That is 100% clear and you need not wonder, just read my previous posts here and check my sources.
If you think Al Qaida is no longer in Afghanistan then you are up for a rather large surprise in the coming months and years. The links between the so called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and Al Qaida are deep and it is not as if they are totally different organisations which some seem to think. Their leaders mixed blood with Al Sawahiri and just today, and days before, an unknown number of Al Qaida fighters have been freed from prison by the Taliban.
All of this is available freely from Open Source intelligence sources.
I wont be surprised because I didn’t say that and do not think it. What I said was even if an administration felt it was the right thing to do to stay and fight them back, it would be incredibly difficult to make the argument under the current legal authorization for being there in this political climate.
That I agree with, but the withdrawal has been an abysmal failure of epic proportions and could have been handled in a myriad of other ways, as experts like Joscelyn and Roggio as well as many military sources both in the UK and US, have said many times. Only 2 days ago, US Army used hashtag responsible withdrawal that manages to insult an impressive number of people at the same time.
Like a diplomat from the UK said today, we did not need to do this, the operation in Afganistan was very low cost, both economically and politically and now there is nothing but the greatest shame of betrayal and defeat.
Someone sent me this.
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Looks legitimate and was an interesting read, but the article was much too optimistic and there are much to take issue with. One is the idea that Iran funds the Taliban is based on RUM-INT from the US and Israel and make very little sense (originated in Pompeo’s time as far as I know) and seems more like an ideological rumour leaked by certain parties. They have had diplomatic contact (they kind of have to) because the Taliban is a massive armed force on their border, but the claims that Iran supports the Taliban ought to be taken with a massive truckload of salt since they are traditional enemies (which Muslims does the Wahhabists hate the most ? The answer is the Shias and so Iran is a devil regime for them). This is also true for Russia, which has had contact with the Taliban just like the US (they also have interests in stability at the northern Afghan border). Does Russia want to deal with the Taliban ? Yes, but their choices are not exactly that awesome seen from Kremlin pov. What are they to do, invade again ? This Russia can’t afford so better to deal with the devil then.
In any case, the article ends with a moot point. The war is over, Taliban won and the former Afghan president is gone, so there will be no “redistribution of resources and etc.” for the government. The government is no more. Now it is the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Their flag changed today.
Perhaps now these journalists and certain people who have called themselves experts and fed the media ,and worse, US decision makers, with bullshit, will wake up and realise that there never was a Peace Process. It never existed. It was a delaying plan by the Taliban and their backers to get the US and NATO out so they could take over the country with military force. And this is what has happened. No attacks on NATO to speak of since Trump made the promise to withdraw, but when Trump gave a date and Biden later confirmed it, the Taliban started a nation wide military offensive (again, there was never a Peace Process, Taliban lied from the beginning and many have said this all the time) culminating in today’s take over of the entire country by force of arms.
But the article was an interesting read. A whole lot of super optimistic stuff that ended up being false though.
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Your feeling is correct. Afghanistan did die today. This regime change is as fundamental as the end of Hitler-Germany. Afghanistan tomorrow is the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and will no longer be a republic.
Saigon:
It takes a cruel man not to feel empathy for these.
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Acknowledging that a lot of the coverage of this in the US is from people who are already discredited by their long history of being wrong about absolutely everything to do with the US’ involvement in Afghanistan, there has been a lot of focus on staying and preventing this. But everything credible I have read from people outside of these discredited circles suggest that the existing level of forces there would not have been nearly sufficient to hold back this offensive. Essentially if we were to try to engage them then the only way to do it without suffering certain defeat was to bring in significantly more reinforcements. Ignoring the political impossibility of that, to what end would we be doing that? To maintain a status quo that falls apart the second we eventually leave?
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To answer all of your points takes time .
First of all, I am against the withdrawal and always has been precisely because I viewed this to be the likely worst case scenario because I have read Bill Roggio and friends, as well as their sources, for years. In the US, they are among the few who reported on the war who actually has any credibility left. I am still against the withdrawal, because betrayal creates a massive damage to Soft power of the US and NATO. You don’t start a nation building project and then leave it unfinished like a tower of cards to be toppled by mere wind. That is not ethical. When you go to war and topple a regime and occupies the very country, you have a responsibility to leave it with functioning institutions in my view. Those are my opinions though and I agree that many wise people will differ there.
