D
Deleted member 7164
Guest
"Hitler did nothing wrong"
"Hitler did nothing wrong"
Yeah, I'm super not surprised by that. The Victims of Communism memorial was thought up by the previous Conservative government and is, uh, political in its core. There was a big push to try to rehabilitate the legacy of a few Cold War era prime ministers (specifically John Diefenbaker). I'm really not a fan of it, and this is as expected.
So the Taliban are steadily re-conquering Afghanistan and all the governments that left the Afghan people alone are disturbingly silent about all this.
I'm going to toss out the following prediction: Since the NATO invasion started on 7th October 2001, the Taliban are likely aiming for a capture of Kabul on 7th October 2021. They will reinstate their reign of terror, millions of people will flee the country and eventually, sooner rather than later, China will go to try and fill the power vacuum.
We saw it coming, we have no right to be surprised.
I'm going to toss out the following prediction: Since the NATO invasion started on 7th October 2001, the Taliban are likely aiming for a capture of Kabul on 7th October 2021. They will reinstate their reign of terror, millions of people will flee the country and eventually, sooner rather than later, China will go to try and fill the power vacuum.
We saw it coming, we have no right to be surprised.
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Deleted member 7164
Guest
Just another type of right wing fascists U.S. and its allies have supported in its holy war against communism, same shit everywhere.
It is exactly what we knew would happen. The graveyard of empires indeed.
If China goes in, they might be cruel enough to get results, but they won't necessarily be ones that are good for the Afghan people.
Onhell
Infinite Dreamer
Sooo... What CAN they do that they haven't done the last 20 years? Just occupy the country indefinitely?
Re-establish their theocratic nation state?
Onhell
Infinite Dreamer
But doesn't that theocratric nation state hate "the West" as well?
Well, the Afghan state created by the USA isn't good, but the Taliban wants a hardcore Islamic nation that would make the Ayatollah blush. Like, from a humanitarian perspective, it's extremely bad.
What they can do depends on what their allies let them do. What they want to do is create an Islamic Emirate as they already have done between 1996 and 2001.
What I believe will happen is that they will subsequently drive Afghan government forces out of the big cities and take control of whatever of the country they can, while there will be resistance in the mountainous areas of the Hazarayat and the Badakhshan/Nuristan region, just as it was in 1996-2001. This time around however, China will be wondering what is happening with all those juicy copper mines it spent so much money trying to develop. The outcome will either be a Chinese-backed Emirate or a Chinese-backed anti-Taliban insurgence with Chinese-backed Pakistani troops doing much of the job. I doubt there will be a Chinese invasion though, they aren't yet ready to get their hands dirty with this.
Oh.
Well... nothing. I doubt anyone in the region will trust them anymore, any new mission will be unpopular in the home countries, nobody will care to give any money, there's nothing to be done. Basically, we just lost Afghanistan.
Onhell
Infinite Dreamer
Yup. BUT the answers so far are still very illuminating.
This should be interesting.... What will China do that will have them succeed where the USSR and the U.S failed.
Simple. They won't invade. They're going to make deals with one side or the other once there is a semblance of stability, then have businesses settle down and give the people jobs and build roads without concerns about things like human rights or corruption. They're gonna give out beautiful loans that five years down the line, the Afghans realise they won't be able to pay back, and China will be fully understanding and just ask for unlimited mining rights for some gold mine in Badakhshan or the concession to operate the country's airports instead.
D
Deleted member 7164
Guest
There is a power triangle of nuclear states around Afghanistan, split in two blocks, this thread makes it seem like it's an open country for someone to come in after they take down some extremist guerilla that's going around terrorizing the citizens.
And China is going to deploy soldiers against who? The puppets of their allies? Taliban are the instrument of legit governments, they're not a rogue force like ISIS. They are controlled by ISI of Pakistan, while Pakistan is allied with China against India, which is nominally neutral only in US vs Russia thing, ofc supporting US/NATO vs China all the way.
