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The mystery behind a child’s grave in D.C.

InternationalApr 18. 2021

Karon Flage has visited Nannie’s headstone over the years and has taken photos of the toys left for her. Photo by Karon Flage.

By Theresa Vargas
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON – Lindsey Brittain Collins discovered Nannie in the same way most people do: unintentionally.

Collins knew nothing of the girl on the day she decided to visit two adjoining historic Black cemeteries in Georgetown in 2016. She had been drawn to the tucked-away graveyards after learning that a small brick structure on the grounds may have served as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

The day she walked through the area, she passed overgrown weeds, broken grave markers and people using the space as a dog run.

Then, she noticed the dolls.

She saw several antique figures and other toys sitting in front of a headstone that offered just enough information to show that those gifts were for a girl who lived long ago and not long enough. The marker read “Nannie,” and it held two dates that indicated she died at the age of 7, just days before her birthday.

Born May 26, 1848

Died May 18, 1856

Collins also noticed something else on the ground: a laminated birthday card addressed to Nannie.

“I thought it was beautiful,” she says. She recalls thinking: “Who is it that has this connection to this young girl who died so long ago?”

An energy that Collins felt standing in that spot and the questions that remained with her after she walked away compelled her to return months later. She arrived not long after Nannie’s birthday and found a new doll and card. She knew then, she says, that the person who had left those earlier items was still around, thinking of Nannie.

“I continued to go back and visit over the years,” Collins says. She recalls seeing toys grow weathered. A doll that wore a tan dress one year lay in threads another year. But one thing remained consistent, she says. “Every year, after her birthday, without fail, there was a new doll and laminated birthday card.”

The grave marker of Edgar Allan Poe was known to draw a mysterious visitor each year on the writer’s birthday. In the darkness of night, a masked person would leave a bottle of cognac and three red roses.

A similar mystery has intrigued those who know about Nannie’s headstone.

Who leaves those cards and toys? they have wondered. Is it one person, or is it many? Is it a descendant, or is it a stranger? Will that person show up next month, on May 26, to mark another birthday?

Not even the people who are overseeing the preservation of those cemeteries have those answers. No one, it seems, has many answers when it comes to Nannie. The difference between Poe and Nannie: He was well-known. She is unknown. The identity of her birthday visitor isn’t the only mystery connected to her headstone. So, too, is her identity.

“There are mostly question marks,” says Patrick Tisdale when I ask him about Nannie on a recent evening. He volunteers with the foundation Mount Zion-Female Union Band Society Historic Memorial Park, which manages the restoration and preservation of the cemeteries by those names. “We don’t know anything about her beyond what is on her headstone.”

That headstone, though, offers some clues about the life she might have known.

It reveals that she was alive during a time when many Black people remained enslaved across the country. Her death came six years before President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

It also shows that she was connected to someone who had a comfortable level of wealth, Tisdale says. Many grave markers during that time were made of inexpensive wood, concrete or soft sandstone, he says. Nannie’s headstone was made from Virginia bluestone. Tisdale describes some of the other people in the cemeteries with bluestone grave markers as ship builders, businessmen and clergy.

Without a last name listed on her headstone, there is no way to know for sure who Nannie’s parents were or whether she was free or enslaved at the time of her death. But all the dolls that have been left for her are Black, and the placement of her headstone makes it probable that she was, too, Tisdale says. It sits on a side of the property that a group of free Black women obtained before Nannie’s death.

“Black women weren’t allowed to buy property at that time, but as Black women do, they found a way,” says Lisa Fager, executive director of the Mount Zion-Female Union Band Society Historic Memorial Park. “Nannie, as a young Black girl, was part of that. She was shown what free Black women could do. If I look at it like that, I think she was loved. “

Fager has found photos showing that some of the toys that now sit in front of Nannie’s headstone were placed there more than 11 years ago. She finds it amazing that no person or animal has disturbed or taken them.

“Who is she?” Fager says. “I want to know. It’s important to know our history.”

Since discovering Nannie’s headstone during a walk, Karon Flage has visited it every year or two. Each time she goes, she takes photos of the toys. She has also let her thoughts wander to the person who brings them.

“Is it an older woman and she’s leaving the toys her grandchildren have outgrown?” Flage asks. “Is it someone who lost a child and doesn’t have a grave to visit for some reason, so she visits this grave instead?”

