Meanwhile In Afghanistan

[Ssnake]

That doesn't make it any less repulsive.

[sunday]

So, if your country is going to hell in a handbasket, experience says one should leave it as soon as possible, as the ones trying to help to reverse the tide, with aid from more or less foreign actors, are going to be left to drown.

[RETAC21]

3 hours ago, Ssnake said:

That doesn't make it any less repulsive.

Absolutely. The least that can be done is to offer refuge to those that helped us.

[Ssnake]

Currently reading "The Future of War", a history of how future wars were envisioned to be like before they happened. Analysis of current attempts to handle civil wars and WoT are, well, unflattering.

[Roman Alymov]

On 7/14/2021 at 4:35 AM, R011 said:

I expect the next bunch of government soldiers in that position will fight to the death instead.

Or will accept surrender proposal before fighting to last ammo, or just switch sides the moment they step out of Gov-controlled territory. Civil wars are like that even in more civilized places. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/us-launched-strikes-destroy-military-004629191.html

• The US carried out multiple airstrikes on the Taliban recently in support of Afghan forces.

• The strikes targeted enemy personnel, as well as captured military equipment.

• The US is withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan, where it has waged war for nearly two decades.

The US military carried out multiple airstrikes against the Taliban this week, in part to destroy military equipment that they captured from the Afghan security forces.

"In the last several days, we have acted, through airstrikes, to support the ANDSF [Afghan national defense and security forces]," Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Thursday, declining to offer specifics, the AP reported.

Over the past month, the US has conducted roughly half a dozen airstrikes across Afghanistan, the majority of them being carried out by drones. Some of the strikes targeted "captured military equipment that the Taliban [were] able to seize from the ANDSF," Voice of America reported, citing a US defense official.

Three of the last four strikes were actually aimed at destroying military equipment, CNN reported, noting that it was US equipment that had been transferred to the Afghan security forces. The AP reported the equipment included a vehicle and artillery.

In addition to military equipment, the recent airstrikes also targeted enemy forces, according to multiple reports.

[Simon Tan]

Taijik 'flash mobilization' shows a somewhat obsolescent force. 

[bojan]

Some obscurities have been seen, like BMP-2D and various "overhaul victims" T-72s with interesting features.

[Adam Peter]

Hungary would join Turkey to send troops to Afghanistan, not without internal opposition (like there was recently a big change in the top level leadership, maybe connected).

Unfortunately the Hungarian Army reached level of own equipment and weapons for peacekeeping operations just in time to see the dialing down of these operations from Afghanistan to Africa.

[Simon Tan]

Hungarian Army is pretty old fashioned.

 

[Adam Peter]

Hungarian Army is two.

[Angrybk]

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/30/as-afghan-interpreters-arrive-us-501659 Vietnamese and Hmong immigrants are big assets for our country, I guess this is the upside of our failed wars. 

[Nobu]

According to the Telegraph, the Taliban are now going house to house in search of Afghan interpreters.

These guys are the North Vietnamese in 1975 reincarnate.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Nobu

[Nobu]

Woe to those who crossed Vietnamese and Hmong immigrant gang members in the central valley a generation ago. Doing well in school and blowing up the curve in classes these assholes were in was one way of getting on their shit list.

I learned this from experience, unfortunately.

Curiously, it was the Japanese-American and Chinese-American kids who blew up the curve that bugged them to no end. Non-asian ethnicities who did the same got a pass.

Edited August 4, 2021 by Nobu

[Stuart Galbraith]

Nixon took 5 years to get out of Vietnam, because he knew how bad a hit America's reputation would take by running for the exit door. And with scarce a glance back, Biden runs for the exit door. 

[Ssnake]

In all fairness, "getting out of Afghanistan" was discussed well before 2016.

That's not making it better, especially, a better (well, any) transition strategy could have been devised. Then again, the various Afghan governments all knew that they were on borrowed time and I'm not seeing that they put all the effort in that they might have.

[BansheeOne]

Yeah, after the peace agreement with the Taliban last February, the conditional date for full American withdrawal was 1 May this year. Biden initially delayed it to 11 September, then moved it forward to 31 August. If anything, he just continued the planlessness which has characterized US policy on Afghanistan ever since 2003 when, with pretty much no strategic goals reached, they put it on back burner to go for Iraq over Saddam's role in 9/11 or something. That's four administrations' worth of fuck-ups. 

[Simon Tan]

The Soviet plan was much bettererer. 