But to answer in full I would have to touch upon the so many lies that have been told to the US public (and the Administration!!!). Take 300 000 Afghan troops, many knew, including lying generals, that there was no such thing as a 300 000 strong Afghan army. That was an obvious lie to people who had followed the conflict.The issue of ghost soldiers and the endemic corruption in the afghan institutions, including very much the so called army, was well known but hidden from policy makers by Yes-men. It is not so many days since Biden said this in public and also made the astonishing claim that the Taliban numbered just 75 000. The intelligence failure is some what epic here, but the Long War Journal has been consistently warning these were preposterous numbers and warning about how US military leaders have lied to the political leadership. So your questions are hardly easy to answer in just one post without digging deep into my sources.
As for the current numbers of troops, well, they are obviously so extremely low, so yes, it would be impossible to hold back the Taliban offensive without reinforcements, this is granted. But the moment the Taliban began their offensive they broke all agreements with the Trump admin and so yes, it would be proper to fight back on behalf of the Afghan government and I am not convinced this would have been politically impossible if the NATO and particularly US media apparatus were used to reinforce the message of necessity. 5-6000 troops to hold cities would have broken the Taliban offensive if supported by air power, and this would also have stopped the domino effect of the tribes surrendering. The problem with the Taliban is that they do not follow the Geneva Convention, so they kill a few hundred prisoners, film it, then visit tribal leaders, telling them that if you do not convince your kin to surrender, we kill all their families. This method of war has of course extremely negative implications for morale and is effective. It is however unlikely that this would have happened if there were 1-2 combat companies in each city to support ANA, but now I enter realms of speculation and must be careful as I don’t want to write anything unfactual.
But yes, it would have taken reinforcements to completely crush their offensive and certainly air strikes from local bases and not just these belated “over the horizon strikes”.
An obvious problem in Afghanistan is that Pakistan was never tackled, never put under actual pressure, they continued for 20 years to support the Taliban militarily and economically without repercussions of any real kind. I just mention this now so I won’t forget it later, because it is a very important factor in this defeat. The failure of political will in the US chiefly, to tackle Pakistan that is. Afghanistan could never be won without that, as many have pointed to for decades. Yet, here we are.
But when withdrawal then is decided, then there should at the very least have been coordination with the Afghan government. This was not the case. They withdrawal was abrupt and instantaneous without any coordination, leaving the Afghan air force mostly inoperable without logistical support (this could have been phased, Limescouse). Another very important point is the criminal negotiations of the Trump administration with the Taliban in Doha, a negotiation that the Afghan government was not allowed to be part of. To be clear, the US dictated solutions to the Afghan government, among them freeing over 5000 fighters (a large number of whom contributed to this offensive) against the explicit wishes of the Afghans. In reality, the Taliban was only interested in one thing, and that was the evacuated of NATO, and here the Trump admin made up stuff to suit their political agenda. While I realise that Biden is only following up on what Trump initially ordered, there was no particular reason that the US should just accept that the Taliban started a general offensive (a clear breach of the agreement and a imo a betrayal of the Afghans) and break the negotiated agreement that never really was. These negotiations, which the Afghan government was never part of, greatly weakened the Afghan government’s legitimacy and greatly increased the legitimacy of the Taliban.
But when this happened, ammunition could have been distributed to the Afghan army, bases could have been secured for them, spare parts donated to them so their planes and helicopters could fly. Food. Supplies that are needed. None of this happened, the US left abruptly, the rest of NATO followed the days after as they have to (US stood for Force Protection along with some UK elements, when they are gone, the rest must naturally evacuate). This was a shock to the Afghans, they had not been told how and when this would happen. The coordination was beyond awful. We simply do not know if the Afghan army could have held if they were given real support. They relied mostly on their exhausted commandos and misused them greatly by not rotating them, the rest of the Afghan army always needed baby sitting and many have known that. Yet the message in the US politically was that the Afghan Army could take care of itself and was 300 000 strong and “as well trained and supplied as any army in the world” (quote Joe Biden very recently) while only facing a mere 75 000 Taliban fighters. This was always nonsense and Biden was served lies. I was completely shocked when I heared that quote myself and privately wondered if I myself was a better Intelligence Apparatus by my own lonesome through my twitter sources than the enormous apparatus serving the president of the supposedly mightiest country in the world. But it was challenged in the US mostly just by the guys around the Long War Journal, for reasons I don’t really know but which I suspect has to do with how much easier it is to speak sweet lies than to tell difficult truths. Because these generals must have known. I refuse to think they were lacking so much info about the Afghan army and its dispositions.
