Afghanistan. It's fucked

[JimC]

Or they can get the Chinese vaccines, which have a very low efficacy...

[Tero]

Miller in Trump WH
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen ... l_advisor)
prevented any visas given to Afghans under Trump

[Tero]

Welcome to Tajikistan
GDP-PPP Per capita
$3,354

8F4EA409-4415-4F5D-AF0F-D8E178DAD255.jpeg (101.65 KiB) Viewed 772 times

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajikistan

[JimC]

Tajikistan probably has little choice - they'll be pouring over the border in any case...

[Seabass]

It's looking more and more like this is another case of Republicans fucking something up really, really badly, and then blaming it all on the Dems. In other words, standard modus operandi.


video:
https://twitter.com/NickKnudsenUS/statu ... 3604294657

[Seabass]

Trump's deal with the Taliban set the stage for the Afghan collapse

History will mark Aug. 15, 2021, as the date that the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban retook control over this troubled and war-torn country. But the real date that the Taliban’s victory was assured is Feb. 29, 2020, the day the Trump administration signed what it characterized as a “peace” deal with the Taliban. Once this agreement was signed — the tragic collapse we witnessed this weekend was inevitable.

Of course, the agreement was not, and could not possibly have been, a “peace” deal since one of the parties currently at war — the Afghan government — was not a signatory. Rather, this was a “withdrawal” agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban that set the terms for the complete departure of American troops from Afghanistan by May 2021.

What did the United States gain in exchange for this withdrawal, for which the Taliban had been fighting for 20 years? Nothing but vague, unenforceable promises that the Taliban would not engage in hostilities against the departing U.S. troops and would “send a clear message” to al Qaeda that it “had no place” in Afghanistan. So eager Trump was to withdraw, we did not even hold out for a clear, firm commitment that the Taliban would not provide aid, safe harbor or weaponry to al Qaeda and like-minded groups. The agreement contained no enforcement mechanisms and included no penalties on the Taliban for failing to comply with its terms.

Once the agreement was signed, the fate of the Afghan government was signed, sealed and delivered — the Taliban had practically won the war. There was no way that the government could possibly survive.

The fact that the United States entered into negotiations and then an agreement with the Taliban, without even inviting the Afghan government to the table, undercut the power and legitimacy of the government. The citizenry, including those in the national armed services and police, could plainly see that its own government was being ignored, a helpless bystander in critical discussions about the country’s future. After we had cut the legs out from under this government and rendered it a paper tiger, it is no wonder that when those serving in the Afghan army and police were asked to fight, most said, “No, thanks.”

The agreement also did absolutely nothing to attempt to bring about a peaceful settlement of the war between the Afghan government and the Taliban. A genuine peace deal would have made our withdrawal contingent on the progress of peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. But it did not. Trump agreed unconditionally to bring down U.S. troop levels to 8,600 by mid-July 2020 and totally withdraw by May 2021.

The agreement anticipated there would be peace negotiations, but in August, Trump voluntarily cut troop levels down to 4,500, even more quickly than required by the agreement, even though negotiations had not even begun. This was a clear signal there would be no linkage between withdrawals and peace, contrary to what U.S. diplomats were telling the parties. This signal was received loud and clear by the Taliban. They balked at starting negotiations until December, and even then, had zero incentive to make any concessions since Trump had already announced that there would be only 2,500 troops in Afghanistan by the time he left office, the smallest U.S. force in 20 years. It was clear to the Taliban that the Americans were quickly headed for the exits.

When the fighting season began again this year, the only hope for the Afghan government was to show that it could stand up to the Taliban even with reduced American support to gain leverage at the bargaining table. But results on the ground were just the opposite. The Taliban gobbled up territory more quickly than it had in years. As the Taliban’s power increased, it had even less reason to engage in peace negotiations.

To stem the Taliban’s momentum on the ground this spring, the Biden administration would have had to not only abrogate the Trump withdrawal agreement but also deploy more troops and get them more deeply involved in the fighting. This would have breached Biden’s campaign commitment to end the war in Afghanistan and ran against the strong bipartisan public support for withdrawal.

The Taliban reads statements from American politicians and likely watches poll numbers. They could not have been surprised when, in April, Biden reaffirmed the American commitment to a complete withdrawal of troops, albeit on a somewhat slower timetable.

The Taliban knew it had won the war once Biden’s predecessor had signed the troop withdrawal agreement — now it was only a matter of time.

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-se ... n-collapse

[Seabass]

Republicans blame Biden for the US's chaotic withdrawal but are glossing over how Trump's Taliban deal set up the disaster

A number of congressional Republicans are criticizing President Joe Biden's handling of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan amid desperate scenes of Afghans scrambling to get on airplanes out of the country.

