Afghanistan

[kaz7]

Female journalists in Afghanistan are fearing for their lives and many have been "taken off air" as the Taliban's reign of terror begins after the jihadi army seized Kabul.

She told BBC Women's Hour: "Just an hour ago, I received an update from Kabul where they are going house to house searching for women who were activists, women who were bloggers, YouTubers, any women who had a role in the development of civil society in Afghanistan.

"They are going door to door targeting those women and marking the doors with bright pink or bright-coloured paint to ensure 'this is the house we need to come back to and do something about them'

Taliban 'marks doors of prominent women with paint' as females 'axed from TV'

TALIBAN fighters have reportedly marked the doors of prominent Afghan women with paint as several female anchors are axed from TV in a chilling crackdown. Female journalists in Afghanistan are fear…

www.thesun.co.uk

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15888555/taliban-marks-doors-afghan-women-paint-female-anchors-tv/#

 

[mancity1]

To be honest this crossed my mind too. Potentially Trump loyalists in the DoD dropping Biden in the sh*t.

However it went down it's done and it needed to be done. Given that it was already a done deal form the previous administration Biden was between a rock and a hard place and it was never going to be easy. Like I said earlier in the thread, it's like ripping off a plaster (Bandaid for our US cousins). It's going to hurt anyway so you might as well get it done.

I think you might be onto something TMT but I will leave that for the conspiracy theory thread.

I actually feel for Joe on many occasions but he is a hardened politician and he will know who to trust and who to fire.

I like the way he quickly said to the world that rogue Governor from New York had to go.

I will agree with Joe in that the US should have left much earlier and I mean during the Biden period and I am sure he and Obama had many a blew on the departure and how.

Again its just how the final hours were handled that reflects poorly on the US but if they can get out as many as they can now without much bloodshed some good will come from it.

I am not too concerned at the reaction to the US by the EU and the UK to date.

We could have waited for the bandaid to lose its traction if Biden's wishes had of been agreed to by Obama who I think will end up with a far worse legacy on foreign policy than Joe in truth.

he got his man in Pakistan and that should have signalled the beginning of the end for assistance to a country that hasn't the will or the fight to become a democracy more in line with what we know one to be.

 

[west didsblue]

It is a fucking clusterfuck , just seen the taliban news conference , pure bollocks about women when their actions so far are showing no tolerance for them working and wanting to take the girls , the so called army have let every female down

You are right , once isis was defeated they should have supported the tribes but they didnt want to know from the begining , the allied forces were scum to them

It was Al Qaeda not ISIS but I take your point. Not sure all the tribes didn't want to know but there was conflicting loyalties amongst allies which meant that building a unified force was doomed from the outset. In retrospect, and it's easy to say now, after the Taliban were defeated in 2001, the US and its allies should have just left the tribes to sort themselves out. It probably would have been civil war but it wouldn't have lasted 20 years, and the Taliban wouldn't now have a full set of brand new US military hardware that the Afghan army left behind when they melted away over the last few days.

 

[kaz7]

It was Al Qaeda not ISIS but I take your point. Not sure all the tribes didn't want to know but there was conflicting loyalties amongst allies which meant that building a unified force was doomed from the outset. In retrospect, and it's easy to say now, after the Taliban were defeated in 2001, the US and its allies should have just left the tribes to sort themselves out. It probably would have been civil war but it wouldn't have lasted 20 years, and the Taliban wouldn't now have a full set of brand new US military hardware that the Afghan army left behind when they melted away over the last few days.

Christ yeah it was Al Qaeda , my memory is so bad

 

[SiMCFC]

What a cunts trick, get the locals to work for you, get them to believe in you and then fcuk off and leave them to it.
We should be ashamed

We should be ashamed for our part 100% however, a 'massive' amount of those locals would have and did sell their souls to the highest bidder at any given moment.

