Intra-Afghanistan talks in Qatar set for Sept 12th

[Provience]

disagree, but not fully. Pretty sure there are plenty of folks that want a somewhat western life, just get shut out by the extreme. Like most places that have.

Maybe we should just give the Taliban a seat with the understanding that we are going to be doing drone training for the forseeable future. Step out of line and hellfire. War crimes, hellfire. Shooting civilians, hellfire.

there are absolutely a whole bunch of people over there that simply want to run a restaurant or hair salon or be in public without a funny hat. do they care about those things enough to get involved in a shooting war over it? apparently not.

edit: as to your second part, that is basically what we did during the whole 8 years of obama. diplomacy via drone strikes. it didn't work well then either and is why the first couple of years under trump were about building pressure through warfighting on the taliban in order to get them to the table for serious negotiations.

 

[gt1guy]

disagree, but not fully. Pretty sure there are plenty of folks that want a somewhat western life, just get shut out by the extreme. Like most places that have.

You're right. I'm sure there are some, I'm sure there are also those who don't buy into Islam either. But the rest are true believers and religion runs every aspect of their lives. There's no middle ground or grey areas, speak up and your parents will tell on you.


If there's enough of them, maybe now's the time to stand up. I'm sure everyone in the country has a M16 right now.


I honestly think the middle east country that has the most people ready for a change is Iran.

 

[Provience]

You're right. I'm sure there are some, I'm sure there are also those who don't buy into Islam either. But the rest are true believers and religion runs every aspect of their lives. There's no middle ground or grey areas, speak up and your parents will tell on you.


If there's enough of them, maybe now's the time to stand up. I'm sure everyone in the country has a M16 right now.


I honestly think the middle east country that has the most people ready for a change is Iran.

i'm curious to see what the next 10 years holds. certainly the US is going to take a much more serious dove approach to the region, hopefully we can find a way to not dump massive amounts of cash into the region. I dunno, maybe kurdistan will kick off and take parts of iran and turkey with it iraq seems to be generally uninvolved with the northern kurds. maybe northern afghanistan will take a bunch of autonomy strides, especially considering the "world reaction" to the past year of their northern neighbor actions. maybe china and india and pakistan will start a 3 way violence triangle that distracts from the whole thing.

lot's of options that would all be under the US getting involved level.

 

[Provience]

Statement by President and Mrs. Bush on Afghanistan | George W. Bush Presidential Center

Laura and I, along with the team at the Bush Center, stand ready as Americans to lend our support and assistance in this time of need. Let us all resolve to be united in saving lives and praying for the people of Afghanistan.

www.bushcenter.org

Laura and I have been watching the tragic events unfolding in Afghanistan with deep sadness. Our hearts are heavy for both the Afghan people who have suffered so much and for the Americans and NATO allies who have sacrificed so much.

The Afghans now at the greatest risk are the same ones who have been on the forefront of progress inside their nation. President Biden has promised to evacuate these Afghans, along with American citizens and our allies. The United States government has the legal authority to cut the red tape for refugees during urgent humanitarian crises. And we have the responsibility and the resources to secure safe passage for them now, without bureaucratic delay. Our most stalwart allies, along with private NGOs, are ready to help.

Laura and I are confident that the evacuation efforts will be effective because they are being carried out by the remarkable men and women of the United States Armed Forces, diplomatic corps, and intelligence community. And we want to speak to them directly, along with the veterans who have served in Afghanistan.

Many of you deal with wounds of war, both visible and invisible. And some of your brothers and sisters in arms made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror. Each day, we have been humbled by your commitment and your courage. You took out a brutal enemy and denied Al Qaeda a safe haven while building schools, sending supplies, and providing medical care. You kept America safe from further terror attacks, provided two decades of security and opportunity for millions, and made America proud. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and will always honor your contributions.

In times like these, it can be hard to remain optimistic. Laura and I will steadfastly remain so. Like our country, Afghanistan is also made up of resilient, vibrant people. Nearly 65 percent of the population is under twenty-five years old. The choices they will make for opportunity, education, and liberty will also determine Afghanistan’s future. As Dr. Sakena Yacoobi of the Afghan Institute of Learning, which has opened schools for girls and women around the nation, wrote this week: “While we are afraid, we are not defeated.” She added, “Ideas do not disappear so easily. One cannot kill whispers on the wind. The Taliban cannot crush a dream. We will prevail, even if it takes longer than we wanted it to.”

