Afghan "train, advise and assist" 1984 style

[funinspace]

I think the US mindset was, the Afghan military would be capable of a stalemate. Again, mistaking Afghanistan for Iraq.

What didn't enter the calculus was that the Afghan military likely felt the Taliban would win... eventually. So why risk the violence and threats to their families (based on the terror strikes for the last 15 to 20 years) when they can just lay down their arms as well as beheadings of the military leaders. This was Shock and Awe... where the shock was all the bombings and attacks the past couple of decades.

There is plenty of blame on this. Biden's blame would seemingly being completely unprepared for this breaking down so fast and not staging evacuation appropriately. Though, I honestly don't recall anyone warning it would be a week or two.

The only thing I remember that should have provided some warning was how the Taliban was rapidly taking control of the countryside in the northern part of Afghanistan in June. This was significant, as the Taliban had in the past been largely an ethnically Pashtun group. The ethnic Pashtun's are more located in the southern parts of Afghanistan and also Pakistan. Also, the Taliban never fully controlled the northern part of the country, when they ruled in the 1990's. I had read that in recent years, they worked to be more ethnically inclusive within their ranks. This sweep into the north, suggests that their strategy was working. But with our generals and experts having more rosy kaleidoscope glasses than Elton John, I find it hard to blame Biden (or even Clownstick for that matter) for this failure to see the impending collapse. But it was Clownstick and Pompeo that negotiated with the Taliban and allowed the Afghan government to not be included in their negotiations...

 

[lpetrich]

Titled link:
Aśvaka - آسواکا News Agency on Twitter: "Exclusive- A clear video (from other angle) of men falling from C-17. They were Clinging to some parts of the plane that took off from Kabul airport today. #Talibans #Afghanistan #Afghanishtan (vid link)" / Twitter

Afghans desperate to flee Taliban takeover mob Kabul airport | Taliban News | Al Jazeera - "At least seven people are reported dead after panic rush of crowds at Kabul airport as Taliban seize power."

Some people tried to hitch a ride on a transport plane by climbing onto it, like they would do with a surface vehicle. Some of them then fell off as the plane departed.

"Turkey has evacuated civilians and its citizens from Kabul on a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul."

Afghans cling to moving US Air Force jet in desperate bid to flee | Conflict News | Al Jazeera - "Described as ‘defining images’ of Western intervention, extraordinary scenes from the runway in Kabul send shockwaves across the world."

Videos shared widely on social media on Monday showed hundreds of people running alongside a US military jet as it prepared to depart Kabul airport.

One video showed several people climbing onto the plane as it progressed down the airport’s runway, some of whom appeared to be hanging off its moving front wheel.

Another horrifying clip appeared to show at least two people falling from the sky after the plane has taken off.

Sameer ‘Sadiq’ Bhat on Twitter: "Unprecedented images from Kabul Airport. These have to be the defining images of this war. This is on America’s conscience! Shocking, unreal scenes! (vid link)" / Twitter

Showing a lot of people running alongside that airplane.

 

[lpetrich]

Andrew Connell on Twitter: "Incredibly powerful, defining images from Kabul Airport this morning - as people clamber onto an airbridge, so desperate are they to escape Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover." / Twitter
noting
Manish Shukla on Twitter: "Total chaos at Hamid Karzai International Airport of #Kabul #Afghanishtan #Taliban (vid link)" / Twitter
showing people trying to climb aboard a jetway

Manish Shukla on Twitter: "Another video of #Kabul. Afghani people don't know where to go. (vid link)" / Twitter
A lot of people running in some streets

Manish Shukla on Twitter: "Video -3, #KabulAirport today morning (vid link)" / Twitter
A big crowd on the tarmac near an airliner

Manish Shukla on Twitter: "Video-4, Security Forces controlling the situations inside #kabulairport (vid link)" / Twitter

Some lamented the “unimaginable … level of desperation it must have taken to hang onto an airplane”, and described the unravelling security situation as “unbelievable”.

For others, the images were reminiscent of the chaos that enveloped the US’s escape from Vietnam at the end of the country’s war in 1975, though US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has rejected the comparison.

In recent days, the US and several of Washington’s allies, including the United Kingdom, France and Germany, have been trying to arrange evacuation flights out of Kabul in line with the end of their combat operations in Afghanistan.

As authorities attempted to clear the throngs of people who had converged on its airfield, the US later on Monday halted all evacuation flights from Kabul, a defence official told Reuters news agency.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So far girls schools are operating. Maybe Taliban will let them be this time?

That seems incredibly unlikely.

