• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

US, NATO Outta Afghanistan 2021

place a bet? Will it be China or Russia that either vetos outright or procrastinates until it is too late?
I honestly don't know.

Russia doesn't want an unstable Afghanistan, it does what it can to keep it's neighborhood as orderly as possible. Putin is a smart man, he understands the importance of looking good on the world stage, and has a growing trading relationship with France. Vetoing it doesn't really serve him any real benefit.


China doesn't give a shit about what anybody thinks, and they've made that abundantly clear over the last few years. I could see China going either way on this proposal to be honest. But if there is a safe area around Kabul so the west can get it's remaining people out, the west will quickly lose any focus it currently has as on the region, which is very much the preferred environment by China I imagine.

If a Taliban government is secured in the capital, I'm sure China would be more than happy to supply them with money, weapons, advisors, possibly even decent military equipment to be paid for with the natural resources that are being mined/developed - possible business opportunity and monopoly on a new market. If not, I'm sure China would be happy to put a few planes on a tarmac somewhere with people to support them as a 'gesture of friendship' to 'keep the west out of Afghanistan's sovereign affairs.' (And, conveniently, also keep the west out of China's backyard.)

China could also initiate projects with the Taliban's consent/cooperation. The Taliban ensure Chinese companies and workers are safe, in return for the money and goods that China is providing. Or like Kevin said, China could easily put a very effective security ring around where it wants to set up shop. Country doesn't need to be super stable, as any potential threat to either the project or workers would be handled swiftly & decisively anyway.


Interesting to see how this proposal ends up... 🍿
 
China will play with the Taliban for a while, they are going to start asking for dissidents to be handed over as part of that deal, that's going to sour a lot of Muslims and likley lead to attacks on Chinese interests, things will unravel.
 
China will play with the Taliban for a while, they are going to start asking for dissidents to be handed over as part of that deal, that's going to sour a lot of Muslims and likley lead to attacks on Chinese interests, things will unravel.
Chinese will just wholesale wipe out security threats - they don't give two frigs what we (or the Taliban) think.
I'd expect more and more Chinese "migrants" moving south - and displacing the Afghans.
 

Interesting that Mark Norman has reappeared giving an interview talking about Afghanistan, China and other CAF issues
 
... they are going to start asking for dissidents to be handed over as part of that deal ...
That's how I'd bet my loonie, too ...
Uyghurs living in Afghanistan are terrified that the Taliban’s takeover of the country could mean they will be extradited to face harsh punishment in China or suffer other dangers in the war-torn South Asian nation.

(...)

The roughly 80 Uyghur families in Kabul are living in confusion and fear about life under the Taliban, says Mamat, a Uyghur man who was born in Afghanistan to parents who had parents had immigrated there in the 1960s.

Mamat, who lives in Kabul with his own family, said he was beaten and barely escaped an attack by Taliban militants Sunday when he went to buy bread for his children ...
 
Subject to verification but reported by both Fox and the Washington Post

When Afghanistan's president Ashraf Ghani fled the country, the city began to collapse as gangs were reported to be taking over. This led to U.S. military leaders meeting and reaching an agreement with the Taliban, a U.S. official told the Post.

"We have two options to deal with it," Taliban political leader Abdul Ghani Baradar reportedly said, according to the official. "You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it."

Faced with the decision of whether to accept control over Kabul or allow the Taliban to do so, the U.S. opted for the latter
, given President Biden’s insistence on withdrawing from Afghanistan by August 31. As part of the agreement, the U.S. assumed control of Kabul’s airport until the end of the month to facilitate its exit while the Taliban ruled the city.

According to the Post’s report, the Taliban had no intention of taking control of Kabul that day. Prior to Ghani’s departure, the U.S. had not anticipated it either, as several top officials had reportedly been on vacation.

The chaos that ensued when Ghani left, however, required someone to step in. The U.S. decided that it should be the Taliban.