Laura and I, along with the team at the Bush Center, stand ready as Americans to lend our support and assistance in this time of need. Let us all resolve to be united in saving lives and praying for the people of Afghanistan.

official statement from GWB

 

[Yota Up]

Pretty sure there are plenty of folks that want a somewhat western life, just get shut out by the extreme.

To them, "western" = modern and degenerate.
They reject it in favor of tradition and that discipline runs deep.

Most of us can't imagine it because we live a life where we chase comfort and entertainment.

 

[Provience]

Taliban agreed to allow ‘safe passage’ to airport, US says

Washington has a channel with Taliban to ‘resolve issues’ around access to airport, says top US official.

www.aljazeera.com

The Taliban has told the US administration that it will allow a “safe passage” to the airport in Kabul, which remains under the control of American forces, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday.

Sullivan confirmed that the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) is now operational, and flights evacuating Americans and Afghan civilians are under way after a pause on the operation on Monday following chaotic scenes of people looking to flee the country.

this is interesting.

thousands more afghani's are pouring into pakistan over the border, many others have gone north to uzbekistan, uganda is going to temporarily house thousands for the US, the UK has said they will take 20k.....and to smooth things along the Taliban sounds like they are going to "allow" people to get to the airport let's see if it holds.

 

[realsquash]

I'm sure Biden would love to bring in tens of thousands. 86 billion for the refugees. This is an incredible shit show.

 

[Provience]

MSN

Inside the Afghanistan province that refuses to buckle to Taliban

The small, picturesque province of Panjshir at the foot of the lush Hindu Kush mountain range has become the last bulwark against Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, who have seized the country at bre…

nypost.com

outspoken fracturing of afghanistan continues, looks like they picked up a decent bit of afghan national defense force personell and equipment.

much of the flyable afghan air force left a few days ago and this northern province seems to be another spot for many people who fled kabul.

a few protests have popped up in a few cities, mostly met with gunfire into the air to disperse people, sometimes met with gunfire into people.

 

[Provience]

Taliban claims to have taken over Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley

Taliban says it’s in control of final region outside its rule, but opposition forces say fight will continue.

www.aljazeera.com

The Taliban has taken complete control of Panjshir province, the last area in Afghanistan held by resistance forces, the group’s spokesman said, as it cemented its control of the country three weeks after taking over Kabul.

“With this victory, our country is completely taken out of the quagmire of war,” chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Monday.

well, fuck.

 

[realsquash]

Taliban claims to have taken over Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley

Taliban says it’s in control of final region outside its rule, but opposition forces say fight will continue.

www.aljazeera.com

well, duh.

FTFY

 

[Provience]

FTFY

i dunno. i'm hopeful that this is basically the taliban version of GWB and "mission accomplished" banner. Panjshir claims they are still well and kicking, if they spend the next few decades being the terrorists against the taliban government, well, that works

 

[Eric]

There will be no peace as long as there is religion.

 

[Provience]

There will be no peace as long as there is religion.

yeah but hell, there won't be peace without religion either. people need to accept that there just won't be peace and quit pretending that giving up "just this little bit this time" of their personal sovereignty will result in the fabled guarantee of peace

 

[Provience]

The West is getting Afghanistan wrong – again

Here are four misconceptions about the Afghan crisis that Western politicians and pundits continue to spread.

www.aljazeera.com

The West is getting Afghanistan wrong – again​

Here are four misconceptions about the Afghan crisis that Western politicians and pundits continue to spread.

• 
  Ahmad M Siddiqi
  Novelist and academic

12 Sep 2021

An Afghan man sells the flags of the former Afghan government and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan during the anti-Pakistan protest in Kabul on September 7, 2021 [West Asia News Agency via Reuters]
The dust has settled on a chaotic United States withdrawal from Afghanistan. It began with faulty predictions of the Afghan government’s longevity (at least 18 months, we were told in April), continued under the protective wing of its adversaries, and concluded with a drone strike which killed some of the Afghans, several of them children, whom the US was so keen to evacuate.
Longtime observers of the US and NATO war, with its frequent unmet timelines and repeated insistence that change was just around the corner, should not be surprised. Despite amassing a wealth of data on Afghanistan and making profitable careers for an army of analysts, contractors and assorted “experts”, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to paraphrase Sun Tzu, failed to understand either its enemy or the nature of its own intervention.
This article attempts to address several of the most salient misconceptions, past and present, while reflecting on what might be expected of the new Taliban-led dispensation.

