Source is wikilinks which has never yet been proved wrong.
Afghanistan
- Thread starter Sherzad
- Start date
If you keep reading the article admits it's information might not be true since they are trying to link it with another complex 12 miles away. They also seem confused as to whether they want then to be man made tunnels or caves that have been there for ages.Murica Today ? Sounds legit.
They found so far 94 terrorists dead including 4 leaders
Looks like they got a good number of mostly if not all militants.
Did I hear correctly that the us continues to train and arm Afghans yet about a third disappear every year? That is one scary stat if accurate.
Design began in 2002. They just wanted a new Daisy Cutter for mass area de-forestation and/or
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It's not really a bunker-buster, hence the name (air-burst). Though it does have a 'relative' developed around the same time designed for that purpose.
Mother-in-law bomb?
True.. "tunnel busting" then. I was lumping all the big GBU's together
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I heard that too. So, well trained and armed Afghans go back to their tribes. Crazy.
Heard some info too, where the US has paid to build highways there but now they're falling into disrepair because the Afghans didn't do any maintenance.
Makes me wonder why the US didn't read their history books before embarking on the invasion.
Imagine if all that money was spent upgrading the infrastructure in the US?
It gets worse when you include other infrastructure projects in Afghanistan; Vice did some really good reporting on it, though it was a while back I think.
The real crazy part is the Taliban is re-taking control (which kind of defeats the point of the invasion in the first place), people of all stripes are still getting killed, and it's not a big deal internationally.
Kind of like the untold numbers of civilians starving in Yemen and Syria, but we're more concerned with a few dozen missiles being launched at airport hangars that don't result in anything substantial. SNAFU.
So I'm guessing anybody with an uniform can walk inside their base. Back in time (good times) when I was in service I couldn't get back in my base without documents and I would think they would do the same over there
Just another example how messed up that country is. Sad.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, man of peace - https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...a0ae1940305_story.html?utm_term=.987baf562bd2Should be an interesting Mar-a-Lago meet up.
Isn't this the Butcher of Kabul?
Should be an interesting Mar-a-Lago meet up.
Edit - I should read the article first
Should be an interesting Mar-a-Lago meet up.
He can walk down the streets of Kabul holding hands with Dostum now.Showing up, giving some sweet talk and patiently checking out what's in it for him. Also this:
Should be an interesting Mar-a-Lago meet up.
Any predictions if the reconciliation policy has a chance of success long term? Especially since the unity government itself is busy with internal power struggles and the Taliban are gaining ground? Doesn't look good to me.
Yes it definitely is. The US is finding out its futile to invade, replace the government, and build a new democracy when all the militants are just across the border and can generally come and go as they please. Although I heard Trump is considering putting more troops in country which will just prolong the US presence indefinitely.
It's been bleeding obvious for a long time, just a terrible shame that the US, and UK, governments couldn't see it.
I can understand that given the sweep of world history the US thought everyone would prefer western-style democracy to tribal or religious government if only they were given the chance. I thought so too. What I can't understand is why it's taking them so long to figure out it isn't so.
It's always related to domestic politics back home. Politicians don't want to be perceived as weak against their political opponents and generally don't want to deal with political ads that they made citizens less safe by withdrawing troops abroad and allowing militants back into the mix. Obama was a bit of an outlier in this regard where he actually did the right thing by deescalating in both Iraq and Afghanistan in an attempt to pressure both governments to seize their own initiative - and yet still he wound up getting attacked by the likes of McCain, Graham, and others
Could he not build a wall... You know a big beautiful wall... I'm sure he can get Pakistan to pay for it
Ironically, both countries can't even agree on where their respective borders are, so a wall may not work.
Thanks, that makes sense.
I can't help but be so sad from a British perspective, where we clearly lost but won't admit it, and suffered so many casualties in the process, all for nothing.
Hekmatyar's been at war for 40 years, even before that he was up to his shit in dodgy politics, assassination attempts against rivals, etc. I often wonder how a guy like that will evaluate his life, and what is it that makes him want to stay involved all that time? He could have had a handy retirement in Tehran after 1995. I guess after a certain point some guys just can't function outside of a war-time environment.
I find the strength of personal ambition in politics a very strange thing, not really something I understand.
I find the strength of personal ambition in politics a very strange thing, not really something I understand.
Each country builds a wall, where they think it’s fair. The area in-between is getting turned into a Mad-Max style wasteland. Everything goes. The only condition is, that you have to wear some kind of fetish clothing.
Considering that Afghanistan considers half of Pakistan territory to be Afghan land under occupation.. I can't really see them coming to a resolution as to where the border lies.
Its not even a matter of defining a border. Even if one did that, there are still deeply interwoven ethnic and tribal ties that exist deep into the territories of both countries, which is more or less why currently recognized borders are generally ignored by the locals.
Hasn't the international border pretty arbitrarily cut through the middle of traditional Pashtun land?
Yes, the Durand Line.
'Arbitrarily' probably isn't the right word. This wasn't like the post-WW1 Middle East or the partition of 1947 where the British imposed new borders that hadn't previously existed. The Durand Line was a formal recognition of a frontier between British India and Afghanistan that had existed already for decades, and that the British had inherited when they incorporated the Sikh Kingdom.
(Edit): an obvious exception is the Wakhan Corridor, which was certainly an arbitrarily drawn border designed to extend Afghanistan's role as a buffer between Russia and British India to the Chinese border.
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And was implemented with zero consideration for the existing tribal/ethnic makeup of the region at the time (and the present).
All pre-modern frontiers were. The current border reflects more a geographical reality (the distinction between the mountains and the Indian plains) than an ethnic or tribal one.
In history the Pashtuns had often been divided between other empires such as the Mughals and Safavids, although along different geographical lines. Of course they had sometimes been mostly united, such as under the Durranis (until the rise of the Sikhs).
Uniting all the Pashtuns in one state would have required the British either to conquer the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan and incorporate them into British India (something obviously beyond them given how they tended to fare on their Afghan adventures) or to cede the Pashtun regions of British India to the Kingdom of Afghanistan (something politically impossible for so many obvious reasons, not least the fact of the perceived Russian threat to India). On the other hand, had tribal considerations been taken into consideration there would have had to be many Pashtun states along the frontier.
The problem is not that the frontier - which had existed for almost a century - was formally recognised; it is that it was modernised, with all that that entails - administrative procedures, customs, checkpoints, surveillance, etc.
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What a clusterfeck.
They just control about 10% of all districts and contest another 30%. Nothing to see here. Maybe throwing a couple more of these MOABs on farmers will do the trick.
Picture from the 70s or early 80s I guess of Hekmatyar (seated) hosting Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (right) and the leader of Tunisia's Ennahda Party Rached Ghannouchi:
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Epitome of America's foreign policy. Came too soon and still didn't know how to pull out.
Well done sir