Taliban will wait, and then it'll be time to assess the curriculum to ensure it doesn't violate the new brand of compassionate conservative radical Islam.

funinspace brings up a very disturbing point, which I heard elsewhere. The Taliban enters into their new phase, in control of more of Afghanistan than when the US entered. They were feuding with the Northern Alliance at that time. It seems almost perverted that the US leaves Taliban in control of all of Afghanistan.

 

[lpetrich]

William Dalrymple on Twitter: "Just seen the most heartbreaking footage from Kabul airport: terrified Afghans clinging to the undercarriage of US planes taxiing along the apron, then falling to their death, one by one, as the plane climbs. The most tragic symbol yet of the whole US betrayal of Afghanistan." / Twitter
then
William Dalrymple on Twitter: "Horrible echoes of those limp figures falling from the World Trade Centre 20 years ago" / Twitter

Emma Graham-Harrison on Twitter: "This, even more than yesterday's images of choppers over the embassy, may be the defining image of the West's failure in Afghanistan.

People so terrified, so desperate to leave, they are chasing a plane down the runway, clinging to its undercarriage." / Twitter

David Patrikarakos on Twitter: "This footage will still be played in 100 years. It now joins images of the retreat from Saigon and the naked Vietnamese girl as one of the west’s most shameful moments in modern history. (vid link)" / Twitter

Jane Ferguson on Twitter: "Unbelievable scenes at #KabulAirport as people literally cling to US military place taking off." / Twitter

Walter Shaub on Twitter: "The level of desperation it must have taken to hang onto an airplane wing or landing gear until falling to their death is unimaginable. The situation at the Kabul airport is horrific. What a calamity." / Twitter


Kabul near standstill on day one of the Taliban’s ‘Emirate’ | Conflict News | Al Jazeera - "The bustling metropolis of six million saw businesses shut as people stayed indoors after the Taliban took over."

The first day of what the Taliban calls the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” saw Kabul, a bustling metropolis of six million, turn into a slow, male-dominated city without police or traffic controls and with shuttered businesses everywhere.

A city that only 48 hours ago was jam-packed with cars and hundreds of people lining up outside banks, visa processing offices and travel agencies, had come to a near standstill.

Remnants of the Western-backed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, built over 20 years of international support, linger. The dividers and K9 cages of police checkpoints were still standing, but unmanned.

The giant explosives scanners still stand, but with no one to operate them. Streets leading to the airport road were jammed with no traffic police to direct them.

The most glaring difference is the city’s new inhabitants: Taliban fighters who had come from all over the nation’s 34 provinces. They could be seen proudly waving their black-on-white flag and displaying their guns from the very four-wheel drives that used to be sent across the country to hunt them down

They also had smartphones, and they took selfies of themselves in the city.

"During their five years or so of rule, the Taliban had banned photography and provided the public with no access to the still-fledgeling Internet."
That was back in the late 1990's.

 

[Gospel]

This is all too messed up man.

 

[lpetrich]

The US, the Taliban and the stunning defeat in Afghanistan | Taliban | Al Jazeera - "The Taliban victory is a major humiliation for the US, but perhaps that’s the silver lining of the Afghan tragedy."

Since the war began almost 20 years ago, successive US administrations have ignored the writing on the wall, prolonging the inevitable, while failing to prepare for it.

It took the US and its allies only two months to “liberate” Kabul from the grip of the Taliban in 2001, and less than two years for the smug Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to declare at a news conference in Kabul on May 1, 2003, that “major combat activity” was over.

As the US occupation stumbled, the deposed Taliban regrouped and launched a merciless asymmetrical war on the US and Afghan government forces for much of the following two decades.

But successive US administrations deliberately deceived the American public into thinking everything was dandy on the war front in Afghanistan, when in fact, it was anything but – just as they did previously during the Vietnam war.

The scene of US personnel fleeing Kabul last week, just as they did Saigon in 1975, was downright eerie.

"In fact, since World War II, the US has failed to decisively win any major war, whether in Korea, Vietnam or Iraq."


UK rules out returning troops to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan | Asia News | Al Jazeera - "UK defence secretary says the Taliban’s rapid takeover is a sign of the international community’s ‘failure’."

"British and NATO forces will not return to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, the United Kingdom’s defence secretary said, after the group took control of Kabul following a blistering nationwide offensive."

Does Russia have a new strategy for Afghanistan? | Conflict News | Al Jazeera - "Moscow will seek ‘pragmatic’ engagement with the Taliban after the armed group seized control of Afghanistan, analysts say."

 

[lpetrich]

How the world reacted to Taliban takeover of Kabul | Conflict News | Al Jazeera - "Sixty nations called on those in power in Afghanistan to protect ‘human life and property’ after Taliban enter capital."