[BansheeOne]

Yes, it accelerated the downfall of the Soviet Union. Excellent result! 😃👍

[Stuart Galbraith]

I don't think they had a plan, did they? Or at least, not one they were able to describe in the General staff study.

Not that we did either,  but at least it was a well resourced inadequate plan, you have to give it that.

Edited August 8, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[BansheeOne]

There goes Kunduz. Wider scene of the defining nine-hour Good Friday Battle in 2010 which made Germans aware that the Bundeswehr was in a shooting war, not just some "stabilization mission" to build schools and drill wells. The day totaled three KIA and eight WIA, plus six Afghan soldiers who were killed in a friendly fire incident as a Marder lit up the civilian vehicles they were riding in. Participants were later awarded six Honor Crosses for Bravery and 17 Special Honor Crosses in Gold, 14 of which to the crews of two American Blackhawks who evacuated the wounded under fire.

Quote

Updated Aug. 8, 2021, 10:35 a.m. ET 31 minutes ago

Live Updates: Taliban Seize 2 Afghan Capital Cities in a Day

The fall of Kunduz, a major northern hub, and another city, Sar-i-Pul, is a devastating blow to the Afghan government just weeks before the final withdrawal of U.S. troops.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban seized two Afghan provincial capitals on Sunday, including the strategically crucial northern city of Kunduz, officials said, escalating a sweeping insurgent offensive that has claimed four regional capitals in just three days.

The rapid fall of Afghan cities — including Kunduz and Sar-i-Pul, another capital in the north — comes just weeks before U.S. forces were set to complete a total withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is a crucial challenge for President Biden, who in recent weeks has insisted the American pullout would continue despite the Taliban’s advances.

After sweeping through the country’s rural areas, the insurgents’ military campaign has shifted to brutal urban combat in recent weeks. They have pushed into the edges of major cities like Kandahar and Lashkar Gah in the south and Herat in the west.

The strategy has exhausted the Afghan government’s forces and overwhelmed the local militia forces that the government has used to supplement its own troops, a move reminiscent of the chaotic and ethnically divided civil war of the 1990s.

Kunduz, the capital of a province of the same name, is a significant military and political prize. With a population of 374,000, it is a vital commercial city near the border with Tajikistan, and a hub for trade and road traffic.

“All security forces fled to the airport, and the situation is critical,” said Sayed Jawad Hussaini, the deputy police chief of a district in Kunduz city.

Clashes between government forces and Taliban fighters were continuing in a small town south of the city, where the local army headquarters and the airport are situated, security officials said.

“We are so tired, and the security forces are so tired,” Mr. Hussaini said. “At the same time we hadn’t received reinforcements and aircraft did not target the Taliban on time.”

Security forces, who had retreated to the town earlier in the morning, began an operation to flush Taliban fighters out of the city on Sunday evening, according to security officials.

As Kunduz was collapsing on Sunday morning, the Taliban also seized Sar-i-Pul, the capital of another northern province of the same name, after heavy fighting in the area in recent days, officials said.

“Taliban are walking in the streets of the city. Local residents are terrified,” said Sayed Asadullah Danish, a member of the Sar-i-Pul provincial council. Provincial officials had taken shelter in an army base on the outskirts of the city, where clashes were continuing, he added.

In the two preceding days, the Taliban had taken two other provincial capitals: Sheberghan, the capital of Jowzjan Province in the north, and Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz Province on the Afghanistan-Iran border.

The Taliban briefly seized Kunduz in 2015 and again in 2016, gaining control of a province for the first time since American forces invaded in 2001. Both times, Afghan forces pushed back the insurgents with help from American airstrikes. Kunduz is also where an American gunship mistakenly attacked a Doctors Without Borders hospital in 2015, killing 42 people.

Since the U.S. withdrawal began, the Taliban have captured more than half of Afghanistan’s 400-odd districts, according to some assessments. Their attacks on provincial capitals have violated the 2020 peace deal between the Taliban and the United States. Under that deal, which precipitated the American withdrawal from the country, the Taliban committed to not attacking provincial centers like Kunduz.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/08/world/afghanistan-live-updates

[Daan]

The Taliban also ransacked the HQ of the formerly great warlord general Dostum in Kunduz and paraded in his dress uniform:

[Stuart Galbraith]

Looks like The village people as reimagined as Sascha Baron Cohen.

[Ssnake]

Except that these are fanatical killers, not actors.

[sunday]

3 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

Except that these are fanatical killers, not actors.

Well, some actors are not far from being the former.