Is it someone who wants to remain anonymous? If that’s the case, Flage says, she is fine not knowing any answers.

“Some mysteries you want to know the endings,” she says. “I don’t need to know the ending for this.”

There is a power to Nannie’s story, even with the unknowns, or maybe even more so because of them. She is drawing people to a historic Black cemetery and making them consider what life in Georgetown might have looked life for a Black girl in the 1850s. She is making strangers think about human connection – then and now.

During her visits, Collins has seen the cemetery change from a once-neglected space to a place that volunteers are actively working to restore.

She also developed an unexpected connection to Nannie’s mystery visitor. An artist who grew up in the Washington D.C. region, she was inspired by the dolls left at the site. She started working on a painting shortly after that 2016 visit. That eventually grew into pieces that she completed over the years and recently showed as part of an exhibit in New York.

The series features painted images of the dolls surrounded by concrete. Over time, as the concrete crumbles, the painting beneath it becomes more visible. It becomes unearthed.

Collins believes that one person has been bringing the cards for Nannie each year based on the similarities between them. She also suspects that person is elderly. But she stops herself from imagining much more. She doesn’t want to guess wrong – about Nannie or her mystery visitor.

Last year, Collins worried that the pandemic might keep the visitor from coming. She went to the cemetery shortly after Nannie’s birthday and found nothing new. She then went again in July, and learned that the coronavirus had delayed the birthday offering, not stopped it.

A tiny ballerina dangled in front of the headstone. Nearby, she found the laminated card.

“Happy Birthday, Nannie!” it read, before listing the age she would be now: “172.”

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Gunman in Indianapolis FedEx shooting used two legally purchased assault rifles, police say

InternationalApr 18. 2021

By Breanna Cooper, Lateshia Beachum, Joel Achenbach
The Washington Post

INDIANAPOLIS – Residents held vigils here Saturday in memory of eight people gunned down late Thursday at a FedEx plant, as authorities said the 19-year-old gunman used two assault rifles to target his former workplace.

Police said the shooter, Brandon Hole, purchased the rifles legally last July and September, raising further questions as many call for tighter restrictions on powerful firearms and more safeguards on who can own them. Earlier last year, officials say, Hole’s mother had reported her fears that her son would attempt “suicide by cop,” leading authorities to question Hole and temporarily detain him for mental health reasons.

This latest mass shooting – the sixth in the United States in the past five weeks – left local leaders once again calling for action to stop these violent outbursts that have targeted offices, stores, places of worship, movie theaters, nightclubs, colleges and grade schools.

“We have to act against gun violence,” said Rupal Thanawala, president of the Asian American Alliance in Indianapolis. “I cannot say why this happened, but these people will not come back. Everyone should have the right to feel safe at work, at school, at houses of worship. But, people don’t have that anymore.”

The victims of Thursday’s shooting ranged in age from 19 to 74 years old, including a recent high school graduate with basketball talent and a 68-year-old Indian immigrant who loved long walks around his neighborhood. Four members of the Sikh community were killed. The massacre also hospitalized at least five people with one in critical condition, according to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

On Saturday, officials released no new details about Hole’s motive. The gunman, who last worked at the FedEx plant in 2020, was found dead at the crime scene by police Thursday with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

A person who knew Hole said he had suffered from mental illness, and said he did not get the treatment he needed.

“I feel really bad for the eight families that lost loved ones,” said a man who identified himself as a family friend who spoke in an interview with The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because he does not want to be the family’s spokesperson. “Should have never happened at all. I do know that they did try to get him help, and they couldn’t.”

In a statement released Saturday, Hole’s family said, “we are devastated at the loss of life caused as a result of Brandon’s actions; through the love of his family, we tried to get him the help he needed.”

“Our sincerest and most heartfelt apologies go out to the victims of this senseless tragedy. We are so sorry for the pain and hurt being felt by their families and the entire Indianapolis community,” the statement reads.

No one answered the door at Hole’s home on Saturday. A “no trespassing” sign was on the front door.

Hole was known to law enforcement: Last spring, according to a brief statement released Friday by the FBI, his mother called police to say he might try to commit “suicide by cop.” The FBI said Hole was interviewed after items of an undisclosed nature were found in his bedroom. A shotgun was confiscated. Authorities have released no further details about that investigation.

