Tag: Afghanistan

Some how I doubt the first thing on these kids minds will attending school will be converting people to Islam:

Some locals are protesting the government’s decision to enroll Afghan children resettled in the southern city of Ulsan at a single elementary school and kindergarten.  
   
“I can’t help but wonder if my children won’t be influenced, including by Islamic practices,” wrote one user on an online community forum of parents in Ulsan on Wednesday, following the announcement by the city’s education office of schools and kindergartens for the Afghan families resettled in Ulsan.  
   
When Kabul fell to Taliban forces last August, Korea airlifted 391 Afghans out of the city. Members of the families brought to the country had worked for Korea’s embassy in Kabul or on Korean aid projects and include medical professionals, IT experts and interpreters. They did not enter Korea as refugees but as “special contributors” and were issued long-term residence visas after relevant laws were amended.  
   
Of them, nearly half — 157 Afghans of 29 households — were employed by a subcontractor of Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan last month. 

As the Afghans resettled in the southern city — the eighth most populated city in Korea, also known as a hub for shipbuilding industry — some Korean parents asked the local government to ensure that the Afghan children be dispersed throughout several schools and kindergartens, “for fear of the safety” of their own children.  
   
A few even held rallies in front of an elementary school in the city to demand they do not accept Afghan students.  
   
The Afghan children brought to Korea include 16 kindergartners, 28 elementary school students, 19 middle school students and 22 high school students. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but not properly integrating these kids into South Korean society is what will cause issues later on if they feel isolated as adults.

Good news for these families that were able to escape Afghanistan to South Korea:

A total of 378 Afghans arrived in South Korea on Thursday as part of Seoul’s efforts to evacuate local co-workers of the country’s embassy and other facilities in the war-torn nation after the Taliban’s seizure of power.

A KC-330 tanker transport aircraft carrying the evacuees landed at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, at 4:24 p.m., after departing from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad early in the morning, the foreign ministry said.

Of a total of 391 people to be airlifted, 378 were on board. 

The 13 others left Islamabad at around 7 p.m. (Seoul time) aboard a separate military plane and was expected to arrive in Korea early afternoon on Friday, the ministry said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but great job the ROK getting these people out. Meanwhile back in Afghanistan things just continue to get worse:

A “complex attack” involving at least two explosions outside the airport in Kabul on Thursday killed 12 U.S. service members and injured at least fifteen others, the Pentagon said. 

The attack also killed and wounded a number of Afghan civilians. An Afghan official told Associated Press that at least 60 Afghans were killed and 143 others were injured in the attack.

“Let me be clear, while we’re saddened by the loss of life both U.S. and Afghan [lives], we’re continuing to execute the mission,” Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., commander, U.S. Central Command, said at a press briefing on Thursday. 

Yahoo News

You can read more at the link, but condolences to families and friends of the U.S. service members killed in action by this terror attack.

It looks like Korea is about to have a minority community of Afghans in it:

Korea is working to evacuate Afghans who helped the Korean government’s activities there, rescuing them from the Taliban-controlled country, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, Tuesday. 

The ministry said in a text message to reporters that “three military aircraft have been deployed to Afghanistan and neighboring countries on a mission to evacuate those who helped the Korean government’s activities in Afghanistan.”

The ministry added the Afghans to be rescued had worked for years at the Korean embassy as well as Korea-led hospitals and job training centers there, without elaborating further on the details of the mission. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I don’t think this is a mission that the Korean government is going to be very eager to support:

The top South Korean diplomat confirmed Monday the United States requested using American military bases here as a housing site for evacuees from war-torn Afghanistan, although there is no related discussion underway now between the allies.

“It is true that (the allies) did discuss the possibility at the very basic level. It, however, was not discussed seriously,” Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong said, responding to a lawmaker’s query during a session of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee. 

The foreign minister said that currently, however, “there’s no such discussion underway at all”, adding that the option of using American military bases on South Korean soil as a refugee camp would absolutely require consent from the South Korean government.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but from the ROK perspective a concern they must have is what happens to refugees that are denied entry to the U.S.? Do they get sent back to Afghanistan or linger in South Korea? Over time will the U.S. ask the ROK to take in some of these refugees? I am sure the ROK has a lot of questions they want answered before they sign up for this.

I figure once the Biden administration recognizes the Taliban government, that is when everyone else will:

The Taliban wants South Korea to recognize it as a “legitimate” government of Afghanistan and hopes to strengthen economic cooperation and other exchanges between the two countries, a Taliban spokesman said Monday.

Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a member of the Taliban’s Cultural Commission, made the remarks in an exclusive interview with Yonhap News Agency, calling for Seoul to maintain “cordial” ties with the country “replete with untapped mineral resources.”

It marked the first interview a Taliban official has held with a South Korean media outlet since the Islamist movement took over Afghanistan as the United States withdrew troops from the war-torn nation.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The mess of the Afghan pullout may land on the front doors of Japan and South Korea:

The United States is considering using American military bases in South Korea as one of the housing sites for evacuees from Afghanistan, along with other overseas bases, including those in Japan, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The Pentagon is “looking at American bases in Japan, Korea, Germany, Kosovo, Bahrain and Italy” as existing housing sites in Qatar and elsewhere are filling up quickly, the paper reported Saturday (U.S. time), citing unidentified officials.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

At least it appears that the most of the ROK embassy was able to get evacuated before the current chaos unfolded at the Kabul Airport:

Sunday’s rushed evacuation of the South Korean Embassy staff in Afghanistan proceeded smoothly with the help of friendly countries, including the United States, a foreign ministry official said Monday.

South Korea has temporarily closed its embassy in the war-torn country and evacuated most of its diplomatic staff to a third country in the Middle East amid the Taliban militant group’s faster-than-expected advances to retake full control of Afghanistan.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the ROK Embassy still has three personnel and a civilian stuck at the Kabul Airport because of the chaos. Here is what is going on at the Kabul Airport right now:

Chaotic scenes unfolded at Kabul’s airport on Monday as thousands of people rushed the tarmac in desperate attempts to flee Afghanistan following a takeover by the Taliban, which swept into the capital in a stunningly swift overthrow of the Western-backed government.

Videos posted to social media from Hamid Karzai International Airport showed Afghans clinging to a departing U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane. Others showed people falling from the wheel well of a jet just before takeoff.

Other planes were seen overloaded with Afghans who flooded across the runway to board them.

Yahoo News

You can read more at the link, but people are literally being killed grasping the sides of C-17 aircraft that are departing. What an avoidable disaster.

It is amazing that it has been nearly a decade and half since ROK Army soldier, SGT Yoon Jang-ho was killed in Afghanistan. Well now the memorial to him and other Soldiers have been disposed of after the U.S. military shut down Bagram Airbase:

Much of the work done by several people during the final stretch was “sanitizing” Bagram. 

“We pulled off stickers, signs went down,” said Kimberly Culverhouse-Steadman, who came to Bagram in February to close the USO and bring back its mementos. “They just didn’t want anything reminiscent of American presence.”

This effort was to “ensure consistency in appearance,” said Col. Jennifer Spahn, spokeswoman for U.S. Forces – Afghanistan, in a statement Friday. 

Some objected to painting over the murals at Bagram, including James Von Holland, a contractor at Bagram who has photographed hundreds of murals during his time at U.S. bases in the Middle East. 

“I didn’t like it at all,” Von Holland said. “It’s like going into the Louvre and destroying the Mona Lisa.”

Stars & Stripes

Here is SGT Yoon’s memorial afterwards:

It is tough to see these memorials being dismantled, but I think it had to be done. What would people think if the Taliban take the base over and we seem them defecating, blowing up, and doing other destructive things to these memorials.

By the way if you haven’t you should read up on SGT Yoon who has deep American ties and returned to Korea just to do his mandatory military service. He was the first Korean servicemember killed in action since the Vietnam War.

Here is another bounty-gate story in Afghanistan:

 The Trump administration is working to verify intelligence that shows China offered to pay militants in Afghanistan to kill American troops, a U.S. news website has reported, citing anonymous high-level sources.

“Administration officials across multiple agencies are currently working to corroborate the initial intelligence reports,” which is in the process of being declassified, the Axios news website, which broke the story, reported Wednesday.

National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien briefed President Donald Trump on the reports earlier this month, Axios reported.

But the intelligence the administration claims to have was “thinner even than reports that Russia offered payments to the Taliban to target U.S. and coalition troops, which were never corroborated,” another news website said, citing an unnamed government official.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but if the Russians and Chinese were offering bounties they were not very good at it considering there has not been a U.S. troop death due to combat in Afghanistan since February. It seems it would be in their interest to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan and thus out of their geopolitical backyards. If so encouraging the Taliban to comply with the peace terms instead of offering bounties would be in their interest.