Mates of mine who served in Afghan have all been fairly unanimous in telling me that the majority weren't arsed about the training, were constantly trying to sell any gear that was given to them and half of them were feeding info back to Taliban whilst working alongside them, everyone knew it was going on but apart from the odd gunfight most missions away from the Capital were a waste of time anyway as villages they visited didn't want the army/police there as they saw coalition troops as meddlers and nothing more, they weren't willing to fight for Afghanistan simple as.

We shouldn't have even been there, as sad as it is, we need to actually allow them to evolve and stop pushing our westernised views on them, obviously if the threat increases we need to deal with it but we just need to stop interfering, it wasn't that long ago we were chopping people's heads off for being Scottish...

 

[idahoblues]

We should be ashamed for our part 100% however, a 'massive' amount of those locals would have and did sell their souls to the highest bidder at any given moment.

Mates of mine who served in Afghan have all been fairly unanimous in telling me that the majority weren't arsed about the training, were constantly trying to sell any gear that was given to them and half of them were feeding info back to Taliban whilst working alongside them, everyone knew it was going on but apart from the odd gunfight most missions away from the Capital were a waste of time anyway as villages they visited didn't want the army/police there as they saw coalition troops as meddlers and nothing more, they weren't willing to fight, simple as.

We shouldn't have even been there, as sad as it is, we need to actually allow them to evolve and stop pushing our westernised views on them, obviously if the threat increases we need to deal with it but we just need to stop interfering, it wasn't that long ago we were chopping people's heads off for being Scottish...

I’d like to see a resumption of beheading Sweats

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

It was Al Qaeda not ISIS but I take your point. Not sure all the tribes didn't want to know but there was conflicting loyalties amongst allies which meant that building a unified force was doomed from the outset. In retrospect, and it's easy to say now, after the Taliban were defeated in 2001, the US and its allies should have just left the tribes to sort themselves out. It probably would have been civil war but it wouldn't have lasted 20 years, and the Taliban wouldn't now have a full set of brand new US military hardware that the Afghan army left behind when they melted away over the last few days.

There was a fair bit of kit left over when the Russian's pulled out in 89 but I don't know how much of it was new. Probably very little.

 

[Blue Mist]

It is colonialism driven by the desire of Capitalists to expand into new markets.

Lenin wrote "Imperialism is the highest stage of development of capitalism. Capital in the advanced countries has outgrown the boundaries of national states"

Countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya are seen as future markets, offer them liberal democracy and they are more likely to be places to adopt capitalist models, more likely to be open to western goods and services, more likely to be places where capitalist's can exploit resources and labour for future profits.

@Rascal I don't disagree with your point at all. It was a lot easier to force colonialism on other countries in the 18th and 19th centuries when we had the guns but we and America are still trying it today. We do it for profit not any ideological belief, women are equal etc.

 

[bluethrunthru]

 

[kaz7]

He is such a bullshitter but is very polished he gets away with it unless you really listen

 

[west didsblue]

He is such a bullshitter but is very polished he gets away with it unless you really listen

The current government are masters at polishing turds.

 

[bluethrunthru]

The current government are masters at polishing turds.

I'd disagree - they leave huge rank smelling turds all over the shop. They don't even try to polish them they just "move on" denying the turd exists and disown any damage done by the stench coming off it by directing the gaze to the new rank turd they have developed......

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

It is colonialism driven by the desire of Capitalists to expand into new markets.

Lenin wrote "Imperialism is the highest stage of development of capitalism. Capital in the advanced countries has outgrown the boundaries of national states"

Countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya are seen as future markets, offer them liberal democracy and they are more likely to be places to adopt capitalist models, more likely to be open to western goods and services, more likely to be places where capitalist's can exploit resources and labour for future profits.

I don't think it is anything to with changing the political economy in any of those countries. How did the transition to Liberal Market economy in Libya go?

The allied forces didn't do much other than offer air support, there was no ground support and the subsequent civil war could have been seen a mile off.

