Collapse in Afghanistan

[Albany Rifles]

That's because the US does not have a Colonial History when and where a Major had the authority to speak with and to honour the Queen's Voice.

True enough. Our colonial history consisted mainly eradicating the local native American tribes, making Latin America safe for the United Fruit Company and issuing an RFQ for a handgun that could stop a charging Moro tribesman in his tracks.

One minor point...we did do all of this in the Philippines but the US military does not have that expertise since 1946 when independence was granted to them.

[Albany Rifles]

Regarding the returning home ceremonies...

In the US military there were ALWAYS welcome back ceremonies...but not a ticker tape parade.

Pretty much every unit/squadron/ship would be greeted at home station by chain of command, a band if available, families, etc. Individual augmentees (usually HQ people) may not units down to platoon received some sort of ceremony.

As for parades...there were some...but I have to be honest since 9/11 there has been a continuous outpouring of support for military personnel....some of it nauseatingly so from cloyingly chauvinistic country music to a free/discount meal at most chain restaurants on special days (Memorial & Veterans) to bad stock photos used in advertising.

[kato]

Pretty much every unit/squadron/ship would be greeted at home station by chain of command, a band if available, families, etc.

Sure, that was done here. Also, the last flight of 264 soldiers to return from Afghanistan were greeted on touching German soil back in June by the commander of the Einsatzführungskommando, i.e. the three-star general in charge of all overseas deployments for the Bundeswehr (who himself commanded ISAF TAAC-N in 2013-2014, KFOR MTF-S in 2007-2009 and SFOR GerCon in 1999, so he can presumably relate). They did a little ceremony where they also handed out some awards for individual meritious service overseas, then handed the guys over to their relatives.

Afghanistan is also somewhat special due to its duration, as least to those here. The commander of those last returning troops spelled it out as having soldiers returning now who had just been born when the mission started, as well as knowing one soldier among those last 264 who had been deployed with ISAF no less than 14 separate times.

[Albany Rifles]

Afghanistan is also somewhat special due to its duration, as least to those here. The commander of those last returning troops spelled it out as having soldiers returning now who had just been born when the mission started, as well as knowing one soldier among those last 264 who had been deployed with ISAF no less than 14 separate times

Yeah, we had some in our special operations forces who definitely fit in this category as well.

Heck, I remember being in Germany in OCT-DEC 2001 and having the Bundeswehr guarding all of our facilities. I am sure some of those guys probably ended up in SOF forces and/or deployed.

[kato]

Right now 200 German soldiers (mostly military police) are deployed in Ramstein since last week for guard duties for the somewhere around 35,000 Afghans the US imported over here in the Kabul evacuation - of which 12,000 are still here.

In USAF media the German soldiers are called "volunteers", although i don't really see anything voluntary in a deployment ordered through the chain of command. Apparently the word is used since the US military is unable or unwilling to shift any soldiers from other duties over onto the task and relies on a few dozen people who "volunteered" from the 786th Civil Engineer Squadron (... "volunteered" to, you know, do their job, i.e. establishing infrastructure in support of the US military presence). USAF in press releases also - presumably purposefully - regularly considerably understates the number of Afghans present by only counting those in a specific housing section or similar.

A number of these Afghans apparently also don't want to be shipped on to the USA or wherever the US plans to "temporarily house" them (apparently Albania and Kosovo "volunteered" to a US request in the regard). So far Germany got 130 asylum requests among them.

[Firestorm]

“We will never give up Osama [bin Laden] at any price,” Mullah Hassan Akhund said in Oct. 1999. He was responding to a U.N. demand. See below. Today, Akhund was named the “head of state” for the Taliban’s resurrected Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Link

Fantastic. Also, Sirajuddin Haqqani who has a $5 million bounty on his head has been named the Interior Minister. I tried calling up the FBI to collect on the bounty by telling them where they could find him now but they weren't amused.

[Double Edge]

I'm using it because it's the only historic option that worked and also in our histories as well. We burned Germany and Japan to the ground with their only hope against starvation was surrender. It's not an option because we chosed it but make no mistake, it's easy. Too damned easy. The Sepoys who marched to Kabul after the 1842 retreat left no man or boy or dog alive in Kabul.

If doing a Mongol isn't an option then you do next best.

Isolate the battle field. No ? so then next best.

Deny the enemy space. Couldn't do that either.

So now we're at fourth best. Garrison fighting.

That is blatant bullshit right off the bat. To control the LOCs, you must travel the LOCs. The number if IED hits should tell you that no one was staying behind the walls. They travelled enough on the those roads for the TB to set up IED ambushes and also for us to watch and track them back to their staging points. No NATO force stayed behind the walls. Every single one went out on patrols. With the British, Americans, and Canadians actively hunting down TB strongholds. The man don't know what he's talking about.

yes, you went on patrols but did you hold the space or did TB just return after you left. The results don't back up what you said does it.