Yet the decision to leave the country was originally negotiated under President Donald Trump and allowed the Taliban to strengthen their position against the US-backed government — a circumstance most Republicans skirted around in their criticism.

After Taliban forces took control of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, over the weekend, GOP lawmakers effectively said that the Biden administration was solely to blame for the collapse of the Afghan government.

"The Biden Administration's botched exit from Afghanistan including the frantic evacuation of Americans and vulnerable Afghans from Kabul is a shameful failure of American leadership," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement on Sunday.

While the highest-ranked Republican senator pointed out that both Republican and Democratic administrations over the past several years had overseen foreign-policy failures in Afghanistan, he placed the brunt of the current situation on Biden.

"I have never hesitated to express myself candidly when leaders of either party threatened to put politics ahead of reality on the ground," McConnell said. "But as the monumental collapse our own experts predicted unfolds in Kabul today, responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of our current Commander-in-Chief."

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has long opposed a full military withdrawal from Afghanistan, also faulted Biden for the crisis in the country.

"It is only a matter of time until al-Qaeda reemerges in Afghanistan and presents a threat to the American homeland and western world," Graham said in a tweet. "President Biden seems oblivious to the terrorist threats that will come from a Taliban-run Afghanistan"

—Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 16, 2021
Similarly, Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, condemned the president and said he did not carry out Trump's strategy.

"President Biden owns this mess — the blood is on his hands," Inhofe said in a statement on Sunday. "President Biden did not inherit the current withdrawal from President Trump — in fact, he has deviated from the previous administration's plan and set his own disastrous course."

He added: "Biden needs to admit he made a strategic mistake leading to tragic consequences for U.S. national security and the Afghan people."

Some GOP lawmakers also criticized Biden, who had been on planned vacation at the presidential retreat Camp David, for staying silent on the issue as the Taliban seized control of Kabul on Sunday.

"The American people deserve to hear immediately from their commander-in-chief and to know who's in charge," Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas wrote on Twitter.

As the backlash mounted, Biden on Monday afternoon defended his decision to pull out at the White House.

While the Biden administration executed the US withdrawal, it was the Trump administration that brokered a deal with the Taliban to pull out US troops. The agreement, signed in February 2020, stipulated that US troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan within 14 months. The deal was much criticized for acceding to the Taliban demand of not including the Afghan government. At the time, the Taliban already controlled nearly half the country.

Biden largely upheld the Trump-era deal, though he didn't follow that exact timeline. Many observers said the US's agreement in principle to depart cost it leverage it could have used to compel the Taliban to adhere to the peace deal and a cessation of hostilities.

After the negotiations, Trump began slimming down the US's presence. By mid-January, there were only about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. To put this into perspective, there were more US troops deployed to Washington, DC, as a result of the January 6 insurrection than the number deployed in Afghanistan.

An Afghan special-forces officer told The Washington Post that Trump's withdrawal deal demoralized Afghan troops and made them feel as though a Taliban takeover was inevitable.

"The day the deal was signed we saw the change. Everyone was just looking out for himself," the officer said.

Trump on Sunday criticized Biden over the Afghanistan withdrawal, saying that the president didn't follow the plan he crafted. But outside the original timeline, in which US troops would've fully pulled out in May, Biden hardly diverged from Trump's peace agreement.

Biden in a statement on Saturday placed blame on Trump for the chaos in Afghanistan, saying that he'd inherited a deal that "left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001."

There is ample evidence that the US withdrawal has been rushed and sloppy, particularly when it comes to helping vulnerable Afghans who assisted the US during the conflict. But the US's ultimate failure in Afghanistan cannot be laid at the feet of a single president or administration.

The war in Afghanistan has been chaotic from start to finish, with US troops often unsure of their mission as multiple administrations — both Republican and Democratic — misled the public about the state of the conflict.

Over the years, Americans were repeatedly told that the US was turning a corner in Afghanistan, but there was rarely evidence to back that up. The US invested $83 billion in training and equipping Afghan forces, with little to show for it. The Afghan military consistently struggled with endemic corruption and discipline issues, exhibiting few signs that it could defeat the Taliban without US assistance.

Every president who has overseen this war made decisions that exacerbated the conflict in various ways.

The war in Afghanistan began in October 2001 under President George W. Bush, who within the first month of the conflict rejected an offer from the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden in exchange for the US to stop bombing the country. In May 2003, the Bush administration declared that "major combat" was over in Afghanistan. As time would show, this was exceptionally premature.

President Barack Obama drastically ramped up America's troop presence in Afghanistan in 2009 — a move that Biden opposed as vice president. In 2014, Obama shared a timeline to bring US troops home by 2016. He declared an end to the US combat mission in the country in December 2014, but the war was nowhere near finished — and US troops remained in Afghanistan when Obama left office.

