Meanwhile In Afghanistan

[Daan]

The surgeon saw combat?

[BansheeOne]

I think the term used by the military commenter was "combat experience, one led, one supported". Following up I find both were present at the 2011 incident on the Kunduz River where a Marder was blown up and the driver killed, with five others wounded.

[Simon Tan]

Afghanistan is a litany if what not to do. The Taliban etc. were merely supporting cast. 

[BansheeOne]

18 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

Watching the Große Zapfenstreich in front of the Bundestag officially marking the end of the mission. It's an unusual arrangement since the ceremony is usually held for general officers and senior defense officials leaving their position. Here the honored are all troops who deployed to Afghanistan, represented by a selection of 200 from all contingents. The formation was reported to a Panzergrenadier MSgt who spent a total of 1,700 days in country, and a surgeon LTC with three tours under her belt; both saw combat in the same action. 

There were of course some reactions by mostly the usual suspects screaming about torches in front of the Reichstag. Counterreactions were best summed up by a professor of Bundeswehr Uni Munich: "How wrong does your marble to be wired if pictures of a stable democracy's parliament and before it torches of a democratic army, which is the army of said democratic parliament, evoke Nazi associations. " 

Twitter users took care of a BBC correspondent who showed his personal ignorance on the thing. 

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

I'd personally feel a lot easier if they were doing it with Zippo lighters and wearing baseball caps.

I can see it's traditional, but so was this, and that didn't save it.

 

[urbanoid]

 

[Daan]

Interesting opinion about the importance of sleep:

 

[JWB]

Afghan Resistance Groups Eye Spring Offensive

Armed resistance against the Taliban is picking up momentum across Afghanistan, with militias run by former political and military leaders of the collapsed republic recruiting and arming fighters, notably from the ranks of the former republic’s U.S.-trained security forces. Some are trying to drum up international support for forcible regime change, according to sources among the groups, who have eyes on a spring offensive.

But the lack of unity among leaders of the armed opposition groups, who regard each other more as rivals than comrades, could mean they are unlikely for now to make much progress in their shared ambition to overthrow the Taliban, a movement that has been galvanized by the extremists’ repression of women, girls, and ethnic groups.

“The Taliban have proven they cannot govern, cannot address their own differences, and cannot address the concerns of neighboring countries, so there is an awareness of new geopolitical dynamics and realities,” said Mirwais Naab, a former deputy foreign minister working with the National Resistance Front, the most prominent of the opposition groups.

 

The lack of international support for the resistance isn’t existential, so far. There is no lack of money among the old Afghan warriors, many of whom ran private armies alongside smuggling and drug operations that made them enormously wealthy. Nor is Afghanistan short of firearms after 40 years of Soviet occupation, civil war, and insurgency.

The bigger problems are internal divisions. The old guard of the failed republic with ambitions of a return to power include warlords, power brokers, and ethnic leaders such as Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is ethnically Uzbek, and Muhammad Mohaqiq, who is Hazara. They are generally reviled among Afghans who see them as a cause of the republic’s collapse.

“They all believe they will be the leader and so they fight for themselves rather than for the people and for the country,” said one of the militia leaders, himself a former politician and soldier, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In the meantime, the Taliban have their hands full. They have battled significant pockets of armed resistance, especially in the Panjshir Valley and Andarab district in Baghlan province. Unrest has also arisen in recent months, according to a former Afghan army general now leading an anti-Taliban group, in Kapisa, Parwan, Badakhshan, Takhar, Sar-e-Pol, Ghor, and Jawzjan provinces and north of the capital, Kabul. Another resistance figure said around 200 Taliban had been killed in fighting in the past couple of weeks. Another said around 40 Taliban fighters were killed in the Panjshir Valley last week.

Afghan Resistance Groups Plot New Offensive Against Taliban (foreignpolicy.com)

[BansheeOne]

"Spiegel" has a extensive three-part series on the German evacuation from Afghanistan, now available in English:

Quote

Escape from Afghanistan, Part I

"We're Destroying the IT. Have a Nice Sunday"

Documents are burned, computers mutilated and 15 Mercedes SUVs are destroyed with a forklift: The fall of Kabul caught the Germans by surprise – and politicians in Berlin proved unequal to the moment.