‘Al-Qaeda is coming back’​

Two days before the fall of Kabul, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace declared that Afghanistan was “heading towards civil war”, suggesting the history of Afghanistan and the fragmented nature of the Taliban movement meant al-Qaeda would “probably come back”. Since then, his views have been echoed by former US ambassador Ryan Crocker, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, and numerous other commentators and politicians.
Such statements are based on an outdated understanding of the situation in Afghanistan and the greater Middle East. After 2001, al-Qaeda found more fertile ground outside Afghanistan, chiefly in places where governance was shattered and local resentments created by US invasions and bombing campaigns (Iraq, Yemen, Libya).
It has been the presence, rather than the absence, of US violence that has created support for the organisation. Meanwhile, more extreme outfits like ISIL (ISIS) have superseded al-Qaeda both in importance and in their ability and willingness to strike on US territory.
By contrast, the Taliban has shown no inclination to take its fighting outside Afghan borders, despite many opportunities to do so, and was tacitly collaborating with US forces against ISIL in Afghanistan. In the present day, no government can guarantee that none of its nationals will ever carry out an attack in another country – could Australia?
But there is every reason to take seriously the Taliban’s evident interest in establishing a peaceful order in Afghanistan. The tragic ISIL attack on Kabul airport only underscores the urgency of doing so.

 

[Provience]

‘The Taliban is fragmented’​

The claim that the Taliban is fragmented is also a common misconception. Drawing an inaccurate parallel between the divided mujahideen insurgency against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and the Taliban, this assertion has been made repeatedly over the years, notably during the Obama presidency as an excuse to avoid serious negotiations: if the Taliban leadership has no control over its constituent commanders, who is there to negotiate with?

Such beliefs led to Obama’s stop-start policy of negotiations interspersed with head-hunting by drone strikes. The former, often focused on trying to wean away individual commanders and split the insurgency, yielded no political achievements; the latter resulted in no lasting military gains.

In reality, the Taliban has operated for many years as a cohesive insurgent movement with consultative leadership and multiple centres of power. At times there have been internal tensions and even violence between them, but as a whole, the movement has displayed the ability to weather these conflicts and remain intact.


It clearly demonstrated this cohesiveness and internal discipline last year, in adhering to its peace agreement with the US: in accordance with its public pledges, it initiated peace talks with the Afghan government and its attacks on ISAF forces dropped to next to nothing. Quietly, Taliban forces also provided a ring of security to shield ISAF bases from ISIL attacks.

The Taliban’s highly coordinated military campaign this summer, meanwhile, contrasted sharply with the failure of the mujahideen to capture the provincial city of Jalalabad in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, a failure that breathed three more years of life into the then widely unpopular communist government.

That is not to go to the other extreme of claiming that the Taliban is a completely unitary actor. The movement remains decentralised, and compliance of individual commanders with, for example, the Taliban code of conduct in war, has been uneven. Nevertheless, its leadership has demonstrated the capacity to articulate the movement’s red lines, develop consensus around policies which do not cross them, and largely enforce it.

 

[Provience]

‘The Taliban triumphed due to foreign support’​

Accompanying ISAF and the Afghan government’s failures over the years has been a steady narrative drumbeat in search of a scapegoat, most commonly Pakistan, which has been accused of providing support for the Taliban.

Students of the history of counterinsurgency will note nothing unusual here: incumbent governments routinely attempt to deny insurgents any indigenous legitimacy, instead blaming their failures on the clandestine machinations of foreign sponsors. Thus, for the US, the Vietcong were puppets of the USSR and North Vietnam; for the French, the Algerian nationalists were puppets of Egypt and the USSR; for the Soviets, the mujahideen were the puppets of the US and Pakistan.

And indeed, claims of support are accurate so far as they go: not only Pakistan, but a number of regional powers (Iran, China, Russia, several Arab states) have maintained ties with the Taliban over the last decade, even as they have also supported ISAF’s mission and the Afghan government in various ways. Weapons and funds, either acquired on the black market or through state support, flowed through some of these channels – although the biggest source of Taliban weapons was likely the Afghan security forces themselves.

