Tag Archives: Taliban

Taliban Enjoys Deep Belly Laugh Over Diversity Training Materials Left Behind By U.S. Military

Posted on August 16, 2021 | 1 comment

From The Babylon Bee:

KABUL—According to sources in Afghanistan, the Taliban was having a “deep belly laugh” over the diversity training materials left behind by the U.S. military previously stationed there. Taliban fighters captured books like Antiracist Baby, White Fragility, and The GayBCs and collectively cracked up over the ridiculousness of the gender ideology present in the works.

As the American military evacuated quickly with no apparent plan or direction, many top-secret materials were left behind, from battle plans and tactics to books like How to Be an Antiracist and Heather Has Two Mommies. According to sources, after a busy 24 hours conquering all of Afghanistan, the material provided a “much-needed break” and some “well-deserved laughter.”

“Oh man, this is great stuff, Allah be praised,” said one Taliban leader, tears in his eyes, as he read through Pink is for Boys and Jacob’s New Dress. “These American fighters thought they stood a chance against us? Pathetic!”

“Look at this book — the Americans think it is praiseworthy for a boy to dress up like a girl! No wonder they couldn’t win in a war against us!”

At publishing time, the Taliban were kicking themselves after realizing they could have won the war much earlier if they had just called American soldiers by the wrong pronouns.

https://babylonbee.com/news/taliban-enjoys-good-belly-laugh-over-diversity-training-materials-left-behind-by-us-military

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A Saigon Moment Looms in Kabul, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on August 14, 2021 | Leave a comment

“A Saigon Moment” is a nice way of saying that the US withdraws from a country disgraced, with its tail between its legs. From Pepe Escobar at unz.com:

A Taliban fighter holds a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) along the roadside in Herat, Afghanistan’s third biggest city, after government forces pulled out the day before following weeks of being under siege, August 13, 2021. Photo: AFP
A Taliban fighter holds a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) along the roadside in Herat, Afghanistan’s third biggest city, after government forces pulled out the day before following weeks of being under siege, August 13, 2021. Photo: AFP

August 12, 2021. History will register it as the day the Taliban, nearly 20 years after 9/11 and the subsequent toppling of their 1996-2001 reign by American bombing, struck the decisive blow against the central government in Kabul.

In a coordinated blitzkrieg, the Taliban all but captured three crucial hubs: Ghazni and Kandahar in the center, and Herat in the west. They had already captured most of the north. As it stands, the Taliban control 14 (italics mine) provincial capitals and counting.

First thing in the morning, they took Ghazni, which is situated around 140 kilometers from Kabul. The repaved highway is in good condition. Not only are the Taliban moving closer and closer to Kabul: for all practical purposes they now control the nation’s top artery, Highway 1 from Kabul to Kandahar via Ghazni.

That in itself is a strategic game-changer. It will allow the Taliban to encircle and besiege Kabul simultaneously from north and south, in a pincer movement.

Kandahar fell by nightfall after the Taliban managed to breach the security belt around the city, attacking from several directions.

In Ghazni, provincial governor Daoud Laghmani cut a deal, fled and then was arrested. In Kandahar, provincial governor Rohullah Khanzada – who belongs to the powerful Popolzai tribe – left with only a few bodyguards.

He opted to engage in an elaborate deal, convincing the Taliban to allow the remaining military to retreat to Kandahar airport and be evacuated by helicopter. All their equipment, heavy weapons and ammunition should be transferred to the Taliban.

Afghan Special Forces represented the cream of the crop in Kandahar. Yet they were only protecting a few select locations. Now their next mission may be to protect Kabul. The final deal between the governor and the Taliban should be struck soon. Kandahar has indeed fallen.

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All Roads Lead To The Battle For Kabul, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on August 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

Afghanistan is going to be a mess, but the Taliban will probably end up running the country under cover of some sort of fig-leaf coalition. In other words, pretty much the situation before the US invaded 20 years ago. From Pepe Escobar at The Asia Times via zerohedge.com:\

City after city have fallen from government to Taliban control but Afghanistan’s end-game is still unclear…

Afghan militia fighters keep watch at an outpost against Taliban insurgents at Charkint district in Balkh Province in June. Photo: AFP / Farshad Usyan

The ever-elusive Afghan “peace” process negotiations re-start this Wednesday in Doha via the extended troika – the US, Russia, China and Pakistan. The contrast with the accumulated facts on the ground could not be starker.

