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Was the reason we didnt want Zahir Shah literally 'we cant install a monarchy' or were we afraid if he was installed the people would overthrow Karzai later? Because looking him up the dude seemed fine being a purely ceremonial figure head with no power, or was atleast willing to accept it, while Karzai could still be president with all the actual power.
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Apr 16, 2017 05:23
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I don't think Zahir Shah would have made much of a difference.
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Apr 16, 2017 12:22
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Taliban kill dozens at army HQ in northern Afghanistanquote:Dozens of Afghan soldiers were killed or wounded on Friday when Taliban gunmen disguised in Afghan army uniform talked their way past checkpoints and attacked a military base, officials said. That ain't good. This was in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province.
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Apr 21, 2017 22:12
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OhFunny posted:Taliban kill dozens at army HQ in northern Afghanistan Balkh is normally outside the area in which the Taliban operate, so I doubt this really represents a serious threat to the ability of the Afghan government control territory there. However it's part of the same unified military command that's in charge of security in neighboring Kunduz, which The Taliban heavily contest it last year and I'd like for you to try and occupy permanently this summer.
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Apr 22, 2017 16:40
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The death toll is climbing to 140+ now though, that's a huge blow to the afghan forces there.
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Apr 22, 2017 18:14
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Miruvor posted:The death toll is climbing to 140+ now though, that's a huge blow to the afghan forces there. Yeah no doubt. The Taliban made it their explicit objective this year to finally nab a provincial capital. Last year they waited until late summer before hitting everyone at once, assaulting Kunduz while putting Lashkar Gah under siege while routing many Afghan army formations in the hinterlands. The US military calls the present circumstance a "stalemate", but its a stalemate in which every summer the Taliban waxes ever stronger and the government has less and less with which to respond.
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Apr 22, 2017 21:23
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Squalid posted:Yeah no doubt. The Taliban made it their explicit objective this year to finally nab a provincial capital. Last year they waited until late summer before hitting everyone at once, assaulting Kunduz while putting Lashkar Gah under siege while routing many Afghan army formations in the hinterlands. The US military calls the present circumstance a "stalemate", but its a stalemate in which every summer the Taliban waxes ever stronger and the government has less and less with which to respond. Well I'm sure Trump will prop up the plucky little Afghan government as freedom fighters against the major enemy of our times 
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Apr 22, 2017 22:12
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Panzeh posted:I don't think Zahir Shah would have made much of a difference. Not when the US government was hung up on catching and prosecuting/killing/torturing "terrorists". Not sure if it's been linked in this thread but No Good Men Among the Living is a really great read on this subject. US was not in Afghanistan to rebuild a nation but to exact blind vengeance with predictable results.
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Apr 23, 2017 03:06
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https://twitter.com/thomasjoscelyn/status/855794173382971393
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Apr 23, 2017 19:52
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...m=.7317706e3e7a 2 Americans killed and 1 wounded in fighting Afghan ISIS.
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Apr 27, 2017 17:07
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Double posting https://twitter.com/JasonLeopold/status/857646459973509120 This brings US troops to over 10,000 I believe.
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Apr 27, 2017 19:03
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wow, 100+ with just automatic rifle fire. that's pretty crazy 10,000 troops in afghanistan in year 15 of our forever war its staggering to me how many people just don't think about it anymore/assume its virtually over/winding down to nothing a forgotten decades old war in our time. its fascinating in an academic sense, but terrible and tragic and horrifying in reality
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Apr 27, 2017 20:31
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RaySmuckles posted:wow, 100+ with just automatic rifle fire. that's pretty crazy i honestly dont think we will ever leave. I mean why did Afghanistan become such a sad place. like it was pretty westernized under the king and kinda went back to roots when the soviets when the soviets invaded and the afganis went full nationalistic plus the CIA importing wahabis to help the pashtune nationalists in country. after the invasion it fell to the wahabis.
