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The removal of Qassem Soleimani from the regions political chessboard will have implications not only across the Middle East and its various conflict zones but is also likely to reverberate through South Asia, affecting the conflict in Afghanistan and Irans bilateral ties with Pakistan.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force has remained an active player within the Afghan theatre since the days of Afghan Jihad, yet it remained a marginal player during the 1980s as its overwhelming focus was the western front with Iran. It was only in the mid-1990s that it became an active player. Iran was concerned by the ascendancy of the Taliban and sought to undermine the Sunni fundamentalist regime that had appeared on its eastern border.

It was during this time that Qassem Soleimani emerged as a prominent player in Afghanistan. When Soleimani became the chief of the IRGC's Quds Force in 1998, Iran and the Afghan Taliban government were on a war footing. And the confrontation only got worse: the 1998 Taliban takeover of the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif from the Uzbek warlord Abdur Rashid Dostum resulted in the killings of nine Iranian diplomats and a journalist. Yet Soleimani argued against the use of direct force and advocated instead for increasing the support for the Northern Alliance, the main anti-Taliban front at that time.

Meanwhile, Iranian ties with Pakistan remained on a downward trajectory during the 1990s as the country witnessed some of the worst sectarian violence perpetrated by Sunni and Shia militant groups backed by Saudi Arabia and Iran respectively. As Pakistan was one of the erstwhile supporters of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, Tehrans active support for the Northern Alliance was not well received in Islamabad.

The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban regime was finally removed from Kabul and the political factions associated with the Northern Alliance were back in power. Yet, for Tehran, a bigger problem was the presence of NATO troops in Afghanistan. This led to Irans multifaceted engagement with a range of political and militant actors within Afghanistan. Soleimanis successor, Ismail Qaani, also played a significant role in Irans strategy.

Iran has traditionally supported and held stronger ties with the ethnic Hazara Shia community in Afghanistan. As the Hazaras suffered severe persecution during the Taliban days, they found a natural patron in Iran. Iran also exercised influence over Tajiks in Afghanistan, particularly in the western province of Herat which borders Iran. But the most spectacular aspect of this Iranian engagement was their courting of the Afghan Taliban who resurrected themselves as a powerful insurgent force challenging the authority of the Afghan government and NATO troops across the length and breadth of the country.

Recently disclosed pictures circulating in the Afghan media suggest that General Qaani was operating as the deputy ambassador of Iran to Afghanistan as late as 2018, a story which only emphasises his prime role in managing Irans Afghan policy. This does nothing to improve Irans relationship with Pakistan, which maintained strong links with the Taliban leadership and considered this incursion by the Iranians as an effort to weaken its hand within Afghanistan.

If Iranian manoeuvres in Afghanistan raised eyebrows in Islamabad, developments on the IranPakistan border further weakened the bilateral relationship. The 2016 capture of the alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Yadav, who entered Pakistan from Iran, was an eye-opener for Pakistans security establishment. The episode meant that the PakistanIran border could not be considered a safe zone anymore, and the alleged Indian presence in the Iranian port of Chabahar was a potential threat to Pakistans security and strategic interests. It is highly unlikely that the Quds Force was unaware of these activities. Pakistan lodged a strong protest against this development with the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and demanded that Iran was not used as a launch pad for actions against Pakistani national interests.

As IranPakistan relations soured following the Kulbhushan affair, another issue involving the Quds Force came up on the radar of Pakistans security circles. This was the recruitment of Pakistani Shias to fight for the Bashar Al-Assad regime in the Syrian civil war. These fighters were grouped under a militia named Liwa Al-Zainabiyoun (or the Zainabiyoun Brigade). General Qaani was a central figure in this recruitment drive in Pakistan. The Pakistani authorities eventually clamped down on a charity organisation that was used as a front group for these activities.