While Trump promised to end "forever wars," he relaxed the rules of engagement for airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2017, and under his watch, civilian casualties in the county rose 330% from 2016.

Biden announced the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in April. The Taliban continued to make gains across the country throughout spring and into summer, raising fears of an eventual takeover. Last month, Biden rejected the notion that it was "inevitable" the Taliban would regain power and expressed confidence in the Afghan military. Within a matter of weeks, the Taliban was back in control of Afghanistan.

There's no doubt that Biden and his advisors got much wrong about what would transpire in Afghanistan, but recent events are a product of years of poor decision-making by the US. Like other empires before it, the US has learned the hard way that no amount of military might and money can fundamentally change a complex country like Afghanistan.

https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-bla ... eal-2021-8

[Seabass]

At the Save America rally in Ohio Saturday, former President Donald Trump said he started the troop withdrawal and the Biden administration couldn't stop it.

[Seabass]

They all did.

Biden just did it in a more grandiose way.

Trump did say how it should have gone. Sounded like a MUCH better plan than the one Biden enacted.

Approximately it was get the Americans out first, then the troops, then bomb the bases so they couldn't be used anymore.

Sounds like Biden had different motivations though.

Olivia Troye is a Republican who worked for Pence inside the Trump administration. This is her response to right-wing media claims that Trump would have gotten everyone out safely.

https://twitter.com/OliviaTroye/status/ ... 5665679361

There were cabinet mtgs about this during the Trump Admin where Stephen Miller would peddle his racist hysteria about Iraq & Afghanistan. He & his enablers across gov’t would undermine anyone who worked on solving the SIV issue by devastating the system at DHS & State.(1/7)
I tracked this issue personally in my role during my WH tenure. Pence was fully aware of the problem. We got nowhere on it because Trump/S. Miller had watchdogs in place at DOJ, DHS, State & security agencies that made an already cumbersome SIV process even more challenging.(2/7)
I met w/ numerous external organizations during my White House tenure who advocated for refugees & pleaded for help in getting US allies through the process. I got the phone calls & letters as the homeland security & CT advisor to Pence…(3/7)
The system wouldn’t budge, regardless of how much this was argued about in National Security Council mtgs. The Pentagon weighed in saying we needed to get these allies through the process-Mattis/others sent memos. We all knew the urgency but the resources had been depleted.(4/7)
The fear of people across the Trump Admin to counter these enablers was palpable. There were numerous behind closed door meetings held-strategizing how to navigate this issue. The Trump Admin had FOUR years…(5/7)
..Trump had FOUR years-while putting this plan in place-to evacuate these Afghan allies who were the lifelines for many of us who spent time in Afghanistan. They’d been waiting a long time. The process slowed to a trickle for reviews/other “priorities”-then came to a halt.(6/7)
To people like Ben Domenech, JD Vance & others who are making blanket statements & pushing narratives of convenience on Afganistan-especially on the SIV/allies issue-please, just stop. Your comments are uninformed & also hurtful. We see right through you.(7/8)
Grateful for everyone advocating the urgency of getting our allies evacuated out of Afghanistan ASAP & those who are doing everything they can to help. It’s the least we can do for these individuals & it’s a matter of national security. The world is watching.(8/8)

Olivia Troye interview:

https://www.msnbc.com/ali-velshi/watch/ ... 9192645927

[L'Emmerdeur]

It's never too cold to jihad.

'What I Learned While Eavesdropping on the Taliban'

When people ask me what I did in Afghanistan, I tell them that I hung out in planes and listened to the Taliban. My job was to provide “threat warning” to allied forces, and so I spent most of my time trying to discern the Taliban’s plans. Before I started, I was cautioned that I would hear terrible things, and I most certainly did. But when you listen to people for hundreds of hours—even people who are trying to kill your friends—you hear ordinary things as well.

On rare occasions, they could even make me laugh. One winter in northern Afghanistan, where the average elevation is somewhere above 7,000 feet and the average temperature is somewhere below freezing, the following discussion took place:

“Go place the IED down there, at the bend; they won’t see it.”

“It can wait ’til morning.”

“No, it can’t. They [the Americans] could come early, and we need it down there to kill as many as we can.”

“I think I’ll wait.”

“No, you won’t! Go place it.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes! Go do it!”

“I don’t want to.”

“Brother, why not? We must jihad!”

“Brother … It’s too cold to jihad.”

Yes, this joke came in the middle of plans to kill the men I was supposed to protect, but it wasn’t any less absurd for it. And he wasn’t wrong. Even in our planes with our fleeces and hand warmers, it really was too damn cold for war.

...

Days before my 22nd birthday, I watched fighter jets drop 500-pound bombs into the middle of a battle, turning 20 men into dust. As I took in the new landscape, full of craters instead of people, there was a lull in the noise, and I thought, Surely now we’ve killed enough of them. We hadn’t.