The entire affair was akin to US interventions against some enemy groups in last decade in Middle East, extremist fundamentalists but funded by US allies and often receiving direct US support via proxy. You see when Britain went to war against Argentina and lost a ship to a French-sourced anti-ship missile, having French as allies, they first embargoed the Argentinians from getting more missiles legaly, and made special ops of flooding the black market with fake, dead alley deals so they make sure Argentina is left with no arms.
This entire time, the Taliban are fighting US/NATO in Afghanistan using what weapons? Who gave them bullets do they have a fucking industry to wage war for 20 years? Let me tell you, with whole intact industry, Croatia had no chance of arming itself in 1991.
Have you ever seen the Vice documentary about US Trained Afghan forces? Seinfeld would not think of this. It is the greatest joke ever told, you need to see these men. Poor US Army trainers, you need to see looks on their faces once they witness how Afghan military base is ran and what kind of material they're dealing with.
Personally, I would take a dozen guys from these forum and we would raid over that base and have a stash of Western guns and ammo of our own. With no shots taken. It is absurd what kind of people are 'defending the country' there. It is 100% clear that at some point in time some more motivated actor is going to exploit it. So yes, the arms are being placed there knowingly. These US trainers are professional personnel, there's no chance in hell they didn't report about their work. Somewhere some bueraucrat is having a report on his desk where a jackass base full of new guns is 50 km away from Taliban realm and doesn't bat an eye.
Pakistan/KSA have been arming them all time long and US has turned a blind eye or even participated in the deal.
So under what circumstances have we lost Afghanistan @Perun, I don't get it. We never had it in the first place. The whole pretense of going into Afghanistan is shaky - patching the consequences while refusing to deal with the source - in this case heading over to neutralize enemy training camps and breeding ground while being oblivious to the masterminds and funders.
Pak will remain the chief force in Afghanistan for the times to come. I do not believe Chinese money will go in unless the political situation is stable. Like Perun says it's a hassle - they don't deploy armies to control their resoruces in Africa.
What happens, we'll see.
And China is going to deploy soldiers against who? The puppets of their allies? Taliban are the instrument of legit governments, they're not a rogue force like ISIS. They are controlled by ISI of Pakistan, while Pakistan is allied with China against India, which is nominally neutral only in US vs Russia thing, ofc supporting US/NATO vs China all the way.
The entire affair was akin to US interventions against some enemy groups in last decade in Middle East, extremist fundamentalists but funded by US allies and often receiving direct US support via proxy. You see when Britain went to war against Argentina and lost a ship to a French-sourced anti-ship missile, having French as allies, they first embargoed the Argentinians from getting more missiles legaly, and made special ops of flooding the black market with fake, dead alley deals so they make sure Argentina is left with no arms.
This entire time, the Taliban are fighting US/NATO in Afghanistan using what weapons? Who gave them bullets do they have a fucking industry to wage war for 20 years? Let me tell you, with whole intact industry, Croatia had no chance of arming itself in 1991.
Have you ever seen the Vice documentary about US Trained Afghan forces? Seinfeld would not think of this. It is the greatest joke ever told, you need to see these men. Poor US Army trainers, you need to see looks on their faces once they witness how Afghan military base is ran and what kind of material they're dealing with.
Personally, I would take a dozen guys from these forum and we would raid over that base and have a stash of Western guns and ammo of our own. With no shots taken. It is absurd what kind of people are 'defending the country' there. It is 100% clear that at some point in time some more motivated actor is going to exploit it. So yes, the arms are being placed there knowingly. These US trainers are professional personnel, there's no chance in hell they didn't report about their work. Somewhere some bueraucrat is having a report on his desk where a jackass base full of new guns is 50 km away from Taliban realm and doesn't bat an eye.
Pakistan/KSA have been arming them all time long and US has turned a blind eye or even participated in the deal.
So under what circumstances have we lost Afghanistan @Perun, I don't get it. We never had it in the first place. The whole pretense of going into Afghanistan is shaky - patching the consequences while refusing to deal with the source - in this case heading over to neutralize enemy training camps and breeding ground while being oblivious to the masterminds and funders.