However, as explanations for NATO’s failure in Afghanistan, analyses blaming foreign forces obscure as much as they reveal. If foreign support was the crucial determinant of victory, then why did the Afghan government, which by any measure received far more external support, continuously lose ground to the Taliban over the last two decades, even before this final, swift collapse?

The reason is that external support is a double-edged sword. While shoring up an insurgent movement or government’s military capabilities, it costs it crucial legitimacy as an indigenous force. And in this respect, the Afghan government, with four-fifths of its budget coming from foreign aid, with an army far larger than it ever could sustain, with resentments in its bureaucracy and security forces running deep against the Western advisers and officers who were running the show, proved itself far more dependent on foreign sponsorship than the Taliban.

As for the Taliban, it is impossible to measure the extent of popular support it enjoys as a movement in Afghanistan. In some places, people have welcomed its governance as an improvement on that of Kabul; in others, it remains deeply mistrusted.

But the Taliban narrative, that the dispensation in Kabul was corrupt and beholden to foreign powers, that the war it waged was against an un-Islamic occupation that has long overstayed its welcome, was a narrative that enjoyed widespread resonance.

It appealed to those who recalled tales of the British invasions; those who suffered under the Soviet occupation; those who were persecuted and imprisoned in the aftermath of NATO’s victory in 2001; those who lost friends or relatives as “collateral damage” in NATO airstrikes; those who dealt every day with the corruption and injustices of government officials.

For most of the last 20 years, the Taliban has been the only group credibly fighting on behalf of that narrative. Unsurprisingly, it has always had sympathisers to provide shelter and intelligence, and a ready supply of recruits to replace those fallen on the battlefield.

 

[Provience]

‘The US withdrew too soon’​

Since the Taliban takeover, US President Joe Biden has faced a crescendo of criticism from Republicans, pro-war sections of the media, the foreign policy establishment and allies like the UK. His administration has been savaged for betraying the sacrifices of US veterans and Afghan allies, for pulling US troops out too soon, for not making its withdrawal “conditions-based”.

Yet what these critics are never able to give a satisfactory answer to is when would have been the right time to withdraw and how those conditions would have been met. The “too-hasty withdrawal” in reality began in 2014, when the vast majority of ISAF forces left Afghanistan, five years after President Barack Obama’s ill-fated “surge”.

The residual force of 10,000-15,000 never had the capacity to reclaim the initiative from the Taliban. Its sole purpose was to support and train an Afghan security force capable of defending on its own. That it has failed to do so in seven years, to say nothing of the previous 13, points to the more fundamental problems suggested above.

As one study of the ISAF mission concluded: “The real analytical problem is to explain why the post-2001 effort persisted along a path which was obviously leading to a dependent Afghan state … One hypothesis … [is] that what the mission to Afghanistan after 2001 was meant to achieve was exactly what it achieved … Unfortunately, the politics and diplomacy of Western powers in Afghanistan had changed quite radically by 2012; at that point what was needed was a client state able to stand on its own feet, and little time was available to even conceive a strategy to achieve that.”

Biden is quite correct in his assertion that delaying the decision to withdraw would have achieved nothing, and deserves some credit for resisting his commanders’ invariable demands for more troops and more time.

He deserves criticism for not managing the withdrawal in a less chaotic manner, but the most likely route to achieving that would have been to admit the US had been defeated and arrange a transfer of power to a Taliban-led set-up beforehand. Needless to say, few of his critics were ready to come to terms with that reality.

 

[Provience]

What the future holds​

NATO’s war in Afghanistan, which by one estimate resulted in the deaths of 243,000 – most of them Afghans – has finally come to an end. The Taliban is victorious, but what kind of victor it will be remains to be seen.

There are some promising signs: the relatively bloodless culmination of the Taliban’s offensive, where many cities surrendered as a result of deals negotiated with local security forces or elders; the talks with former adversaries in Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah; the absence of systematic revenge killings – although there have been isolated accounts of executions and the monitoring of US-allied Afghans. It is also unclear what the situation is in Panjshir, which has resisted the Taliban takeover.

Ethnically, the Taliban has diversified from the exclusively Pashtun movement it was in the 1990s. As early as 2009, the Peshawar shura of the Taliban established a front dedicated exclusively to non-Pashtuns; Tajiks, Turkmens, Uzbeks and some Hazaras have joined the ranks of the Taliban in recent years. It was partly by expanding its presence in the multiethnic north that the Taliban was able to withstand Obama’s surge against its southern heartlands; a fact that was once again underlined by the swift capitulation of northern cities in the recent offensive.

