The Arab Spring and "the War on Terror"

[Chindie]

A full military top secret briefing document was recently found in a bus stop, leaving ID documents in the work place during a panicked evacuation is almost expected at this point. Still appalling, but here we are.

[HanoiVillan]

3 minutes ago, Chindie said:

A full military top secret briefing document was recently found in a bus stop, leaving ID documents in the work place during a panicked evacuation is almost expected at this point. Still appalling, but here we are.

I'm constantly surprised by how orderly everyone expects this military defeat to have been.

[a m ole]

How do you just leave 100 helicopters or whatever somewhere?

[chrisp65]

55 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I'm constantly surprised by how orderly everyone expects this military defeat to have been.

 

I don’t think everyone expects an orderly retreat. I certainly don’t. I think they expect the political and military pronouncements we’re being served up to at least have some correlation to the facts we can all see for ourselves. 

Weren’t we told a few days ago this was no Saigon 2.0?

We’re leaving because it’s job done on the terror threat, we’re leaving quickly, too quickly to even neutralise abandoned weaponry, because of the threat of more terror attacks.

A bit of the old cognitive dissonance going on there. 

There are several issues running parallel that contribute to a sense of the orderly. Did we spend 20 years of time, money, and lives wisely? Are the last few days a good example of team work at state level? Are the last few days a good example of the incredible team working ability of young soldiers?

 

 

 

[Genie]

The US coming across as scared of the Taliban.

Being chased out of town.

The Taliban have 80-odd billion dollars worth of US funded kit, much of it extremely sophisticated and potentially to be used against the West. Why aren’t the US looking to get some of it back? Or destroy it? Aren’t they in dialogue with the Taliban? 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Genie

[Davkaus]

20 minutes ago, a m ole said:

How do you just leave 100 helicopters or whatever somewhere?

One thing I've not been clear on in some of this shambles is what was deliberately left behind, and what wasn't, the latter we should have been removing months ago.

Evacuation of Afghans who aided the UK should have been done and dusted well before the transition, and I don't think there's any excuse for the situation we've put them in over the last week or two.

Some of the equipment and data, however, I expect we left so it could be used by the Afghan government? The documentation about staff referenced in the Times, for example, they couldn't have started thinking about destroying files until the Taliban started to seize the country, and it was over almost as soon as it started. A lot of the military equiopment was also left for the Afghan army, with the expectation they'd fight and not just hand it all over to the Taliban. Maybe the same for the biometrics?

[Genie]

I assume the US know exactly where the big stuff like helicopters tanks and trucks are. Why aren’t they making any attempts to recover them?

Its alright crying about it in a White House briefing room, how about sorting out the mess you made yourselves?

Edited August 27, 2021 by Genie

[Davkaus]

7 minutes ago, Genie said:

The US coming across as scared of the Taliban.

Being chased out of town.

The Taliban have 80-odd billion dollars worth of US funded kit, much of it extremely sophisticated and potentially to be used against the West. Why aren’t the US looking to get some of it back? Or destroy it? Aren’t they in dialogue with the Taliban? Why aren’t they setting up an amnesty? 

Right now, the evacuation continues only with the cooperation of the Taliban, and there's been no sign of them not holding up their end of the bargain, so why poke the hornet's nest while there are so many innocent fish in a barrel right under their nose?

A decision then needs to be made fairly quickly once evacuations end as to what the Talian are to the west now. They're the de facto government of Afghanistan now, and a lesser evil than IS who pose much more of a danger to us. I think over the past couple of weeks we've already started to see a bit of a media charm offensive and rewriting of history to make the Taliban our Afghan allies, keeping IS in check. 

What poses more of a danger, the Taliabn having some advanced kit, and being able to keep IS busy, or the US and other western countries continuing aggression in Afghanistan, provoking the Taliban when we might otherwise be able to keep them contained and amicable, while creating a power vaccum that IS could capitalise on. 

At the end of the day, someone needs to run Afghanistan, and it's not going to be a western-installed puppet government. Pick your poison.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Davkaus

[Genie]

2 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Right now, the evacuation continues only with the cooperation of the Taliban, and there's been no sign of them not holding up their end of the bargain, so why poke the hornet's nest while there are so many innocent fish in a barrel right under their nose?

A decision then needs to be made fairly quickly once evacuations end as to what the Talian are to the west now. They're the de facto government of Afghanistan now, and a lesser evil than IS who pose much more of a danger to us. I think over the past couple of weeks we've already started to see a bit of a media charm offensive and rewriting of history to make the Taliban our Afghan allies, keeping IS in check. 

What poses more of a danger, the Taliabn having some advanced kit, and being able to keep IS busy, or the US and other western countries continuing aggression in Afghanistan, provoking the Taliban when we might otherwise be able to keep them contained and amicable, while creating a power vaccum that IS could capitalise on. 

Good points.

Then the US should probably pipe down about how dangerous the Taliban are now because they’ve got all the cutting edge military hardware the US sent in.

It feels a bit like they haven’t really decided how they want this to go yet.

1) the vehicles, helicopters, weapons etc are not a threat to the West / rest of the world so we’ll leave them be with the Taliban who have promised to behave.

or 

2) It’s a major issue which is going to need a level of force to neutralise. 

The early message from the WH is that they are now more heavily armed than a lot of the world so I assume they will want to do something about that. Maybe a deal to be struck (we’ll come and collect a,b&c and you can keep x,y&z).

[Awol]

Just on the helicopters and some more advanced kit, the background provides a microcosm of how failure was baked into this mission at the political level from the very beginning.  

It was supplied to the Afghan armed forces by the US. The Afghans needed Russian made equipment which they were familiar with, was simpler, more rugged and which they already knew how to maintain. 

