The Evening: Afghan Aid, Taliban Seek Recognition, You Wreck Me and More
September 13, 2021
U.N. Warning on Afghanistan
Top United Nations officials warned that millions of people could run out of food before the arrival of winter and one million children could die if their immediate needs are not met, as the NYT reports.
U.S. Aid to Afghanistan
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday a new pledge of $64 million in U.S. assistance to Afghanistan would circumvent the Taliban and go directly to nongovernment organizations and U.N. agencies providing relief to impoverished Afghans, as The Washington Post reports.
Afghanistan Seeks Recognition
With a new government in place and uncontested control over the country, Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers are clamoring for international recognition of their reinstated Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as the WSJ reports.
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In That Number
$1 billion
The international community pledged more than $1 billion in emergency funding as Afghans already unsure of where their next meal will come from risk running out of food just as winter sets in.
Source: NYT
Critical Quote
“In contradiction to assurances that the Taliban would uphold women’s rights, over the past three weeks, women have instead been progressively excluded from the public sphere.”
— Michelle Bachelet, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
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Optics
(Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.)
Former President Bill Clinton, former President Barack Obama, former First Lady Michelle Obama, President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg attend the annual 9/11 Commemoration Ceremony at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum on September 11, 2021 in New York City.
Recommended Reading
"China’s Afghanistan Dilemma" by CSIS's Seth G. Jones and Jude Blanchette.
This Town Tomorrow
Tomorrow, at 12:00 p.m., day two of CSIS's U.S. Innovation Competitiveness Summit will convene leading intellectual property experts and executives for panels on U.S. I.P. policy and I.P. protection.
Earlier, at 9:30 a.m., join the CSIS Middle East Program for a conversation with HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan on the role of developing sustainable public utilities in building regional security.
Also, starting at 9:00 a.m., day two of the 2021 Intelligence and National Security Summit commences with sessions on strategic intelligence, China’s influence on U.S. national security strategy, and more.
Video
Today, the CSIS Americas Program hosted a discussion on recent political crises and natural disasters in Haiti, and on the path forward for recovery. Watch here.
Podcasts
In the latest episode of The Truth of the Matter, CSIS’s Andrew Schwartz and Steve Morrison discuss the Biden administration’s recent announcement that private employers may mandate vaccines, the Afghan Covid landscape, and what America needs to do to curb the current surge.
Listen on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.
Smiles
On Saturday, my in-town fraternity brothers got together in Kensington, Maryland at the fire station where they have a 9/11 memorial which includes artifacts from the Pentagon and Shanksville. We were there to remember our brother who was killed in the attack 20 years ago on the World Trade Center.
It’s amazing—if you ask most teenagers today what 9/11 is to them, they will say that they think of it as a sad event in history, but no different than WWII or Vietnam. It’s not like that for those of us who lost friends and family, or simply remember the terror we felt that day when America was under attack.
As we pulled out of Kensington, one of my brothers who rode with me asked me to put on some tunes so we could lighten our mood. I dialed up my all-time go-to, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
My brother asked, “Don’t you miss Tom Petty?”
“Every single day,” I said. www.youtube.com/watch?v=e25p0Y3Vd38