Afghanistan mission accomplished

[BlackLabel]

Countdown said:

V8 Fettler said:

What's your proposed solution? Leave "them" alone to get on with it as per 1989 - 2001? That didn't work very well.

So has terrorism decreased or increased since 2001?

To be fair terrorist plots on the west planned in Afghanistan have certainly decreased, in fact they've pretty much disappeared. However it's come at the cost of over 3500 coalition deaths and 10 x as many Afghan civilian deaths.

[Countdown]

BlackLabel said:

To be fair terrorist plots on the west planned in Afghanistan have certainly decreased, in fact they've pretty much disappeared. However it's come at the cost of over 3500 coalition deaths and 10 x as many Afghan civilian deaths.

OK - so if no terrorist acts are being planned in Afghanistan (despite the Taliban being in control of 40% of the territory) what are the benefits of the US going back in?

I'm not being argumentative, I just think it's a stupid idea.

[Lance Catamaran]

Countdown said:

BlackLabel said:

To be fair terrorist plots on the west planned in Afghanistan have certainly decreased, in fact they've pretty much disappeared. However it's come at the cost of over 3500 coalition deaths and 10 x as many Afghan civilian deaths.

OK - so if no terrorist acts are being planned in Afghanistan (despite the Taliban being in control of 40% of the territory) what are the benefits of the US going back in?

I'm not being argumentative, I just think it's a stupid idea.

You could argue that if you pull out and the Taliban retake the country, then all those deaths would have been for nothing.

[Cobnapint]

Countdown said:

OK - so if no terrorist acts are being planned in Afghanistan (despite the Taliban being in control of 40% of the territory) what are the benefits of the US going back in?

I'm not being argumentative, I just think it's a stupid idea.

It's not that simple. Think of the long game.

The Taliban are a west hating terrorist group. If you leave them to grow, the 40% will eventually become 100%. So then you have a terrorist controlled state.

A terrorist controlled state ran by terrorists that look forward to dying for their cause, with enough state money to eventually go out and buy some shiny nuclear weapons off a willing supplier so they can wreak havoc across the ME (as if it needs any more) and probably places closer to home.

[V8 Fettler]

Countdown said:

V8 Fettler said:

What's your proposed solution? Leave "them" alone to get on with it as per 1989 - 2001? That didn't work very well.

So has terrorism decreased or increased since 2001?

For the US and the UK, deaths through terrorism have dropped substantially in recent years

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/many-people-kill...

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/03/us/terrorism-gun...

In the euphoria of the fall of communism in 1989 - 1991, Afghanistan was forgotten about.

Edit: poor wording on my part, should read "In the US and the UK..."

Edited by V8 Fettler on Wednesday 23 August 20:51

[BlackLabel]

Countdown said:

BlackLabel said:

To be fair terrorist plots on the west planned in Afghanistan have certainly decreased, in fact they've pretty much disappeared. However it's come at the cost of over 3500 coalition deaths and 10 x as many Afghan civilian deaths.

OK - so if no terrorist acts are being planned in Afghanistan (despite the Taliban being in control of 40% of the territory) what are the benefits of the US going back in?

I'm not being argumentative, I just think it's a stupid idea.

Short answer - to maintain the status quo. No one is really winning over there however at least the terror training camps targeting the rest of the world have gone.

I don't see them as going back in, they are just increasing what they already have there (~10-12k troops) by another 4k.

As to the benefits of staying and not just pulling out completely like Trump promised during the election campaign well is it really worth risking the country turning into another Iraq or Syria and letting the various jihadi groups there have a free rein?

The Taliban may control up to 40% of the country but most of the major cities and provinces are still under the control of the Afghan government. Keeping a certain number of troops there (as well as the whole drone apparatus) will help keep it that way.

I was completely against the Iraq war and welcomed the American withdrawal in 2008-2011 but in hindsight that just made the place worse. ISIS and other groups filled the vacuum that the Americans left and now the Americans are back again albeit in a limited capacity. I don't think we should make the same mistake in Afghanistan.

They should never go back to the ~120k troop levels we once saw in Afghanistan but perhaps having 10-20k troops supporting the government there for the foreseeable future is just something we'll have to accept.

In the long term we'll have to find a political solution to this problem which brings everyone to the table - including the Taliban, and Pakistan and India who both play their own games in Afghanistan.

[Sheets Tabuer]

BlackLabel said:

In the long term we'll have to find a political solution to this problem

How can you do that in a tribal country when it matters more who insulted your brother in law or which 3rd cousin married which local leader than the good of the whole country.

We do not understand the place, we have no business there and we should let it no matter how difficult a thing to do find it's own peace.

[TLandCruiser]

Countdown said:

OK - so if no terrorist acts are being planned in Afghanistan (despite the Taliban being in control of 40% of the territory) what are the benefits of the US going back in?

I'm not being argumentative, I just think it's a stupid idea.

al qaeda Planned the terrorist attacks and not the taliban, the beginning of the invasion was fought predominately against al qaeda forces at bora tora. Before the fighting commenced the taliban wanted to negotiate with the west and in return they were prepared to fight and help kill Bin Laden and the remaining forces of al qaeda.

[Cobnapint]

Strela said:

I live in Afghanistan. I think the range of points made by posters show how complex the situation is. A few observations.

There are different ways to calculate how much territory is outside of government control - by area / population / district centres. And, of course it fluctuates seasonally, with more ground tending to be lost during the summer and retaken in the winter. However you calculate it, it's clearly a catastrophic state of affairs.

I think it's fair to say that nobody has ever controlled 100% of the country, and if the Taliban took power again, they wouldn't either. The Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras haven't forgotten the last time.

