Afghanistan

Homar said:
A disaster from the beginning. Hundreds of thousands dead, countless billions wasted, and a country in ruins. All for what? What can they say to the families of those that lost their family members? I live in hope that one day Blair will face justice.
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Sadly the way Afghanistan was being ran the internal civilian deaths would have happened anyway the losses that could and should have been avoided were the British Service personnel.
 
Phil Mitchell Foden said:
Underfunded? The US alone spent over 2 trillion dollars in Afghanistan. Who knows what the figure is accounting for the whole of the wider NATO coalition and charities like UNICEF.

NATO built and provided an Afghan airforce. NATO troops spent decades training, arming and equipping the Afghan National Army and police.

There's a lot of criticisms you can make but I don't think you can say the project was underfunded. It's been 20 years in the making. The collapse is absurd though, and has a lot to do with party politics in America juggling an unpopular war. Shameful the way the country was just handed back to the wolves though, but also likewise the way in which the Afghan security forces just handed it over.

As I mentioned in the other post though, you're asking them to believe in a nation state and Afghan national identity when the vast majority of Afghans find that an alien concept. Why it was ultimately always doomed to failure, not matter how much money was chucked at it.
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I am sure the vast majority of that was on maintaining armed forces presence - at the outset they were talking about reconstruction - roads, electrical national grid, water supplies - all were talked about - Dick Cheyney spoke a lot about those needs and a lot of US companies got cash with that in mind but nothing really came of it. US and UK debt combined is about £30tn - and thats supporting established states - to think 2 to 5 tn buys you a fully functioning modern state from a basket case in just 20 years is nonsense. Thats what going in with no real plan other than revenge gets you - the Yanks wanted the Wild West and 20 years later the Hole in the Wall Gang just rode back into town because they let them
 
BigJoe#1 said:
Sadly the way Afghanistan was being ran the internal civilian deaths would have happened anyway the losses that could and should have been avoided were the British Service personnel.
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I disagree with this. The war cost hundreds of thousands of lives. No war, no casualties of war. You can argue about the morality of the Taliban government of the time, but the scale in bloodshed and destruction is not remotely close. We have no right to dictate to Afghanistan who should govern the country. Afghanistan's involvement in 9/11 was significantly lesser than the involvement of the Saudis, who we continue to arm and support in their genocidal war. Additionally, the US and UK later supported Al Qaeda, who re-branded under a different name, in Syria. That's going to come back to bite us. I guess they didn't learn the first time...
 
Looks like some of the ANDSF dumped their vehicles at the Uzbekistan border and were taken in my Uzbek authorities.

Way to put up a fight. Cowards
 
Scenes at Kabul Airport similar to scenes from Saigon in the 70s with civilians scrambling to get on to any available aircraft. Tragic
 
Why are you concerned about Afghanistan? No one is arsed that Boko Haram is running wild in Africa or that Burma is slaughtering its citizens. The Rohinga are being raped tortured and murdered but no one bats an eye lid.
 
Tommy_Catons_Perm said:
An expert being interviewed on sky news this morning recounted the British military teaching 30 Afghan soldiers. Ten Afghanis weren't listening and ten others were asleep.
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Seen the vids of them on joint ops with our lads, they stand in the open shooting aks without a care in the world. No discipline and just really bad soldiers. No wonder it has fell so fast none of them believe in what they are meant to protect.
 
Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese said:
The hunting terrorists and nation building thing was always bollocks to sell military action to the public. It was all about slapping the Taliban on the wrists and letting them know that the consequence of allowing transnational terrorists to set up shop on their patch and attack the west would be bad times, disruption of their medieval fiefdom and their lucrative opium business. It's very much mission accomplished for the US, and as you were for the Islamist nuts, just so long as they play ball in the future. The Taliban have no interest in terrorism (aside from terrorising their own population), and no interest in the rest of the world aside from supplying our heroin addicts. They don't want a global caliphate like Isis - they just want to be backward fundamentalists and run their stone age nation according to their version of Islam.
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Sad but true.
 
Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese said:
The hunting terrorists and nation building thing was always bollocks to sell military action to the public. It was all about slapping the Taliban on the wrists and letting them know that the consequence of allowing transnational terrorists to set up shop on their patch and attack the west would be bad times, disruption of their medieval fiefdom and their lucrative opium business. It's very much mission accomplished for the US, and as you were for the Islamist nuts, just so long as they play ball in the future. The Taliban have no interest in terrorism (aside from terrorising their own population), and no interest in the rest of the world aside from supplying our heroin addicts. They don't want a global caliphate like Isis - they just want to be backward fundamentalists and run their stone age nation according to their version of Islam.
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If they weren't interest in exporting their ideology and support Islamic terrorists they woukd have kicked Al Quidia out after 11/09.
 
The West should have supported the War Lords. Not a democracy but regional war Lords would at least have had a good chance of beating the Taliban.
Not the rampant corruption and ineptitude we got from the attempt to build a western style army.
 
BlueAnorak said:
Trump was a definate ****. Biden just proved he is as well.
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The US signed a peace deal in February 2020. In return the Taliban got a commitment that the US would withdraw by May 2021. In effect, the US handed the country to the Taliban.

If the US reneged on the deal, then the Taliban would have resumed hostilities and that would have meant putting in more troops and back to square one.

The real failure is the zero impact the US and it’s Allies made in twenty years in pulling Afghanistan away from the Taliban and putting in place structures and governance that had a reasonable chance of lasting. Instead it all melted away in about twenty minutes.

This end game was set in stone once the US signed the peace deal. In truth, this was all pretty much inevitable when we first invaded twenty years ago.
 
BlueAnorak said:
If they weren't interest in exporting their ideology and support Islamic terrorists they woukd have kicked Al Quidia out after 11/09.
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They actually nearly kicked them out beforehand. They'd had enough of the 'heat' brought down upon them by previous AQ attacks and the 1998 declaration of war on the US by bin Laden. Tribal politics and the traditional honour code kept Bin Laden and co there, as well as bin Laden / AQ assisting the Taliban with their tribal struggles. The Taliban were very much against 9/11 but were effectively bought off by AQ - assassination of Masshoud leader of the northern alliance two days prior to 9/11 for example.
 
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