By Matthias Gebauer und Konstantin von Hammerstein

02.09.2022, 10.01 Uhr

On Monday morning, at six, the earth begins shaking. The floor sways, the walls quiver, but Chris Klawitter doesn’t get nervous easily. The businessman from Hamburg has lived in Kabul for two decades. He knows what earthquakes feel like.

But this time it's different, the shaking doesn't stop. Klawitter runs outside. He has spent the night in an accommodation container located in the military part of the airport. As he will recall later, the embassy called him at just after 3 p.m. on the previous afternoon: "Chris, come to the airport right away. We’re evacuating."

The call didn’t come as a surprise. On Sunday morning, Klawitter was still in the city. His American principals didn’t initially want to let him go, but they ultimately relented, even providing him with Georgian bodyguards. There were long lines of people waiting outside the banks in the capital and gunfire could be heard. On the way back, he saw armed Afghan policemen who had thrown away their uniforms and were now fleeing in their pickup trucks toward the airport.

The Taliban are on the advance, and now Klawitter feels the earth shaking. He looks across the runway to the civilian part of the airport. What he sees there in the distance in the morning haze frightens him. A huge wall seems to be moving. "Oh, shit!" he recalls thinking, "the earthquake is so strong it is moving walls."

But it's not a wall, nor is it an earthquake. It's people. Children, women, men, thousands of desperate Afghans sprinting to the runway and causing the ground to shake. Klawitter feels fear creeping up inside him. He has endured a lot in Afghanistan: He has been shot at, experienced explosions, but this is horrifying. He doesn’t want to be crushed or overrun by desperate people fleeing the Taliban.

He sees armored combat vehicles driving up. British and American Marines are taking up positions on his side of the runway. They throw themselves to the ground and open fire, warning shots over the heads of the oncoming masses.

Klawitter has seen enough. He runs back into the container, gathers his things and runs the few hundred meters to the compound where the German Embassy is housed.

The diplomats there are not alone. The building also provides shelter to officers with the Federal Police and special forces from the Czech Republic, Spain and Italy. Now, the heavily armed men are standing in the corridors as they prepare for the worst. They aren’t equipped to bring crowds under control – they only have live ammunition. If the crowds storm the building, they will have to fire at desperate, unarmed men, women and children.

On this Monday morning in August, Klawitter has no idea that the next 11 days will change his life. Nothing will be the same afterward. He has spent the past few years importing armored vehicles for the U.S. Army into Afghanistan. Now, he will play a critical role in helping Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr, evacuate thousands of people from the Afghan capital.

[...]

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/germany-s-escape-from-afghanistan-we-re-destroying-the-it-have-a-nice-sunday-a-743070b2-fefb-4d43-863a-96e8157165bc

 

Quote

Escape from Afghanistan, Part II

"Ground Attack! Ground Attack!"

One year ago, the government in Berlin had to prepare the harrowing, last-minute rescue of its diplomatic staff and hundreds of local hires in Afghanistan. When they arrived Kabul, Germany's armed forces experienced chaos and despair.

By Matthias Gebauer und Konstantin von Hammerstein

02.09.2022, 10.02 Uhr

On Sunday, August 15, 2021, three U.S. helicopters fly 43 men and women from the German Embassy in Kabul out of the heavily secured Green Zone in the heart of the Afghanistan capital to the airport. It is a last-minute escape. Already that afternoon, Taliban fighters will force their way into the palace of the previously evacuated president.

The German representative Jan Hendrik van Thiel and the embassy's security adviser, a man from the special federal police unit GSG-9 with the codename Fish, had prepared for the evacuation on their own – in opposition to sentiment from Berlin.

Plans by the German military, the Bundeswehr, for an evacuation mission are being urgently pushed forward on this weekend, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel giving her final OK on Sunday morning. The next morning, the first military planes take off for Afghanistan from the Wunstorf Air Base in Lower Saxony.

The meeting at American operational headquarters at the Kabul airport has almost concluded on this Monday morning, August 16, when all hell breaks loose. A German federal police officer who is responsible for the security of German envoy Jan Hendrik van Thiel bursts into the room. "Fish," he says, "I have to speak with you."