In recent years, Shia Hazara communities have also sought and received the protection of the Taliban against ISIL. And after the takeover, the Shia in Kabul were able to carry out Muharram processions in peace.

Nevertheless, like any ruling dispensation in Afghanistan, the Taliban remains Sunni and Pashtun-dominated, and its just-announced interim government gives every impression of being a government of the victors. True, these victors have been arguably more generous and more willing to speak to their defeated opponents than the US was in 2001.

Nevertheless, they will need to reflect that until they provide them, and Afghanistan’s minority communities in general, a stake in governance, they will struggle to command broad legitimacy either locally or internationally.

Finally, the status of women under a Taliban-dominated regime has rightly raised concerns. The Taliban has made positive, though vague noises, supporting the right of women to work and be educated through university level, within an “Islamic framework”. What that means has yet to be spelled out, and it is possible to imagine more or less concerning scenarios.

Frustration at the unwillingness of Taliban officials to give a clear answer resulted in women’s marches on the streets of Kabul and Herat, and the Taliban’s rough-handed dispersion of these protests is not a reassuring sign.

Any honest analysis of the future of women in Afghanistan, however, has to take cognisance of the following qualifications: first, that what are frequently described as “the gains of the last 20 years” were often gains limited to a minority of women and girls from among the minority of Afghans who are urbanised, whereas the losses imposed on Afghan women by a relentless and brutal war – in deaths, injuries, trauma, insecurity, economic loss – were more broadly shared.

 

[Provience]

Second, that Western powers prominently used the cause of women’s rights as a justification for continuing war, and by so associating and tarnishing women’s rights with the occupation, ensured they would become unnecessarily controversial and vulnerable once the mood of society turned against that occupation.
And third, that regressive attitudes to women in Afghanistan neither originated with nor are limited to the Taliban; in many places, they simply reflect the cultural norm, and the work of changing that norm is a much more challenging and arduous process that can only occur over time within Afghan society.
In its rhetoric, the Taliban is undoubtedly a movement transformed from its suspicious and insular antecedents. It seeks international legitimacy and at least some of its leadership recognise that the kind of rule it tried to impose in the 1990s is, and always was, unsustainable in Afghanistan.
Still, as noted earlier, the Taliban is not a unitary actor, and the pressures of governance will test its cohesion in ways that the war never did. The best the international community can do at this stage is to recognise that it is the dominant power in Afghanistan, to assist its leadership in stabilising the economy and accessing the frozen assets of the Afghan state, and while doing so, push it to honour its public commitments of establishing an inclusive government and guaranteeing the rights of women and minorities.
Those who advocate sanctions or more aggressive intervention are deluded in thinking that such an approach will somehow help Afghans. In reality, they will only satisfy their own sense of wounded pride. The record of the last 40 years of intervention in Afghanistan bears tragic witness to that.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

---

• 
  Ahmad M Siddiqi
  Novelist and academic
  Ahmad M Siddiqi is a novelist and academic. He completed his PhD from Oxford on the topic of Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan and the impact of the Soviet occupation. His research interests include revolutionary war and counterinsurgency, war and politics in Afghanistan, and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

 

[Provience]

thought it was an interesting article in todays AJ opinion section

 

[arse_sidewards]

Wanna give us the TL;DR since you're the resident sandbox expert?

 

[Provience]

Wanna give us the TL;DR since you're the resident sandbox expert?

well the long is the interesting part

basically the whole wrap-up is that continued sanctions and freezing of Afghan assets by "the west" as punishment against the Taliban for taking over is doing significantly more harm than good and just makes "the west" look worse in the eyes of the people.

there is a whole bunch more to it than that and he has a pretty neat take on the situation, some of it dealing with US politics is spot on and some of it seems more like the typical foreigner view of politics. Talking about how the afghan government itself was ultimately far more dependent on foreign aid than the taliban was is an interesting point, noting that it may well have been by design during the bush years, but the transition of power in the US and resulting policy shifts to the Obama years were not met with similar removal of dependency is interesting. It certainly fits with the obama middle east diplomacy of "cash and drones" that we say in Iran/Syria/Lybia/Iraq as well as AFG and a whole bunch of counter-terror places in Africa.