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Apr 27, 2017 22:01
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Dapper_Swindler posted:i honestly dont think we will ever leave. I mean why did Afghanistan become such a sad place. like it was pretty westernized under the king and kinda went back to roots when the soviets when the soviets invaded and the afganis went full nationalistic plus the CIA importing wahabis to help the pashtune nationalists in country. after the invasion it fell to the wahabis. The conservative Islamic fundamentalists have always been a very strong force in Afghanistan and they've revolted every single time there's been a modernizing government. Go have a quick perusal through Afghan history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Am%C4%81null%C4%81h_Kh%C4%81n_and_civil_war
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Apr 28, 2017 00:35
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The problem with Afghanistan is that what the USA wants is a right-wing, NATO-friendly government, and that's what the Taliban was, so after Bush decided to go aggro on them we can't actually get what we want without losing massive face I think the only realistic outcome here is that we simply walk away, the Taliban wins (again), and 20 years later we make up and formally ally with them, just like with Vietnam It's pretty amazing how dumb the invasion of Afghanistan was in pure sociopathic geopolitcal terms (IE the terms that everyone involved in foreign policy is operating on). Afghanistan is crucial geopolitical real estate, probably as important as Turkey and the Bosporus, and the US successfully got a friendly government in there after the war with the USSR, then flushed it right down the toilet. If Russia manages to befriend the Taliban and turn them into a client state that will be an unprecedented rollback of of the NATO-Atlanticist-liberal reach, to a point that has actually never been seen before. Has there ever been a Russia-friendly government in Afghanistan? That's on top of China having nabbed Pakistan as a client out from under the nose of the US too. Having a Russia-friendly government in Afghanistan is what haunts the nightmares of Anglo-American foreign policy people and has been since the the days of the British Empire. Thanks Obama icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 01:44
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Afghanistan was already within the Soviet sphere of influence prior to their invasion. The USSR intervened because their preferred client had been killed in an internal struggle but the party in power was explicitly communist and pro-Soviet.
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Apr 28, 2017 06:28
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Yeah the USSR had a friendly series of clients basically until the end of their invasion, one of whom, Amin, the Soviets even killed on their own after KGB disinfo suggesting he was getting turned by the CIA managed to get back to them. Why is Afghanistan so strategically significant other than that it borders Iran? Because it borders the Central Asian republics?
cargo cult fucked around with this message at 07:55 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 07:53
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cargo cult posted:Yeah the USSR had a friendly series of clients basically until the end of their invasion, one of whom, Amin, the Soviets even killed on their own after KGB disinfo suggesting he was getting turned by the CIA managed to get back to them. Why is Afghanistan so strategically significant other than that it borders Iran? Because it borders the Central Asian republics? that's a good question, and i'm not sure what the answer is i'd say its because its sort of right in the middle of all those power players in the region- china, india and pakistan, and iran, plus you can pipe out some of that natural gas being drilled in the central asian states to try and cut into russia's economic dominance but yeah, its still a barely habitable, landlocked state with virtually nothing of value within it. so its got to be its ability to meddle in the affairs of its neighbors/cut into russia's economic client states edit: though its proximity to regional powers is rather limited in the fact that its not exactly near anything of value in those major states. south korea, japan and the other pacific nations are much closer to anything of value in china by far. and the russia is way far away and once again near nothing particularly important. india is already an ally and i thought pakistan war relatively pliable as well (though i'm aware they do poo poo to gently caress with the US all the time). so maybe its just surrounding iran (since we're in iraq too)? RaySmuckles fucked around with this message at 08:12 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 08:08
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It wasn't more pro-Russian than any other third world/nonaligned country. The explicit Marxists didn't come to power until 79. A government as friendly to Russia as Pakistan is with China would be unprecedented IMOcargo cult posted:Why is Afghanistan so strategically significant other than that it borders Iran? Because it borders the Central Asian republics? Pretty much. It borders Russia's sphere of influence, China's, Iran, and Pakistan
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Apr 28, 2017 08:11
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Sergg posted:The conservative Islamic fundamentalists have always been a very strong force in Afghanistan and they've revolted every single time there's been a modernizing government. Go have a quick perusal through Afghan history. Yeah, you have to take 'modernizing' with a grain of salt- there was modernization in the cities, but most of the country is highly rural and opposed to central authority beyond what's immediately on offer.