Outside, gunfire can be heard, sirens are howling and an announcement drones over and over again through the speakers: "Ground attack! Ground attack!" When Fish, the security adviser for the German Embassy, goes out into the hallway, he sees heavily armed U.S. soldiers sprinting to their positions. An intense firefight has broken out, but the German official doesn't know what is going on. As if they were locked in, he and van Thiel find themselves stuck on this Monday morning in the Joint Operation Cell of the U.S. headquarters. And "cell" is the right word – it has no windows.

Just yesterday, German diplomats and their security personnel had to lay low for several hours in a protective room because the Taliban had attacked one of the airport gates. The Islamists have gathered on the large traffic circle on the road to the airport. Is this the start of a large-scale attack?

GSG-9 agent Fish orders the envoy to stay in the room no matter what and he then leaves the building with his colleague. It looks as though shooting is taking place across the entire airport premises, but the two men can't tell who is firing at whom. The American headquarters lies between large buildings and container offices.

"The situation was scary," Fish will later say. He, van Thiel and the personal security officer are stuck with the Americans in one part of the airport, but the rest of the German team, three members of the German foreign intelligence agency BND and the rest of the embassy personnel are cut off in another section. There is shooting everywhere, and the Americans aren't allowing anyone to leave.

The Germans can do nothing but wait. And wait. The minutes slowly turn into hours. It is extremely hard on the nerves. Finally, an American general turns up and explains the situation. It's not the Taliban who are advancing, but thousands of fleeing Afghans who are trying to get away from the Islamists. They have stormed the civilian part of the airport and spilled out onto the runway. Now, British and American troops are tying to hold the men and women back with warning shots fired over their heads.

When the shooting abates somewhat, Fish, his colleague and the envoy van Thiel run to Building 508, where the other Germans are taking shelter. The three BND agents are sitting on the ground and destroying their computers, so they don't fall into the wrong hands. Heavily armed German federal police officers are in the hallways, along with special forces from the Czech Republic, Spain and Italy.

The mood is tense. If the building is stormed, they will have little choice but to fire live ammunition at unarmed civilians.

On the way to Building 508, Fish sees the combat helicopters the Americans are flying low over the tarmac to try to push back the crowds. And he still has the U.S. general's voice in his ear, who told him that the airport was now closed for the foreseeable future – meaning that no German aircraft can land.

[...]

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/escape-from-afghanistan-part-ii-the-dramatic-rescue-of-german-staff-and-local-hires-in-kabul-a-2d4ae4c4-ed42-4148-bd73-b22f80bd2470

 

Quote

Escape from Afghanistan, Part III

"Children Were Disposed of Like Garbage"

In August 2021, the Taliban captured Kabul. The capital city became a trap for thousands of Afghans and Germans. Berlin sent in Germany's armed forces to extract thousands of men, women and children. They had little time left.

By Matthias Gebauer und Konstantin von Hammerstein

02.09.2022, 10.03 Uhr

On Sunday, August 15, 2021, three U.S. helicopters fly 43 men and women from the German Embassy in Kabul out of the highly secured Green Zone of the Afghan capital to the airport. It is a last-minute escape. In the afternoon, Taliban fighters invade the palace of the Afghan president, who has already fled.

Twelve Germans remain in Kabul, diplomats, staffers with the BND foreign intelligence service, and federal police officers. Over the next two days, they ferry refugees into the airport. On Monday evening, the first German military plane lands. The largest evacuation operation in the history of the Bundeswehr begins.

The stench is overwhelming. It leaves the German soldiers gasping for breath as they descend the ramp of their plane upon arrival in Kabul. Later, they will talk about how this nauseating mixture of fecal matter and decay affixed itself to their hair and their uniforms, how it seemed to gum up their lungs. When they returned to Germany, some of them were told by comrades: "You stink like Kabul."

One can get used to stench. And to the garbage that piles up between the cement walls and the processing points, near the gates and in the open areas where the refugees are camping. Mutilated wooden pallets, flattened water bottles, torn clothing, burst open suitcases, diapers, empty ammunition boxes, excrement and even blood. The entire airport is a giant garbage dump.

