WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. TROOPS FROM AFGHANISTAN: EXIT STRATEGIES

After twenty long and frustrating years, America has finally withdrawn completely from Afghanistan. This paper gives an overview of American actions in Afghanistan, starting with the George W. Bush administration and the invasion of American troops, assassination of Osama bin Laden and suppression of Al-Qaeda’s activities, through the Obama administration, during which the ISAF mission ended and throughout which the withdrawal of American troops was announced. After that, an overview of the activities during the mandate of Donald Trump is given, during which definite conditions for the withdrawal of troops were created, by signing the agreement in Doha between the United States of America and the Taliban, which was meant to bring the peace to the Afghanistan. At the end of the paper, an overview of the activities and the situation on the ground during the administration of Joe Biden is given, during which the complete withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan was finally completed, which the Taliban used it to reoccupy the country and declare the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

11 de setembro: das Reformas aos atentados

O presente artigo pretende mostrar as ideias e acontecimentos que serviram de base ao líder da Al-Qaeda Osama bin Laden. Através da Escola Hanbali e das Reformas no mundo islâmico, surgiram teóricos que são peças fundamentais para entender os desdobramentos de grupos como a Al-Qaeda. Dessa forma, o artigo se debruça sobre os aspectos históricos e religiosos que perpassam esse meio. Através das obras do teórico Sayyid Qutb, faz-se uma abordagem a respeito do conceito de jihad, sobre o seu significado e como a questão é abordada pela Al-Qaeda.

War on Terror and Pak-Afghan Borderland

The US-led war on terror against Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda network has brought gigantic socio-political and economic impacts on the overall population of Pashtuns of FATA and KP. The US drone strikes largely targeted the Pashtuns population in the tribal belt of Pakistan while the Pakistani security forces particularly conducted various operations in the Pashtuns areas, being a partner/ally of the get praise. In the war, thousands of innocent civilians, including children and women of the Pashtuns population, have been killed, injured and millions remained displaced. Infrastructure, including roads, public and private buildings, bridges, educational institutions, tourism, etc, in the Pashtuns' land, has been destroyed. This paper is an attempt to analyze the so-called war on terror and how it turned against the Pashtuns of FATA and KP. The suffering of the Pashtuns population as targeted by the US drone strikes, Pakistan security forces, and terrorists attacks have been examined in this paper.

Global Corpse Politics

Taboos have long been considered key examples of norms in global politics, with important strategic effects. Auchter focuses on how obscenity functions as a regulatory norm by focusing on dead body images. Obscenity matters precisely because it is applied inconsistently across multiple cases. Examining empirical cases including ISIS beheadings, the death of Muammar Qaddafi, Syrian torture victims, and the fake death images of Osama bin Laden, this book offers a rich theoretical explanation of the process by which the taboo surrounding dead body images is transgressed and upheld, through mechanisms including trigger warnings and media framings. This corpse politics sheds light on political communities and the structures in place that preserve them, including the taboos that regulate purported obscene images. Auchter questions the notion that the key debate at play in visual politics related to the dead body image is whether to display or not to display, and instead narrates various degrees of visibility, invisibility, and hyper-visibility.

End of the Surge

Chapter Fourteen, “End of the Surge,” describes how the United States decided to end the surge, covering the death of Osama bin Laden, debates in Washington, and relations with Pakistan. It also describes the peace negotiations of 2010–2013.

In Vaccines We Trust? The Effects of the CIA’s Vaccine Ruse on Immunization in Pakistan

In July 2011, the Pakistani public learnt that the CIA had used a vaccination campaign as cover to capture Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban leveraged on this information and launched an anti-vaccine propaganda campaign to discredit vaccines and vaccination workers. We evaluate the effects of these events on immunization by implementing a Difference-in-Differences strategy across cohorts and districts. We find that vaccination rates declined between 23% and 39% in districts in the 90th percentile of Islamist support relative to those in the 10th percentile. These results suggest that information discrediting vaccination campaigns can negatively affect trust in health services and demand for immunization.

Critical Discourse Analysis of the Editorial Coverage of Osama Bin Laden Operation by the Pakistani Media

The article is intended to compare and analyze the media discourse in the editorials of two daily English newspapers of Pakistan in the context of one of the most controversial antiterrorist operation which is named as the Osama Bin Laden (OBL) operation. For this purpose editorials of two leading English newspapers of Pakistan i.e., Dawn and The News were selected from 3rd May, 2011, to 26th August, 2011. Moreover, the current study employed the method of critical discourse analysis and has also studied the theoretical notion of agenda setting and framing. Results reveal that The News used very strong, rather harsh vocabulary during the editorial coverage of OBL operation. Whereas, Dawn adopted literary phrases and less harsh tone to cover OBL operation. Also, editorials of both the newspapers constructed similar frames such as “failure of military establishment” and “security lapse” throughout the coverage of OBL operation

Ideological prerequisites for terrorist attacks by radical Islamists on objects in the United States (11.09.2001)

Twenty years ago, terrorist attacks were carried out against a number of significant tar-gets in the United States. As a result, several thousand people died, and members of the radical Islamist group Al-Qaeda and personally its leader, Osama bin Laden, were declared terrorists, although there are other opinions about the organizers and customers of these attacks. In this article, the author examines the ideological prerequisites that some trends in Islam have accumu-lated for centuries, and that could have triggered the acts of terrorism by adherents of radical Islamism. Despite the fact that the ideologists of modern Islamism say that it is necessary to purify Islam from «sinful» layers and bring it in line with the «golden age» of this religion (610–661), they themselves literally parasitize on the ideological heritage of the founding fathers of radical views, starting from Ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyyah, their students and followers. In this regard, it can be argued that modern Islamists, directly or indirectly borrowing the views and ideas of their predecessors (ideas about takfir, jihad, the judiciary, etc.), introduce other «sinful» innovations into the doctrinal provisions of Islam. This conclusion is vital for improving the effectiveness of counteracting the ideology and practice of radical Islamism, including in the Russian Federation.