You could not push the TB out and keep them out, they kept returning because you could not isolate the battle space. They had safe sanctuary and you did not go after it.

The one time you did was at the Salala crossing in 2012 and then the Paks cut off your supplies for the next six months. No chance of hot pursuit. Not many insurgents try their tricks when you follow them back to their hideouts and blow them up.

An exceedingly difficult predicament

TAgain, you need control of two of the three of the money, the force, or the people. The TB could not control the flow of goods through the roads, ie no control of the money. Scaring the people makes people support probamatic and does nothing to gain you money nor military power.

The point i'm trying to make is drive 20 miles out of any Afghan city and you're in Taliban country. This was the case for well over a decade.

So they had a presence and only had a few miles to go to capture any city.

When AIM visited in 2019 he found the only thing these TB were interested in was collecting road taxes. So either pay or fight. For those that could not fight, they paid.

[Double Edge]

Must have been a fun day for south block.

CIA chief, Russian NSA in Delhi for talks on Afghanistan | TOI | Sept 08 2021

[Double Edge]

Remnants of the Afghan Defence Forces, alongside the Panjshiri militia have put up a valiant fight against the Taliban. They are simply being outmanned and outgunned by the Taliban and the list of their dead has started mounting since last night. Next time Biden or his supporters say the Afghans did not put up a fight against the Taliban, remind them of Panjshir. They fought and died till the bitter end..

Afghan defense casualties are 66k odd and civil casualties amount to 46k over the last twenty years. They paid in blood that's clear.

I don't know what the status of Panjshir is right now but its become a symbol of resistance for other areas to emulate in the future.

Panjshir never had a chance of holding out beyond a point. They are heavily outnumbered and surrounded with no link to the Tajikistan border and no way for them to be resupplied. And they have no Russian support this time around. The Russians seem to be toeing the Chinese line about supporting the Taliban now.

That's the key limiting factor. The Tajiks could resupply them but not without the green light from Moscow.

There is a famous video of Hamid Gul the former ISI Director General (1987-89), wherein he brags that Pakistan defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan using American money. The interesting part is what he says after -- Pakistan will now defeat America in Afghanistan using American money. They were straight up telling you guys what they were going to do and your leaders sat back and watched it happen. Incompetence and stupidity are both very mild words to describe this. Even in that final phone call between Ghani and Biden which has now become famous, Ghani makes it a point to mention that they are facing a Pakistani supported invasion which Biden of course does not even acknowledge.

The part that gets me is no penalty from the US for killing US troops. That is why he can blatantly talk like that.

Well, no penalty from the Americans up to this point

Obama thought it more important to spar with Putin over Georgia & Ukraine that putting the lives of his own troops first in Afghanistan.

[Officer of Engineers]

If doing a Mongol isn't an option then you do next best.

Isolate the battle field. No ? so then next best.

Deny the enemy space. Couldn't do that either.

So now we're at fourth best. Garrison fighting.


yes, you went on patrols but did you hold the space or did TB just return after you left. The results don't back up what you said does it.

You could not push the TB out and keep them out, they kept returning because you could not isolate the battle space. They had safe sanctuary and you did not go after it.

The one time you did was at the Salala crossing in 2012 and then the Paks cut off your supplies for the next six months. No chance of hot pursuit. Not many insurgents try their tricks when you follow them back to their hideouts and blow them up.

An exceedingly difficult predicament



The point i'm trying to make is drive 20 miles out of any Afghan city and you're in Taliban country. This was the case for well over a decade.

So they had a presence and only had a few miles to go to capture any city.

When AIM visited in 2019 he found the only thing these TB were interested in was collecting road taxes. So either pay or fight. For those that could not fight, they paid.

What the hell are you talking about? The battle space ceases to exist once the battle is over. I'm not going to keep an entire brigade on a warfooting for 2 guys playing mall store cops. The TB NEVER controlled the battle space. They never controlled the LOCs. Else, the cities, garrisons, and platoon houses would have been starved into submission. Trade and supplies was still going through WITHOUT TB TOLLS.

If you are going to use these terms, learn them properly. Good God, lay off the Pakistani sanctuaries. They were contained just as they were during the Soviet times. Yeah, life was miserable for the border troops but the ragheads were not marching to Kabul from Pakistan through NATO/Soviet lines.

And if you can't do the Mongols, you buy off the Mongols and let them do the dirty work for you.

[TopHatter]

Who to blame for Taliban takeover? Former Afghan envoy points finger at Kabul

WASHINGTON, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Roya Rahmani, Afghanistan's first female ambassador to the United States who left her post in July, is clearly horrified by the Taliban takeover of her country. But she is not surprised.

In an interview, Rahmani accused the former U.S.-backed government in Kabul of a failure to lead the country and of widespread corruption that ultimately paved the way for the Taliban's victory last month.

