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A War Hero, Wounded Pride, and a Killing to Shame Us All

Yahoo

3 days ago

General
Yahoo

A War Hero, Wounded Pride, and a Killing to Shame Us All

Four years after unsung war hero Abdul Rahman Waziri flew out of Kabul Airport to start a new life in America, his remains returned there in a coffin. The 31-year-old was shot to death by a Texas gunman on April 27 in a parking lot dispute. Waziri was unarmed, and his killer has so far escaped arrest by claiming self-defense. As Waziri was buried in an elegantly simple, stone-lined grave in the Barmal District of Paktika Province, his grief-stricken wife was 8,000 miles away in Houston with their two daughters, aged 4 years, and 9 months. The older girl was repeatedly asking a question that her family did not want to answer. 'Where is my dad?' When Waziri fled Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban had targeted him for torture and execution as a member of the Afghan National Mine Reduction Group (NMRG). This elite, highly trained unit cleared improvised explosive devices (IEDs) ahead of American Green Berets, whose missions from 2019 on were conducted entirely at night. The NMRG had demonstrated year after year, without Hurt Locker-style bomb suits, that the bravest acts are sometimes performed on hands and knees. Waziri had been on Team 7 and had disabled two dozen bombs before he became an instructor training NMRG replacements for those who died. His older brother, Abdullah Khan, was on Team 8 and disabled 40 bombs. Khan's 12-man unit lost three members. 'The hazards they undertook were immense,' former Green Beret Thomas Kasza told the House Foreign Affairs Committee last year. 'From 2015 onwards, 22 Green Berets died, compared to 47 NMRG members. We owe them and their families a debt.' During the chaos of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, Waziri took the time to establish safe houses for his comrades before he escaped to America. He had communicated while still in Taliban territory via encrypted messaging apps with Shireen Connor, a U.S.-based volunteer with an Afghan evacuation team. 'I really have tried to underscore the panic and level of danger that was present at the time,' she told the Daily Beast. 'He was a high-value Taliban target, and despite that, was still putting his life at risk to set up safe houses for other people to try and wait for potential evacuation.' She added, 'That really gave me a sense of who he was; someone who's willing to step forward and keep doing the right thing for other people, people he doesn't even know. A good person down to his core.' After arriving in America, Waziri went to work for a Houston security company. He settled into an apartment complex at 3400 Ocee Street with his wife, Malalai, and their two daughters. He was returning from the gym in his white Toyota Camry shortly after 9 p.m. on April 27 when he pulled over outside the apartment complex's mailboxes. He put on his hazard lights, apparently to signal that he was just pausing there and would proceed to a parking spot closer to his apartment after he collected his mail. He never got the chance. Surveillance footage shows that a black Kia pulled up moments later. But a carport roof obscured from the camera much of what followed in the minutes before a Houston police dispatcher put out a call for that address. 'Person shot is a male, gray shorts, gray shirt,' the dispatcher said. 'Caller is a male, black, striped shirt, blue pants. Gun is in his pocket.' The caller was the shooter. 'It's about a male trying to take over this parking spot, and he shot him,' the dispatcher added. Officers arrived moments later, where they saw the man in gray shorts and a gray shirt lying in the parking lot with gunshot wounds to his head, chest, and leg. 'This guy isn't moving or breathing,' a cop reported over the radio. An ambulance responded and rushed the unconscious Waziri to Ben Taub General Hospital. There, Abdullah Khan Waziri was pronounced dead. Back at the scene of the shooting, the caller surrendered his gun to the police. 'We've got one male detained,' a cop reported on the radio. 'Suspect's on scene. He says it's self-defense.' A sergeant called over the air for the usual ritual to begin: 'Do me a favor and start putting up yellow tape.' A cop responded, 'Yeah, this is going to be a homicide most likely.' In further keeping with standard procedure, the deceased's family was notified. Word reached 36-year-old Khan in Florida, where he had settled with another brother, Gul Shabar Gul, 44. Gul had served as an interpreter with the Americans. Khan and Gul flew together to Houston and arrived at the apartment complex the following morning. They saw Waziri's blood where he had fallen. Khan asked several residents if they had seen what happened. They seemed fearful and did not respond. 