Posted on 07/12/2021 11:43:28 AM PDT by caww
Joe Biden’s insistence that Afghanistan’s defense forces can withstand the Taliban did little to persuade allies and partners anxious about the militant group’s surge in the months since the president announced his U.S. withdrawal plan.
“Overall, [Biden's] comments were more to justify [his] own decision but not in line with [the] ground situation,” an Asia-Pacific intelligence officer who has served in Afghanistan said of Biden’s assessment delivered in remarks Thursday. “Taliban would be pleased with [Thursday’s] comments.”
Taliban fighters have more than doubled the number of districts they hold in the country since May 1, a surge that foreign officials attribute in no small part to the tactical and psychological ramifications wrought by Biden’s decision to exit the country.
“We've been not happy with the decision and the way it was made,” a European official told the Washington Examiner. “We didn’t expect that it will go as fast, but it happened. … [Biden] decided to do it like a shock therapy.”
“[Biden gave the Taliban] the best option which was available, which was that [the U.S. is] withdrawing regardless,” the Asia-Pacific intelligence official said. “So that gave them some amount of courage. … And they went about doing their operations, and we see the result of those operations, which is basically taking over district after district.”
the militants have achieved major victories in Afghanistan’s border areas. Taliban forces have seized three of Afghanistan’s mainland border crossings, gaining with each new checkpoint control of the revenue generated by trade flowing in and out of the country.
“Afghan forces protecting all three dry ports put up little resistance,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Bill Roggio documented Friday. “In all three instances, the Afghan security forces and customs officials abandoned their posts and fled across the border.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
If china thinks the Taliban are pushovers,just wait and see ...They fought Russians with very little...They have a lot more weapons now......
Why do I see Taliban shooting down ChiCom planes with American missiles for fun and profit?
If the taliban think the Chinese are going to fight like western militaries that try to follow the Geneva Convention and win the hearts and minds of the people….they are in for what is known as “scorched earth”
Within 3 years they’ll all be working under Chinese overseers in the mines, poppy fields, or One Belt pipeline rail and communications projects…or they’ll be dead
Screw it! Leave that chip hole to the PRCs! Opium isn’t a thing anymore now that the PRC via Biden’s OK are flooding the US with cheap ass fentenal!
obama 2.0: screw allies, help the enemies.
China will run before they even attempt engaging with the Taliban in any conflict. Instead they’ll offer a deal they cannot refuse.
That’s about the size of it! Pun intended!
Obama’s agenda never changes....he’ll assist anyone who will help him change the face of this nation...the darker the better.
I think it is a given once we leave, the Taliban returns to the territories it occupied before 2001 and then some. We achieved our mission within the first 3 months of the war in this backward nation. That is, to send a violent message of bombing from the skies and turning the Northern Alliance on them as a way of telling them should they have terrorist training camps again, they could expect more of the same. Bomb and leave the rubble behind as a reminder is the most successful policy when dealing with these backward nations accustomed to internally fighting each other. That they understand. It was when we switched the mission, as we are always prone to do, to bring democracy that we blew it.
My money is on the Taliban effecting a takeover of Afghanistan to coincide with 11 September.
The tollebon are welcoming the Chinese with open arms.
Red China is the biggest mass murderer in human history. Genghis Kahn killed around 40 million by most estimates. The red Chinese have killed at least 100 million. The average accepted number from Mao by Rudolph Rummel and others is 60 million. And you have to add in tens of millions of babies thrown on trash piles at the edge of town under the one China policy.
Even the Russians in the 80s had limits and didn’t want to send too many dead bodies home. China has no such limits, even on their own soldiers.
Not my problem.
China’s first engaged the Taliban to protect its interests in Afghanistan in the 90s. Decades later, history repeats itself. One is a communist state wary of the threat posed by Islamic extremism, the other a group of religious hardliners with alleged links to Al Qaeda. But, despite their differences, relations between China and the Afghan Taliban go back decades.
In the late 1990s, China came to believe that the best way to manage the potential terrorist threat from Afghanistan was to engage with the Taliban and strike a deal..In 1999, Chinese officials broke the ice and flew to Kabul, where they opened economic ties and launched flights between Kabul and Urumqi...... Chinese companies expanded their activities in Afghanistan, and, on September 11, 2001, the two sides signed an MoU to enhance economic ties further.
China and Pakistan were the only states to maintain their ties with the Taliban after 9/11.
Chinese diplomats became involved in several multilateral initiatives to seek a political settlement with the Taliban, first at Murree in 2015, then via the Quadrilateral Coordination Group with the US, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
China was part of the Kabul Process convened by President Ghani in 2017 and sent its diplomats to attend talks with the Taliban and other Afghan politicians in Moscow in 2018. That year President Xi Jinping resuscitated the Afghanistan Contact Group of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which met again this summer.
There have also been multiple bilateral meetings between Chinese officials and the Taliban in recent years. These discussions were secret and unconfirmed by the Chinese government. But, in June, Beijing publicly announced that it had received a Taliban delegation led by deputy Mullah Baradar (who served eight years in prison in Pakistan before his release in 2018).
China participated in two trilateral events with Russia and the US this year, and in 2017 convened another trilateral forum with long-time foes, Afghanistan and Pakistan, to promote ongoing reconciliation efforts and discuss the possible extension of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to Afghanistan.
Moreover, China’s economic role in Afghanistan has been growing. It is now the country’s biggest foreign investor and appears keen to extend the Belt and Road Initiative there.
The Taliban are keen to avoid the isolation they experienced in the 1990s when only three governments (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE) recognised their regime. Furthermore, they are alert to the need for foreign investment.
But the Taliban’s interest in exploiting the country’s natural resources goes well beyond gas. The group also profits from the mining of Afghanistan’s vast mineral deposits.
“The Taliban has realised that Afghanistan’s mineral wealth offers opportunities to get rich,”
So what?
Wait until they become Chinese slaves..I’ve read articles on how badly treated the Africans are by their “Chinese masters”......
Genghis Khan may have killed a higher percentage of the World’s population.
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.