Pak will remain the chief force in Afghanistan for the times to come. I do not believe Chinese money will go in unless the political situation is stable. Like Perun says it's a hassle - they don't deploy armies to control their resoruces in Africa.
What happens, we'll see.
@Zare you are basically saying what I meant to say. The only thing where I want to be careful is that I'm not 100% sure that the Chinese will want to directly or indirectly (via Pakistan) back the Taliban, because they are not a rational political actor and have been known to bite the hand that feeds. Granted, that was 20 years ago and things may have changed since, but we don't know for sure if they have. It's possible that China will end up pressuring Pakistan into building a new political force.
We also don't know where Iran will be in all of this. It's an ally of China, but also a mortal enemy of the Taliban. They want stability in Afghanistan, but they also enjoy the cheap labour force brought by Afghan refugees, who might even be instrumentalised as militias to suppress oppositional forces in the country.
As for India, it's been stretching out its hand to the US and Europe for years now and is a natural ally in the region, but the west has ignored it almost completely. I think that a few years down the line, India will start to fight back against the economic isolation with which China treats it (look at a map of the One Belt One Road project) and maybe look for militia forces such as the Taliban to disrupt trade routes like the Karakoram Highway or the Central Asian pipelines.
I'm not saying all this is NATO's fault for withdrawing, but tell me what the fuck we were doing there in the first place, please.
We also don't know where Iran will be in all of this. It's an ally of China, but also a mortal enemy of the Taliban. They want stability in Afghanistan, but they also enjoy the cheap labour force brought by Afghan refugees, who might even be instrumentalised as militias to suppress oppositional forces in the country.
As for India, it's been stretching out its hand to the US and Europe for years now and is a natural ally in the region, but the west has ignored it almost completely. I think that a few years down the line, India will start to fight back against the economic isolation with which China treats it (look at a map of the One Belt One Road project) and maybe look for militia forces such as the Taliban to disrupt trade routes like the Karakoram Highway or the Central Asian pipelines.
I'm not saying all this is NATO's fault for withdrawing, but tell me what the fuck we were doing there in the first place, please.
D
Deleted member 7164
Guest
Yeah, "we'll see" because no-one is sure how tight is the Taliban leash. It is known ISI is on top of the chain but the internal Taliban cohesion is another matter - whether the 'middle management' will listen to the Pakistani orders or just fraction into smaller groups.
Another variable for me is Pakistan itself, I don't know whether they have a long game or they were just using Taliban as a destabilization factor. In case of latter the country could go into apeshit mode again.
A lot of damage has been done. Wrong approach from day 0. We should've used Soviet approach because there was no America to arm our enemies with absolutely the best tools for the job nor are our mil-ind complexes and economies fragile as Soviet was. The theory that Taliban are going to fight allied army from their manholes without external support is preposterous.
Someone said, let's go there, invade the country, make a protectorate and try to sway country towards democracy, but with absolute negligible amounts of dead on our side.
What we got is a country full of allied bases and personell which aren't fighting the enemy but just being stationed there in case of offensive enemy activity. While the attack part was done by drones who regularly miss their targets and hit children. It's a half arsed approach that Afghan population saw through and that's why the presence did not have a wide majority support. As an Afghan you could live and breathe 100% of the 'new Afghanistan', live in cohesion with protectorate troops, but then your cousin's kid dies somewhere because the protectors waged that it's better to remote in the drone strike than to risk sending troops to village.
Even if soldiers make a mistake and shoot a little girl, even if there is a minuscule chance that one of them is a perverted fuck so he shoots her out of fun, the killing has a human character, as opposed to just being blown out of the existence. UCAVs are invisible if you don't have technology, their ordinance silent until it's too late.
I'll never forget when I saw that Afghan kids love playing in mud pools in the rain, because they stay in shelter when the weather is perfect. Think about that.
SixesAlltheway
Ancient Mariner
After twenty years of war and Western presence in Afghanistan, thousands of human lives and billions and billions of dollars, the Taliban occupy all of Afghanistan in just over a week. Taliban seems to be the future there now.