'I asked them to give me a bucket,' Khan recalled. Khan poured out bucketful after bucketful of water and borrowed a brush. He crouched down just like he and Waziri often had while finding and disabling IEDs with NMRG. He set to scrubbing away what remained of his younger brother's blood. 'It was, like, in between the cracks,' he told the Daily Beast. Khan became aware of a man who was casually walking back and forth nearby, carrying clothes and other belongings from an apartment complex to a car in the lot. A resident told Khan that this was the man who killed Waziri. The police had briefly handcuffed him when they responded to the scene of the shooting, but had quickly released him. He claimed he had acted in self-defense. The 'stand your ground law' in Texas allows private citizens to use deadly force to defend their person or property, and there is no duty to retreat. He now remained at liberty. 'He was normal, walking in front of me,' Khan recalled. 'He was not feeling like, 'I did this with his brother, I should not show my face.'' A retired Green Beret who learned of this disrespectful indifference and knew Khan's physical capabilities as a highly trained special forces operator marveled at his restraint. Khan simply finished scrubbing and went with Gul to the rental office. There, the brothers viewed the surveillance video from the time of the shooting. They saw Waziri's Toyota and then the gunman's Kia arrive and largely disappear from view. At one point, Waziri and a Black male from the Kia can be seen above the upper edge of the obscuring carport roof, speaking to each other and pointing. At another point, the other man's feet appear below the lower edge of the roof, moving toward the Kia and then quickly back toward Waziri and the Camry. What appears to be the man from the Kia then strides into full view in a striped shirt and blue shorts, almost be-bopping, as if he had nary a care. The detectives in charge of the case did not speak to the brothers until the day after they arrived. They declined to identify the gunman. They would only say that the case was under continuing investigation and any charging decisions would be made by the Harris County district attorney. The D.A.'s office would only say the investigation was ongoing. But while the police officer who responded to the shooting could be heard on the radio following the usual routine, there is some question about the detectives who then took the case. A spokesman for the Houston police department says the detectives have been conducting a thorough investigation from the very start. But a lawyer for Waziri's family says that he discovered a spent 9-mm Hornady Luger shell casing in the vicinity of the Camry that almost certainly should have been taken into evidence. The lawyer, Omar Khawaja, also says the detectives failed to conduct a full canvass for witnesses with an interpreter who could allow them to communicate with the numerous Afghans in the complex who do not speak English. Five days after the shooting, Khawaja brought a woman to the police who said she had witnessed the entire incident from the balcony of her second-floor apartment. Khawaja says she told them that after Waziri continued on toward the mailboxes, the other man began kicking the Camry. Waziri had turned back before he could get his mail, and there had been a verbal dispute that turned physical. As the woman told it, Waziri had quickly subdued the man without inflicting serious injury to anything but, perhaps, his pride. The man had gone to his car and gotten a gun, loading it as he headed back toward Waziri. The witness said Waziri raised his hands to signal 'don't shoot.' The man allegedly shot him three times and then walked off with an improbable bounce in his step. That a soldier such as Waziri would meet such an end was particularly heart-wrenching for Green Berets who served with him in Afghanistan. Retired Master Sgt. Ben Hoffman remembered that when he met Waziri, he had first been struck by the size of the 6-foot-4-inch, 230-plus-pound Afghan. Hoffman then came to know Wazari as a 'gentle giant' who, at his core, embraced the U.S. Army Special Forces motto De Oppresso Liber (To Free the Oppressed). 