Authorities may need time to piece together a “psychological autopsy” of the gunman, said Christopher Ferguson, a Stetson University professor of psychology who is an expert on mass shootings.

He said a common feature in many mass shootings is that the perpetrator has an untreated or undiagnosed mental illness and is an “injustice collector” who blames some group, or society generally, for all that has gone wrong in the person’s life.

“Other people are screwing them over. Society is evil. Society is hurtful. They are emotionally crushed by their relationship with society, and they’re very angry about it. So they want to die, but they want to bring other people with them,” Ferguson said.

The massacre has recharged the political debate about gun laws, with President Biden calling for a ban on military-style semiautomatic rifles and limits on ammunition cartridges. Some local leaders demanded new laws to keep weapons out of the hands of people known to pose a public threat.

Indianapolis City-County Council member Ali Brown, a Democrat, renewed a call Saturday for lawmakers to ban military-style assault weapons.

“We’re all shook to our core and we all feel the need to have something change,” she told a local TV station, WISH. “This country has a problem, and it was exhibited here in Indianapolis on Thursday night and pretty much every other day in Indianapolis.”

Early Saturday afternoon, DeAndra Yates, 38, who founded an anti-violence group in 2015 after her 13-year-old son Deandre was shot and injured, organized a prayer vigil in a church parking lot. “I know prayer vigils seem cliche now, but as a believer, I think prayer is our greatest weapon,” she said.

Another event organizer, Cathy Weinmann of the group Moms Demand Action, said she plans to send a letter to the governor demanding action: “‘Thoughts and prayers’ aren’t working,” she said.

An evening vigil brought even more calls for reform – and weariness.

“I have to be honest, I’ve been asking myself the same question since Thursday,” Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett, a Democrat, told a crowd of roughly 200 people. “Oh, loving God, what more can we take?”

Eight candles were lit, the first one by Ryenne Beaty, a 19-year-old friend of victim Samaria Blackwell, also 19. After the shooting, she said, she waited 16 hours hoping her best friend of a decade would turn up safe.

Blackwell was “selfless, she said.

Michelle Parksey, 37, and Savana Delao, 20, were both supposed to be at work at the FedEx when the shooting occurred.

“I was on my way to work when I saw 20 cops fly be me, and for some reason I just knew they were going to FedEx,” Parksey said. “I was late, because I spent 40 minutes in the drive-through at Fazoli’s, which I was mad about, but they ended up saving my life. I would have been in the parking lot when he was shooting at cars.”

The single mom of three teenage sons said she’s thankful for every moment that she now has with her sons.

“If I would have gone to work that night, I wouldn’t have come home to my babies,” she said. “I’m all they have.”

They don’t know when employees will be able to return to work. Delao said she’s not sure she’ll be emotionally ready when the time comes. “I can just imagine in my head walking in there, and knowing bodies were laying there on the ground,” Delao said.

Delao knew Blackwell from work and said her smile and energy could light up a room.

“For someone that young to die, it’s just not fair,” Delao said. “I can’t understand it.”

Just days before the shooting, Parksey trained another victim, Karli Smith, 19, who was about to receive her first paycheck.

“She was awesome, it’s just heartbreaking,” Parksey said.

– – –

Beachum and Achenbach reported from Washington. The Washington Post’s Meryl Kornfield in Indianapolis and Alice Crites, Julie Tate, Fenit Nirappil, Hannah Knowles and Timothy Bella in Washington contributed to this report.

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Climate change may be costing Russia billions every year

InternationalApr 18. 2021

Fog shrouds Yakutsk, which has a reputation as the world’s coldest city, on Feb. 16, 2016. The eastern Siberian city is in Sakha Republic, Russia. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrey Rudakov

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Olga Tanas, Dina Khrennikova

The residents of Irkutsk, one of Russia’s coldest regions, are used to harsh winters. But when the temperature dropped to negative -76 Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius) last January, even they had to submit to the elements. “Please stay at home unless absolutely necessary,” Governor Igor Kobzev pleaded on Instagram.

With the cold came the heaviest snowfall in 25 years. It blanketed Siberia, the Far East and central Russia. When temperatures starting rising at the end of March, the Ministry of Emergency Situations warned that the melting snow may cause dangerous floods.

