Largest Non-Nuclear Bomb in world dropped on Afghanistan

Mountainous regions have always been difficult/impossible to control from a remote central location.
Psychologically and culturally, people who grow up in the mountains are very independent and capable.
Even here in Ireland with no real mountains to speak of, we consider people from our upland areas to be a law unto themselves.
Some might point out Switzerland as an example of being able to centrally govern a mountainous region, but the cantons have much more autonomy there in many other countries. Also, one element of the Swiss defence plan (National Redoubt) was the permanent mining of 3,000 bridges with explosives in the knowledge that each mountain valley was self sufficient without road access.

Afghanistan is a much larger country with more significant mountains. It always has been, and always will be tribal in mountain areas where neighbouring valleys may be cut off from each other for 4-5 months of each year. With annual temperature swings of up to 70C, the real enemy is the climate and politics are but a gadfly.

PREG1967 wrote: »

but the swiss national redoubt plan has been largely decommissioned

Yes, because the threat of invasion is lower than any time in the last 150 years.
But the Swiss mindset remains the same.
https://www.ft.com/content/abb3de84-832c-11e6-8897-2359a58ac7a5

Autonomous Cowherd wrote: »

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/us-drops-largest-nonnuclear-bomb-on-afghanistan-21000lb-moab-used-for-first-time-35621197.html

This world is a crazy place. Do they even give a damn for the innocent people who happen to live in that area

Yes, they care, that's why they killed all the ISIS fighters with a big bomb.

At this rate I wouldn't be at all surprised if an official Taliban office opened in Moscow

What was the last "successful" intervention by a foreign power in a domestic conflict in another country that didn't result in disfunction when they left/ceased operations?

PREG1967 wrote: »

can you send me your username and password?

I don't have an account but if you google Ticino vote
it will be the 5th link.
This url will work if you haven't access too many FT articles already.
https://tinyurl.com/kgbowfp
If you have, try clearing cookies or accessing from a browser that you don't normally use.

Failing all of that, here's the raw text (ugh)

The Swiss canton of Ticino, which borders northern Italy, has voted decisively in favour of tougher controls on foreign workers in the latest example of Switzerland’s voters defying agreements with the EU over the free movement of people.

A campaign initiated by the ultra-conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP) won 58 per cent of votes in a referendum on Sunday, creating a challenge for the local cantonal government and highlighting popular support for curbs on EU immigration. Since the UK Brexit vote in June, Brussels has taken an increasingly hard line in insisting that Switzerland — which is not part of the EU — sticks to its bilateral agreements, fearing any concessions to the small-but-wealthy Alpine state would set a precedent for negotiations with London. Italian-speaking Ticino, which has a population of 350,000, is arguably the most exposed of Switzerland’s 26 cantons to foreign workers, with more than 62,000 crossing the border daily to work locally. Sunday’s result, backing measures to boost the employment of local residents over foreigners, is likely to be seized on by the SVP, led by veteran nationalist Christoph Blocher, as showing voters want Swiss politicians to stand firm in talks with Brussels.However, Ticino’s location and economic structure reduced the relevance of the vote to the rest of the country, analysts said. “Ticino is special — it has a long history of tensions with Italy, especially on labour issues, and it is an area which suffers particularly from low wage competition,†said Patrick Emmenegger, politics professor at the University of St Gallen.Sunday’s referendum had also not presented voters with a choice between controlling foreign workers or protecting the bilateral agreements with the EU, Prof Emmenegger added. “They want to have their cake and eat it — and in Ticino that problem is particularly severe.†Switzerland relies on a web of more than 120 bilateral contracts for access to European markets. Relations with Brussels were thrown into confusion in February 2014 when Swiss voters nationally backed limits on EU immigration from European neighbours — a clear violation of the agreement on the free movement of people. Among Swiss cantons, the strongest vote for limits on EU immigration in February 2014 was in Ticino, where 68.2 per cent of voters were in favour — compared with 50.3 per cent across Switzerland.Paolo Beltraminelli, president of the Ticino government, pointed out that support for Sunday’s proposal was 10 percentage points lower than for the 2014 proposals, which he attributed to the local government being “united in opposing this initiativeâ€. But he admitted the vote “shows the people still expect solutions to the pressures experienced by Ticino in the labour market.

Although referendums in Switzerland are meant to be binding, Sunday’s vote is likely to prove merely symbolic as the cantonal government almost certainly lacks the powers to implement the proposals. Last week, Swiss parliamentarians indicated the country would yield first in its stand-off with Brussels, proposing that legislation implementing the 2014 result should simply include measures encouraging companies to employ domestic workers — for instance, by requiring them to notify vacancies to local job centres. The compromise will be debated in the Swiss upper house of parliament in December.Despite Switzerland showing signs of backing down, Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president, made clear on a visit to Switzerland that he wanted to put Swiss-EU relations on a new footing with an “institutional framework†by which Swiss laws would change automatically as EU rules evolved, and which would require Switzerland to follow the rulings of the European Court of Justice. Such a step would almost certainly be rejected by Swiss voters.

MysticMonk wrote: »

Apparantly the Ruskies have a bigger bomb..hopefully they will also use them to destroy Daesh.

Old news but i doubt that even putin would drop the biggest bomb on highly populated areas in Syria ,
But i could be wrong