'It's not about conquering the enemy; it's about freeing people that are being conquered by the enemy,' Hoffman said, 'And he was all about De Oppresso Liber. He saw his own crew, men and the kids and the women being persecuted by the Taliban, and he wanted to see them free, which is why he was willing to go and crawl on his hands and knees to clear IEDs for us.' Hoffman went on, 'Crawling on hands and knees at night under night vision goggles, digging up IEDs that could kill American special forces and other Afghans. I definitely saw him on multiple occasions doing stuff like that. 'And then you get into contact with the enemy, and see him rear up and return fire, and then, come back to us, and we're fighting side by side.' He added, 'It's a story of a teammate that I definitely would have gone side by side with at the gates of hell.' Hoffman says he and Waziri shared a mindset. 'Which is, we are strong, we are trained, we are absolutely capable of destroying the enemy,' he said. 'But at the same time, we are calm, and we're able to see a situation and draw back and escalate or deescalate as needed.' That was Waziri. 'He was all about bringing peace to a situation, if he could.' In the meantime, Khan and Gul brought their brother's widow and children to Florida. 'My brother's wife, she's like, 'My husband was not a person to hurt anybody. My husband was always trying to save other people's lives,'' Khan told the Daily Beast. 'She was talking the whole night and day about that, and now she's panicking and doesn't know where she is. But then we spray water on her face… and then, she gets better.' The 9-month-old is too young to even remember her father, but the 4-year-old keeps asking for him. 'She's always asking, 'Where is he? When is he coming?'' Khan told the Daily Beast at the start of last week. 'And I'm like, 'He's in work. He's coming. He's doing (his) job right now.'' The family decided to hold off telling the girl the truth, partly because that would include telling her that, so far, nothing has happened to the man who shot her father. She had become only more insistent on Wednesday. 'She said, 'Tell my father to take me back to Texas,'' he reported. 'And I'm like, 'OK.'' He told the Daily Beast that he felt the time was nearing when he would have to tell her the truth. 'I will just say, 'He's not coming to you anymore, he is not with us anymore,'' Khan said. 'Maybe that's all I can say to her.' But over breakfast on Friday morning, the girl's mother told Khan to hold off. 'She said, 'No, just keep it like this, don't tell her,'' Khan told the Daily Beast. 'I said, 'One day, she needs to know.' [The wife] said, 'Yeah, but we can say, like, 'He's here, he's there.'' And maybe she forgets later on. And then I'm like, 'OK, whatever you say.'' Khan called the police and was told he could leave a message, as he had been instructed to do on at least five other occasions. He has yet to receive a call back. 'I've been calling so many times, and nobody responded, and my message is, 'I want to know where is the investigation and what's going on?'' Khan reported. 'So they said, 'Okay, she will call you back. I'm gonna take a note and leave it on her desk with your phone number.'' A spokesman for the district attorney was saying, 'We are still awaiting investigation results before making a decision.' Khawaja told the Daily Beast that he had heard that the district attorney will turn the matter over to the grand jury and let it decide whether the gunman should be charged. He said that the witness from the second-floor balcony had become so frightened after the gunman remained at liberty despite her account that she had left the country. But the police have her statement, and when Khawaja spoke to her, she told him she would still be willing to testify. 'I don't know what the mechanics of that look like in terms of getting her back over here,' he said. Khawaja added that there was supposedly a second witness who had been smoking a cigarette nearby at the time of the shooting, but he had apparently not come forward. He had likely also seen the police handcuff and immediately release the gunman. In the weeks since the shooting, Hoffman and other Green Berets have issued calls for justice. Reports of the shooting appeared in various news outlets, including local TV stations, the Daily Mail, People, the New York Post, and then in greater detail by NBC News. Shireen Connor wrote an impassioned letter to Houston Mayor John Whitmire describing Waziri's selfless courage. 'Always helping other people in the face of significant personal peril,' she wrote. 'How do you define a human being like this?' Whatever the authorities do or do not do, the 4-year-old daughter of that magnificent human will never see her daddy again.