“The unstable climate system is leading to increasing extremes, to a growing number of weather anomalies, including dangerous events,” said Anna Romanovskaya, director of the Moscow-based Yu. A. Izrael Institute of Global Climate and Ecology. “The direction of the trend is undeniable.”

Russia is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. A significant part of its territory is in the Arctic, which is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the world. That’s manifested in Siberia’s unusually high 2020 temperatures, two consecutive years of record wildfires and thawing permafrost-the frozen ground that covers vast swaths of the country.

The disasters have caused expensive damage. Reinsurance broker Aon Benfield estimated that June floods near Russia’s border with China in 2019 cost the nation more than $460 million. In total, major catastrophes may have led to just under $1 billion of losses in Russia that year, it said.

“The heat wave in Siberia in 2020 and the corresponding widespread fires are renewed evidence of climate change,” said Ernst Rauch, chief climate and geo scientist at global reinsurance provider Munich Re. “We view with concern the thawing permafrost soils, which amplify global warming by releasing methane.”

Russia hasn’t developed a comprehensive system for assessing weather-related losses. Leading databases only record events with registered damage, some of the nation’s top climate scientists at its Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring, or Rosgidromet, wrote in a 2019 paper. “Data on the losses are, for the most part, only descriptive, while monetary assessments are rare.”

The paper also cites confidentiality requirements and the lack of a developed insurance system as key hurdles to assessing the nation’s economic damage from natural catastrophes. The lack of data means current estimates for Russia’s annual weather-related economic damage by insurers, researchers and governmental bodies vary greatly.

Munich Re, which been gathering estimates of losses caused by natural disasters across the world for nearly 50 years, has only limited information on Russia’s recent annual weather-related damage. “The data quality for Russia is not sufficient,” a spokesman said.

A resident passes frozen trees, with a Russian orthodox church in the background, in Yakutsk, Sakha Republic, Russia, on Feb. 14, 2016. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrey Rudakov

The Russian climate scientists in their 2019 paper presented a mathematical model for assessing losses from only four high-impact weather events: strong wind, summer rain, winter snow and rain, and frost. According to the model, the events resulted in monetary losses of as much as $4 billion (234 billion rubles) in 2017.

Romanovskaya from the Yu. A. Izrael Institute says that calculations should go further, including not only direct but also collateral economic losses, such as damage to residents’ health and the environment. She estimates Russia’s total weather-related losses for 2019 were around 850 billion rubles, meaning working citizens paid almost 10,000 rubles each. It’s “kind of a climate tax,” she said.

The Russian government remains sanguine about the impacts of climate change. It’s the world’s biggest energy exporter and fourth-largest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases, yet lags other nations in taking steps to reduce its pollution.

The nation pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 70% from 1990 levels by 2030, assuming that its vast forests absorb the maximum amount of carbon dioxide possible. The target is so low that Russia met it years ago and has so far expressed no desire to set a more ambitious goal. Carbon Action Tracker, a U.K.-based nonprofit, rates its policies as “critically insufficient.”

Russia is working on a national climate strategy set to be adopted this year, with recent comments from officials indicating the country aims to develop a low-carbon economy in the next decades rather than reach full carbon neutrality.

Meanwhile the warming Arctic will keep causing greater weather imbalances in the northern hemisphere, according to Yury Varakin, head of the Rosgidromet’s situation center. In recent weeks, scientists have linked higher temperatures in the Arctic to the cold spell that moved as far south as Texas, shutting down power plants and leaving residents without electricity.

Air masses “are moving more frequently from north to south or south to north” rather than in the west-east circulation that dominated during the 20th century, Varakin said. That means an Arctic blast can reach southern regions relatively quickly and Mediterranean heat can move rapidly into northern areas. “This trend will only increase irreversibly in the next 10 to 15 years,” leading to wilder swings in the weather, he said.

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Asia’s richest man rebuilds a 261-year-old British icon

InternationalApr 18. 2021

The Hamleys toy store at the DLF Saket Avenue mall in New Delhi, on April 10., 202l. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Prashanth Vishwanathan.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · P R Sanjai, Chris Kay

A struggling 261-year-old U.K. toy-store chain is seeking a new lease of life in the hands of billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who’s looking to India where about a fifth of the world’s babies are born to fuel its revival.