In a coordinated blitzkrieg, the Taliban have subdued no less than six Afghan provincial capitals in only four days. The central administration in Kabul will have a hard time defending its stability in Doha.

It gets worse. Ominously, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has all but buried the Doha process. He’s already betting on civil war – from the weaponization of civilians in the main cities to widespread bribing of regional warlords, with the intent of building a “coalition of the willing” to fight the Taliban.

The capture of Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz province, was a major Taliban coup. Zaranj is the gateway for India’s access to Afghanistan and further on to Central Asia via the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).

India paid for the construction of the highway linking the port of Chabahar in Iran – the key hub of India’s faltering version of the New Silk Roads – to Zaranj.

At stake here is a vital Iran-Afghanistan border crossing cum Southwest/Central Asia transportation corridor. Yet now the Taliban control trade on the Afghan side. And Tehran has just closed the Iranian side. No one knows what happens next.

The Taliban are meticulously implementing a strategic master plan. There’s no smoking gun, yet – but highly informed outside help – Pakistani ISI intel? – is plausible.

First, they conquer the countryside – a virtually done deal in at least 85% of the territory. Then they control the key border checkpoints, as with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Spin Boldak with Balochistan in Pakistan. Finally, it’s all about encircling and methodically taking provincial capitals – that’s where we are now.

The final act will be the Battle for Kabul. This may plausibly happen as early as September, in a warped “celebration” of the 20 years of 9/11 and the American bombing of 1996-2001 Talibanistan.

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Escobar: The Taliban Go To Tianjin

Posted on August 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

Will Russia, China, and their Eurasian consortium be able to sort out the mess that is Afghanistan? From Pepe Escobar at The Asia Times via zerohedge.com:

China and Russia will be key to solving an ancient geopolitical riddle: how to pacify the ‘graveyard of empires’…

So this is the way the Forever War in Afghanistan ends – if one could call it an ending. Rather, it’s an American repositioning.

Regardless, after two decades of death and destruction and untold trillions of dollars, we’re faced not with a bang – and not with a whimper, either – but rather with a pic of the Taliban in Tianjin, a nine-man delegation led by top political commissioner Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, solemnly posing side by side with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Lateral echoes of another Forever War – in Iraq – apply. First, there was the bang: the US not as “the new OPEC,” as per how the neo-con mantra had visualized it, but with the Americans not even getting the oil. Then came the whimper: “No more troops” after December 31, 2021 – except for the proverbial “contractor” army.

The Chinese received the Taliban on an official visit in order once again to propose a very straightforward quid pro quo: We recognize and support your political role in the process of Afghan reconstruction and in return you cut off any possible links with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, regarded by the UN as a terrorist organization and responsible for a slew of attacks in Xinjiang.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang explicitly said, “The Taliban in Afghanistan is a pivotal military and political force in the country, and will play an important role in the process of peace, reconciliation, and reconstruction there.”

This follows Wang’s remarks back in June, after a meeting with the foreign ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan, when he promised not only to “bring the Taliban back into the political mainstream” but also to host a serious intra-Afghan peace negotiation.

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Featured Story Be Prepared to Live With the Taliban or the Warlords, by Brian Cloughley

Posted on July 13, 2021 | Leave a comment

The over/under on when the Taliban and warlords take over Afghanistan after the US leaves is three months. From Brian Cloughley at strategic-culture.org:

The U.S. and the rest of the world have to be prepared to live with the winner. They had better start planning how they are going to do that.

The Fourth of July marks U.S. Independence Day and it was ironic that at the beginning of the holiday weekend, on July 2, American troops slunk out of the massive Bagram air base in Afghanistan which they had occupied for twenty years. Concurrently, President Biden had a media conference at which he was asked “Are you worried that the Afghan government might fall? I mean, we are hearing about how the Taliban is taking more and more districts.” The President’s reply was barely coherent which is disturbing on several counts, not the least being the indication that he has no idea what the future holds for Afghanistan.

His rambling response was : “Look, we were in that war for 20 years. Twenty years. And I think — I met with the Afghan government here in the White House, in the Oval. I think they have the capacity to be able to sustain the government. There are going to have to be, down the road, more negotiations, I suspect. But I am — I am concerned that they deal with the internal issues that they have to be able to generate the kind of support they need nationwide to maintain the government.” He was then asked another question about Afghanistan but cut the reporter short, saying “I want to talk about happy things, man.”

