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[Lionator]

Interestingly, we essentially went to Iraq and Syria to put into power their equivalent of the Taliban, attempting to overthrow their less conservative, more nationalist, less Islamic regimes, yet Assad and Hossein were the bad guys (not taking away that they're terrible people, just evidently better than the alternative).

 

It's all a power game, Afghanistan has been the site of proxy wars since pretty much 1839 when we first invaded (and lost). Foreign intervention by countries who think they know how Afghanistan should be run causes this. Nobody even identifies as Afghani, you're mainly either Pashto or Tajiki, Hazari etc, nobody gives a damn about being Afghani, yet we don't seem to understand that.

 

It's another shameful, shameful episode in the West.

[ozleicester]

[Guest SO1]

17 hours ago, Innovindil said:

Going to take a lot of explaining both here and in the US as to what 20 years of money and thousands of lives have done for us over there.

 

20 ****ing years. Undone in the space of a few weeks. Ridiculous really.

Knew exactly this when I watched the towers fall on TV.

The millions of lives ruined and wasted that I knew would follow in the "war on terror" protecting "freedom and democracy". The endless hypocrisy, greed and cruelty. After the past couple of years it looks like justice is finally going to come for us. All of our conflicts were just another smash and grab. The rest of the world needs a break from us. 245 years is enough of being a terrorist.

[Guest SO1]

 

16 hours ago, DANGEROUS TIGER said:

A monumental error, withdrawing troops. Obviously without the Americans, our troops would be beaten by the vast numbers of Taliban and the body gags coming home in large numbers.

 

We must now brace ourselves for consistant acts of terrorism, world wide, some of which could lead to huge losses of innocent lives.

 

I just cannot understand why the Americans have withdrawn. It is surely an insult to the soldiers who died, were maimed, and mentally damaged in the past twenty years. I am both shocked and disgusted.

With all due respect.  Maybe your country should fight its own wars with its own blood and treasure. Perhaps there might be fewer wars if we learned to live within our means and stopped terrorising the rest of the world for resources and control. Our hands our covered with the blood of millions of innocent people through our sanctions and violence. We are the terrorists.

 

[Lionator]

Also it's a good time to watch Bitter Lake by Adam Curtis to educate yourselves. 

 

 

[Lionator]

19 minutes ago, SO1 said:

 

With all due respect.  Maybe your country should fight its own wars with its own blood and treasure. Perhaps there might be fewer wars if we learned to live within our means and stopped terrorising the rest of the world for resources and control. Our hands our covered with the blood of millions of innocent people through our sanctions and violence. We are the terrorists.

 

Agree with this (to an extent), the British Empire was having their backsides handed to them in Afghanistan 63 years after American independence. While we can blame the Soviets, the US et al for more recent issues, we are massive culprits of the destabilisation of a country rich in natural resources.  

[Guest SO1]

12 hours ago, leicsmac said:

The thing is though, the US simply couldn't stay there forever - the day would have to come when they would have to withdraw, having a permanent standing army out there would be absurd for a variety of reasons.

 

So, with that in mind, the question has to be asked: what didn't they do, or didn't account for, that is now making the expenditure of trillions of dollars and countless lives essentially meaningless?

6730 miles is a long distance to create a culture/state and police it as well. You should all know this very well  from all of your failures.

My own feeling is that we were in it for the resources and money. As in the Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned us about all those many years ago. That and thinking we are going to somehow control Russia and China and make them bow to our will. Comedy Gold.

With Delta cranking up, the economy in the crapper and still no affordable health care etc. etc etc. its not looking good for Captain America. Time to take care of problems at home or there won't be a country. If the government pulls out the stick instead of the carrot its done. USSR 2.0 is my guess.

[Guest SO1]

8 minutes ago, Lionator said:

Agree with this (to an extent), the British Empire was having their backsides handed to them in Afghanistan 63 years after American independence. While we can blame the Soviets, the US et al for more recent issues, we are massive culprits of the destabilisation of a country rich in natural resources.  

Must be a reason they call Afghanistan the "Graveyard of Empires"

[SpacedX]

6 minutes ago, Lionator said:

Agree with this (to an extent), the British Empire was having their backsides handed to them in Afghanistan 63 years after American independence. While we can blame the Soviets, the US et al for more recent issues, we are massive culprits of the destabilisation of a country rich in natural resources.  

It certainly is: oil, copper, lithium, talc, marble, gold, uranium to name a few. Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth is estimated to potentially exceed one trillion dollars. However, poor security, the lack of proper legal framework, infrastructure and logistical capacity, together with corruption, have prevented the development of the sector. 

 

The Taliban currently earn an estimated $10m a year from mining talc alone, which has become, next to opium, their main source of revenue. They are now sitting on a wealth of natural resources which the state has not developed and I suspect that we'll see the emergence of bilateral negotiations from certain nations eager to invest in lucrative contracts to exploit this. 

[Countryfox]

With all the papers and news channels full of what’s happening in Afghanistan and no doubt a raft of horrific stories of violence to those still there that opposed the taliban still to come …. here’s something to just take your mind of it !!
 

