Where does it say Saudi Arabia?
Afghanistan
- Thread starter Sherzad
- Start date
My post from another thread..... The Taliban allegedly wanted evidence he was behind 9/11 before being willing to hand him over to a third country. Dubya, still enraged by the 9/11 attacks, was at that point in no mood to barter with the Taliban (who he didn't consider honest brokers in the first place), so he opted to in go in to remove the Taliban, AQ, and find Bin Laden. The Taliban then tried another a last ditch attempt to use Bin Laden as a negotiating tool to stop the bombing (this was a week into the campaign) but Dubya/Cheney and team at that point likely interpreted that as a stall tactic and simply proceeded with the campaign.
I was in Afghanistan in 2002 and spoke to Mutawakil myself and never got the impression that the actual people who make the decisions (Mullah Omar and the Quetta Shura) were serious about handing him over as opposed to leveraging him as a delay tactic to preserve and reorganize their own resources before and during bombings. Also, the likelihood that Bin Ladin, who had upwards of 2000 Arabs in country with him would voluntarily just give himself up to be extradited to the US is more farce than reality. And finally, the objective was not just to get rid of Bin Laden, it was to make sure Afghanistan would no longer be a state sponsor of terrorism that could be used by a future Bin Laden type character or organization to plot further attacks in the west.
Good job there!
You now have Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya as places this sort of shit could happen from.
wrt your impressions - you lot were in a position of strength, what harm could it have done to give it a try? Loss of face basically. Apparently that was more costly than 17 years of war.
It does, Pervez Musharraf said that in his book, In the line of fire.
Afghanistan is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism. There was no option but to remove the Taliban since their medevil brand of religious fanaticism was amenable to hosting more extremist groups like Al-Qaeda. Pakistan’s inability to control its lawless tribal areas where the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other militants continue to operate in remains the primary problem for Afghanistan’s stability.
I wish that were true, but it's not. Afghanistan is responsible for terrorism in Pakistan. There is now also ISIS in Afghanistan, thanks to the CIA. China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan are all worried about the terrorist presence in Afghanistan.
https://nation.com.pk/13-Jul-2018/p...agree-to-carry-out-joint-efforts-against-isis
I don't know how long you've been retired, but there are no lawless regions in Pakistan, the army waged war there and cleared them all out. We're even trying to build a fence to keep them out - only the Afghan government seems to object to it. The fence should be finished by next year.
The links only say “a third country”, hence my confusion.
Why do you think the IS elements have emerged in Afghanistan? It’s because of its continued instability due to the fact that the Taliban have been using Pakistani territory as a base to continue destabilizing Afghanistan and its government from within. Now that the Taliban are finally negotiating for a peace deal, the IS groups have been subsuminng the militancy from them. So until the tribal area issue inside Pakistan is resolved, Afghanistan will continue to have to deal with cross border militants, which will lead to further internal conflict.
If they were "outsourcing" the militancy, then why are they fighting amongst themselves? The IS element has "emerged" because 17 years of war have done nothing to make any of us secure anywhere in the world. What it has done is made us all unsafe and under threat from global jihadists. Instead of tackling this like a security problem and using intelligence and policing tactics to dismantle these networks and make us safe from them, the US and it's allies have engaged in war and spread these turds far and wide. It's like you guys litterally picked up a massive shit and threw it at the biggest fan you could find.
Do you think the Taliban is a homogeneous entity? It was and always has been factioned. There was scope for use of diplomacy to work with them through back channels, to take out networks like ISIS and Al Queda, there still is, instead the US is interested in the blame game, and new places to fight wars.
Name 1 country that is safer after 17 years of war? Afghanistan? Pakistan? Yemen, Somalia, Iraq? Syria? Libya? All countries bombed by the US, none of them any safer than they were in 2001. Are western countries any safer? Are any NATO allies safer?
War was a failed strategy then and it's a failed strategy now. If anyone needed threatening it was the Saudi's with their wahhabi fanatic factories!
@Zlatattack
Just came across this, let’s hope it works.
https://www.aljazeera.com/programme...ed-groups-lawless-region-180524202539111.html
Just came across this, let’s hope it works.
https://www.aljazeera.com/programme...ed-groups-lawless-region-180524202539111.html
So does everyone else. At the very least it'll prevent these regions from ever being in that same FUBAR state ever again. It literally was governed like a colonial outpost from the 19th century.