Yet another episode where the Quds Force and the Pakistani authorities had a face-off was the border security situation across the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchestan and Pakistani Balochistan. The Jundullah, a Sunni Baloch separatist organisation, had waged a low-intensity insurgency within Sistan-Baluchestan, and although Pakistan helped Iran in apprehending its chief, Abdolmalek Regi, the bilateral distrust on the issue never went away. The deaths of 27 IRGC troops in an attack on their bus near the border town of Zahedan in early 2019 prompted a severe response from Iranian authorities. Soleimani cautioned the Pakistani government to stop cross-border terror attacks from its territory and vowed a strong response from Iran if significant progress hasnt been made by Pakistan on the issue.

The government of Imran Khan in Pakistan tried to address the trust deficit issue with Iran, yet there was no structural change on any of these clash points. Instead of acknowledging and appreciating Pakistans efforts to defuse regional tensions, when the Pakistani prime minister visited Iran in October 2019 in an effort to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Iranian supreme leader advised Imran Khan to focus instead on addressing the border security issues between the two sides.

The assassination of Soleimani has propelled General Qaani, the Quds Forces eastern front commander, to the position of overall leader. This development has serious implications for the security situation in Afghanistan and Irans relationship with its eastern neighbour.

Under the Trump administration, Pakistan and the US have developed a working relationship and both sides have agreed upon the need for a negotiated settlement of the Afghan conflict. Pakistan has used its influence with the Taliban, essentially keeping the Doha Dialogue, which takes place periodically in the Qatari capital, alive even after President Trump cancelled talks with the insurgent group.

Yet, Pakistan has been wary of Irans attempts to sway the Taliban away from the negotiating table and towards a renewed confrontation with the US on Afghanistans battlefields. With Qaani now in charge someone who knows the Afghan political landscape just as Soleimani knew that of Iraq there remains a serious possibility that Iran could exact its revenge on the US, not in the Middle East as most commentators have alleged, but in the Afghan theatre, by attempting to derail the Afghan peace process. For Pakistan, ominous signs are already there, with the public appearance of an IRGC spokesperson in a press briefing with the Zainabiyoun groups flag behind him, alongside the banners of Irans other proxy forces across the region.

Perhaps this posturing from Iran has been a direct response to Pakistans rather cautious and restrained reaction to the killing of General Soleimani, which evidently infuriated Iran. It also appears that close deliberation between US officials and the Pakistani government on the Soleimani affair has not gone down well in Tehran. By openly admitting its patronage of the Zainabiyoun militia, Tehran has sent a clear message to Islamabad, reminding Pakistan of its capabilities and willingness to use proxy forces against Pakistani interests.

These new developments require enhanced coordination between the US, Pakistan and all other stakeholders involved in Afghanistan to ensure that the Afghan peace process is not derailed, and that Afghanistan does not become a new front in the USIran rivalry.

Umer Karim is a Visiting Fellow at RUSI. He is also a doctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham.

BANNER IMAGE: Courtesy of Maryam Kamyab, Mohammad Mohsenifar / Mehrnews.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the authors, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

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Death of Qassem Soleimani: What to Expect in Afghanistan and Pakistan - RUSI Analysis

A U.S. Air Force (USAF) E-11A Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) aircraft crashed in Afghanistan on Jan. 27, 2019.

The E-11A, which is a converted Bombardier BD-700 Global Express Business jet equipped with specialized communications equipment, went down in a Taliban-controlled area of Ghazni Province, north of its operating base at Kandahar Airfield. The E-11A serial number 11-9358 was assigned to the 430th Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron, a geographically separated unit of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing at Bagram Airfield.

There are no indications the crash was caused by enemy fire, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan spokesman Col. Sonny Leggett said in a statement. Taliban claims that additional aircraft have crashed are false.

According to Air Force Magazine, the USAF maintains a small presence of four E-11 aircraft at Kandahar. The BACN works to ensure a consistent and effective form of communication in nearly any location or environment, significantly reducing the possibility of communication failure and increasing the rate of mission success. The payload, or package of sensors carried on the E-11A, allows command and control to get in contact with the troops on the ground, and vice versa, to enable mission accomplishment. The aircraft was developed as an urgent operational need after communication shortfalls were identified during Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan in 2005. The operation became well known following the success of the book and subsequent movie Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell, a former Navy SEAL and the only surviving member of the mission.

