I would have gotten out my decades old Kalashnikov and taken as many out before they got me. The Taliban has 75,000 headcount in a population of 38 million. I'm not buying that they don't have the support of villagers and outside the cities.
We always hear how hard Afghanistan was to conquer. The graveyard of empires etc. Was that all bullshit? Have the people lost their will to fight, or are they not fighting because they don't see the Taliban as the enemy.
Let me ask you a question Gary. Say you live in a village / area of 5000 people, barely scratching a living, poor to non-existant communications, extremely difficult to reach, and one fine day a convoy of heavily armed military turn up waving their black Flags, and proclaim that you are now free, and have been liberated from the invaders.....and invite you to join their ranks in their mission to overthrow the infidel unbelivers. To reinforce their demands, they publicly excute the local leaders....so they spread out to the surrounding villages / districts and repeat the process,,,and their prowess and methodology precedes them..so they get to the stage, that by the time they reach the next districts, the Govt leaders have already left, any defenders have thrown down their weapons, and are already waving black flags in welcome.
Now Gary, if you lived in one of these villages / districts, how would you react? And for the towns and bigger population centres, it was the same. Because the majority of these Afghan people you mention, were not military,just ordinary Afghans.
And let the Soviets increase (or maintain) their sphere of influence? Yeah, sounds like a good idea. Perhaps the Soviets should have minded their own business.
Perhaps the Yanks should have minded their own business.
That's like saying russia shouldn't have invaded and forceabble occupied the country which brought us to where we are today ,
It didn't start with America .
Maybe the Soviet Union shouldn't have invaded.
Maybe the US shouldn't have armed and funded the Mujahideen 40 years ago. 😉
Maybe they should have given the Al Qaeda up when they had the chance 20 years ago.
The main problem with this whole 20 year farce is that Bush and Co. abandoned Afghanistan because there was no money in it. Instead they chose to dust off an old Iraq invasion plan to carry out an oil war over there instead, purely based on the most flimsy of lies, and they left a skeleton crew of poor saps in Afghanistan who hadn't a bull's notion what the hell they were doing there in a war they couldn't have won if they'd stayed a thousand years.
All that America has done is to sink yet another country into the quagmire of an uncertain future with the possibility of blowback in the neighbouring regions and maybe onto itself. Because if the Taliban have anything at all in their arsenal, it's the fact that America invaded their country and left it in a bloody mess. That will be enough of a rallying cry for many young men to join forces with them.
People talk about Trump being a disaster, and he was, but the tenure of George Bush Jr. and his string pullers has left the world with deplorable disasters that have been felt years after he's left office and have the potential to be felt for years to come.
Why is no one trying to stop them? Afghan military forces? The Afghan people?
Afghan population is 38 million. Afghan military is 180,000. Taliban fighter headcount is supposed to be 75,000.
I think the west has it's head in the sand here regarding what the Afghan people really want.
The difference is I think, is that the US money pumped into the South Vietnamese might have filtered down to the ordinary Vietnamese soldier, and given them the support they needed, when they needed it. Much more money and support were given to the Afghanistan Govt, but unfortunately, corruption meant that very little filtered doen to the soldiers..even highly trained commando units were beaten because they ran out of ammunition.Its poetic justice in a way...the very ones who were the most corrupt, now could find their very lives in danger, because the Taliban will take over.. and this will happen because the ill equipped army are unable to protect them.
If the majority don't want to be ruled by the taliban again, them why is nobody putting up much of a fight?
The taliban are walking it.
But its not the wishes of the majority ( or the minority either) to be ruled by the Taliban again, even after 20 years the memories of the Taliban "RULE" are still fresh in everyone over 25 years of age..and for those who have forgotten...soon they will remember, as those citizens of places the Taliban have retaken are already finding out.. They have had 20 years living in a world which is the opposite of the world they lived in when under the Taliban before.
I doubt anyone expected this , it's like there is no military presence in Afghanistan at all at this moment ,the Taliban are litterally just walking into towns and cities near unoposed ,at this rate Russia Iran and Pakistan must be thinking this can't be good for us
The speed of collapse by the Afghan army is remarkable.
It's like a Taliban blitzkrieg.
Even the South Vietnamese Army were more resilient.
What percentage of the Afghan population support the Taliban?
The US was right to invade given that the Taliban wouldn't give up the Al Qaeda leadership, but they are also right to leave IF the wishes of the majority of the Afghan people is to live in the stone age, as long as they don't interfere with the rest of the world.
Taliban forces are now within 6km of Kabul ,the British and American are rushing there forces into evacuate diplomatic staff and other civilians ,
Kabul could fall within the next day or two ,seen footage from social media of thousands of siezed weapons and several helicopters flying in support of the Taliban,
The Taliban have an airforce who would have thought that !
Looks like it will be all done by morning. Power cut to Kabul with Taliban approaching.
US and other foreign powers will barely have time to evacuate staff.
Hmmm clap your hands or face public execution of you and your family ,it's an easy option when you have no other options
what a waste of twenty 20 years in two 2 weeks the people have rolled over not just the army I think it almost welcomed by the vast majority guess they must miss the BnBs (burka's and beheadings)
How difficult can they make it to delete a post...
Actually it was ,no means a perfect utpopia but it was better than anything thats come since
Are we going back to the times of Alexandrian conquest here?
But they did promise air support after the ground troops had left, and they are carrying out bombing missions, mainly on supply and equipment dumps, vehicles ect. that they dont want falling into Taliban hands. They are probably harrassing Taliban grouping where the find them as well, but that becomes increasingly difficult when they capture cities and mingle with the local population.
Afghanistan was never governable, the fact you've see a video of women in miniskirts in Kabul in the 1960's doesn't equate to the entire society being stable.
Love how these threads bring out the keyboard warriors,
"go back in there, and just kill the lot of them, armed or unarmed"
🙄🙄🙄
But here's the thing , Afghanistan was governable in the recent past ,it wasn't always a shithole people talk about ,much like iran pre revolution , pre Russian involvement and invasion it was relatively stable compared to the rise of the Taliban ,post russian exit and ensuing civil war ,the Americans didn't need to arm them , when the russians left in the late 80's they litterally abandoned tens of thousands of weapons and munitions behind for a free for all , they took their men ,jets and helicopters and left anything else unsecured ,
Even recent images showing Taliban forces carrying ww1 issue Lee Enfields likely made across the border in Pakistan , which can be bought for a few Euro along with aks ,
I have a great deal of respect for the Afghans and their ferocity in the face of the adversarial conquests unleashed on them by crumbling empires - the UK, Russia and now the United States.
The brass tax of the entire situation is this - Afghanistan has never been stable. Ever. It will never be stable, ever.The laughable experiment in nation building was a deception.
i haven’t been following the occupation. It was all of my adult life and I opposed the original war but I lost interest.
Anybody know how the Americans didn’t win the peace? Surely 20 years us enough. It’s like the Nazis coming back in Germany in 1965.
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://w2.vanillicon.com/v2/23af546224513cf852af4d456d68d01c.svg)
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://w8.vanillicon.com/v2/87962ff026856470eacf12f9c3179c90.svg)