ukraine? Not as much as you might expect.

Ukraine and its resistance have captured the Western imagination in a way Afghanistan never did. European leaders and Congressional delegations head to Kyiv to have their photographs taken with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy with an urgency few did with former Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani: Western politicians know they gain more from being seen with Zelenskyy than vice versa.

It is likely that the Biden administration wishes to forget that it initially counseled Zelenskyys surrender. The Ukrainian leader rose to the moment and showed himself to be more Winston Churchill than Neville Chamberlain. He inspired his countrymen to fight for a cause in which they believed and against an enemy against whom they could unite. The ramifications for the liberal order would be disastrous had Zelenskyy chosen differently.

Ghani was no Zelenskyy. For years prior to Kabuls fall, first Donald Trump and then Joe Biden counseled compromise. Ghani resisted at firstthe privileges of power were vast, and he never believed the United States would follow through with its threats to leave the countrybut, when push came to shove, he fled his palace in the middle of the night, handing the capital city to the Taliban. The Taliban, in victory, quickly dashed any hope that they were different from the radical, repressive force that dominated the country in the years immediately prior to the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

While Biden may wish to put Afghanistan behind him, deflect blame, and tarnish all Afghans with the actions of their former president, the reality is many Afghans never gave up the fight. Freed from Washingtons efforts to micromanage the Afghan politics, true leaders have arisen who refuse to accept the subjugation of their people.

Consider the case of Ahmad Massoud, the son of the late Lion of the Panjshir Ahmad Shah Massoud. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul might have spent millions of dollars in polling to tell them how Afghans felt outside the embassy compounds walls, but those polls were always snake oil: A far better way would simply be to drive around the city and into the countryside. In my years visiting Kabul and its environs, portraits of Massoud became more numerous and prominent than Afghanistans top elected leaders in shops, homes, and on billboards.

Even if Biden does not believe his withdrawal was an error, its timing surely was. He ordered the U.S. evacuation in the summer at the height of Afghanistans fighting season when the Taliban was most mobile. Had the United States waited until winter, it might have given Afghans a chance to entrench and prepare to the battle the Pakistan-backed group. After the winter snows froze the Talibans gains in place, Western politicians erred again when they confused silence with acquiescence.

No longer. In recent weeks, Massouds National Resistance Front launched its spring offensive. It was able quickly to take most of three districts in Panjshir, a district in Takhar, and several villages in Andarab. The Taliban lost considerable local credibility when its spokesman denied fighting in the north while media disseminated photographs of dead fighters and coffins transported to Helmand and Kandahar. Massouds forces then ambushed Taliban reinforcements, inflicting casualties on the Taliban force in southern Panjshir and in the Abdullah Khel district. Compounding the Talibans problems are is the fact that reinforcements from southern Afghanistan are like fish out of water in Panjshir and the surrounding valleys.

The Taliban also lost fighters and vehicles in Qasan village in Andarab. There have been similar ambushes of Taliban forces in northern Kabul, Parwan, Kapisa, Takhar, Baghlan, and Badakhshan. The Taliban, therefore, now face resistance across hundreds of miles.

Importantly, the Taliban have not been able to take any National Resistance Front bases in a counterattack. In effect, what Massouds force now is doing in the Panjshir Valley and elsewhere in Afghanistan is reminiscent of the initial Ukrainian resistance against the Russian onslaught. And, just like Russia did in the face of resistance, Taliban forces are taking civilian hostages and conducting summary executions around Andarab, perhaps believing that retaliating against relatives of resistance fighters will demoralize them. To the contrary, however, it appears to solidify and motivate the resistance. Taliban brutality has also led many non-Pashtun to defect to the National Resistance Front. The most senior defector so far was Commander Malik, who served as the intelligence director for the Taliban police in Panjshir.

Momentum matters in Afghanistan. I learned this the hard way while visiting Mazar-e-Sharif in 1997. I went to sleep in an area controlled by non-Taliban forces, with the front-line dozens of miles away. When I woke up, the Taliban were marching on the city after convincing a neighboring warlord to defect. (The Indian Embassy in Uzbekistan helped evacuate me to Termez, just across the Afghanistan border).

The Taliban consolidated power and by 1998, controlled perhaps 90 percent of the country. As Afghans living under them told me when I visited the Talibans emirate in March 2000, they were a house of cards. It was not surprising to see the rapidity of their collapse in October 2001 in the face of overwhelming U.S. and NATO firepower. Only when Washington began to signal exhaustion did the Taliban really rebound. Now, however, it is the Talibans turn to face a crisis of momentum.

The Talibans losses so early in the spring show the competence of the National Resistance Front. Without outside assistance and against an enemy armed to the teeth, Massouds forces show victory to be possible. In effect, Afghanistan today is like Ukraine two months ago. Ukraines victories discredited intelligence assessments about Russias potency that, in retrospect, seem silly. So too does the narrative that Taliban are unchallenged in Afghanistan and that they have consolidated control.

President Joe Biden and Congress are right to fund Ukraine. It would be unconscionable for any official in Washington or the West would suggest funding Russian occupation zones in the name of alleviating the suffering that the Russians themselves caused. It is no less crazy, however, to pump tens of millions of dollars to the Taliban regime in the name of humanitarian relief. Donor motives might be pure, but that money does not achieve its goals. The Taliban steals and diverts it. At the very least, it helps the Taliban solidify control.

The United States need not actively fund Massoud and the Afghan resistance, but it should recognize the Afghan Zelenskyy when it sees it and stand out of his way. Massouds success is apparent to anyone who looks. It is time to let the Taliban fail.

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Reuters.

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Afghanistan Rising: It's Time to Let the Taliban Fall - The National Interest Online