Speaking to reporters, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein confirmed the E-11 crash Monday morning, but said he did not have details on the status of the aircrew.Five crew members were on board, FOX News said.

Unlike most other USAF aircraft, E-11 crews come from other airframes and often fly the plane the first time while deployed. The aircraft flies over Afghanistan constantly it surpassed 10,000 sorties in 2017 about eight years after deploying to the country for the first time.

The following video was posted onlineand shows the wreckage, with the cockpit and main fuselage heavily damaged and burning. The tail of the aircraft is largely intact, with the tail markings of the Air Combat Command seal, tail number 11-9358, and USAF roundel clearly visible.

Photo credit: U.S. Air Force

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Video Surfaces of USAF E-11A BACN aircraft crashed in Afghanistan - The Aviation Geek Club

On Monday, the Supreme Court lifted a lower-court stay on a Trump Administration rule that will deny permanent-resident status to legal immigrants who are deemed likely to become public charges, because they have in the pastor may in the futurereceive public assistance, such as Medicaid or Social Security supplemental income. The rule has been called a humanitarian catastrophe, an act enabling racist and classist cruelty, and a throwback to the darker days of rejecting the neediest immigrants, be they Irish, Jewish, queeror nonwhite. It is all of those things, but it is not, contrary to many comments, a drastic change in immigration policy. Like much that is Trumpian, the new rules, and the Supreme Court order allowing them to go forward, build logically on the last few decades of the American political conversation on immigration, race, and class.

In August of last year, Ken Cuccinelli, then the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, quipped in an NPR interview that the guiding principle of American immigration policy is give me your tired, your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge. He was telling the truth. U.S. policy has always hewed closer to his rendering than to the original Emma Lazarus poem that adorns the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The public charge exclusion in immigration law goes back to the middle of the nineteenth century, and the underlying fear that newcomers will take what is rightly ours predates the policy by centuries.

The immediate precursor of the Trump Administration rule is the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the welfare-reform law signed by Bill Clinton, in 1996. Clinton had run on the promise to end welfare as we have come to know it, and he did. On its way through Congress, the reform package acquired provisions that effectively threw most noncitizens, present and future, off most federally funded public-assistance programs. Clinton opposed these amendments. In his speech heralding the passage of welfare reform, he said:

I am deeply disappointed that the congressional leadership insisted onattaching to this extraordinarily important bill a provision that willhurt legal immigrants in America, people who work hard for theirfamilies, pay taxes, serve in our military. This provision has nothingto do with welfare reform. It is simply a budget-saving measure, andit is not right.

These immigrant families with children who fall on hard times through no fault of their ownfor example, because they face the same risks the rest of us do from accidents, from criminal assaults, from serious illnessesthey should be eligible for medical and other help when they need it.

Then Clinton signed the bill into law. Of course he did: it was his signature legislative achievement, which had taken years to craft and pass. The fear of spending too much money on immigrants, meanwhile, had become a matter of bipartisan consensus. (In the years leading up to welfare reform, California residents voted for a bill that would strip noncitizens of public benefits.) In the end, most of the money that the Treasury actually saved on welfare reform came from cutting benefits to noncitizens.

The thinking that underpinned the anti-immigrant amendments was fundamentally indistinguishable from the thinking that drove welfare reform in general: that undeserving people would somehow take advantage of the system, getting something for nothing. The spectre of the welfare queen haunted America. Viewed through the prism of this fear, immigrants are the least deserving people of all, because they havent paid their imaginary dues.