Hamleys, a British retail icon that hasn’t made a profit for a number of years, plans to quadruple its outlets in the former British colony to more than 500 in three years despite the pandemic, according to Darshan Mehta, chief executive officer of Ambani’s Reliance Brands. Besides the main growth market, the company is also adding stores from Europe to South Africa and China, he said in an interview.

Ambani, 63, bought Hamleys in 2019 to strengthen his retail footprint as part of the ongoing transformation of his oil-and-chemicals conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd. into a consumer and technology behemoth. The deep pockets of Asia’s richest man and India’s demographics could help breathe new life into Hamleys, whose share of global toy sales was estimated at 0.6% last year by Euromonitor International, and see it avert the pitfalls faced by rivals such as Toys “R” Us Inc.

With a backer whose net worth is $72 billion, Hamleys is seeking to tap into what it sees as an inadequately serviced section of India’s almost 1.4 billion people, of which about 27% are children under 14. The country accounts for just 1% of the $90 billion global toy industry, meaning the potential for growth is high, Mehta said.

“There is a lot of headroom and India is no way near saturation,” Mehta said. “We are now mulling how we can roll out stores in newer geographies and new formats.”

Hamleys stores are famed for the carnival-like experience, allowing children to race toy cars, enjoy model train sets and play various games. In a country like India, with its densely packed cities and limited entertainment options, such an environment could be a hook to get customers to visit again. Product prices appealing to buyers of modest means as well as the super-rich make Hamleys an “elastic brand,” said Mehta.

A street cleaning buggy moves along the pavement outside The Hamleys Group flagship store on Regent Street in London on June 11, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Chris J. Ratcliffe.

In Asia, Hamleys is seen as “high class and it’s on par with Harrods in some ways,” said Marc Alonso, a London-based senior research analyst at Euromonitor. “So it’s attracting that customer base, which is why in some places like India and China, it has been seeing some good sales growth in the past few years.”

While the pandemic has been hitting parts of India’s economy, Mehta sees the toy industry as “recession proof” because many families choose the happiness of kids over anything else.

But other chains have struggled before the virus. Toys “R” Us was the biggest victim of the U.S. retail apocalypse when it filed for bankruptcy in 2017, crushed by debt and felled by competition from online sellers such as Amazon.com. Though the American chain is on a recovery path now under a new owner, a protracted pandemic points to an uncertain future for retailers.

Nailing online sales is key to avoiding the fate of other high-end toy chains, according to Reliance. As part of Ambani’s e-commerce and technology pivot, his group is building Jiomart, a shopping portal, to take on giants such as Amazon.com and Walmart’s Flipkart in the local market. Reliance Industries has roped in Facebook Inc. and Google as investors to fuel those ambitions.

With covid-19 accelerating the group’s digital strategy, Mehta expects 30% of Hamleys’ sales coming from orders online in five years, versus 20% now. Direct selling over the phone or via WhatsApp would account for 20% in the same period, he said.

Euromonitor’s Alonso said that target may be too ambitious because some customers could go to another portal that offers cheaper prices. “You can get the same product much cheaper by going straight to Lego, for example, on their e-commerce site,” said Alonso.

A child looks at a display in a Hamleys toy store at the DLF Saket Avenue mall in New Delhi, India on April 10, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Prashanth Vishwanathan.

Founded by William Hamley in 1760, Hamleys has seen its share of troubles. Ownership of the London-based chain has changed at least three times in the past decade alone — from an Icelandic bank to a French group and then to a Chinese fashion retailer. Two years ago, Ambani snapped it up for about $89 million in cash. Hamleys’ most recent books for 2019 show a loss of almost 9 million pounds ($12.4 million) on revenue of about 48 million pounds.

The onset of the pandemic just months after Reliance took control compounded Hamleys’ financial distress in the U.K., where it runs 21 outlets. Like most shops in the deserted streets of London, its grand seven-story Regent Street flagship store that opened in 1881 remained closed for much of the past year until recently, while it cut a quarter of its staff to weather the crisis.

Mehta believes the U.K. operations will “come out very strongly” with non-essential stores reopening this week following the easing of curbs. After 100 days of lockdown, consumers flocked to shopping streets across England on Monday. Retailers like Hamleys are hoping the pent-up demand will translate into bumper sales. Mehta said another coronavirus wave could cause temporary disruption — like delayed plans for the U.S., a market Hamleys wants to crack.