So - you negociated with the Taliban itself? wow. I am the only one on this forum who just works in a shitty IT job?
Sounds good but isn’t particularly realistic. Like it or not, war and violence are still the ultimate arbiters of human conflict so it’s unrealistic to expect the world’s most powerful state to not respond.
As an IT you should know not to believe what everyone claims online either.
Much of the problem imo has been the arbitrary nature of the Durand Line which has only served to fracture the Pashtuns across what eventually become two different countries which has been a constant problem in the legitimate territoriality of Afghanistan.
Yeah, Afghanistan would be more stable if the pukhtun bits joined Pakistan. We already have more than twice as many as Afghanistan. Heck most of them were probably Afghans at one point!
The Pashtuns were divided between different states long before the Durand Line formalised the boundary.
Dasht-i-Barchi is the Hazara area of Kabul. Seems Islamic State.
How do people like the Hazaras figure in this scenario, or those who want to give their daughter an education? The list could go on, but I guess it's clear what I mean. You took care not to treat Afghans as a homogenous group in your posts, but you haven't addressed those on the other side of that scenario's dividing line so far.
I'm not able to say how representative this is of the population as a whole, but it is definitely a thing. Nevertheless, this may say something about how bad the current situation is, but not really much about the desirability of alternatives.
What you describe was true for 1990s Taliban rule as well, a state of affairs you said you would have wanted to continue. Initially they had considerable support, in large part because people were hoping for some kind of stability after the horrors of the civil war. But they were increasingly hated by a lot of those people for their medieval practises and sheer brutality in enforcing them (in addition to those who never had anything to hope for from their rule), and that included conservative-minded people and Pashtuns as well.
I guess the bottom line is this: The situation in Afghanistan was so horrible for so long that, to many people, any change soon seemed better than the status quo. But after a while each new situation became the status quo that was hated for good reasons. To the best of my knowledge, this also applies to the Americans and the current Republic, who have featured in both roles of that play. Is there anything to the scenario laid out in the two quotes at the top that makes you think it could be a way out of this, and not just another episode along those lines?
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I think the best case scenario is a peace deal with the current iteration of the Taliban. Both sides are war weary after all these years and would be amenable if the right terms are met. Then, the irreconcilable IS elements would find it much harder to gain traction. The country as a whole is in far better condition today than it was 15 years ago in terms of infrastructure, institutions, the rule of law etc., so this final piece of reconciliation would go a long way towards moving the process forward.
Wasn’t a political solution with the Taliban being mooted as the only feasible positive outcome by those most familiar with the area several years ago? I want to say ‘5ish’ years...?
This is a long time coming despite how bitter the taste; not too dissimilar from admitting Assad will have to remain in power for practical reasons.
This is a long time coming despite how bitter the taste; not too dissimilar from admitting Assad will have to remain in power for practical reasons.
The Taliban opened a political office in Qatar in 2013 that was supposed to be used as their political base from which to advance negotiations. I'm guessing this new effort is a part of that. The success of the negotiations obviously depends on them and the position the current Afghan government take.
Jalaluddin Haqqani died a couple of days ago it seems.
Good.
Watched an interesting 2 part documentary on Afghanistan on Netflix. The Great Game.
The real solution lies in the formation of greater Afghanistan.
Could have probably just been redrawn ~100 years later, with the Soviet Union and the US left & right and Daoud in the middle.
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Edit: Thinking about it, this analogy doesn't really make sense. Well.
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Edit: Thinking about it, this analogy doesn't really make sense. Well.
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Taliban Slaughter Elite Afghan Troops, and a ‘Safe’ District Is Falling
SANG-E-MASHA, Afghanistan — One pickup truck after another arrived at the government compound in a district capital in Afghanistan on Sunday, pulling around to the back of the governor’s office to unload the dead, out of sight of panicked residents.
Soldiers and police officers, many in tears, heaved bodies of their comrades from the trucks and laid them on sheets on the ground, side by side on their backs, until there were 20 of them.
The dead all wore the desert-brown boots of Afghanistan’s finest troops, the Special Forces commandos trained by the United States. Four days earlier, the soldiers had been airlifted in to rescue what is widely considered Afghanistan’s safest rural district, Jaghori, from a determined assault by Taliban insurgents.