While it may not effect the article as a whole, an interesting side note is the negative space. I can't remember after just reading it if the author even once mentioned the trump admin, which was the shift away from sending cash, increasing sanctions on the AFG due to corruption, open direct negotiations with the taliban, directly setting peace terms. There is a mention of several of those things with references to "UN/Nato/ISAF" though

some of the other stuff is made up boggiemen that is a bit more common in foreign media. i.e. "the US doesn't understand because Republicans said we should have never left!" which seems like a pretty obvious oversimplification, distortion and/or outright lie depending on how you view intent. at least this article is long enough to dig deeper in other areas and not just leave things at that.

 

[Provience]

Drone attack killed 10 civilians in Kabul, US acknowledges

Top US general offers apology and says it is ‘unlikely’ that those killed in Afghanistan were associated with ISKP.

www.aljazeera.com

Drone attack killed 10 civilians in Kabul, US acknowledges​

Top US general offers apology and says it is ‘unlikely’ that those killed in Afghanistan were associated with ISKP.

“Having thoroughly reviewed the findings of the investigation and the supporting analysis by interagency partners, I am now convinced that as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children, were tragically killed in that strike,” McKenzie said.

The US general offered “profound condolences” to the families of the victims, stressing that the attack was taken with the “earnest belief” that it would prevent an imminent attack on the airport where American forces were evacuating people.

Pentagon acknowledges ‘mistakes’​

The strike on August 29 came days after a suicide bombing near the airport, claimed by ISKP, killed at least 175 people, including 13 US service members.

The US pulled all of its forces from Afghanistan by the end of last month as the Taliban took over the country, capturing Kabul in mid-August.

US troops, which remained in control of the airport in Kabul as the Taliban took control of the capital, conducted a massive and chaotic evacuation operation to airlift American citizens, third-country nationals and Afghan allies.

this is terrible. seriously.

We all knew that the hard line in the sand or swift whatever that the US president claimed would rain down on the Taliban for any violence against American's or NATO during the airport fiasco was always going to simply be a target bomb or two. We also all knew that anything that DID happen would immediately be labeled as "ISIS" inspired and NOT taliban for optics. We ALSO knew that we would not target any top Taliban official in retaliation over concerns for 'destabilizing'

So of course the most reasonable thing to happen would be that the Taliban would quickly offer up a body or 10 and throw them over a bridge or hang them publicly and say "these people were the ISIS and see what we have done? we are here for peace!" or the US would take the strike into their own hands and do what we did with a drone targeting a car and claiming "We got the guy". Obviously the latter is what happened. there was a big press rush and all kinds of attention, for a coordinated attack and then for us to have made solid retaliation about 24 hours later was interesting, but lot's of people get tracked for lots of time so not terribly unheard of.

and now the suspicions and rumblings are confirmed by the pentagon. Yup, we killed somebody who was just out living his life and trying to do good, wholly unrelated to anything political. That is not good. that is bad.

it would be interesting to see the investigation results to see who/where/what got this particular car on the radar and where his label came from.



and then there is this guy, bad optics for his recently damaged brand.

Mark Milley, the top US general, called the drone attack “righteous” on September 1.

“I don’t want to influence the outcome of an investigation, but at this point we think that the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike,” Milley said then.

 

[aczlan]

and now the suspicions and rumblings are confirmed by the pentagon. Yup, we killed somebody who was just out living his life and trying to do good, wholly unrelated to anything political. That is not good. that is bad.

it would be interesting to see the investigation results to see who/where/what got this particular car on the radar and where his label came from.

From that article "McKenzie described a series of activities by the vehicle targeted by the raid that gave the impression that it was linked to a possible attack on the airport, including a stop at a building associated with ISKP operatives."
So, someone picked up their Uncle in the city near the airport and then dropped them off at a random building and got blown up for their troubles.

Aaron Z

 

[Provience]

From that article "McKenzie described a series of activities by the vehicle targeted by the raid that gave the impression that it was linked to a possible attack on the airport, including a stop at a building associated with ISKP operatives."
So, someone picked up their Uncle in the city near the airport and then dropped them off at a random building and got blown up for their troubles.

Aaron Z

the early reports where that the guy was picking up and trading in water jugs.

Zemari Ahmadi, 43, and nine members of his family, including seven children, were reportedly killed in the blast, his brother Romal Ahmadi told the New York Times.