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Apr 28, 2017 10:59
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icantfindaname posted:It wasn't more pro-Russian than any other third world/nonaligned country. The explicit Marxists didn't come to power until 79. A government as friendly to Russia as Pakistan is with China would be unprecedented IMO well in that case just turn it into a radioactive crater field, the reds can't geopolitics if there's nothing left to geopolitics on :lemaysay:
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Apr 28, 2017 11:02
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Sergg posted:The conservative Islamic fundamentalists have always been a very strong force in Afghanistan and they've revolted every single time there's been a modernizing government. Go have a quick perusal through Afghan history. thats depressing, Wahhabism is loving cancer. 
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Apr 28, 2017 12:48
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https://twitter.com/ABC/status/858001944916480004 Oh ffs
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Apr 28, 2017 20:11
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https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/858653443396972545 300 more Marines into the grinder.
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Apr 30, 2017 17:58
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icantfindaname posted:The problem with Afghanistan is that what the USA wants is a right-wing, NATO-friendly government, and that's what the Taliban was, so after Bush decided to go aggro on them we can't actually get what we want without losing massive face There's an important difference between the Taliban and the Viet Cong, the Taliban have their support pretty much limited to ethnic Pashtuns, who only make about about 40% of the population. It's kind of like if the Hmong were 30% of the population of Indochina instead <10%, and genociding them was an official party line of the Vietnamese communist party. The Hazara will never join the Taliban, and therefore it is much more difficult for the Taliban to win outright as their base of support is necessarily a much smaller percent of the population. Also this speculative hand-wringing about the Taliban becoming a Russian client is so absurd I've never seen it expressed in even the most histrionic of right-wing opinion on Afghanistan. Not that there hasn't been a good deal of anti-Russian sentiment expressed on the subject, but it tends to frame it much more realistically. Rumors of Russian support for the Taliban first started last summer around the same time they started taking a more active role in the Libyan political crisis, and I'm pretty sure their goals in Afghanistan are limited to the more realistic objective of tying up American resources and political will. For what its worth, political science hasn't found much evidence foreign funding really gives much political leverage over insurgent groups and even a lot of money isn't likely to make up the ideological differences between Russia and the Taliban.
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Apr 30, 2017 21:30
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Dapper_Swindler posted:i honestly dont think we will ever leave. I mean why did Afghanistan become such a sad place. like it was pretty westernized under the king and kinda went back to roots when the soviets when the soviets invaded and the afganis went full nationalistic plus the CIA importing wahabis to help the pashtune nationalists in country. after the invasion it fell to the wahabis. Wahabism has had some degree of influence on Taliban theological thought, but it is easy to overstate. the Taliban draw more strongly from a South Asian Sunni tradition called Deobandism and traditional Pashtun tribal law. OhFunny posted:300 more Marines into the grinder. Some military sources are now suggesting America is considering putting as many three-five thousand additional troops into Afghanistan, while NATO is considering an increase as well 
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Apr 30, 2017 21:40
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OhFunny posted:https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/858653443396972545 Whats this guy holding? Is it a sheathed lance of longinus or a 40k style banner? Also why is this thread even here, we won afghanistan, mission accomplished.
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Apr 30, 2017 21:59
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While we're still a few years from the point when American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan will have been born after the invasion, you can bet there are already Afghan people fighting in the war who were born after 2001.
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Apr 30, 2017 22:16
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Squalid posted:traditional Pashtun tribal law. It's called pashtunwali and it sucks rear end.
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Apr 30, 2017 22:32
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Volkerball posted:It's called pashtunwali and it sucks rear end. is it? i mean that wouldnt surprise after hearing some of the horror stories over there dealing with Bacha bazi and honor killings(though i think that mostly Pakistan). the general outline of the beliefs seem nice.