One could point out that noncitizens pay taxes. (Notably, many noncitizens pay Social Security taxes even though they may never attain the status that would entitle them to benefits.) But arguing about taxes misses the point. The basic idea behind the welfare state is that its best for a society when all its members lead lives of dignity. Not only those who have paid taxes, not only those who have worked, want to work, or will work, not only those who were born here, but all people who inhabit this wealthy land ought to have a roof over their heads and food on the table, have basic medical care, and be free of fear that they will not have any of these things tomorrow. Precisely because this is the foundational principle of a welfare state, in most welfare states noncitizens are eligible for public assistance, and, indeed, public assistance is seen as an essential element of integrating immigrants into society.

After welfare reform became law, the number of noncitizens receiving public assistance decreased precipitouslymore drastically than the law required, in fact. Many people who were still eligible, such as citizen children of noncitizens, stopped receiving benefits, not because they were thrown off the rolls but because they stopped seeking the help. Some of the provisions of the law, such as those stripping benefits from people who were already in the country and receiving aid, were never enforced, but people complied with them anyway. Scholars called this a chilling effect: immigrants, fearful of repercussions, went into the shadows.

Of course they did. Another of Clintons signature legislative achievements was the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (I.I.R.I.R.A.), which created the framework for the mass deportations of immigrants who broke the law in the United States. The law was rooted in thinking that we have now normalized: that noncitizens and citizens should be punished differently for the same crimescitizens by incarceration, fines, and community service, and noncitizens by removal, often in addition to the standard penalty a citizen would have received. It also reified the image of immigrants as criminals, and it laid the groundwork for mass deportations, for which the Obama Administration, which removed hundreds of thousands of people a year, still holds the record. In addition, the I.I.R.I.R.A. mandated the construction of a physical barrier on parts of the southern border, laying the literal foundation for Trumps wall. The I.I.R.I.R.A. became law the same year as welfare reform, as did the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which created expedited procedures for deporting alien terrorists. This was five years before 9/11, and two decades before Trump conjured the image of immigrants as terrorists in his 2016 campaign.

Trumps spin on these long-standing policies and fears takes them to an entirely new level of hatred and cruelty. But, to reverse them, we will have to do much more than return to the way things were before Trumpism.

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Trumps Immigration Rule Is Cruel and RacistBut Its Nothing New - The New Yorker

The president has said he'll build a border wall, cancel funding for sanctuary cities and remove undocumented immigrants, among other things.

President Donald Trump has promised to make big changes on immigration since he was a candidate.

"The truth is our immigration system is worse than anybody ever realized," the president said.

Among them, build a southern border wall, remove undocumented immigrants, cancel funding for sanctuary cities and other sanctuary jurisdictions, suspend immigration from certain countries, limit legal immigration, and end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

We'll cover the border wall and DACA in separate stories, but here's a closer look at some of these other promises.

"There are vast numbers of additional criminal illegal immigrants who have fled, but their days have run out in this country. The crime will stop. They're going to be gone. It will be over," the president said.

On the campaign trail, President Trump said he'd remove all undocumented immigrants from the U.S., especially those who had committed crimes. Pew Research estimated there were about10.5 millionundocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2017.

In a series of tweets in June 2019, thepresident reiteratedthat promise. He said Immigration and Customs Enforcement would "begin the process of removing the millions" of undocumented immigrants. In total, ICEremoved over 267,000 peoplein fiscal year 2019, a slight increase from the year before.

"Cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities will not receive taxpayer dollars," President Trump said.

In January 2017, President Trump signed anexecutive ordersaying sanctuary jurisdictions could not receive funding that's not already mandated by law. Two months later, the Justice Department announced it would expand an Obama-era policy that denied sanctuary cities funding.

Los Angelessued the DOJafter it was passed over for a community police grant. The case went back and forth in court, and in July 2019, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Trump administrationcan give preferential treatmentwhen awarding grant money to cities that use it to combat illegal immigration.

Let's go back to President Trump's first few days in office: On Jan. 27, 2017, hesigned an executive orderbanning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. The order was quickly challenged and met with nationwide protests. The White House revised the order two times and a revised ban eventually made it to theSupreme Court, which upheld it in June 2018.