However, military officials have admitted they did not know the identity of the person targeted in the strike, and had only deemed him suspicious because that day he had "possibly" visited an Islamic State safe house and was seen loading what officials believed to be explosives into his car, according to the New York Times.

Ahmadi worked for 14 years as a technical engineer in Afghanistan for US-based charity group Nutrition and Education International.

Last week the New York Times reported the strike did not target a jihadi bomber transporting explosives, as US officials believed - but actually killed an aid worker whose car was filled with water jugs.

Pentagon DEFENDS Kabul airstrike despite claim aid worker & 7 kids were killed

THE Pentagon has defended the last US drone strike in Kabul despite a report that claimed the Hellfire missile killed an innocent aid worker and seven children. On Monday the Pentagon’s Press…

www.the-sun.com

article from the 13th

 

[Provience]

but yeah. "hey, we need a scape goat, who do you have?" "uh, this guy picked up something heavy...." "OK, ghost him and we will say that he was the head honcho! mission success!"

just fucked, something seriously got fucked in this process. I'm not trying to say that no regular person should ever be wrongly killed or that it should be reasonable to expect they will never be wrongly killed. i'm pretty okay with it happening. blasting around that "oh we certainly got the guy!" when it all happened so quickly is the disturbing part.

it's the same "at this point, what does it even matter?" fucking response to the 9/11 benghazi shit show when the media circus and politics were blasting that it was simply a response to a cartoon/video. no, get fucked.

 

[Provience]

FINALLY THE PURPOSE OF THE THREAD HAS COME FULL CIRCLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


SIGNING OF DOHA MENTIONED AS HISTORIC EVENT!!!!!!!!!!!!

HISTORY ON THE BOOKS PEOPLE, THANK YOU EVERYBODY WHOSE PARTICIPATED!!!!!!!!

US general says Afghanistan collapse rooted in Trump-Taliban deal

Top general says collapse of the Afghan government can be traced to US troop withdrawal deal.

www.aljazeera.com

30 Sep 2021
Senior military officials in the United States have linked the collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces in August to former President Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban in 2020 promising a complete withdrawal of US troops.
General Frank McKenzie, the head of Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that once the US troop presence was pushed below 2,500 as part of Washington’s bid to complete a total withdrawal by the end of August, the unravelling of the US-backed Afghan government accelerated.

“The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military – psychological more than anything else, but we set a date – certain for when we were going to leave and when they could expect all assistance to end,” McKenzie said.

He was referring to a February 29, 2020, agreement that the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, in which the US promised to fully withdraw its troops by May 2021 and the Taliban committed to several conditions, including stopping attacks on US and coalition forces.

The stated objective was to promote a peace negotiation between the Taliban and the Afghan government, but that diplomatic effort had failed to gain traction before former US President Donald Trump was replaced by President Joe Biden in January.

The new US president pushed ahead with the plan for the troop withdrawal but extended the deadline to August 31.

McKenzie said he also had believed “for quite a while” that if the US reduced the number of its military advisers in Afghanistan below 2,500, the collapse of the government in Kabul would be inevitable “and that the military would follow”.

He said in addition to the morale-depleting effects of the Doha agreement, the troop reduction ordered by Biden in April was ”the other nail in the coffin” for the 20-year war effort because it blinded the US military to conditions inside the Afghan army, “because our advisers were no longer down there with those units”.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, testifying alongside McKenzie, said he agreed with McKenzie’s analysis.

He added that the Doha agreement also committed the US to ending air attacks against the Taliban, “so the Taliban got stronger, they increased their offensive operations against the Afghan security forces, and the Afghans were losing a lot of people on a weekly basis”.

‘Strategic failure’​

Wednesday’s House hearing is part of what is likely to be an extended congressional review of the US failures in Afghanistan, after years of limited congressional oversight of the war, which has cost billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said a day earlier in a similar hearing in the Senate that the war in Afghanistan was a “strategic failure,” and he repeated that at the House hearing.

Milley listed a number of factors responsible for the US defeat going back to a missed opportunity to capture or kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora soon after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

He also cited the 2003 decision to invade Iraq, which shifted US troops away from Afghanistan, “not effectively dealing with Pakistan as a (Taliban) sanctuary,” and pulling advisers out of Afghanistan a few years ago.

Biden has faced the biggest crisis of his presidency over the war in Afghanistan, which he argued needed to be brought to a close after 20 years stalemated fighting that had cost American lives, drained resources and distracted from greater strategic priorities.

