Who Is Arming The Taliban .

[crookesey]

1 hour ago, Baron99 said:

After WWII, the allies had a presence in Germany to ensure that the former regime's supporters didn't have a chance to regroup.  75 years on, despite the fact that we're all 'mates' now, the UK & US still retain a presence there. 

 

Biden was warned by his generals that if they walked away from Afghanistan, this would happen but the Taliban's takeover has been far faster than expected.  The generals argued for keeping a reduced number of service personnel to prevent Afghanistan from becoming distabilised & going back to how things were 20 years ago, was dismissed by Biden. 

 

We all know how this is going to pan out, don't we?  The Taliban will / have promised to maintain law & respect all the rights of citizens that have been built up over the last 20 years, until of course those rights conflict with Sharia Law.  Behind the scenes, (denied by the Taliban hierarchy), individuals & groups will be singled out for persecution, torture & execution.  Stories will leak out of Afghanistan about atrocities & the West will wring its hands & the UN talking shop will hopelessly discuss. 

 

Despite denials, Afghanistan will become a safe house for terrorists & terror attacks, both regional & further afield, will be linked back to the country & the Taliban. 

 

The West / the UN / NATO  will decide that military action is required & within 2 years, it'll be boots on the ground & having to fight our way back in again. 

Everything that you say is true, however the U.K. & USA presence in  Germany commenced when the East was firmly controlled by the Russians who had progressed in building their Soviet Union empire. As it now happens the choice is for a unified Germany to once again build an army, something that I recall they are very good at, or live under the protection of NATO, the choice is clear to me.

[cuttsie]

If the Afghan men will not fight back against 75,000 Taliban( a minority ) then it is no good them blaming the West for the situation they are now in , They all seemed to have weapons , they have a Air Force and army yet they still allow a gang of religious nut cases to take over , perhaps they are not as bothered as we think .

[hauxwell]

1 hour ago, crookesey said:

Everything that you say is true, however the U.K. & USA presence in  Germany commenced when the East was firmly controlled by the Russians who had progressed in building their Soviet Union empire. As it now happens the choice is for a unified Germany to once again build an army, something that I recall they are very good at, or live under the protection of NATO, the choice is clear to me.

I’m not sure how many countries were involved in training the army in Afghanistan.  If it was just the US and UK it doesn’t look as though they have done a very good job, unless as cuttsie suggests, not all Afghan people are as bothered as we think.  All the millions that has been spent to build security out there.  I would say at the moment the US and UK  are the ones who are arming the Taliban with all the weapons they left behind.

 

I’m wondering if Germany could have done a better job training the  Afghan Army if it was left to them.  They have had good practice at it over the last century and they did put up a good fight even though they lost two world wars.

[crookesey]

We can’t protect everyone from everything, we could do very little to save the lives of millions of ordinary Russians butchered by the communist regime. We can’t help people who show little interest in helping themselves, sad that it is.

[nightrider]

14 hours ago, The Joker said:

Now this is an interesting development.

 

China has been aggressively implementing its territorial ambitions (witness the recent conflicts in Hong Kong, coupled with China's wish to control more of the South China Sea), but will the Taliban want to start a conflict with China, or keep China as a local ally?

 

Western countries will be unwilling to trade with the Taliban (until it becomes in our economic interest to do so), therefore I'd expect the Taliban to keep a wealthy and aggressive China onside - but I will admit that I'm viewing this through a Western mindset.

 

Yes, that is what I would expect. But it may well be religious fundamentalists are not motivated by money nor by avoiding death at the hands of the Chinese.

1 hour ago, cuttsie said:

If the Afghan men will not fight back against 75,000 Taliban( a minority ) then it is no good them blaming the West for the situation they are now in , They all seemed to have weapons , they have a Air Force and army yet they still allow a gang of religious nut cases to take over , perhaps they are not as bothered as we think .

Did they have an air force?  I read their defence plan was dependent on the US air force providing air support - when the US pulled out their plan was in tatters and they concluded they could not win a fight without that support. Hence better to surrender than endure a 90 day siege they would lose anyway.

Edited August 17, 2021 by nightrider

[cuttsie]

26 minutes ago, nightrider said:

Yes, that is what I would expect. But it may well be religious fundamentalists are not motivated by money nor by avoiding death at the hands of the Chinese.