"When politicians talk about immigration reform, they usually mean the following: amnesty, open borders, lower wages. Immigration reform should mean something else entirely," President Trump said. "It should mean improvements to our laws and policies to make life better for American citizens."

President Trump has also looked at limiting legal immigration. In September 2017, the State Department said itwanted to capthe number of refugees admitted to the U.S. at 45,000 for the 2018 fiscal year. That was the lowest since the refugee program was created in 1980. The Trump administration decreased that cap again in each of the next two years. Forfiscal year 2020, the U.S. has a refugee admissions ceiling of 18,000.

In May 2019, the presidentoutlined his planto overhaul the U.S. immigration system. The heart of the proposal was the creation of a merit-based point system aimed at prioritizing skilled workers in the immigration process.

"Our proposal is pro-American, pro-immigrant and pro-worker. It's just common sense," President Trump said.

That proposal has since stalled. But in August, the Trump administration issued its so-called "public charge" rule. It prevents people from getting green cards and visa extensions if they use or are deemed likely to use public benefits in the future. Federaljudges temporarily postponedthe rule while it faced legal challenges, and in late January, the Supreme Court said the rule should be allowed to take effect.

Finally, in the latter half of 2019, the U.S. entered into asylum agreements with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. It's part of the Trump administration's goal to limit the number of migrants entering the U.S. at the southern border. Under those deals which are often referred to as "safe third country" agreements the U.S. will send migrants to apply for asylum in those countries regardless of whether they actually passed through on the way to the U.S. The Guatemala deal is in effect after several legal challenges, but the Honduras and El Salvador agreements aren't being enforced yet.

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Trump Has Had A Lot Of Immigration Plans Here's Where They Are - Newsy

Driscolls One Family philosophy has played a key role in helping the company navigate challenges such as labor standards, immigration reform and water stewardship. We spoke to Soren Bjorn, President of Driscoll's of the Americas, about the impact it has had on the farming communities who produce its berries.

From its humble beginnings as a small family business more than a century ago,Driscolls has become a major producer of berriesin the US and beyond. But the ideas of family and community still play a keyrole in Driscolls business philosophy especially as it navigates increasinglychallenging issues such as labor standards, immigration reform and waterstewardship. While agriculture can bring work and prosperity to a community, itcan also put a strain on precious resources such as water. And while there maybe regulations in place to ensure workers receive the financial and healthbenefits they are entitled to, making sure this happens can be a very differentstory.

We spoke to Soren Bjorn, President of Driscoll's of the Americas, about thecompanys One Family approach, andto find out more about the impact it was having on the farming communities whoproduce the berries we eat.

Soren Bjorn: In our business, we work in a number of different countries,and while there may be laws and regulations in place, we often see varyingdegrees of enforcement and compliance. In Morocco, for example, many of thefarmworkers were not even registered with the state; and so, had no socialsecurity or registration number. This meant that although social security wasbeing paid on their behalf, the workers had no way of ever getting the benefits.So, we worked to get individuals registered to make sure that they will beeligible for these benefits one day.

In Mexico, in a lot of the smaller communities, there may not even be ahealth clinic meaning that although the grower is paying for health benefitson behalf of the workforce, the workers wont receive any benefit. To deal withthat, in some instances, we would pay to get a clinic up and running and fundthe infrastructure required to make sure the workers receive those healthbenefits.

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If you want to drive meaningful change, you need to address these underlyingissues. This is why you sometimes need to draw the circle around your businessmuch wider and think beyond the narrow economic impact.

SB: Working in agriculture, we have to consider not just the water on thefarm; but also ask if the community has enough water to sustain itself. InBaja, California, for example, there was not enough water in the community;so we made a decision not to increase our footprint in that region unless wecould find a more sustainable source of water. For five years, even though therewas a demand for more berries, we didn't increase our footprint. More recently,our largest grower in the region developed an ocean water plant; which allows usto grow more berries, but also to return that supply of water back to thecommunity.