Pixels, propaganda, panic: The anatomy of global conflicts in the modern era

Indian Express

27-05-2025

Politics
Indian Express

Pixels, propaganda, panic: The anatomy of global conflicts in the modern era

In the early hours of May 8, missiles and drones were launched across India's northern and western borders, originating from Pakistan. As India responded to these aerial incursions, another kind of salvo was underway — not of steel and fire, but of pixels and lies. During the conflict, numerous social media accounts — some verified and others anonymous — shared a barrage of images and videos related to the events. Many of them were later identified as doctored, misrepresented, and unverified. The visuals illustrated how, in the modern era, conflicts are no longer just about territory, but narrative. Phase One: The bombardment of visuals The propaganda offensive began almost simultaneously with the military action. An image of a fiery explosion was shared widely, with captions claiming an Indian Air Force base had been struck. It was an old image — from Kabul Airport, August 2021 — but had been strategically selected to evoke urgency and fear. Hours later, another video emerged, purporting to show Hazira Port in Gujarat under attack. It was, in reality, footage of an oil tanker explosion from 2021. Next came a viral video of a supposed drone strike in Jalandhar. This too was a misfire of misinformation — in truth, it depicted a farm blaze, timestamped before any known drone activity. {PAYWALL HERE} Then came a video claiming a Pakistani battalion had destroyed an Indian post, supposedly manned by the '20 Raj Battalion' — a unit that does not exist. The video was flagged and debunked by Indian fact-checkers. According to the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate Crimes, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, video game footage was weaponised as 'evidence' of military victories, in context of airstrikes and military engagements: 'Footage from pre-existing games were edited with text overlays, patriotic soundtracks, and strategic commentary to create battlefield narratives that generated millions of views,' the organisation said in its report, Inside the Misinformation and Disinformation War Between India and Pakistan, published on May 16. Phase Two: The infrastructure of illusion The actors behind these digital salvos are not lone trolls or misguided patriots. Increasingly, they are coordinated networks, employing the techniques of modern marketing: microtargeting, A/B testing, and algorithm gaming 'These are very structured and handled as part of strategic responses around conflicts,' says Subimal Bhattacharjee, a defence and cyber security analyst and former country head of General Dynamics, a global aerospace and defence company. 'You would have dedicated teams building up content that's then disseminated through pre-decided networks, including social media influencers, bot networks, and even paid criminal syndicates to amplify it. This is a kind of parallel warfare.' Tarunima Prabhakar, co-founder of Tattle, a Delhi-based organisation focused on developing citizen-centric tools to track misinformation, agrees that the system is deliberately multi-platform and plays into algorithmic weaknesses across media. 'There's algorithmic amplification on social media. The most sensational, clickbaity content spreads fastest,' she says. 'But even without algorithms, on apps like WhatsApp, people themselves become amplifiers — trying to be the first to share, to be the knowledgeable one in their network.' What's more, she adds, the overlap of television, social media, and encrypted messaging creates a feedback loop that reinforces emotional narratives over factual ones. 'Each medium interacts with the other, whether television, social media, or messaging apps.' Data voids and the vacuum of trust One of the most dangerous dynamics in the May escalation, Prabhakar says, was the role of data voids — a concept describing the information vacuum created when there is a scarcity of verified news on fast-moving events. And in such situations, ordinary citizens are often caught in the crossfire of conflicting narratives. 'The impulse is to panic-scroll, to seek clarity through more consumption. But in this case, the better response might have been to tolerate not knowing,' she says. 'People needed to be okay with knowing less — to not let anxiety force them into the arms of misinformation.' The psychology of panic Dr Itisha Nagar, a Delhi-based psychologist who studies mass behaviour in high-anxiety scenarios, argues that misinformation doesn't just exploit confusion; it provides temporary emotional relief. 'Rumours are not just idle talk; they serve a deep psychological purpose,' she says. 'In times of conflict, they reduce uncertainty and give a false sense of control.' People don't necessarily share information because it's true; they share it because it resonates, Dr Nagar says. 'We are social beings. Rumours help us connect, express concern, and bond emotionally, even if the facts are wrong.' Prabhakar reinforces this point from the technological side. 'In high-emotion events, you have motivated reasoning. People believe what aligns with their ideology. They're not looking for facts; they're looking for affirmation.' Phase three: The damage done What makes digital misinformation so potent during conflicts is its latency — the delay between lie and debunking. A falsehood spreads at the speed of a click; the truth chases it uphill. By the time fact-checkers weigh in, the damage is done: fear escalates, public opinion hardens, and policy discussions are distorted. This latency is magnified by encrypted platforms, where virality cannot be easily monitored or countered. Once again, Dr Nagar warns that the emotional environment created by misinformation is as harmful as the content itself. 'It's counterintuitive, but sharing a rumour can feel like quenching a thirst for predictability, even though it's like drinking saltwater. The more you consume, the thirstier and more anxious you become.' 'Telling people to 'stay calm' in a high-anxiety situation without giving them real information is like putting a sitting duck in a storm and asking it not to shiver,' says Dr Nagar. That's not all, social media also has an impact on diplomacy. Nandan Unnikrishnan, Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, says all governments are sensitive to public opinion. 'However, it is difficult to distinguish what is real.' 'In India, what you see online is often the view of less than 20% of the population, but those voices end up influencing public perception,' he says. This distortion effect, he warns, turns digital platforms into what he calls a 'different zoo' — an unpredictable ecosystem where anonymous handles, state-run accounts, and bots coexist with genuine public voices. 'It's very difficult to distinguish who's a tool and who's real.' The stakes are particularly high when governments are active participants in this ecosystem, not just as targets but as the sources of content. 'Officials should be careful when they post from personal accounts or under dual-use accounts — where it's not always clear if it's the state speaking, or an individual,' Unnikrishnan says. The counteroffensive Authorities across the world are working towards countering misinformation and disinformation. Cyber commands now sit beside infantry divisions. Fact-checking has become a core pillar of national defence. India's PIB Fact Check unit has moved swiftly to debunk false narratives, but the sheer volume of misinformation makes this a Sisyphean task. For citizens, Prabhakar offers one final suggestion: humility in uncertainty. 'The healthiest thing we could have done,' she says, 'was to be okay with not knowing everything. That, more than anything, might be the antidote to disinformation in the fog of digital war.' Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More