Then obviously we have the massive problem with the absolutely corrupt political culture in Afghanistan that was never really tackled, and much should have been written about this, but I can’t write for hours right now.
I cannot source all of this to you directly (takes much too much time to research), but you can find this information through Bill Roggio, the guys he quotes, and Bilal Sarwary if you scroll enough back down.
Anyway, my fingers tire now and I don’t want to spend more time writing now. Maybe you are unimpressed by what I wrote, but so be it (I probably forgot important points too). Takes a long time to write such posts and I don’t want to spend more time now.
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I cannot recommend Bilal enough. He has so much integrity, an obvious intellect, and he has told the world some seriously important stories. I hope people take notice of him. I also hope he will be safe. He has always been incredibly non propagandistic and objective, so not an obvious target for Taliban hopefully.
Anyway, take a look at his newest sad report:
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Al Qaida in Syria congratulating the Taliban (technically Hayat Tharir al Sham, or the then Jabhar al Nusra, dissociated from Al Qaida central on the orders of Ayman Al Zawahiri so they would not be bombed by the US Coalition, but they are loyal to Al Qaida still as far as I know) :
This victory will greatly boost Al Qaida’s and Taliban’s image in the Muslim World as a heroic organisation that slays giants and sacrifice all for victory. It does of course also put another nail into the coffin of US Soft Power, as it is widely seen as yet another betrayal after Trump let Erdogan crush our SDF allies after being manipulated by Recep Erdogan in a couple of phone calls, further eroding trust and credibility. The reason why I write Al Qaida is that there is not a great deal of difference between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and Al Qaida. They are sworn brothers.
The true repercussions of this disastrous defeat will probably only be seen years from now.
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And it gets worse:
Taqi Usmani is regarded as perhaps Pakistan’s most important religious leader (at the very least one of them);
The repercussions of this strategic defeat will haunt the West for a very, very long time. It will get a lot worse before it gets better now. Wahhabism and Salafism will most probably become a lot more popular, of that, there is little doubt I think.
Also, just as a bonus point, imagine how this report (which is reported by very many credible sources and broadcasted all over the Muslim world) plays out when it comes to the image of the US: https://twitter.com/MacaesBruno/status/1426876247443914755
Then imagine the US right wing and how they will spin the pallets of cash tale. Not a good look. In fact, terrible it is as Yoda would say.
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I am sad for the Afghan people. Years of conflict, never ending conflict. People just want to live. I would probably never understand what it means to just want to survive. And all these people, who fight in the name of politics, ideologies, religion, money whatever shit…I wish nothing but the worst for you all. I am really sad.
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It didn’t take the Taliban long to regroup did it.
To be honest, they never went away, the US and Afgan governments have been negotiating with them for 4-5 years (that I can remember, although others were know more may have more information) over a shared power agreement.
The worrying thing is the speed with which they managed to recapture the whole country. Even on Friday evening/Saturday morning most reports were saying that it would take 5-6 weeks for them to reach the outskirts of Kabul, yet they managed to take it in a few days.
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I don’t disagree with you, but the error is right at the beginning: the US had no business to go there with an army and to create havoc in this country. They increased the already existing problems there, instead of helping to solve them. You can’t bring peace to a country by waging war, it’s a contradiction in itself.
In my opinion, there can’t be any doubt that the US have reinforced islamic radicalism all over the world with their actions during the last twenty years, willingly or not.
The disgustingly weak way they have now left the people there to hang out dry, is only a further proof of that imo.
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It really does show the West did a shit job. Paid lip service to rebuilding Afghanistan. 20 years and 2 trillion and it fell like a house of cards.
For me the root cause is poverty (36% of total population). Just 23% have safe water, 40% don’t have enough food. 24% can read and write. That’s the travesty of years of conflict.
Failure to resolve the basics means it was always destined to fail.
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