Early on Sunday, their company of 50 soldiers was almost entirely destroyed on the front line. And suddenly, Jaghori — a haven for an ethnic Hazara Shiite minority that has been persecuted by extremists— appeared at risk of being completely overrun by the Taliban.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/...i-district.html#click=https://t.co/carp5Vw5B8
SANG-E-MASHA, Afghanistan — One pickup truck after another arrived at the government compound in a district capital in Afghanistan on Sunday, pulling around to the back of the governor’s office to unload the dead, out of sight of panicked residents.
Soldiers and police officers, many in tears, heaved bodies of their comrades from the trucks and laid them on sheets on the ground, side by side on their backs, until there were 20 of them.
The dead all wore the desert-brown boots of Afghanistan’s finest troops, the Special Forces commandos trained by the United States. Four days earlier, the soldiers had been airlifted in to rescue what is widely considered Afghanistan’s safest rural district, Jaghori, from a determined assault by Taliban insurgents.
Early on Sunday, their company of 50 soldiers was almost entirely destroyed on the front line. And suddenly, Jaghori — a haven for an ethnic Hazara Shiite minority that has been persecuted by extremists— appeared at risk of being completely overrun by the Taliban.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/...i-district.html#click=https://t.co/carp5Vw5B8
What the Taliban do after they take this district will be very telling about the future of Afghanistan. Nobody in the region can afford a rinse and repeat of the first version of the Taliban.
Neighbouring states like Pakistan/China/Iran should consider providing the Taliban a sense of legitimacy (once they win the war) and offer support and funding for re-building in exchange for guaruntees that the Taliban won't host terrorist groups or engage in sectarian or ethnic warfare once they take over.
I think their victory is ineviatable, but to let them do what they did last time is morally incorrect and will destablise the region again. Lets engage the cavemen rather than shun them.
Neighbouring states like Pakistan/China/Iran should consider providing the Taliban a sense of legitimacy (once they win the war) and offer support and funding for re-building in exchange for guaruntees that the Taliban won't host terrorist groups or engage in sectarian or ethnic warfare once they take over.
I think their victory is ineviatable, but to let them do what they did last time is morally incorrect and will destablise the region again. Lets engage the cavemen rather than shun them.
The U.S. Never Dropped As Many Bombs On Afghanistan As It Did In 2018
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallm...18-infographic/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallm...18-infographic/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Do you really think appeasing them might work?
What do you see as the alternative if they don’t do as China, Iran, and Pakistan wish?
Well Pakistan, China and Iran can simply mine and fence thier borders (as Pakistan is already doing) and keep the Afghans contained to thier own hell hole.
Also I don't consider working with your neighbours appeasement. They have as much legitimacy in Afghanistan as any of the other warlords dressed up as diplomats. They're a reflection of the ruined horrible society that is Afghanistan. It suits the interests of the neighbouring countries to busy them in governance rather than war.
If they don't want to do that, they you just have to let the Afghans fight it out amongst themselves.
Without Pakistan state support the taliban would wither away. The wrong country was invaded after 9/11. Hopefully china can arm twist pakistan into controlling its terrorists.
You're right. It should have been Eygpt and Saudi Arabia.
As for controlling Pakistan, - dream on. NATO shit the bed in Afghanistan, Pakistan is a very different creature. Pakistan will do anything to counter the Indian aggression towards it.
For decades the Indians have tried to support Afghan governments which are hostile to Pakistan to create instability in Pakistan and also to use Afghanistan as a military threat to Pakistan. Pakistan has in it's custody a senior Indian Navy official who was caught in Pakistan and has confessed to being the RAW agent coordinating with terrorist groups in Pakistan, specifically the TTP. This has been an openly stated strategy of Indian security advisor Ajit Doval.
Pakistan will fight those designs against it, to the last Afghan. It's sad, but it's real politik.
The Chinese have no interests in curbing that, their only interest is keeping their economic investment in Pakistan safe.
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Tibet.WOW
Remind me which was the right country to invaded ?
You've literally just spelled out isi propaganda there.
When has India ever done anything to pakistan except in retaliation ? What "Indian aggression" are you talking about ?
One of the biggest gripes that i have with Indian foreign policy is that we've never done anything to pakistan, we are always responding to things that pakistan initiates.
More slaughter, this time targeting a Mawlid ceremony:
Kabul suicide bomber kills dozens at gathering of clerics
https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-46273612
Kabul suicide bomber kills dozens at gathering of clerics
https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-46273612
Disgusting, Isis I assume.
Everytime I see a notification for this thread my heart sinks and I think "what horror has occurred now" .