Happy things? The man is living in fantasyland. Not only has his country suffered the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world, but a Washington Post analysis showed that “through the first five months of 2021, gunfire killed more than 8,100 people in the United States, about 54 lives lost per day” — which is even more deaths than in Afghanistan in the same period, which the New York Times calculated as 2077 (1461 soldiers and police; 616 civilians). Biden should be sitting down with his best and brightest advisers and talking about serious things — such as future U.S. policy concerning Afghanistan.

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Pepe Escobar: Say Hello To The Diplo-Taliban

Posted on July 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

There are many nuances and details that defy simplistic analysis concerning Afghanistan and its place in Asia after the Americans leave. From Pepe Escobar at The Asia Times via zerohedge.com:

Deploying diplomatic skills refined from Doha to Moscow, the Taliban in 2021 has little to do with its 2001 incarnation…

Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (center) and other members of the Taliban arrive to attend an international conference in Moscow on March 18, 2021. Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko / AFP

A very important meeting took place in Moscow last week, virtually hush-hush. Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, received Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan’s national security adviser.

There were no substantial leaks.

A bland statement pointed to the obvious:

They “focused on the security situation in Afghanistan during the pullout of Western military contingencies and the escalation of the military-political situation in the northern part of the country.”

The real story is way more nuanced. Mohib, representing embattled President Ashraf Ghani, did his best to convince Patrushev that the Kabul administration represents stability. It does not – as the subsequent Taliban advances proved.

Patrushev knew Moscow could not offer any substantial measure of support to the current Kabul arrangement because doing so would burn bridges the Russians would need to cross in the process of engaging the Taliban. Patrushev knows that the continuation of Team Ghani is absolutely unacceptable to the Taliban – whatever the configuration of any future power-sharing agreement.

So Patrushev, according to diplomatic sources, definitely was not impressed.

This week we can all see why. A delegation from the Taliban political office went to Moscow essentially to discuss with the Russians the fast-evolving mini-chessboard in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban had been to Moscow four months earlier, along with the extended troika (Russia, US, China, Pakistan) to debate the new Afghan power equation.

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An Empire in Love with Its Afghan Cemetery, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on May 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

By now the brighter lights in the US government know why Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires. From Pepe Escobar at unz.com:

One cannot but feel mildly amused at the theatrical spectacle of the US troop pullout from Afghanistan, its completion day now postponed for maximum PR impact to 9/11, 2021.

Nearly two decades and a staggering US$2 trillion after this Forever War was launched by a now immensely indebted empire, the debacle can certainly be interpreted as a warped version of Mission Accomplished.

“They make a desert and call it peace,” said Tacitus – but in all of the vastness of the Pentagon there sits not a single flack who could imagine getting away with baldfacedly spinning the Afghan wasteland as peaceful.

Even the UN bureaucratic machinery has not been able to properly account for Afghan civilian deaths; at best they settled for 100,000 in only ten years. Add to that toll countless “collateral” deaths provoked by the massive social and economic consequences of the war.

Training and weaponizing the – largely inefficient – 300,000-plus Afghan Army cost $87 billion. “Economic aid and reconstruction” cost $54 billion: literally invisible hospitals and schools dot the Afghan landscape. A local chapter of the “war on drugs” cost $10 billion – at least with (inverted) tangible results: Afghanistan now generates 80% of the world’s opium.

All these embarrassing facts disappear under the shadow play of 2,500 “official” departing troops. What really matters is who’s staying: by no means just a few out of some 17,000 “contractors,” over 6,000 of whom are American citizens.

“Contractor” is a lovely euphemism for a bunch of mercenaries who, perfectly in tune with a shadow privatization drive, will now mingle with Special Forces teams and covert intel ops to conduct a still lethal variation of hybrid war.

Of course this development won’t replicate those David Bowie-style Golden Years in the immediate post-9/11 era. Ten years ago, following the Obama-Petraeus surge, no fewer than 90,000 contractors were dancing to the Hindu Kush groove, lavishly compensated by the Pentagon and dabbling in everything from construction, transportation and maintenance to “enhanced interrogation services.”