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has said the US “military failure” in Afghanistan offers an opportunity to establish lasting peace in the country.

...
China on Monday said its embassy will remains open in Kabul and expressed a willingness to support the country’s reconstruction.

...
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi assured a visiting delegation of the former Afghan government on Monday that his country will continue to play the role for peace and stability in Afghanistan, according to the foreign ministry.

...
The Kremlin envoy to Afghanistan on Monday said on Moscow will decide whether to recognise the new Taliban government based on its conduct.

...
US President Joe Biden has not spoken publicly on the situation in Afghanistan since Saturday, when he defended the decision to withdraw troops. He is expected to make an address in the coming days.

On Monday, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the failure of the Afghan military is to blame for the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan.

Sullivan said Biden did not want the US to enter a “third decade of conflict” in Afghanistan and believed it was time for the Afghan army to defend the country two decades after billions of dollars of investment and training by the US.

...
EU foreign ministers are set to meet for an emergency videoconference on Tuesday, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, announced on Monday.

The meeting will be used to make a “first assessment” of the situation, Borrell wrote on Twitter.

...
The UN humanitarian aid coordination agency says it and partners “are staying and delivering to people in need” despite a complex security situation in Afghanistan following a sweep by Taliban forces across the country.

...
The German government has called on the Taliban to show restraint, protect the lives of the Afghan people and make sure needed humanitarian aid can reach them.

...
Qatari foreign minister Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, speaking in Jordan on Monday, called for stability for the Afghan people.

...
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan is a “failure of the international community”, the UK’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said on Monday, assessing that the West’s intervention was a job only half-done.

 

[TomC]

So far girls schools are operating. Maybe Taliban will let them be this time?

That seems incredibly unlikely.

We'll see. Maybe these idiots learned that pissing off outside world could lead to 20 year old occupation.

Then again, maybe what they learned is that with patience and resolve, Allah will give them victory over any invader. From the godless Russians to the godless Americans, Allah rules over puny humans.
Tom

 

[lpetrich]

An Iconic Bridge Sees U.S. Allies Flee Afghanistan as the Soviets Did - The New York Times - "Retreating Afghan government soldiers crowded onto a bridge over the Amu Darya River that was a backdrop for the Soviet failure in Afghanistan decades ago."

The bridge is between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.

... In a chaotic retreat from the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, pro-government soldiers streamed onto the crossing, seeking safety on the opposite bank.

The scene on Thursday mirrored an iconic moment 32 years ago at the end of the failed Soviet war in Afghanistan, when the bridge provided the final exit route out of the country for the defeated Soviet Army.

Then, red flags fixed to the armored vehicles flapped in a winter wind as the departing Soviet troops drove and marched across the bridge on Feb. 15, 1989. That was meant to signal an organized, dignified exit for the superpower’s army after a decade of occupation and defeats.

The Soviet commander, Gen. Boris V. Gromov, walked alone behind the last armored column as it rumbled across and out of the country. He then declared that Russia was done with Afghanistan.

“That’s it,” General Gromov told a television crew. “Not one Soviet soldier or officer is behind my back.”

The Red Army withdrew ceremonially.

The armored vehicles rolled across over the roiling, glacier-fed river slowly and precisely, as if in a parade. On the Uzbek side, women met the soldiers with the traditional greeting of bread and salt. Soldiers were given wristwatches for their service. Television cameras filmed.

The Biden Admin has made a point of avoiding a similar sort of departure from Afghanistan, even though the Obama Admin had a similar sort of departure from Iraq -- a convoy of trucks crossing the border to Kuwait.

 

[Gospel]

Our leaders are going to argue back and forth about this & no matter what they or Biden says, this 20-year expedition is on all of us.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The US, the Taliban and the stunning defeat in Afghanistan | Taliban | Al Jazeera - "The Taliban victory is a major humiliation for the US, but perhaps that’s the silver lining of the Afghan tragedy."

Since the war began almost 20 years ago, successive US administrations have ignored the writing on the wall, prolonging the inevitable, while failing to prepare for it.

It took the US and its allies only two months to “liberate” Kabul from the grip of the Taliban in 2001, and less than two years for the smug Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to declare at a news conference in Kabul on May 1, 2003, that “major combat activity” was over.

As the US occupation stumbled, the deposed Taliban regrouped and launched a merciless asymmetrical war on the US and Afghan government forces for much of the following two decades.

But successive US administrations deliberately deceived the American public into thinking everything was dandy on the war front in Afghanistan, when in fact, it was anything but – just as they did previously during the Vietnam war.

The scene of US personnel fleeing Kabul last week, just as they did Saigon in 1975, was downright eerie.