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May 1, 2017 03:30
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nopantsjack posted:Whats this guy holding? Is it a sheathed lance of longinus or a 40k style banner? Flag of some sort. Would be touching the ground if it wasn't furled up in the cover.
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May 1, 2017 04:41
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Helsing posted:While we're still a few years from the point when American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan will have been born after the invasion, you can bet there are already Afghan people fighting in the war who were born after 2001. FFS average life expectancy in Afghanistan is about ~60 years old and the country has been in a de-facto state of war since 1978 so everyone under the age of 39 has been born in a country at war... so pretty much only the oldest Afghani's will have any memory of ~peace~.
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May 1, 2017 05:02
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OhFunny posted:https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/858653443396972545 Anime Lance Division
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May 1, 2017 06:23
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Volkerball posted:It's called pashtunwali and it sucks rear end. Yeah, I think connecting all conservative traditions in islamic society with wahabbiism is extremely a-historical and dumb.
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May 1, 2017 10:28
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nopantsjack posted:Whats this guy holding? Is it a sheathed lance of longinus or a 40k style banner? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guidon_(United_States)
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May 2, 2017 06:07
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lol https://twitter.com/USAIDAfghan/status/858901355645292545
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May 2, 2017 18:33
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Cute pic  Incidentally Afghanistan set a new record in 2016 for poppy production, up a whopping 42% wow! At least that's one bright spot for the Afghan economy
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May 2, 2017 18:44
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NPR had on a guest today named Ali Soufan to talk about his new book, Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State. http://www.npr.org/2017/05/02/526607468/in-anatomy-of-terror-former-fbi-agent-outlines-how-terror-groups-stay-resilient quote:SOUFAN: We've been successful against tactically weakening that organization. However, strategically, they have been able to mutate because we focus on attacking structures. They are focused on ideology and message. And that ideology is actually the neck of this hydra.
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May 3, 2017 04:53
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The al-Qaeda-IRA comparison if far more common in high level policy planning than I think most people realize. Ali Soufan is one, but the idea is floating in more circles than the Soufan Group's.
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May 3, 2017 18:04
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Svartvit posted:The al-Qaeda-IRA comparison if far more common in high level policy planning than I think most people realize. Ali Soufan is one, but the idea is floating in more circles than the Soufan Group's. I'm curious now what kind of comparisons are made, because I'm not sure I quite understood where he was going with it. I think I've shared with you before some of the ways I think the US counter-terrorism strategy is self defeating, and this interview was one of the first times I've heard government officials echoing the way I feel. Policy makers have long recognized that truly defeating Al Qaeda outright via force of arms alone is a pipe dream. Instead they've pivoted towards more modest objectives like preventing AQAP from launching foreign attacks. One way they have accomplished this is by targeting mid-level Al Qaeda leaders with drone strikes, reducing organizational effectiveness and keeping operations disrupted. I think this strategy was effective in Iraq in 2007, but has been a disaster in places like Yemen and Somalia. Without any real capacity to capitalize on organizational weakness these targeted strikes have had the same effect on Al Qaeda as a weak dose of anti-biotics on a bacterial population. By repeatedly killing their leaders but allowing the organizations to survive, we've simply put an immense amount of selective pressure on Al Qaeda affiliates, forcing them to "mutate" into something altogether leaner, more resilient and efficient, immune to the kind of self-destructive cults of personality that have weakened insurgent groups like the Shining Path. Al Qaeda in Somalia was maybe a dozen or so guys and hardly any more sympathizers before America's "Shadow War" of the mid aughts catalyzed their evolution into Al Shabaab, and their ascendancy with the Islamic Courts Union likely never wouldn't have happened if the flood of anti-terror money into the pockets of local warlords hadn't reignited civil conflict in Mogadishu. Similarly the Houthi used Saleh's receipt of US anti-terror funding as justification of their resistance against his government. edit: new report from SIGAR counted 6,785 Afghan soldiers killed in the first 10 months of last year, and more than 800 killed in January-February this year. They found more civilians died last year than any year since they started keeping records in 2009
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May 4, 2017 06:37
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