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The Yankees Are Coming Home: The Taliban Won. Get Over It, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on April 8, 2021 | 1 comment

The real tragedy of Afghanistan is that the decision to withdraw could have been any time over the last twenty years. From Philip Girladi at strategic-culture.org:

American soldiers can still win wars, but it has to be a real war where there is something genuine at stake, like protecting one’s home and family.

It hardly made the evening news, but the New York Times reported last week that after twenty years of fighting the Taliban are confident that they will fully control Afghanistan before too long whether or not the United States decides to leave some kind of residual force in the country after May 1st. The narrative is suggestive of The Mouse that Roared, lacking only Peter Sellers to put the finishing touches on what has to be considered a great humiliation for the U.S., which has a “defense” budget that is larger than the combined military spending of the next seven countries in order of magnitude. Those numbers include both Russia and China. The Taliban, on the other hand, have no military budget to speak of. That enormous disparity, un-reflected in who has won and lost, has to nurture concerns that it is the world’s only superpower, admittedly self-proclaimed, which is incapable of actually winning a war against anyone.

In fact, some recent wargaming has suggested that the United States would lose in a non-nuclear conflict with China alone based on the obsolescence of expensive and vulnerable weapons systems that the Pentagon relies upon, such as carrier groups. Nations like China, Iran and Russia that have invested in sophisticated and much cheaper missile systems to offset U.S. advantages have reportedly spent their money wisely. If the Biden foreign policy and military experts, largely embroiled in diversifying the country, choose to take on China, there may be no one left around to pick up the pieces.

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US Intelligence Warns Withdrawal Could Lead To Afghanistan Being Controlled By Afghans, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on March 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

Any country that’s so benighted that it thinks it can run itself better than the US government can deserves permanent occupation by the US military. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

US intelligence agencies have warned the Biden administration that if the United States withdraws its military presence from Afghanistan under current circumstances, the nation would be at severe risk of falling under the control of the people who live there.

A New York Times article titled “Officials Try to Sway Biden Using Intelligence on Potential for Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan” warns that an intelligence assessment has predicted that if “U.S. troops leave before any deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government, the militant group will take over much of the country.”

“The intelligence estimate predicted that the Taliban would relatively swiftly expand their control over Afghanistan, suggesting that the Afghan security forces remain fragile despite years of training by the American military and billions of dollars in U.S. funding,” NYT reports.

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Bait-and-Switch: How Officials Perpetuate Bad Foreign Policy, by Ted Galen Carpenter

Posted on March 26, 2021 | Leave a comment

Another name for it is the camel’s nose under the tent: get some sort of minimal involvement in another country and once you’re in, expand the mission. From Ted Galen Carpenter at theamericanconservative.com:

(By Roschetzky Photography / Shutterstock)

Unscrupulous used car dealers could learn a trick or two from America’s foreign policy mandarins when it comes to bait-and-switch tactics. Repeatedly, U.S. officials have invoked a specific justification—frequently an emotionally charged one with wide appeal—to obtain congressional and public support for a military intervention or other questionable policy initiative. When the original justification subsequently proves to be bogus, exaggerated, or no longer applicable, they simply create a new rationale to justify continuing the mission.

That tactic is especially evident with respect to the seemingly endless war in Afghanistan. U.S. leaders justified the initial invasion of the country as a necessary response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Foreign fighters belonging to Al Qaeda had used the country as their primary safe haven, and the Taliban government had allowed Osama bin Laden and his organization to plan and execute the attacks from that sanctuary. Given the public’s emotional trauma from the 9/11 episode, the nearly total lack of opposition to launching the Afghanistan invasion was unsurprising. In statement after statement during the initial months and years that followed, American officials reiterated that defeating Al Qaeda—and, if possible, killing or capturing bin Laden—was the primary objective. Ousting the Taliban regime was a corollary to that goal, but no one advocated a long-term war against that indigenous Afghan faction, however odious its social policies might be.

Within a few years, though, the official justifications were quite different. Washington had moved from supposedly waging war against a foreign terrorist organization to explicitly taking sides in an Afghan civil war. U.S. political and military leaders routinely described the Taliban as the principal enemy as though that were always the case. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were scarcely mentioned at all. Indeed, by 2010, U.S. military commanders conceded that there were probably no more than a few dozen Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

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