We've been involved with Ceres for quite a long time. In Watsonville, inthe Pajaro Valley, both agriculture and the community depend on the aquiferfor water, as there is no pipeline to bring water in. This aquifer issignificantly overdrawn, so we wanted to help solve that problem as part of thecommunity. We worked with Ceres on this and also as advocates for thegroundwater legislation that passed in California five years ago. Through that,we got introduced to the AgWaterchallenge.

By joining this challenge, we get to work with others who are already facingsimilar issues and get access to their expertise, as well as a lot of greatideas. There is also the pressure of having to make progress, and thats wherethe challenge part comes in. Water stewardship is not an individual businessissue, but a community and a societal one. To be able to tap into all theseother resources is absolutely critical to meeting the challenge.

SB: That was a really interesting project and one I was very involved inpersonally. We were originally trying to tell the story of our company throughthe voices of our growers. But it became clear when we went out to film thisdocumentary that labor and immigration issues were what everybody wanted to talkabout. We saw this as an opportunity not to advocate for or criticize anyspecific policy, but to shine the light on an issue that we think is critical not just for our business, but for society at large.

In the US today, we are very fortunate to have absolute food security. We are asubstantial net exporter of food; and if we want to maintain that status, weshould do everything within our power to try to protect it. If we want the freshfruits and vegetables that we consume to mostly be grown in this country, weneed immigration reform. The reality is that 75 percent of all the fruit andvegetables grown in the US are still harvested by hand, and the vast majority ofthe people who do that work are immigrants to this country.

If we, as a society, make the choice that we dont want immigrants here doingthat work, we also have to recognize that we are choosing not to have that foodproduction here. This means that we would be relying on imports for a wholerange of commodities.

Even if a person generally takes an anti-immigration stance, they probably donthave an anti-food security stance. But they dont make the connection. When weshow the documentary, it is always done with the intention of having a reallygood dialogue, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Immigration reform, particularly for agriculture, could easily happen. There isa pretty good bill that just passed in the house of representatives withbilateral, cross-party support.

Although we want to solve the problems in agriculture, we are also aware that itis part of a larger issue about immigration.

SB: Because of our business model, our growers are not in a contract withus. It is much more of a partnership, where we are both trying to delightconsumers in the marketplace and have the consumers reward us for that. And weshare that revenue with the growers. In fact, 80-85 percent of the revenue goesback to the growers in their local community. So, the single largest impact weare having in the community is through the success of the independent grower.

I'll give you an example. We grow berries in a small village in the south ofChina. For 1,200 years, they have grown only rice commercially in thatcommunity. If you grow an acre of rice in the south of China, the revenue yougenerate is somewhere around $1,000 per acre. Today, we have growers in thatcommunity growing Driscolls raspberries and the revenue that comes from thatone acre is somewhere between $60,000-80,000. In our model, 85 percent of thatrevenue goes back to the grower in that community to pay for wages, land andother inputs. This means more money for people to spend at the butchers; so thebutcher gets wealthier and has a lot more money for the people that own therental properties, so they can develop new properties and so forth. The impactthis has on the broader community is tremendous.

Another example is in Mexico, where we have mobile medical clinics drivingaround the fields providing basic health services to people that otherwise wouldnot have any health services. This led us to partner up with the ColgateFoundation in Mexico, which had always provided basic dental services tochildren. We asked if they would be interested in serving the farmworkercommunity. We have now partnered up with an NGO that goes out in the field;offering training in how to care for your teeth, as well as providing basicservices. And we have recently done the same thing on eyecare.

So, what started as a mobile clinic has mushroomed into a host of services for acommunity that previously couldnt access those services. And this isn'thappening with our money; it is happening because people are doing a really goodjob of connecting the pieces together. So, I think that is an example ofsomething that is really exciting, because it creates a much healthiercommunity.

Published Jan 30, 2020 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET

This article, produced in cooperation with the Sustainable Brands editorial team, has been paid for by one of our sponsors.

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One Family: How Driscoll's Is Working to Safeguard Its Farming Communities - Sustainable Brands