Congress decided that if US tax dollars were involved then US manufacturers would get the benefit, so the Afghans got Blackhawks, and an army of US contractors to maintain them…

When the US military were pulled out recently the contractors went with them, leaving the Afghan armed forces with helicopters they couldn’t maintain. 

Much has been made of the Afghans refusal to fight. The reality is their outposts were strung out around rural Afghanistan and resupplied by air. No helicopters, no resupply and an untenable military position. 

It’s one small window into how and why this disaster has unfolded, but demonstrates how the US (and no other coalition partner has had any real influence in this) has operated without an actual strategy for two decades. 

 

[PussEKatt]

I think the reason the Taliban are keeping their word and letting people out atm is because.

The last time the west wiped the floor with them so this time they want the west to leave peacefully and then they can get on with their own brand of government.As long as they dont go bombing any western countrys they will be left alone,like Korea is,thats what they are after.

[Davkaus]

5 minutes ago, Awol said:

 

Much has been made of the Afghans refusal to fight. The reality is their outposts were strung out around rural Afghanistan and resupplied by air. No helicopters, no resupply and an untenable military position. 

This is a really interesting insight, because on the face of it, to a layman, if you've got 3-4 times the men, even without your helicopters, what's the bloody problem, if you're fighting a bunch of blokes in consumer vehicles and no real training. But it doesn't matter how much you outnumber them across the country if you're split up into such small numbers distributed across a vast ;andscape, and don't have the leadership, organisation ane means to regroup and pick a winning battle.

Don't suppose you can recommend any readin on how the Afghan forces were deployed?

[bickster]

1 hour ago, a m ole said:

How do you just leave 100 helicopters or whatever somewhere?

Where would you fly them to safety? The only neighbouring country that could be remotely considered an ally is Pakistan (stop sniggering). For Pakistan to even agree to that would take some serious and probably very long talks and no-one really trusts them completely

The Black Hawk has a range of about 600km which might also have a bearing here

Who is running the evac flights and logistics? You'd think they'd be engaged heavily in the evac of Kabul itself

[a m ole]

6 minutes ago, bickster said:

Where would you fly them to safety? The only neighbouring country that could be remotely considered an ally is Pakistan (stop sniggering). For Pakistan to even agree to that would take some serious and probably very long talks and no-one really trusts them completely

The Black Hawk has a range of about 600km which might also have a bearing here

Who is running the evac flights and logistics? You'd think they'd be engaged heavily in the evac of Kabul itself

I have absolutely no idea, but however you do it is surely better than gifting them to the Taliban.

[bickster]

Just now, a m ole said:

I have absolutely no idea, but however you do it is surely better than gifting them to the Taliban.

I'm not sure you're grasping the size and impossibility of the task in such short order, when all resources are stretched concentrating on an evac of humans

Now if you are suggesting they should have destroyed them, you may have a point

[sne]

Back in the day at least the strategy would have been to torch your stuff (and salting the earth) before you retreated.

[blandy]

4 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

But for as long as the military remained there, occupying the country, the media chose to ignore the story

That's not really it, IMO.

They weren't "occupying" the country. It might seem pedantic, but they were (for better or for worse) holding up the government and the Afghan forces and keeping out the bad guys - stone age Talibans, ISIS, AL Quaida....

Whether we (people on VT) think they should have been or not is kind of irrelevant to the point. They were and the media covered that. Then Trump essentially surrendered to the Taliban with a lop-sided deal that excluded even the participation in negotiations, of the Afghan Gov't, never mind in any ultimate settlement. He handed over Afghanistan, by UN treaty, to the Talibans - there's no consent of the people there, just "run away". That abandonment and the mishandling of the exit by Biden is the issue here, IMO.

That's the story and how it is reported, covered, explained ("the Optics") does matter. It matters because it will affect future US behaviour - do they become more reluctant/less reluctant to do stuff, do they move left, or right as a nation...etc.

[desensitized43]

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

A decision then needs to be made fairly quickly once evacuations end as to what the Talian are to the west now. They're the de facto government of Afghanistan now, and a lesser evil than IS who pose much more of a danger to us. I think over the past couple of weeks we've already started to see a bit of a media charm offensive and rewriting of history to make the Taliban our Afghan allies, keeping IS in check. 

What poses more of a danger, the Taliabn having some advanced kit, and being able to keep IS busy, or the US and other western countries continuing aggression in Afghanistan, provoking the Taliban when we might otherwise be able to keep them contained and amicable, while creating a power vaccum that IS could capitalise on. 

I think if you've got Taleban and IS shooting at each other rather than us I'd consider that a pretty good result tbf.

My worry is that instability on the border with Pakistan might spill over into that country. You think people upset about a few humvee's and black hawk helicopters? Can you imagine if they managed to get their hands on what the Pakistani's have got?

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

Evacuation of Afghans who aided the UK should have been done and dusted well before the transition, and I don't think there's any excuse for the situation we've put them in over the last week or two.

Yes. It's perhaps likely that warnings of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military were ignored by politicians and as such the time available to organise was much less than the politicians thought they would have. I'm not saying intelligence knew it would collapse so quickly, but that it assessed the chance as reasonably probable, or similar. There were whispers a month or more ago that that was the case. That's on Biden, but also to an extent the UK gov't in the case of "our" responsibilities. 

[a m ole]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

I'm not sure you're grasping the size and impossibility of the task in such short order, when all resources are stretched concentrating on an evac of humans

Now if you are suggesting they should have destroyed them, you may have a point

I don’t grasp any of it, other than surely there’s a better option than what they’ve done.