Afghan women flee as Taliban gains ground in Afghanistan

Why is Afghanistan falling to the Taliban so fast?

The Afghan special forces could help the US “clear an area, but the police can’t hold it, not because they’re out-gunned or out-manned. It’s because they are useless as a security force and they’re useless as a security force because they are corrupt down to the patrol level. Of all the painful lessons I carry out of my time in those two war zones, Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s the … corruption at every level, that is the starkest point.”
Ambassador Ryan Crocker

 

Yep! Along with the corruption comes intimidation. Intimidation in the form of threatening to kill family members of the individuals who fail to cooperate and further reinforcement of that intimidation by severely harming/wounding a family member- such as a child.

 

And supplementing your U.S.-taxpayer-subsidized salary by using your U.S.-taxpayer-funded weapons to extort money from the villagers you're supposed to be protecting and providing security-for-hire for the local warlord's opium fields. The Afghan Police are (were) nothing more than an organized crime syndicate with uniforms.

 

The Afghan government is blatantly corrupt and gives little to no support to the security forces. Soldiers in many outposts get nowhere near enough food to sustain them, and yet they're expected to hold the line and defend a government that doesn't care about them. In return they don't care about the government and don't feel it's worth dying for. They might change their minds after the Taliban takes over.

On the other hand the Taliban is made of Muslim religious fanatics who believe Allah will reward them in the afterlife for fighting a noble holy cause. When a side believes that what they're fighting for is more important than their lives then there's no stopping them without overwhelming force, which has been taken away.

 

And the US staying there 20 years didn’t help a damn thing!

 

The idea the US occupies a country for humanitarian reasons, belies the existence of the republican party, which took the "human" out humanitarian.

 

It will be interesting to see how a government run by homicidal maniacs will confront the world. I think we know how they'll treat women and anyone that dares to speak of freedom. Or flies a kite. Or listens to music. Or dares to adhere to a different religion. Or uses words that are not approved. Or--or--or--or-- or--etc-etc-etc----------

 

Not my monkeys; not my circus.

 

Yeah, all done with that

 

“The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”
Georg Hegel


U.S. Embassy In Kabul Tells Staff To Destroy Sensitive Material And Evacuate

 

The US built up their infrastructure, because they are going back eventually. They wanted better roads and electricity for their next invasion. Afghanistan is the stone age, in the middle of nowhere even for the third world, but it has one of the richest mineral and rare earth deposits on earth, which the US surveyed while they were at it. There's no rush, Russia will not invade again, knowing it now belongs to the US, and isn't worth their time.

 

Afghanistan Update:
- AL JAZEERA NEWS:

• Taliban fighters have surrounded the capital but promised not to attack as talks got under way.

Afghanistan | Today's latest from Al Jazeera

 

Taliban Advances on Kabul; U.S. Evacuation Accelerates:

• The insurgents, after seizing control of the eastern city of Jalalabad, encircled the Afghan capital and sees a frenzied flight for Kabul.

BBC NEWS:

Afghanistan - BBC News.

 

Taliban insurgents entered the Afghanistan capital Kabu:

• US diplomats evacuated by chopper

REUTERS NEWS:

Taliban enter Afghan capital as US diplomats evacuate by chopper | Reuters

 

Deja Vu.

 

Yes I remember it well.and concur

 

Before you shed a tear for the Afghan National Army, remember that from 2008 to 2017 our ANA "partners" killed 152 ISAF personnel and wounded 200. The US military became so concerned with the green-on-blue attacks in 2012 that it ordered units to designate “guardian angels” in each unit whose one and only job was to overwatch Afghan soldiers working with Coalition troops at gunpoint, shooting any that appeared to present a threat. That our allies are shooting us in the back, and we're returning the favor, should have suggested to somebody in Washington that things were off the rails ten years ago.
Green-on-Blue Attacks--too Much, too Often
Green-on-blue attacks in Afghanistan: the data

 

But now we'll have to deal with the Taliban.

Choosing the lesser of two evils just doesn't work. Didn't work in Vietnam, didn't work here. If the U.S. is going to prop up a regime it needs to make sure that it's a good regime, not one rife with incompetence and corruption. It must be a regime that both its military and its civilians support. Otherwise when we leave it's bound to collapse.

 

(Afghan women flee as Taliban gains ground in Afghanistan)

• Ads depicting women ‘painted over’ after Taliban enter Kabul - (Sam Hancock)

Adverts of women wearing wedding dresses appear to have been painted over in Kabul after Taliban fighters entered the Afghanistan capital.
A man was seen using a roller and white paint to cover up the large images outside a building in a photograph posted on Twitter by an Afghan journalist on Sunday, reports Chiara Giordano.
It comes despite a Taliban spokesman’s claim the militant group “will respect rights of women” when it takes control of Afghanistan.

 

For 20 years the US spent billions of dollars on high-tech equipment to create a modern fighting force that could stand up to the Taliban.
Within months of the US announcing its withdrawal, Afghan troops have abandoned a large portion of that hardware as they skedaddle from guys in compact pickup trucks armed with antiquated AK-47's (as in '1947') and RPG-7s. As a result, all of that equipment is now in the hands of the Taliban.
Taliban have inherited abandoned military hardware in Afghanistan
Weapon seizures 'massive boon' for Taliban as cities fall