"In fact, since World War II, the US has failed to decisively win any major war, whether in Korea, Vietnam or Iraq."

Granada, Panama, First Gulf War were huge military victories!

Does Russia have a new strategy for Afghanistan? | Conflict News | Al Jazeera - "Moscow will seek ‘pragmatic’ engagement with the Taliban after the armed group seized control of Afghanistan, analysts say."

Who do you think got Trump to push that Taliban President-to-be out of prison in Pakistan?

 

[TomC]

Our leaders are going to argue back and forth about this & no matter what they or Biden says, this 20-year expedition is on all of us.

Who is "us" kemosobe?
Most of the Human race was opposed to it in 2001. Including me.
Tom

 

[Gospel]

Wait what? I thought Russia and the Taliban were mortal Enemies. If what you say about Trump is true I'm certain it was more likely an ill-informed means to broker a deal so we can get out of Afghanistan without mud on our faces.

 

[Gospel]

Our leaders are going to argue back and forth about this & no matter what they or Biden says, this 20-year expedition is on all of us.

Who is "us" kemosobe?
Most of the Human race was opposed to it in 2001. Including me.
Tom

I'm trying to trust that you know this goes further back than 2001 but you're making it hard for me.

 

[TomC]

Wait what? I thought Russia and the Taliban were mortal Enemies. If what you say about Trump is true I'm certain it was more likely an ill-informed means to broker a deal so we can get out of Afghanistan without mud on our faces.

The Taliban and the USA are mortal enemies. Nevertheless, we funded and armed them back in the 80s.

Politics make strange bedfellows. Osama bin Laden's first gun was probably supplied by Henry Kissinger. His money came from US petrodollars paid to the Saudi Arabian Kingdom.

It's messy.
Tom

 

[TomC]

Our leaders are going to argue back and forth about this & no matter what they or Biden says, this 20-year expedition is on all of us.

Who is "us" kemosobe?
Most of the Human race was opposed to it in 2001. Including me.
Tom

I'm trying to trust that you know this goes further back than 2001 but you're making it hard for me.

I do know it does. Way further back. But I thought you were talking about the USA invasion of Afghanistan.

If you meant something else please clarify.
Tom

 

[SLD]

Granada, Panama, First Gulf War were huge military victories!

Does Russia have a new strategy for Afghanistan? | Conflict News | Al Jazeera - "Moscow will seek ‘pragmatic’ engagement with the Taliban after the armed group seized control of Afghanistan, analysts say."

Who do you think got Trump to push that Taliban President-to-be out of prison in Pakistan?

I have little doubt that our military can handle a wide variety of threats to the United States, from serious to mere pinpricks. Tactically and operationally, there is no one power that can challenge us. By far. Kicking ass is what they do best. Where we are deficient is nation building. But I don’t see anyone else particularly good at that either. Including the Taliban. They may have taken over, but expect them to start infighting soon enough. There is not one Taliban. There is at least three rival factions who have engaged in the insurgency. Hekmatyar Gulbuddin will never share power unless he’s supreme and the others won’t let him.

 

[Gospel]

I'm trying to trust that you know this goes further back than 2001 but you're making it hard for me.

I do know it does. Way further back. But I thought you were talking about the USA invasion of Afghanistan.

If you meant something else please clarify.
Tom

I mentioned Biden & 20-year expedition. So by us, I meant Americans. This withdrawal and subsequent fallout are on all of us. I'm glad you know, this means you should be able to see how this (and our other actions in the Arab world are on us).

Edit: And before you say it, I'm not saying no other countries played a role.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Granada, Panama, First Gulf War were huge military victories!

Does Russia have a new strategy for Afghanistan? | Conflict News | Al Jazeera - "Moscow will seek ‘pragmatic’ engagement with the Taliban after the armed group seized control of Afghanistan, analysts say."

Who do you think got Trump to push that Taliban President-to-be out of prison in Pakistan?

I have little doubt that our military can handle a wide variety of threats to the United States, from serious to mere pinpricks. Tactically and operationally, there is no one power that can challenge us. By far. Kicking ass is what they do best. Where we are deficient is nation building. But I don’t see anyone else particularly good at that either. Including the Taliban. They may have taken over, but expect them to start infighting soon enough. There is not one Taliban. There is at least three rival factions who have engaged in the insurgency. Hekmatyar Gulbuddin will never share power unless he’s supreme and the others won’t let him.

My brain just got flooded with article titles.

"With rising unemployment, is honeymoon over for the Taliban?"
"Decisive beheading marks the day the Taliban became President of Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan."
"Taliban's First 100 Days, here is what they have accomplished."