Did they have an air force?  I read their defence plan was dependent on the US air force providing air support - when the US pulled out their plan was in tatters and they concluded they could not win a fight without that support. Hence better to surrender than endure a 90 day siege they would lose anyway.

Well the Government soon found a air plane or two .

[geared]

1 hour ago, hauxwell said:

I’m not sure how many countries were involved in training the army in Afghanistan.  If it was just the US and UK it doesn’t look as though they have done a very good job, unless as cuttsie suggests, not all Afghan people are as bothered as we think.  All the millions that has been spent to build security out there.

 

 

President Biden said last night "We spent a Trillion dollars, equipped an army of some 300,000, a force larger than many of our NATO allies.  They had some of the best equipment, an Air Force, we paid their wages"

 

I think people see the complete collapse and automatically think that a total half-assed job was done, where it looks like they were given as much as possible.

[trastrick]

Biden blames Trump (what's new?)

 

He reversed all Trumps policies as soon as he took power. But not this one?  Lol

 

Also blames the Afghanis.

 

But the Afghanis did all the fighting for the last 2 years, with only logistic support from the U.S. They lost thousands of men in the fighting, and still couldn't defeat the Taliban.

 

(Research by Brown University estimates losses in the Afghan security forces at 69,000 since 2001)

 

Then, when the U.S. pulled everything out, Including abandoning Bagram Air Base — which served as the American military’s main hub in Afghanistan —the balance changed in favor of the Taliban, and their pals Iran and China.

 

So against such odds, naturally the civil war became unwinnable, so they faced total annihalation.

 

Biden lost his first major foreign policy challenge, like some of us knew he would. After all he (and Obama) were the ones that pulled support from our supposed ally, the  Ukraine, and let the Russians take over Crimea, unopposed.

 

With Trump gone, the world is now less safe than before, and the West's enemies are emboldened.

 

 And history repeats.

Edited August 17, 2021 by trastrick

[alchresearch]

3 hours ago, cuttsie said:

If the Afghan men will not fight back against 75,000 Taliban( a minority ) then it is no good them blaming the West for the situation they are now in , They all seemed to have weapons , they have a Air Force and army yet they still allow a gang of religious nut cases to take over , perhaps they are not as bothered as we think .

Its saddened me to see fit, grown men abandoning all those guns at the airport and fleeing on planes.

 

Those planes should be full of women and children.  The men should be fighting for them, their country.  

[L00b]

2 hours ago, geared said:

 

President Biden said last night "We spent a Trillion dollars, equipped an army of some 300,000, a force larger than many of our NATO allies.  They had some of the best equipment, an Air Force, we paid their wages"

 

I think people see the complete collapse and automatically think that a total half-assed job was done, where it looks like they were given as much as possible.

The US did not spend 1000 billions, it spent 83 billions, much of which ended up padding bank accounts of US armaments and private security companies, with much of the balance ending up padding bank accounts of successive senior Afghani government types.

 

In recent times, the Afghani army (with an annual recruit turnover of up to 50%) has been reliably estimated at 180k soldiers, of which 95k effective trained combattants, all trained for the past decade or two on western-style combined arms tactics, heavily reliant on air support and dominance. That air power disappeared overnight when US maintenance staff were repatriated.

 

Add to that the ‘peaceful transition’ deal brokered by Trump & Pompeo with the Talibs that included the release of 000s of hardline senior Talibs from Pakistani jails, the $1.6bn (estimate) Talib war chest with which senior commanders have been buying provincial governors and Afghani army commanders over the last few months, lastly the Afghani president hightailing it out of the country that gave the Talib a clear excuse for cancelling that ‘peaceful transition’ deal…and then what do you expect your low-level unpaid-for-months Afghani army recruit with relatives to do, faced with a choice of dropping their weapons and walking away, or fighting with the certainty of dying and likely their relatives too?

 

It’s quite something to read posts criticising the Afghani army for folding so quickly, when the combined might of a NATO coalition led by the US achieved no better in 20 years, than the USSR 20 years earlier, unemcumbered as it was then, by “rules of engagement” and other humanistic niceties.

 

There never was any clean or better exit to be had from the ‘Stan, Biden just got handed the team captaincy for the last minute of extra-time of the game started by Bush. A game which, rightly or wrongly, Trump decided to throw and fold 4 years ago, lest we forget.

Edited August 17, 2021 by L00b