Putting aside for a moment the hugely complex issue of who the Taliban are, how they are structured and governed and the conflicts and shifting allegiances within their own ranks, the question of what threat they pose to the west is an interesting one. There is talk of the Russians supporting the Taliban now. By which I mean, some Taliban groups have openly stated that. To whatever extent that may be true, and there are several possible reasons why, the Russians have been trying to constrain Islamist fundamentalism in their central Asian hinterlands for decades and probably incur more Islamist attacks than any other European country. So, why support the Taliban? One possible reason, if it's happening, is precisely because the Taliban is Afghanistan-focused and not expansionist. Daesh pose a greater threat to Russia, and the west, than the Taliban. So, are people backing the Taliban to fight Daesh? It's hard to rule anything out. That said, not all Taliban will welcome Russian support. After all, if there's one country disliked here more than the US, it's Russia.

Regarding the Taliban obtaining nuclear weapons, that's not really conceivable as long as Pakistan continues to exercise huge influence over them.

Interesting. The Russians supporting the Taliban, never saw that one coming. That would explain Trumps U-turn.

On the nuke front, no, the Taliban have never made any reference to nukes but I guess it's every terrorist groups wet dream to have them in the locker. I don't see how Pakistan's influence over the Taliban makes much difference to whether it'll happen or not in the very distant future. China had influence over North Korea, and look what happened there.

[BlackLabel]

How to win friends and influence people, or not.

"US forces in Afghanistan apologize for 'offensive' leaflet after they mistook one of the most holy Muslim creeds for the Taliban flag and printed it on a photo of a DOG - leading to a suicide bomber attacking an American airbase"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4858004/U-...


Reported elsewhere too...

http://www.newsweek.com/us-military-afghanistan-sa...

https://www.rt.com/news/402385-afghan-citizens-res...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/06/us-m...

[Cobnapint]

BlackLabel said:

How to win friends and influence people, or not.

"US forces in Afghanistan apologize for 'offensive' leaflet after they mistook one of the most holy Muslim creeds for the Taliban flag and printed it on a photo of a DOG - leading to a suicide bomber attacking an American airbase"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4858004/U-...


Reported elsewhere too...

http://www.newsweek.com/us-military-afghanistan-sa...

https://www.rt.com/news/402385-afghan-citizens-res...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/06/us-m...

Thick fkers. You'd have thought a bit of research would have been carried out before going to print.

[BlackLabel]

An interesting story from the Afg/Pak region.

Guardian said:

Nearly five years to the day after they were captured by militants linked to the Taliban, an American woman, her Canadian husband and their three children – all of whom were born in captivity – have been rescued, bringing an end to an ordeal the couple described as a “Kafkaesque nightmare”. Pakistani troops, operating on intelligence provided by the United States, rescued Caitlan Coleman, her husband Joshua Boyle and their children after locating them in the mountainous Kurram Valley region that borders Afghanistan.

Link

NYTimes said:

WASHINGTON — A C.I.A. drone was circling a remote valley in northwest Pakistan last month when it picked up an unusual sight: a young woman and children in a militant camp. To intelligence analysts, she appeared to be an American abducted five years earlier while backpacking in Afghanistan with her Canadian husband. The grainy images were a breakthrough. Military planners mobilized members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, an elite group of commandos, to mount a rescue, according to senior American officials. But the operation was called off amid concerns, and days later, the C.I.A. watched in alarm as militants drove the family out of the camp and across Pakistan’s lawless tribal lands. The top American diplomat in Pakistan, Ambassador David Hale, turned to his host country, one of the officials said, delivering an urgent message to the Pakistani government: Resolve this, or the United States will.

Link


Not sure Afghanistan should be your number one backpacking destination though, especially when your wife is pregnant.

Parents of freed US hostage furious with son-in-law for Afghanistan trip. Caitlan Coleman’s father calls Joshua Boyle’s decision to take his pregnant wife to Afghanistan on a backpacking trip ‘unconscionable’

[Elroy Blue]

He was previously married to the daughter of a senior al-Qaida financier and refused to board a US military aircraft because he stated he does not share their aims and was afraid of being held 'hostage'

Things aren't quite as they seem there.

[IroningMan]

Countdown said:

OK - so if no terrorist acts are being planned in Afghanistan (despite the Taliban being in control of 40% of the territory) what are the benefits of the US going back in?

I'm not being argumentative, I just think it's a stupid idea.

Benefits to who? Life under the Taliban was no bed of roses - not unlike life under the Khmer Rouge. There were petitions and emails doing the rounds demanding that the UN take action against the Taliban regime way before 9/11.

[BlackLabel]

That’s an astonishing amount of money.



https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/study-estimates-w...

Non paywall link..

https://www.thedailybeast.com/study-us-spent-dolla...

[andy_s]

Cui bono....?

[Catatafish]

The cash was spent maintaining its own military industrial complex and personel. Such a massive political/economical beast has no reason d'etre except surviving. Certainly not any rational goal like actually eliminating extremists. There seems to be way more about these days.

All of those mega corps like Lockheed, BAe etc. need munitions to be constantly expended somewhere in the world to survive. They pull the strings. Where next?

[BlackLabel]

They never learn.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/06/britain...

[Mothersruin]

The Middle East is not worth the blood of another British Service Person.

[anonymous-user]

Mothersruin said:

The Middle East is not worth the blood of another British Service Person.

I dare say people may have been saying very similar things about countries in Europe during WW1 and 2.

It is always sad when a service person dies on operations, but if it is in the name of ongoing security at home, it is surely worthwhile?