Taliban commander Muhammad Nasir Haqqani was surprised by the outcome. After he and his men reached the city they awaited instructions. Later that day they went in and occupied the palace in under an hour.


Biden!
 
It sucks but it makes sense, if they took over the city, when they left the taliban would of taken over anyway, so why surge resources when you are pulling out.
 
Subject to verification but reported by both Fox and the Washington Post




Biden!
And here's who got left in charge of security in Kabul .... #FailToPlanPlanToFail
 
It sucks but it makes sense, if they took over the city, when they left the taliban would of taken over anyway, so why surge resources when you are pulling out.

I disagree. Vehemently.

With "control" of the city, even with the 6000 troops that Biden allocated, together with the remaining contractors and the ANSF within the city and all the government workers, and the Northerners, and the allied troops..... French, British, Canadian, Germans etc....

The pace and conditions would have been in American control. And even the final terms.

If the report is true - pending - than the situation moves from shear incompetence to criminal malfeasance.
 

Taliban commander Muhammad Nasir Haqqani was surprised by the outcome. After he and his men reached the city they awaited instructions. Later that day they went in and occupied the palace in under an hour.

"We didn’t see a single soldier or police," Haqqani said, according to the Post.

"We couldn’t control our emotions, we were so happy. Most of our fighters were crying," he said. "We never thought we would take Kabul so quickly."

Under Taliban rule, terrorists were able to hit U.S. forces, as a suicide bomb went off near the airport that killed 13 American service members. After that happened, President Biden warned that another attack was "highly likely" in the coming days.

 
Article is actually incorrect - the Taliban and Al Qaeda where both linked as terrorist organizations under the UN Security Resolution 1276.
Generally the US only lists organizations if the UN Security Council will not.
Noting that Haqqani's network is listed in a little disingenuous - as he's Taliban, albeit a rather extreme part - part none the less.
 
It sucks but it makes sense, if they took over the city, when they left the taliban would of taken over anyway, so why surge resources when you are pulling out.
I see what you mean, and I can understand the train of thought going through Biden's team about those two options. The US was in the process of fully withdrawing all of their troops, had that as a goal they were progressing towards with some momentum, before current events unfolded.

I imagine the option that sounded like 'the least amount of work, and the shortest timeframe' was probably picked pretty quickly - before anybody really gave it any hard thought.



I disagree. Vehemently.

With "control" of the city, even with the 6000 troops that Biden allocated, together with the remaining contractors and the ANSF within the city and all the government workers, and the Northerners, and the allied troops..... French, British, Canadian, Germans etc....

The pace and conditions would have been in American control. And even the final terms.

If the report is true - pending - than the situation moves from shear incompetence to criminal malfeasance.

If they had thought about it, this would have made more sense. The US was withdrawing regardless, but the 6000 US troops + coalition SOF, plus ANSF - they could have kept the city running in a way that was more or less normal. Especially if the Taliban had agreed (in secret) to stay out of the city and allow the US to maintain control for a while longer.

Politicians also care about optics. (In theory anyway, our shining star seems like a notable exception.) Deploying 6000 troops to secure the airport & immediate areas around the airport - while at the same time withdrawing troops as per the peace agreement and a big part of what he was elected on - would be confusing optics. There aren't many examples of where a country has had to deploy 6000 troops in order to withdraw the much smaller number that were present, unless in a combat situation.

The whole situation happened so quickly, and so much more swiftly than anybody thought it would - or even could - I imagine there were quite a few decisions that were made on the fly, with zero long term thought put into them. Most of those decisions probably made sense, or at least sounded like they made sense, with the information they had at the time. (Did anybody in the Biden admin know that ANA and other ANSF units had quietly been told to stand down and disappear? Did anybody have any solid intel that plenty of Taliban fighters were already in the city, waiting out their time?)


I think we are forgetting just how connected all of these events were, and how so much happened in such a short period of time. Personally, regardless of how it was handled, it seems like it was destined to be a shitshow. Especially with the information that continues to leak out, such as this.