When two more attack helicopters arrived, I heard them yelling, “Keep shooting. They will retreat!”

As we continued our attack, they repeated, “Brothers, we are winning. This is a glorious day.”

And as I watched six Americans die, what felt like 20 Taliban rejoiced in my ears, “Waaaaallahu akbar, they’re dying!”

It didn’t matter that they were unarmored men, with 30-year-old guns, fighting against gunships, fighter jets, helicopters, and a far-better-equipped ground team. It also didn’t matter that 100 of them died that day. Through all that noise, the sounds of bombs and bullets exploding behind them, their fellow fighters being killed, the Taliban kept their spirits high, kept encouraging one another, kept insisting that not only were they winning, but that they’d get us again—even better—next time.

...

[W]hen it was too cold to jihad, that IED still got planted. When they had 30-year-old AK-47s and we had $100 million war planes, they kept fighting. When we left a village, they took it back. No matter what we did, where we went, or how many of them we killed, they came back.

Ten years after my last deployment, and after 20 years of combat with the world’s richest, most advanced military, the Taliban has reclaimed Afghanistan. Whatever delusions existed about whether this would happen or how long it might take have been dispatched as efficiently as the Afghan security forces were by the Taliban over a single week. What little gains have been achieved in women’s rights, education, and poverty will be systematically eradicated. Any semblance of democracy will be lost. And while there might be “peace,” it will come only after any remaining forces of opposition are overwhelmed or dead. The Taliban told us this. Or at least they told me.

They told me about their plans, their hopes and dreams. They told me exactly how they would accomplish these goals, and how nothing could stop them. They told me that even if they died, they were confident that these goals would be achieved by their brothers in arms. And I’m sure they would have kept doing this forever.

They told me how they planned to keep killing Americans. They told me the details of these plans: what weapons they would use, where they would do it, how many they hoped to murder. Often, they told me these things while doing the killing. They told me that, God willing, the world would be made in their image. And they told me what so many others refused to hear, but what I finally understood: Afghanistan is ours.

[Seabass]

Maybe what he heard was Taliban watching an Indiana Jones movie?

[Brian Peacock]

... In 2016, for example, 65% of initial applications by Afghans for asylum in the UK were rejected and the now criminalised hopefuls were sent back. Perhaps they could try to flee again on the same plane they were flown back on if it’s still available. The country they are now trying to escape doesn’t seem to have the bright future the Home Office insisted it did five years ago, when their applications were deemed groundless.

Dominic Raab, the former Brexit negotiator who was uncertain of both the position of Calais and the commercial function of the Channel, said the speed of the Taliban’s advance took him by surprise. Why? It didn’t surprise me and everything I know about Afghanistan I learned from the first Iron Man film. If Raab had done even the basic research he would know the best way to defend Kabul is with a metal suit made by a selfish billionaire and a captured local scientist...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... fghanistan

[Tero]

Nikki Haley thinks that after pulling out you can negotiate:
"They're not negotiating with the Taliban. They've completely surrendered to the Taliban. They surrendered Bagram Air Force Base, which was a major NATO hub. They surrendered $85 billion worth of equipment and weapons that we should have gotten out of there.

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-tal ... to-the?amp

Besides, Republican senators will happily build whatever arms are needed in their states.

[Seabass]

Republican congressman Bill Posey:
https://spacecoastdaily.com/2021/08/con ... vacuation/

“Recent events in Afghanistan underscore the need for a proper plan when conducting military operations. Every effort should have been made to evacuate Americans, our allies and military equipment before pulling out,” said Rep. Posey.

“While I have long supported the winding down of U.S. military presence in the region, it’s tragic that after 20 years, tremendous sacrifices made by our brave men and women in uniform, and trillions of dollars, Afghanistan is now just as dangerous as it was before 9/11. Strong leadership is needed to protect American lives on the ground and ensure our national security moving forward.”

Also Republican congressman Bill Posey:
Full List of 16 Republicans Who Voted Against Visas for Afghans Who Helped U.S. Troops

The Republicans who voted against the resolution were: Andy Biggs of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Jody Hice of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Barry Moore of Alabama, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Bill Posey of Florida, Matthew Rosendale of Montana and Chip Roy of Texas.

[BarnettNewman]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-17/ ... /100382960

China is ready to deepen "friendly and cooperative" relations with Afghanistan, a foreign ministry spokeswoman says, after the Taliban seized control of the country.

"The Afghan Taliban said on multiple occasions that it hopes to grow sound relations with China, looks forward to China's participation in Afghanistan's reconstruction and development, and will never allow any force to use the Afghan territory to engage in acts detrimental to China," spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a press briefing.

"We welcome those statements."

I trust that Afghani women and girls deeply appreciate these sentiments...

Well a pipeline through Afghanistan from Iran would be a welcome development for them