Afghans accuse Taliban of killing 333 people as U.S. pulls thousands of troops out

Almost 900 Afghan security personnel and 150 civilians were killed or wounded in a wave of Taliban attacks across Afghanistan last week. The insurgents' onslaught made for the deadliest week in the history of the 19-year conflict, but it hasn't stopped the government, the insurgents, or the U.S. from pushing publicly for a peace deal.

The Afghan government accused the Taliban of carrying out 422 attacks over just seven days, leaving 291 Afghan National Defense and Security forces dead and 550 more wounded. In the same period, the insurgents are accused of killing 42 civilians, including women and children, and wounding 105 others.

The government's unusual release of official casualty figures for security forces appeared to be aimed at highlighting the surge in Taliban assaults as the U.S. moves forward with a military withdrawal long promised by President Donald Trump.

“The Afghan government should have known they had a window to liquidate the Taliban”

The embedded assumption in that is that the Afghan government has the means to do that - liquidate the Taliban. They don’t.

The Taliban can and will keep fighting as long as they just chose to, and no Afghan government can liquidate them.

The Afghan government can survive only as along as it makes that same choice - to keep fighting.

If both sides maintain enough fight in themselves, it may be a century before enough fight has bled out of them, enough to make a settlement.

The two sides represent near diametrically opposed visions of Afghanistan, on a political level, while sharing cultural elements they both have from Afghanistan’s long history.

But the Taliban have one cultural advantage. They are largely Pashtun, and the Pashtun are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan (about 40%) and the second largest ethnic group next door in Pakistan (15%). The Taliban use that ethnic identity as a lever equal to their religious fundamentalism and clan and tribal loyalty. Those are very basic identity levers.

The Afghan government is trying to represent all Afghans and its giant challenge is that it is seeking an identity with an idea. Ideas are harder sells than culturally driven identities and loyalties, particularly in a place that has been at war since the 1980s.

In my view there was only one way to “win” in Afghanistan and no U.S. government had the stomach or the public will to do it - conduct the war like WWII - pull out ALL the stops, throw EVERYTHING at it and do not let up until unconditional surrender. THAT would have won the war, but that was never going to happen. GWBush did not want to go there, and certainly Obama was going to do the opposite.

ALL the U.S. has to do is support the Afghan government sufficiently for that government’s survival, and no more (that’s more on the material side than the troop side). Time, maybe a century, will take care of the rest.

Dear sir,

I was in Afghanistan. They had the means with us and NATO. Rather than get serious about ridding themselves of the Taliban and Haqqani, they screwed around trying to get as much out of the US as if we were a permanent piñata they could strike and get candy on demand.

US leadership communicated to the Afghans that we would be there as long as it took......that is why no progress was made. There was a golden opportunity to flip all of the significant imams to a less primitive strain of Wahabbism-- it was drawn up by a U.S. Marine Captain, and it was tested with great success. Then the State Department dropped the program. After the pilot program worked.

I get mad as shit just thinking about it. We had the strategic win, and State and the Barkey administration screwed it up.

As for the killing, it was much too surgical. We were wasting expensive smart weapons like JDAMS on mud buildings. Ridiculous. When a village demonstrably aids and abets terrorists, there are no innocents. If it was good for Dresden, it's good for Afghanistan.

Your reasoning seems a little contradictory, as to where fault lies.

Here:

“US leadership communicated to the Afghans that we would be there as long as it took......that is why no progress was made.”

you seem to point the finger at the Afghans; that thinking we would stay forever they just kept taking us for what they could get.

Then here:

“it was drawn up by a U.S. Marine Captain, and it was tested with great success. Then the State Department dropped the program. After the pilot program worked.”

you point the finger at our own leaders for dropping the ball.

I imagine the truth is there is plenty of blame that can be laid on both sides.

And, I would respectfully disagree that our initial effort and in the immediate short term afterward was ever enough, militarily, to succeed. Why? Only a WWII style offensive would have admitted that as long as the Taliban can get safe haven in Pakistan they do not have to quit fighting in Afghanistan. (A) The Pashtun are the majority on both sides of the southern border Afghanistan has with Pakistan, (B) the Taliban are predominately Pashtun, and (c) the Taliban have religious friends and religious allies all the way up Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan into Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Area.

That required a WWII style solution we were not ever going to do. Without that all we could ever hope for was an Afghan government strong enough simply to resist being over run by the Taliban, but THAT would never be enough to get the Taliban to quit, when the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan means nothing to the Taliban and that fact is tolerated by Pakistan.

I will take your point that the Afghan governments had too much corruption, been ineffective, and failed in ways they might have succeeded better.

I would agree that the Afghans trying to stay out of the hands of the Taliban have nearly always been poorly led and led with too many folks who were and are corrupt as well.

I have also seen how loyalty among too many Afghan men of fighting age seems to not have any great foundation in any principles. On one day it may be the Afghan government, and on another day it mat be their clan or their clan leader, and when their clan leader goes Taliban so do they. Loyalty seems very “flexible” and situational in Afghanistan, which is why we had so many of our men lost to “friendly fire” from some Afghan who was “working with us”. In some cases they may have been Taliban sympathizers all along, and in other cases it just didn’t take too much to “turn them”.

However, I agree with you here:

“They had the means with us and NATO. Rather than get serious about ridding themselves of the Taliban and Haqqani, they screwed around trying to get as much out of the US as if we were a permanent piñata they could strike and get candy on demand.”

Yes, the Afghans fighting for the government have always had corruptible (and likely underpaid) leadership. I remember one report of how over 200,000 weapons we supplied to the Afghan military and police had been sold - to the Taliban.

But we have had corrupt allies in the past who managed to hang on and eventually reform. I do contend that is still up to the Afghans, if enough of them don’t want to be part of the Taliban, even if we do keep a very low level of troop support.

In the end it is not and will not be up to us. The Afghans will have to choose. And, my guess, looking at their history, is even a Taliban “win” will not end it, as that will really be a Pashtun win, and again the other ethnic groups will not go along with it. There will be another “Northern Alliance/United Front”.

I think both Iran and Pakistan don’t mind an Afghanistan whose wars are not settled. They both profit from the division and intrigue in Afghanistan.

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