Capitalist interests in the arms industry and access to raw materials (metals, oil etc)? You are probably correct.

Was Vladimir Lenin an anti-imperialist?

Just seems like a different model of imperialism.

By early 1920, Soviet Russia desperately needed oil supplies from Baku.[19] On 17 March 1920, Vladimir Lenin sent the following telegraph to the Revolutionary Military Council on the Caucasus Front:

"We absolutely must take Baku. Direct all your efforts to this end, but it is necessary to remain strictly diplomatic in your statements and to ensure to a maximum extent a solid preparation for the local Soviet power. Same applies to Georgia, although in this case I advise you to be even more careful."

Shirokorad, the Soviet invasion of Azerbaijan was carried out using a standard Bolshevik template: a local revolutionary committee starts real or "virtual" worker riots and requests support from the Red Army. This scheme was used also decades later, during the Soviet invasions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). On 28 April 1920, the Baku Revolutionary Committee filed a formal request for help with the Soviet Russian Government. But a day before, the 11th Red Army, including the 26th, 28th, and 32nd rifle divisions and 2nd mounted corps (over 30,000 soldiers), already invaded the territory of Azerbaijan

Red Army invasion of Azerbaijan - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

See other conflicts involving Soviet Russia before 1922 when Lenin was incapacitated.

List of wars involving Russia - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[frothy]

Sky News just giving the Taliban a half hour free policital broadcast, WTF

 

[mat]

Sky News just giving the Taliban a half hour free policital broadcast, WTF

To allow the current home secretary to steal some of their authoritarian ideas.

 

[PannickAtTheDisco]

To allow the current home secretary to steal some of their authoritarian ideas.

I know. I mean, we could get liberal inspiration from supposedly western countries that lock down their supposedly free citizens over a single case of Covid...

 

[bluethrunthru]

I know. I mean, we could get liberal inspiration from supposedly western countries that lock down their supposedly free citizens over a single case of Covid...

agreed - the obvious thing to do is on the receipt of a positive test don't take measures to prevent spread why not just stone the infected to death and get on with things? There is nothing wrong with taking restrictive measures - not entirely sure what freedoms western citizens have lost except that to live which was lost by those infected.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

I know. I mean, we could get liberal inspiration from supposedly western countries that lock down their supposedly free citizens over a single case of Covid...

Not sure they are compatible, but you seem to have been on an agenda offensive over the past couple of days.

Berating women for not fighting back as they are equal. Check.
They’d get shot for leaving the house. Meh. They’re equal. Fuck them.

Berating a female leader for locking down a country to save lives in a pandemic. A country that has had about 20 people die of the virus. They’ve got a low vaccination rate so far, but are on course to full vaccinate by the end of the year. If they do so with under 100 deaths, she will be vindicated in her response.

Have you been checking on the ratio of males and females to have escaped Afghanistan too? If not, it will give you another angle to spout your hatred.

 

[PannickAtTheDisco]

Not sure they are compatible, but you seem to have been on an agenda offensive over the past couple of days.

Berating women for not fighting back as they are equal. Check.
They’d get shot for leaving the house. Meh. They’re equal. Fuck them.

Berating a female leader for locking down a country to save lives in a pandemic. A country that has had about 20 people die of the virus. They’ve got a low vaccination rate so far, but are on course to full vaccinate by the end of the year. If they do so with under 100 deaths, she will be vindicated in her response.

Have you been checking on the ratio of males and females to have escaped Afghanistan too? If not, it will give you another angle to spout your hatred.

I point out the hypocrisies in the narrative of the Titanic brigade on here. They want to have their cake and eat it.

 

[PannickAtTheDisco]

agreed - the obvious thing to do is on the receipt of a positive test don't take measures to prevent spread why not just stone the infected to death and get on with things? There is nothing wrong with taking restrictive measures - not entirely sure what freedoms western citizens have lost except that to live which was lost by those infected.

weed could be an interesting treatment to be fair.