Prior to the acquisition of the chain, Reliance had the master franchise for Hamleys in India. The retail unit of Reliance is also the local partner for over 45 international brands including Burberry, Hugo Boss, Jimmy Choo and Tiffany & Co., according to the company’s website.

The pandemic has limited Hamleys’ India target to just about 50 new stores this year before the roll out picks up pace. The toy retailer is looking at outlets in the U.S. this year or next, depending on travel restrictions, as well as in tourist hot spots in European countries, including France and Italy, the Reliance executive said.

Still, India is likely to be a key market, said Arvind Singhal, chairman of Indian retail consultancy Technopak Advisors. With about 26 million children born in the country each year, Hamleys is unlikely to be short of customers there even if only the top 5% of the population can afford to shop at its store, he said.

“Toys is one category where emotions sometimes overtake your financial abilities,” said Singhal. “Hamleys is probably one of the best investments from Mr. Ambani’s point of view in retail — the visibility the Hamleys brand has in India is unparalleled.”

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Afghanistan plans raise U.S. security concerns

InternationalApr 18. 2021

By The Washington Post · Missy Ryan, Shane Harris, Paul Sonne

WASHINGTON – The military and intelligence agencies are racing to refine plans for countering extremist groups in Afghanistan following President Joe Biden’s planned troop withdrawal, but current and former officials warn it will be far more difficult to head off threats to U.S. security from afar.

Biden said the United States would reposition personnel and equipment once the Pentagon pulls its forces out of Afghanistan ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“We’ll not take our eye off the terrorist threat,” Biden said as he announced his decision, to end a war that is now America’s longest, a goal that has eluded earlier presidents.

Top Biden aides said the move, which came despite warnings from military and intelligence leaders that withdrawal could permit a diminished al-Qaida to regroup, was necessary to comply with a 2020 withdrawal agreement President Donald Trump negotiated with the Taliban, and to allow the United States to focus on more pressing challenges, like China’s military rise.

But some officials cautioned that the trade-offs for American security, especially given the anemic state of peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan government, could be steep without the constellation of military bases, arsenal of weaponry and aircraft, and network of human sources the two-decade American effort in Afghanistan has accrued.

“The reason why al-Qaida is pretty weak right now is that we’ve been putting pressure on them,” making it hard for them to attempt to regroup, said Lisa Curtis, who served as the top White House official for Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Trump administration. Without an American presence, she said, “they’re going to have the freedom to do just that.”

Curtis’ warning echoed statements from CIA Director William Burns, who told lawmakers this week that the military departure would diminish the U.S. government’s ability to detect and respond to upticks in extremist threats, also including the Islamic State. “To be honest, there is a significant risk once the U.S. military and the coalition militaries withdraw,” he said.

Pentagon officials say that preliminary repositioning plans, drawn up during a policy review Biden kicked off after taking office and during earlier debates about U.S. options in Afghanistan, will be reworked and submitted to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for approval.

“We’re still working out what the future bilateral relationship is going to be with Afghanistan,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Friday. “It will not include a U.S. military footprint,” he said, with the exception of a Marine force assigned to protect the U.S. embassy.

Among the biggest challenges once troops are gone will be how to effectively surveil – and potentially strike – extremist groups in Afghanistan, which is landlocked and far from any major American base. U.S. aircraft could launch flights from al-Udeid, the sprawling air base outside the Qatari capital that is the main U.S. air hub in the Middle East. But the Gulf nation’s distance from Afghanistan, compounded by the need to fly around neighboring Iran, makes it an expensive option.

Fighter jets flying from Qatar to Afghanistan require substantial aerial refueling, which if scaled up could further strain the military’s stock of aging tanker planes. More significantly, those staffed flights would occur without the on-the-ground search-and-rescue backup they now have.

Flying unstaffed aircraft like the MQ-9 Reaper from Qatar entails a six- to eight-hour round trip, reducing the time the drones can spend over Afghanistan. That means the military would need a high number of drones to attain 24-hour coverage over multiple areas of Afghanistan at a time when the Pentagon is seeking to shift surveillance resources to East Asia.

Current and former officials said the administration will likely consider closer options for drone operations, including Uzbekistan, whose Karshi-Khanabad base was a logistics hub for Afghanistan until Uzbek officials ousted the United States in 2005. While Uzbekistan is less under the sway of U.S. rival Russia than neighbors like Tajikistan, where U.S. officials say Moscow has positioned weaponry near the Afghan border, its dismal human rights record could make renewed cooperation unpalatable.

