Posted on 04/18/2021 5:05:25 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Driving to Taliban-controlled territory doesn't take long. Around 30 minutes from the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, passing large craters left by roadside bombs, we meet our host: Haji Hekmat, the Taliban's shadow mayor in Balkh district.
Perfumed and in a black turban, he's a veteran member of the group, having first joined the militants in the 1990s when they ruled over the majority of the country.
The Taliban have arranged a display of force for us. Lined up on either side of the street are heavily armed men, one carrying a rocket propelled grenade launcher, another an M4 assault rifle captured from US forces. Balkh was once one of the more stable parts of the country; now it's become one of the most violent.
Baryalai, a local military commander with a ferocious reputation, points down the road, "the government forces are just there by the main market, but they can't leave their bases. This territory belongs to the mujahideen".
It's a similar picture across much of Afghanistan: the government controls the cities and bigger towns, but the Taliban are encircling them, with a presence in large parts of the countryside.
The militants assert their authority through sporadic checkpoints along key roads. As Taliban members stop and question passing cars, Aamir Sahib Ajmal, the local head of the Taliban's intelligence service, tells us they're searching for people linked to the government.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Yeah, now you can have your goats in peace.
“Their society, culture, and economy are pretty much the same as 20 years ago.”
They won a vast cemetery...because THEY did all the dying AND what is worse ... gender apartheid still rules.
It means, there have been NO gains for them, since that is still the case.
If we had to do it again?
We don’t. And we shouldn’t.
But it could already be too late to undo the mess that we got ourselves in starting with the so-called Persian Gulf War of Bush the Elder.
I hate to say it but he's right. The Taliban played a waiting game, a slow war of attrition, knowing that we have no strategic interest in Afghanistan and that we would eventually go home, as the British did, and as the Soviets did (both of whom did have strategic interests there). We should have been much more aggressive in our fighting there. Somewhere between where we are now, and annihilating every living thing in the country.
They have to still live in Afghanistan, how is that a “win”.
9/11 was also planned and developed in Florida and Germany, that is the nature of terrorism.
Well, you’re leaving out some important context re Iran, namely that there was that Cold War thing going on and we didn’t want Iran falling into the USSR’s orbit.
Helping to overthrow Iran, certainly made them like the USSR even more. Kinda weird.
The goal was to get OBL and QA, and the Taliban was in the way. We pushed them out of the way and got them. At that point we won. We got them, and brought free elections to Afghanistan.
Where we lost was in staying on afterwards.
At least with Vietnam, eventually the Vietnamese woke up and saw that Communism was a loser.
Afghanistan will relinquish to the Taliban dung heap it was before. You cannot impose enlightened democracy in any country embracing Islam. The people have submitted to a religion that keeps them in a tribal 6th century society.
They wouldn’t say that if President Trump were in the White House.
Agree.
Still don’t care.
We kept Iran out of the USSR’s orbit for several decades, during which it was a good ally and an oasis of pro-Western sanity in a screwed up part of the world. If Carter had made better decisions, that might still be the case.
Well that depends on who is giving the orders to the congress...the industrial military complex? Then we fight for naught.
America is being invaded by the Taliban and those like them, every single day through our open borders.
Our enemies are within, not in Afghanistan.
What's gone for the last ten years hasn't been a war. It's been either nation building or simply maintaining a base of operation against Islamic terrorism.
The lesson, though, is that trying to turn Islamic nations into Western-friendly democracies doesn't work.
Protecting the Poppy Trade.
Hadji is gonna talk crap no matter what happens. Who cares! If they rear their ugly heads again to harm us, we need to completely smash and destroy them. Bomb them into glass.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.