Republicans have accused Biden of lying about the military commanders’ recommendations to keep 2,500 troops in the country, playing down warnings of the risks of a Taliban victory, and exaggerating the US’s ability to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for armed groups like al-Qaeda.



“I fear the president may be delusional,” said Mike Rogers, the top Republican on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, calling the withdrawal an “unmitigated disaster”.

“It will go down in history as one of the greatest failures of American leadership,” Rogers said.

Shouting matches​

Wednesday’s hearing was politically charged, descending repeatedly into shouting matches, as representatives argued over what Democrats characterised as partisan Republican attacks on Biden, particularly over an August television interview in which the president denied his commanders had recommended keeping 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.

He said then: “No. No one said that to me that I can recall.”


One committee member, Republican Representative Mike Johnson, used the time he had been allotted for questions to read the interview transcript out loud.

Republican Joe Wilson said Biden should resign.

Democrats faulted Republicans for blaming Biden – who has been president since late January – for everything that went wrong during the 20 years US troops have been in Afghanistan.

Representative Adam Smith, the committee’s Democratic chairman, said he agreed with Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.

“Our larger mission to help build a government in Afghanistan that could govern effectively and defeat the Taliban had failed,” Smith said.

“President Biden had the courage to finally make the decision to say no, we are not succeeding in this mission.”

So there you have it folks! Austin, Milley, Mcckenzie, ALL 3 of whom were majorly involved over the past 2 decades blame..............PAST LEADERSHIP! It was clearly TRUMPS FAULT!

yeah, yeah, there is more to it than that, but wow! right? I mean, right? who could possibly have seen this one coming

of course, everybody agrees with the current presidents actions and statements. certainly no jobs will be lost.

US general says Afghanistan collapse rooted in Trump-Taliban deal

Top general says collapse of the Afghan government can be traced to US troop withdrawal deal.

www.aljazeera.com

 

[Provience]

Taliban says women banned from universities in Afghanistan

The US and Britain criticised the ban, which the Taliban says preserves “national interest” and women’s “honour”

www.aljazeera.com

pretty typical and as expected, just like the mass killings of previous public officials and such

The spokesman for the ministry, Ziaullah Hashimi, who tweeted the letter, confirmed the order to several news agencies including AFP and the Associated Press.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric described the move as “troubling”.

“It’s clearly another broken promise from the Taliban,” Dujarric told reporters on Tuesday.

“We have seen since their takeover … a lessening of space for women, not only in education, but access to public areas,” he said.

“It’s another very troubling move and it’s difficult to imagine how a country can develop, can deal with all of the challenges that it has without the active participation of women and their education.”

‘Feeling this pain’​

The Taliban has defended its decision, saying such restrictions have been done to preserve “national interest” and women’s “honour”.

Several Taliban officials said the secondary education ban is only temporary, but they have also wheeled out a litany of excuses for the closure – from a lack of funds to the time needed to remodel the syllabus along Islamic lines.

It has also restricted women from most fields of employment, ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public, and banned them from parks and gyms.

 

[Provience]

Taliban orders NGOs to send women workers home

Ban comes days after Taliban-run government ordered universities to suspend classes for women until further notice.

www.aljazeera.com

Afghanistan’s Taliban-run administration has ordered all local and foreign non-governmental organisations (NGO) to stop female employees from coming to work, according to an economy ministry letter, in the latest crackdown on women’s freedoms.

The letter, confirmed by economy ministry spokesperson Abdulrahman Habib on Saturday, said the female employees were not allowed to work until further notice because some had not adhered to the administration’s interpretation of Islamic dress code for women.



bungled

 

[Gregj50!!!!!]

Taliban orders NGOs to send women workers home

Ban comes days after Taliban-run government ordered universities to suspend classes for women until further notice.

www.aljazeera.com

Afghanistan’s Taliban-run administration has ordered all local and foreign non-governmental organisations (NGO) to stop female employees from coming to work, according to an economy ministry letter, in the latest crackdown on women’s freedoms.

The letter, confirmed by economy ministry spokesperson Abdulrahman Habib on Saturday, said the female employees were not allowed to work until further notice because some had not adhered to the administration’s interpretation of Islamic dress code for women.



bungled

Carry on with business as usual….. to the time before the US was ever fully involved!!!!!