Soon, the men and women will even stop registering the gunfire that continues throughout the day and night. The constant shooting and the bursting of stun grenades used by the U.S. Marines and their Afghan helpers to push people back from the airport gates – you can even get used to that, say soldiers who were there.

Those who arrive at night will later describe scenes out of the post-apocalyptical zombie world of the U.S. series "The Walking Dead." The stench, the heat, the darkness, the Afghan refugee families hunched over on the ground in the shimmering light of burning garbage, with excrement surrounding them in addition to exhausted soldiers sleeping on the asphalt, rifles leaning against the cement barricades.

The worst is the fate of the children, according to the recollection of numerous soldiers, police officers, diplomats and intelligence agents who were at the Kabul airport in August 2021. The images of the children will become emblazoned in their memories. Even months after the mission, back in Germany, sometimes just seeing a small boy in the supermarket line is enough to trigger a horror film in the minds of the Afghanistan veterans.

One hard-bitten officer from the German special forces commando KSK begins tearing up as he talks about it. Code-named Tobias, he has to take a break for a cigarette before he can continue. One particular scene, which took place at the airport's Abbey Gate, still haunts him.

Thousands of Afghans are pushing their way between the razor wire, a trench full of water and cement walls in these days in August 2021, doing everything they can to get on board a plane out of Kabul. Tobias and his men are standing in front of the gate trying to get German citizens into the airport so they can be flown out. They suddenly see two men in the crowd behind the razor wire arguing over a young boy who looks to be around four years old.

Babies and young children are seen as a ticket into the airport since they generate sympathy. Crying mothers hold up their infants in the crowd to attract attention. Babies are shoved into the arms of soldiers in the hopes that their families will be allowed to join them later.

Young children have become coveted commodities in these August days of 2021. Men pull them away from their mothers to use them as a ticket through the airport gates. Soldiers watch as the putative fathers of the stolen children heedlessly abandon them as soon as they have been allowed into the airport. "Children were disposed of like garbage," General Jens Arlt, the commander of the German evacuation operation, will say later.

Tobias is in the middle of the chaos at Abbey Gate when he sees these two men arguing over the boy. It is obvious that neither is the father. They pull on the child, each holding onto one of his arms, as the KSK troops watch in horror. The scene is taking place behind the razor wire, so they can't interfere. They can only look on helplessly as the two men pull harder and harder – until the boy's shoulders are dislocated.

[...]

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-germans-dramatic-escape-from-afghanistan-in-2021-a-8fe92f07-c18a-4ebd-97c4-dd6761ba1d68

[Josh]

On 8/7/2021 at 12:20 PM, Stuart Galbraith said:

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. 

To be fair, the result was never in doubt. Defeat five years from now is still defeat. It could have been a better organized defeat, is all we are arguing.

[BansheeOne]

Chuckle.

Quote

Date 10.09.2022

Taliban Black Hawk down over Afghanistan's capital

https://www.dw.com/en/taliban-black-hawk-down-over-afghanistans-capital/a-63081758

[Daan]

Video of the loss:

 

[TrustMe]

Interesting US look at the collaspe of the Afghan security forces.

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/November-December-2022/Potter/

[Roman Alymov]

Long time ago I promised to write my take on why in my opinion the plan of using Northern tribes against Taliban in A-stan  (origin

was "it could not be implemented".

As for me, the basic thing Westerners (especially ones from North America, who got use to absolutely different meaning of “tribe” word, as Native American tribes) do not understand about “tribes” of A-stan is how ancient  and sophisticated this communities are.  Actually Europe was still emerging from Ice Age when this people were already parts of developed culture. “Northern tribes” are, generally speaking, Tajiks (Iranian-speaking, part of Iranian culture – no need to say how ancient they are and how rich is the culture they are), and Uzbeks  - another ancient Central Asian ethnic group, Turkish-speaking and inheriting very developed culture (for example, famous al-Khwarizmi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi   ) was from this origin.s

But reverse side of this ancient cultures is equally ancient divisions. This “tribes” are divided for  millennials, not even centuries, and the very idea that US administration could unite them against Pastan-based Talibs is strange at least. Even great modernist project of USSR have not unified them (as after USSR collapse, this ancient divisions between Uzbeks and Tajiks on former USSR territory resurfaced up to the point of bloody armed conflicts). As now Russia is full of migrant workers from both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, this divisions are quite visible. And who are the people from opposite side of the globe to meddle into it? What could they propose to them? Pornhub and LGBT rights?

