The Afghans had considerable logistics of their own. Part of which the leaders used to escape the country. They didn’t thought about helping the Afghans. That’s all I’m trying to express.
My point is that they didn’t have the logistical* capacity even if they had the hardware (they didn’t have the software). From what I can gather.
- the activity of organizing the movement, equipment, and accommodation of troops.
Another point is over 20 years they had difficulty finding warfighters desperate to keep the Taliban from returning to power. For me that was a big part of the illusion the West perpetrated here.
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Yes they had an incredible desertion rate. Which complicated things no end. (Then again it appears many Afghan soldiers were based far from their famillies for many years in relatively poor conditions compared to US troops and others).
I dont that is really true, even if it looks like it. The bigger issue from what I’ve read is the lack of faith in the afghan government making it incredibly perilous to step out onto the ledge
Yes, in that they, the security forces, didn’t have confidence that they would recieve reinforcements. This comes back to the organisational problems I’ve been trying to convey.
There’s certainly truth in those points. The Afghan government was a corrupt, puppet government. Who’d want to fight for it? The larger issue, I feel, which I’ve always read, is that the Taliban were considered by many Afghans to be the lesser of a number of evils. They evicted the foreigners (Russians), and they kept the peace, even if for some their idea of law was a bit harsh. What were the choices? Corrupt governments supported by rapacious foreigners, capricious tribal warlords or a regime based on fundamentalist Islam? Events, I believe, have shown the Taliban aren’t hated by a majority of the populace.
It only demonstrates that if you ignore the reality that the taliban’s Genghis Khan style approach to dealing with adversaries would make people welcome them into their territory even if they despised them.
You read a fair amount from Westerners about how we misunderstand the people there and maybe they don’t really dislike the taliban so much. But honestly, that’s just an old fashioned colonial attitude where we shit like “these people are maybe not ready for democracy” while ignoring that siding with a brutal regime they despise is the rational option when there are a lack of other viable options.
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Didn’t the Taliban come about long after the Soviet Union had disintegrated?
I understand the Afghan army was paid a pittance even by Afghan standards. There was nothing to keep them in the role at all.
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Not so long after, but, yes, they were only one of a number of Islamic groups/movements who have sought power in Afghanistan since the Russians ouster.
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I think we flew in a bunch of westernized Afghan exiles and put them on the nightly news to portray the Afghanistan we sought to create, which was really just a figment of State Department policymakers’ imagination.
Meanwhile, we gave the so-called Afghan army the best weaponry and training money can buy and they never really bothered to fight the Taliban very hard.
It seems many in the military were bottom of the barrel recruits.
This video is so bad, it could be a military version of the Office
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Yes it is good to check stories -
Firstly Joe Rogan is not an Anti Vaxer - he suggested on his podcast that it was maybe unnecessary for people under 21 to currently get the vaccine. The statistical risk of somebody getting seriously ill from covid 19 if they are under 21 is tiny. This is what he was alluding to. He did not at any time suggest adults should not get the vaccine. A similar debate is currently occuring worldwide regarding whether children should get the vaccine. Rogan is not an Anti Vaxer.
Secondly, Yenomi Park has shed light upon the appalling conditions in N.Korea. She is a young high profile advocate for human rights. I do not personally know if her story is true or false - neither do you - If it is true then she is bringing much-needed public awareness to the situation in N Korea. If it is false, she is deriding one of the most dictatorial and oppressive regimes on the planet.
What exactly is wrong with that?
Not everything is black and white - not everything can be neatly bundled up into right and wrong, true and false. Life cannot be bundled into absolutes.
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Yes, there’s lots of issues and much of what we are saying is just bits of many pieces. To add to that the US created a centarlised government and wanted well defined power groups. Ignoring the tribal systems in place (far too complicated and dificult to pacify via diplomacy therefore push them out of the equation).
We are simplifying it down to a few sentences yet there’s no way this can ever be true.
I think this is upsetting as I have covered some of that. Without logistical support armies just aren’t a fighting force.
I’d like some tactical imput here as I am finding it hard to imagine how you can fight such a war without an extremely clever and well oiled machine organising behind the scenes. How can we not remember the Taliban had taken 50% of the country before this started, essentially surrounding where they wanted with the time they wanted to take. Seems like a nightmare scenario for the opposing forces trained to hold lines and attack well defined fronts. I think that they had already learnt that reiforcements just would not arrive and even if they did the Taliban would just up and move to another target.
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The Mujahidden there were funded by the CIA before the Soviets entered… 42 years in the making, just another long example of US foreign policy and military incompetence and hubris.
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Some nice peaceful familly killings. 
And therefore to say they evicted the Russians is a little misleading, no?