Also nearby is Pakistan, where the CIA once flew drone missions out of Baluchistan province’s Shamsi airfield until Islamabad closed it to American use during a 2011 dispute. While Pakistan has sought to show its support for Afghan peace talks, Prime Minister Imran Khan, who once led sit-ins against U.S. drone strikes, appears unlikely to approve such a move.

Pakistani leaders “want to be friends, but I don’t think there’s an eagerness to go back to old patterns,” said Husain Haqqani, who served as Pakistani ambassador in Washington and is now a Hudson Institute fellow.

Current and former officials said that major advances in surveillance technology nevertheless means U.S. visibility would be far better in Afghanistan than it was before 9/11.

“But strike options will become more limited because we won’t have a team of JSOC who can go out and do a raid,” a former defense official said, referring to elite Joint Special Operations Command operatives who have carried out missions against militant leaders.

It’s not yet clear whether the Biden administration will, as other administrations have done in the past, seek to assign a small number of troops under embassy or intelligence authority in a way that could be seen as complying with the letter, if not the spirit, of the U.S.-Taliban deal.

Some former officials pointed to the U.S. experience in Iraq following the Obama administration’s hurried 2011 withdrawal as a potential model. There, a contingent of roughly two dozen Special Operations forces stayed behind, placed under embassy control so they could continue to advise Iraq’s elite Counterterrorism Service, which U.S. troops had established after the 2003 invasion.

“That proved to be pretty decisive” when the Islamic State overran much of Iraq less than three years later, said retired Gen. Joseph Votel, who served as head of U.S. Special Operations Command and Central Command before retiring in 2019.

Votel said Biden faced “a really hard decision” in Afghanistan. “But I am concerned it may be one we come to regret,” he said.

The Biden administration has declined to publicly address how the withdrawal will impact intelligence agencies in Afghanistan, where they have played a shadowy but substantial role since 2001.

Burns and other top officials have pointed to the Taliban’s responsibility, under the terms of the 2020 U.S.-Taliban deal, for ensuring Afghanistan does not again become a launchpad for terrorist plots.

“Our expectation is they’re going to live up to their obligation and continue to ensure that al-Qaida can’t again use Afghanistan as a platform to stage external attacks,” Burns told Congress.

But it remained unclear in the days following Biden’s announcement whether that intelligence presence, which in addition to traditional spycraft includes a paramilitary operation staffed in part by military personnel who partner with Afghan counterterrorism teams, can continue their work.

Simone Ledeen, who served as a Pentagon official for Special Operations during the Trump administration, said other U.S. agencies operating in Afghanistan “are doing so off the DOD logistics backbone.”

“They’re going to be really challenged if they’re left behind, despite the fact they still have a fundamental mission to keep the homeland safe,” she said.

Mick Mulroy, a former CIA paramilitary officer who also served as a top Pentagon official for the Middle East during the Trump administration, said he understood the desire to leave.

“We’ve reduced our exposure and we’ve significantly reduced our casualties,” he said. “I just don’t think the investment of 3,000 troops is too much to keep what we’ve gained in 20 years.”

A former intelligence official said while it may be possible for the CIA, which has its own aircraft, to press on, officials might also decide it is too risky without the medical support and far greater firepower the military can provide. “I have a feeling the new director is going to say ‘Heck no. We can defend ourselves, but it’s going to be an Alamo situation,’ ” the former official said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

The troop pullout is likely to make the job of recruiting intelligence agents more difficult, and some experts worry that Afghans who have spied for the Americans will become Taliban targets.

Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA officer, recalled being in Kandahar in early 2002 some time after scores of Afghans had been hanged by the Taliban in a soccer stadium. Among them was an Afghan CIA agent, he said.

“I very quietly slipped into the agent’s family compound, and through a curtain, as I was not permitted to make eye contact with the female family members, I passed them money that the U.S. government owed our former agent,” Polymeropoulos recalled.

“I fear such scenes – bodies hung in soccer stadiums – will repeat themselves with a precipitous full U.S. withdrawal, as the Taliban takes revenge on any and all Afghans who helped the U.S. government over the last two decades,” he said.