[ZORK]

1 hour ago, Roman Alymov said:

Long time ago I promised to write my take on why in my opinion the plan of using Northern tribes against Taliban in A-stan  (origin

was "it could not be implemented".

As for me, the basic thing Westerners (especially ones from North America, who got use to absolutely different meaning of “tribe” word, as Native American tribes) do not understand about “tribes” of A-stan is how ancient  and sophisticated this communities are.  Actually Europe was still emerging from Ice Age when this people were already parts of developed culture. “Northern tribes” are, generally speaking, Tajiks (Iranian-speaking, part of Iranian culture – no need to say how ancient they are and how rich is the culture they are), and Uzbeks  - another ancient Central Asian ethnic group, Turkish-speaking and inheriting very developed culture (for example, famous al-Khwarizmi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi   ) was from this origin.s

But reverse side of this ancient cultures is equally ancient divisions. This “tribes” are divided for  millennials, not even centuries, and the very idea that US administration could unite them against Pastan-based Talibs is strange at least. Even great modernist project of USSR have not unified them (as after USSR collapse, this ancient divisions between Uzbeks and Tajiks on former USSR territory resurfaced up to the point of bloody armed conflicts). As now Russia is full of migrant workers from both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, this divisions are quite visible. And who are the people from opposite side of the globe to meddle into it? What could they propose to them? Pornhub and LGBT rights?

Every once in a while you have a high fidelity and well stated post. Thank You

If Ukraine people are Russian......why are you killing them........please try to answer with truth

[Colin]

Roman

I do fully agree that the people doing the planning could not understand the tribal issues at all. I think that's why the British were so successful with their Empire, they understood Tribal dynamics and exploited them whenever possible.

[Mike1158]

On 10/14/2021 at 9:24 PM, urbanoid said:

Thanks for posting that, it brightened up my morning.

[Roman Alymov]

On 12/25/2022 at 11:43 PM, ZORK said:

Every once in a while you have a high fidelity and well stated post. Thank You

Thank you for this high estimation, note for simplicity reasons i have cut a lot of corners in this story (for example, not mentioned Hazaras who are in terms of number between Tajiks and Uzbeks, but their mixed background making them not matching simplictic picture). Also note influence of non-Western ethnically-close powers of Iran and Turkey (both ancient Empires hostile to each other) not mentioned. I do not pretend to even scratch the surface of complexity of A-stan.

On 12/25/2022 at 11:43 PM, ZORK said:

If Ukraine people are Russian......why are you killing them........please try to answer with truth

I do believe my position on this was manifested on numerous pages of "Kiev" thread, so i have not much to add here. It is civil war, like one 100 years ago, or like Civil War in US in XIX century. Even outside parties involvement is simmilar to one 100 years ago.

Edited December 29, 2022 by Roman Alymov

[Roman Alymov]

On 12/26/2022 at 1:11 AM, Colin said:

Roman

I do fully agree that the people doing the planning could not understand the tribal issues at all. I think that's why the British were so successful with their Empire, they understood Tribal dynamics and exploited them whenever possible.

Understanding is not comming for free  -it is product of experience learned hard way. British have fought for generations against own local "tribes" in Scotland, Iraland etc. and are de-facto product of "tribal uniton" themselves. "Russians" are also ancient tribal union of Slavic and Fino-Ugric tribes that invited Vikings as independent chiefs of tribal unions, then over centuries another "tribes" (sometimes of highly developed own culture, like Volga Tatars who were part of highly developed Islam world) integrated into this melting pod while keeping own language and culture.

[TrustMe]

Update on Al Qaeda in Afghanstan ...

 

https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2024/02/al-qaeda-opens-8-new-training-camps-5-madrasas-and-a-facilitation-network-to-iran-in-afghanistan.php

[JWB]

1 hour ago, TrustMe said:

Update on Al Qaeda in Afghanstan ...

 

https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2024/02/al-qaeda-opens-8-new-training-camps-5-madrasas-and-a-facilitation-network-to-iran-in-afghanistan.php

Why we should have stayed in.