I think we should remember though:

- Without the colossal mess that erupted around HKIA, the west probably would never have evacuated the people that we did.

(The only reason we had 2 C-17's, at least 1 C-130, and a Polaris flying people out of there was because everything went to total s**t. We've had 10 years to relocate our interpreters and their families, and our embassy staff + contractors were still in place despite the Taliban making a very public and violent comeback over a month ago.)


- The fear of the Taliban, especially when they entered the city almost magically fast, actually helped the Afghans finally get out of the country. The ones who were able to leave were very lucky, but they would still be waiting if the Taliban hadn't scared the international community into action. It's pathetic on our part, but it's been their reality as they have waited this entire time. The ones who had to stay behind, it does genuinely suck.

But - not to sound cold or harsh - we can't evacuate the entire country, and not everybody was promised a special visa or had immigrant status elsewhere. A vast majority of Afghans were going to have to stay in Afghanistan, regardless of how many planes were available.



- The airport itself was the biggest limiting factor in the number of aircraft that could be used for evacuating embassy staff + contractors, interpreters and their families, and NGO staff if that NGO was perhaps requested/contracted to be there. One runway, with how many aircraft using it to take off AND land?


- Even if US and coalition troops had spread out and occupied Kabul for a few weeks, there is no guarantee that a VBIED wouldn't have been used against us. Maybe it would have slipped through, and made it into the city? Maybe it would have detonated at a checkpoint further out from the airport, or a major entryway into the city? Maybe the VBIED had been in the city for quite some time, and this was the time it seemed to be of best use?

Whether the Taliban set up checkpoints, or us - or they controlled the city for 30 days, or us - it doesn't guarantee that VBIED (or another) wouldn't have still happened.


Where am I going with all of this? No idea. It was a world class s**tshow, no doubt about it. 🤦‍♂️
 
One thing that has never been clear to me is, given the size of HKIA why people were left huddling in no-man's land between the Taliban and the Walls.

Couldn't they have more securely brought all of the people into one of the compounds at HKIA and housed them in hangars until they got the mess sorted out?

 
Didn't they already get a vote, when they were discussing how & when the west would finally go away?

Do you trust them? Is this a reprieve, a truce or a peace? Does it apply to all factions? What happens now?

Personally I don't believe this "war" is over. It will continue as it morphs and metastatizes.

The problem is that these "wars" are generally not declared and thus never start and never end.
 
One thing that has never been clear to me is, given the size of HKIA why people were left huddling in no-man's land between the Taliban and the Walls.

Couldn't they have more securely brought all of the people into one of the compounds at HKIA and housed them in hangars until they got the mess sorted out?


I'm no airport security expert, but I'm guessing that they didn't want the bad guys to be able to sneak in a few suicide bombers with the refugees.

It makes sense to build a big 'ante room' and screen people there first before letting them anywhere near aircraft etc.

Which, paradoxically of course, makes these crowds an excellent target for suicide bombers.
 
Well, that's ... clear ....
The Taliban government in Afghanistan would accept any Afghan migrants whose applications for asylum were rejected in Europe and they would then face court, an Austrian newspaper quoted a Taliban spokesman as saying on Monday.

Austria’s conservative-led government has taken a hard line on Afghan asylum seekers and refugees within the European Union, with the interior minister initially saying Austria should keep deporting rejected asylum seekers back to Afghanistan for as long as possible.

Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer has since conceded that that is no longer possible, but said he wants “deportation centres” set up in neighbouring countries that would take them in.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the Kronen Zeitung newspaper that his government would be willing to accept such deportees.

“Yes. They would be taken to court. The court would then have to decide how to proceed with them,” Zabihullah told the newspaper when asked if it would take in Afghan asylum seekers in Germany or Austria whose asylum claims had been rejected or who had committed crimes in those European countries.

He did not elaborate on why they should be taken to court or what judgement they might face there ...
 
Back
Top