She also warned the United States, still smarting from its defeat, that the rise of the Taliban would have far-reaching geopolitical consequences.

"I, as an Afghan, was not surprised by the fact that the Taliban took over Afghanistan the way they did and how quickly they did, partly because of the lack of leadership by the Afghan government that was in place at the time," Rahmani said.

President Joe Biden acknowledged he and other officials were aware of the risk that the Afghan government could collapse following the U.S. military withdrawal.

But they say they were caught off-guard by the speed of the Taliban victory, a miscalculation that helped lead to a chaotic U.S. military airlift of U.S. citizens and vulnerable Afghans. Thirteen U.S. troops and scores of Afghans were killed in a suicide bombing during the operation.

Biden, in a speech last month, accused Afghan troops of lacking "the will to fight" for their country's future.

Rahmani saw things differently.

"It was not the Afghan forces, that they were not willing to fight for their freedom and for protection of their people. It was the leadership that was corrupt. And they handed over, basically, the country to the Taliban," she said, without providing specific allegations.

In particular, Ashraf Ghani's decision to abandon the presidency and leave Afghanistan on Aug. 15 was "extremely disappointing and embarrassing," she said.

Ghani said on Wednesday he left because he wanted to avoid bloodshed. He denied allegations he stole millions of dollars on his way out.

"Leaving Kabul was the most difficult decision of my life," Ghani said.

Rahmani, who is 43, left the job as ambassador to the United States after nearly three years in the role. During her posting she wrestled with what she believed was a politically-motivated case over an embassy construction project.

She denied any wrongdoing and an anti-corruption court found flaws in the case, sending it back even before the Afghan government crumbled.

"I invite any investigative body to look at all the documents," she said.

But Rahmani's accusations of broad corruption and mismanagement in Kabul carry echoes of warnings by current and former U.S. officials for years. Experts say corruption was steadily eroding ordinary Afghans' faith in the U.S.-backed government and even turning some of them to the Taliban.

Rahmani described being cut out of discussions between Washington and Kabul, including during the Trump administration. Neither capital appeared to be fully preparing for consequences of the U.S. withdrawal, she said.

She warned of geopolitical shifts that will impact the United States and its allies.

Pakistan - a prickly U.S. ally that is close to the Taliban - will have gained leverage in its dealings with the Washington, she said.

"I believe that the United States will be facing a new Pakistan," she said, while cautioning the Taliban's takeover will have ripple effects on India, China, Turkey and beyond.

LAUDS AFGHAN WOMEN PROTESTERS

The last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, girls could not attend school and women were banned from work and education. Religious police would flog anyone breaking the rules and public executions were carried out.

The Taliban have urged Afghans to be patient and vowed to be more tolerant this time.

But Rahmani says the Taliban's decision to exclude women from all of the top government positions announced on Tuesday was proof that dark times may be ahead for women.

On Tuesday, a group of Afghan women in a Kabul street had to take cover after Taliban gunmen fired into the air to disperse hundreds of protesters.

"I salute all the brave women of Afghanistan. It is quite risky to do what they are doing," Rahmani said. "And it's also an indication to the rest of the world that they have everything to lose at this point."
_______

[Albany Rifles]

a miscalculation that helped lead to a chaotic U.S. military airlift of U.S. citizens and vulnerable Afghans.

Chaotic? The plans were always to have ANA provide security and US would run airlift.

Despite early issues, those were rapidly overcome and 130,000 people were airlifted out.

That is a prodigious effort that was actually a great success.

Anyone with a REACH call sign deserves the Distinguished Flying Cross and the squadrons a Presidential Unit Citation. The ground unit personnel deserve the same or more.

[Firestorm]

OoE, going "mongol" on Afghanistan would be the worst idea ever which would fail to achieve anything while committing a genocide in the process. The Taliban would just hide in Waziristan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa like they did anyway till you finished making the mountain of skulls and then move back in once you leave.

[Officer of Engineers]

OoE, going "mongol" on Afghanistan would be the worst idea ever which would fail to achieve anything while committing a genocide in the process. The Taliban would just hide in Waziristan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa like they did anyway till you finished making the mountain of skulls and then move back in once you leave.

No, it would not. For two reasons.

1) You destroyed the TB's support base. With nobody around to give them food and water, never mind intelligence and ammunition, nature becomes the enemy, not the Mongols.

2) For the people in Waziristan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, they have two and only two choices. Collect TB skulls to give to the Mongols or have their own skulls be collected by the Mongols. Be the head hunter or the head hunted. And failure to collect skulls only means your skull would be collected instead.

Either way, logistical support for the TB disappears real fast.

[667medic]

I keep reading articles about how the winner in Afghanistan is Pakistan but I fail to understand the logic.

By winning, do you mean that Afghanistan is the bargaining chip to funnel funds to Pak and in return "control" terrorism emanating from Afghanistan?