LONDON: Members of the UN Security Council have unanimously voted to extend the international organization’s assistance mission in Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban’s sweeping takeover of the country.
At a meeting on Friday, all five permanent members and the 10 rotating members of the Security Council, opted in favor of a resolution tabled by Norway and Estonia to allow the UN Assistance Mission Afghanistan’s mandate to run for another six months, until March 17.
The resolution also called for the formation of “an inclusive and representative government,” and emphasized the importance of “the full, equal, and meaningful participation of women” in the country moving forward.
It also reaffirmed the importance of combating terrorism in Taliban-run Afghanistan, adding that, “the territory of Afghanistan should not be used to threaten or attack any country, to plan or finance terrorist acts, or to shelter and train terrorists, and that no Afghan group or individual should support terrorists operating on the territory of any country.”
UNAMA is the UN’s main humanitarian facilitator in Afghanistan. It coordinates with other UN bodies such as the World Food Program to deliver aid in the country and employs more than 1,000 people, the majority of them Afghan nationals.
At a press conference prior to the Security Council meeting, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said: “We will hold the Taliban accountable not for what they say, or what they have written in these written commitments, but for their actions. The international community is unified in that position, across the board.”
On how America would deal with any Taliban actions it disagreed with given it no longer had troops in the country, the envoy added: “Our leverage remains. We are one of the largest contributors of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan, and that gives us tremendous leverage.”
According to the UN, 18 million people in Afghanistan are now in need of humanitarian assistance — around half of the country’s population.
During Friday’s Security Council meeting, Thomas-Greenfield again reaffirmed her country’s commitments to human rights — particularly those of women and minorities — in Afghanistan.
She described the extension of UNAMA’s mission as an “important step” that demonstrated the Security Council’s commitment to the UN’s role in “supporting the Afghan people.”
Britain’s permanent representative to the UN, Barbara Woodward, said: “On counterterrorism, we hope the Taliban will live up to the commitments they made in Doha (the capital of Qatar).”
Part of the Taliban’s agreements with the US that facilitated the withdrawal of American forces from the country was that the Taliban would no longer allow their territory to be used as a safe haven for terrorists.
Afghanistan was invaded by the US and its NATO allies in 2001 after it was found that the Taliban government was harboring Al-Qaeda operatives, including Osama bin Laden, that had been central to the deadly attacks in America that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
Echoing the US, Woodward said: “We will calibrate our approach to the Taliban according to the actions they take.”
US, UK will respond to Taliban based on their ‘actions not words’
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US, UK will respond to Taliban based on their ‘actions not words’
- Half of Afghanistan’s 18m population require humanitarian assistance
Trump takes unconventional approach to communicating to the public about war in Iran
- The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war
Typical of an unconventional presidency, the Trump administration waited more than 48 hours to make any live, public communication to the American people about why it had decided to go to war with Iran.
President Donald Trump discussed why he launched the attack prior to a White House ceremony honoring military heroes on Monday but took no questions from reporters. Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine briefed journalists at the Pentagon.
The two days previous, Trump delivered two pretaped statements that were released on Truth Social, the social media site owned by the president’s media company, and granted telephone interviews to more than a dozen journalists — several of which produced fragmented responses that, to some, clouded as much as they cleared up.
The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war, even as the American military suffered its first casualties. By contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has teamed with the US against Iran, delivered two statements the day the war began and addressed reporters Monday at the site of a missile attack that killed nine people. The Israeli military has held multiple press briefings each day.
“The American people need a commander in chief, and he has been absent in that role,” Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama, said on CNN Monday. Emanuel, a Democrat, is contemplating a run for the presidency in 2028.
An unconventional strategy leads to criticism
Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, wrote on social media that “after Trump launched a new war on Iran, he did not rush back to the White House to make an Oval Office address to rally the nation as other presidents have done. He stayed at Mar-a-Lago to attend a glitzy political fundraiser.”
That post provoked a response from Steven Cheung, White House communications director. “Imagine being a reporter so consumed with Trump Derangement Syndrome that he wants President Trump to mimic the failed policies of the past. The truth is that President Trump spent the majority of his time monitoring the situation in a secure facility, in constant contact with world leaders, and made multiple addresses to the nation that garnered hundreds of millions of views. He also took dozens of calls with reporters.”
The calls included one with Baker’s colleague at The Times, Zolan Kanno-Youngs. Trump’s mobile phone number is known to many of the reporters who cover him, and the president often takes their calls for on-the-spot interviews. Besides The Times, he spoke in the aftermath of the attack to journalists for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CNBC, Fox News Channel, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Axios, Politico and an Israeli television station.
Most of the calls were brief and marginally illuminating; Politico’s Dasha Burns said Trump answered but said he was too busy to talk. The public couldn’t hear what Trump said in the interviews and was dependent upon what the journalists chose to report on the conversations.
“I spoke to President Trump today and he told me that the operation in Iran is going to go very fast,” Libby Alon, a reporter for Channel 14 News in Israel, wrote about her interview on X. “It’s doing very well, and (will) make the people of Israel very happy, and the people of the world very happy.”
The Times reported that in its six-minute chat, Trump “offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government — or even whether the existing Iranian power structure would run that government or be overthrown.”
In one of his two conversations with Trump, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl said when he asked about the death of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the president said: “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well I got him first.” CNN’s Jake Tapper went on the air minutes after his conversation Monday, saying Trump told him “the big one is coming soon,” an apparent reference to a future attack.
Asked for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said: “President Trump is the most transparent and accessible president in American history. The American people have never had a more direct and authentic relationship with a president of the United States than they have with President Trump.”
Hegseth briefing concentrates on friendly reporters
Pentagon reporters learned late Sunday about Hegseth’s briefing. Reporters from The Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and Stars & Stripes were permitted into the briefing room, but Hegseth did not call on them. Instead, he took questions from NewsNation and Trump-friendly outlets like the Daily Caller, Daily Wire, One America News and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Most mainstream news outlets left their regular stations at the Pentagon last fall rather than agree to Hegseth’s rules restricting their work.
Hegseth denounced the “foolishness” of people wanting to know details of the operation in advance, such as whether Americans would commit to more than air power, and said the operation would continue as long as it took to achieve objections. He initially ignored NBC News’ Courtney Kube when she called out a question: “President Trump put a four-week time limit on it. Are you saying he’s wrong?”
Later, Hegseth denounced Kube for asking “the typical NBC sort of gotcha-type question. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it might take — four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, it could move up, it could move back. We’re going to execute at his command the objectives he set out to achieve.”
Unlike Pentagon briefings in past administrations, reporters were given assigned seats, with the Trump-friendly outlets seated in front. Jennifer Griffin, Hegseth’s former colleague at Fox News Channel who left the Pentagon with other reporters after not accepting his new rules, was seated in the last row.