US: Pentagon to conduct comprehensive review of 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan

Times of Oman

21-05-2025

Politics
Times of Oman

US: Pentagon to conduct comprehensive review of 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan

Washington, DC: The US Department of Defence on Wednesday announced a comprehensive review of the 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which resulted in the deaths of 13 US service members and 170 civilians in a suicide bombing at Kabul airport. The review aims to provide accountability and transparency, examining previous investigations and decision-making processes that led to the tragic event. A Special Review Panel will be convened to analyse findings of fact, sources, and witnesses, ensuring a thorough understanding of what transpired. "On August 26, 2021, Former US President Joe Biden's administration led a chaotic withdrawal of US military and embassy officials from Afghanistan that led to the deaths of 13 US Service members and 170 civilians in a suicide bombing at the Kabul International Airport's Abbey Gate," according US Department of Defence. Further, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that President Donald Trump and he "formally pledged full transparency for what transpired during our military withdrawal from Afghanistan." "The Department of Defense has an obligation, both to the American people and to the warfighters who sacrificed their youth in Afghanistan, to get to the facts. This remains an important step toward regaining faith and trust with the American people and all those who wear the uniform, and is prudent based on the number of casualties and equipment lost during the execution of this withdrawal operation," the statement added. Hegseth noted that the Department has been "engaged in a review of this catastrophic event in our military's history over the last three months." "I have concluded that we need to conduct a comprehensive review to ensure that accountability for this event is met and that the complete picture is provided to the American people. To meet this imperative, I am directing the Assistant to the Secretary of Defence for Public Affairs (ATSD-PA) and Senior Advisor, Sean Parnell to convene a Special Review Panel (SRP) for the Department who will thoroughly examine previous investigations, to include but not limited to, findings of fact, sources, witnesses, and analyse the decision making that led to one of America's darkest and deadliest international moments," as per US Department of Defence.

Hegseth Orders a New Review of U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan

New York Times

20-05-2025

Politics
New York Times

Hegseth Orders a New Review of U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday that he had directed his chief spokesman to convene a panel to review the U.S. military's chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan and to ensure that senior military officials were held accountable. In a memo to senior Pentagon leaders, Mr. Hegseth said that the department had been reviewing the operation that led to the deaths of 13 U.S. troops and 170 civilians at Kabul International Airport. He suggested that the effort led by Sean Parnell, the Pentagon's assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, would be more comprehensive than previous reviews. Mr. Hegseth's selection of his chief spokesman to conduct such an inquiry was highly unusual and appeared to reflect a skepticism that uniformed military leaders would hold each other accountable. Mr. Parnell served in Afghanistan for 16 months in 2006 and 2007 as a platoon leader in Paktika Province, near Pakistan's border, where he was wounded in combat. A news release announcing the review noted that he 'lost countless friends to the war on terror.' He will be joined in the review by former Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, who in October 2021 pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty, contempt toward officials and willfully disobeying a superior officer, after he excoriated senior military officials in the days after a suicide bombing killed the 13 U.S. troops at Kabul's airport. 'I want to say this very strongly,' Colonel Scheller said in his video he recorded only hours after the deaths. 'I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders: I demand accountability.' He was reprimanded by a military judge and ordered to forfeit $5,000 in pay. In his video, Colonel Scheller criticized the military's senior leaders for closing Bagram Air Base, a large, secure facility about 25 miles from Kabul, and for relying entirely on a more vulnerable, civilian airport for the high-stakes evacuation. 'Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, 'Hey, it's a bad idea to evacuate Bagram airfield'?' he asked. Mr. Hegseth largely blamed the Biden administration for the poorly executed end to the war, and seemed to suggest, much as Colonel Scheller did in his video, that uniformed military leaders should have resigned in protest rather than carry out the flawed withdrawal plan. 'This team will ensure ACCOUNTABILITY to the American people and the warfighters of our great Nation,' Mr. Hegseth wrote in announcing the effort. But the review's narrow scope likely will not include the decisions that led up to the withdrawal, such as the deal President Trump and his first administration made with the Taliban in February 2020. That agreement set a hard deadline for America's retreat from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of war. Nor does it seem likely that the review will look into the sudden collapse of the Afghan military after tens of billions of dollars in support from the Pentagon. Civilian and military leaders spanning four presidencies touted the growing strength and progress of the Afghan forces only to see them collapse in a matter of weeks as the U.S. military was leaving.

Hegseth orders new review of Afghanistan withdrawal and suicide bombing at Kabul airport

Washington Post