 

[Guest SO1]

6 hours ago, Dunge said:

I think they just failed to take into account a simple psychology. As I understand it, the “Afghan army” wasn’t just one organisation but kind of a series of factions and alliances out in the provinces. These factions were then left with a choice: Keep fighting a brutal enemy indefinitely with a supply chain that’s poor at best (and probably lose after a month or two regardless), or stand back, let them in, shake their hands and survive. On that basis I totally understand why they’d go for the latter.

Modern Afghanistan, such that it ever truly existed, is dead. The question remaining is whether the Taliban will allow for or join in terrorist activities, attracting the ire of the West again, or whether they’ll just sit back enjoy ruling the country again rather than having to hide in caves and mountains like they have done for twenty years.

They've(Taliban) spent a lot of time meeting with Russia and China. Hope that they will become a part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and with the help of those countries start rebuilding their infrastructure and create an economy that actually begins to function for the population. Think China and Russia are slowly but surely doing positive things in that part of the world and I hope the people of Afghanistan reap the benefits of that. That part of the world breaking away from the financialized west is a good thing.

[bovril]

Adam Curtis.... "Graveyard of Empires". Just waiting for someone to post a Yanis Varoufakis tweet. 

[bovril]

6 hours ago, Lionator said:

Interestingly, we essentially went to Iraq and Syria to put into power their equivalent of the Taliban, attempting to overthrow their less conservative, more nationalist, less Islamic regimes, yet Assad and Hossein were the bad guys (not taking away that they're terrible people, just evidently better than the alternative).

 

It's all a power game, Afghanistan has been the site of proxy wars since pretty much 1839 when we first invaded (and lost). Foreign intervention by countries who think they know how Afghanistan should be run causes this. Nobody even identifies as Afghani, you're mainly either Pashto or Tajiki, Hazari etc, nobody gives a damn about being Afghani, yet we don't seem to understand that.

 

It's another shameful, shameful episode in the West.

Sorry what are you basing this on? Because that's not my (admittedly limited) experience with Afghans in the UK, who certainly do "give a damn about being Afghani" and see themselves as a nation. 

[Lionator]

4 minutes ago, bovril said:

Sorry what are you basing this on? Because that's not my (admittedly limited) experience with Afghans in the UK, who certainly do "give a damn about being Afghani" and see themselves as a nation. 

Ok my knowledge on this is partly limited and I apologise if it came across as know it all. As far as I'm aware the Taliban are all Pashtun (who tend to be a bit more tied to Islam than the nation). The other ethnic groups are the minority who tend to be more tied to the nation than Islam, however a lot of the groups are Tajikis or Turkmen, both of which are neighbouring states in their own right. The Pashtuns (Taliban) want to establish a more hardcore Islamist Afghanistan which would involve driving the other ethnic minorities out, mainly through force. 

[bovril]

12 minutes ago, Lionator said:

Ok my knowledge on this is partly limited and I apologise if it came across as know it all. As far as I'm aware the Taliban are all Pashtun (who tend to be a bit more tied to Islam than the nation). The other ethnic groups are the minority who tend to be more tied to the nation than Islam, however a lot of the groups are Tajikis or Turkmen, both of which are neighbouring states in their own right. The Pashtuns (Taliban) want to establish a more hardcore Islamist Afghanistan which would involve driving the other ethnic minorities out, mainly through force. 

All of that is true but Afghanistan has been a nation for a long time and there have been no calls for its dissolution (I believe) from any of the groups you mention. Unlike Macedonia, for example, which a significant minority of people in the Balkans totally reject is a nation in its own right, or Kurdistan which the Turks will never accept exists. The Afghans I know very much see themselves as a nation but they are mostly educated and from Kabul. 

 

I don't buy into the whole 'Afghanistan is a mess of warring tribes and will never be pacified' stuff. This result was inevitable but imo as much because of NATO failings as Afghanistan's history, or ethic makeup. The graveyard of Empires thing is a bit of a myth too (America isn't an Empire) and I don't see it as relevant to the current situation. Reminds me of all the bollocks about the Balkans that was spouted in the 90s, which also ended up making the situation worse. 

 

As for Adam Curtis.....

Edited 16 August 2021 by bovril

[bovril]

Nobody gives a damn about being British. Time to let those warring tribes smash their country up. None of our business..

 

https://brilliantmaps.com/national-identity-uk/

[sdb]

Harrowing stuff out there. I can't even begin to comprehend how scared those poor civilians must be 

[Brizzle Fox]

1 hour ago, bovril said:

Adam Curtis.... "Graveyard of Empires". Just waiting for someone to post a Yanis Varoufakis tweet. 

Err.... 

 

Hey, you hang in there sisters, everything will be OK in the end.  Just wow. 

 

This guy. No words. 

[Buce]

 

Am I right in thinking that you trekked in Afghanistan, @fuchsntf?

 

What's your take on all this?

[bovril]

1 hour ago, Brizzle Fox said:

Err.... 

 

Hey, you hang in there sisters, everything will be OK in the end.  Just wow. 

 

This guy. No words. 

grotesque 

[SouthStandUpperTier]

3 hours ago, Countryfox said:

With all the papers and news channels full of what’s happening in Afghanistan and no doubt a raft of horrific stories of violence to those still there that opposed the taliban still to come …. here’s something to just take your mind of it !!
 

 

Probably just wanted its dinner.

 

"Stop lying there and feed me! And I don't want any of that dry crap. Come on! Get up!"

[Lionator]

4 hours ago, bovril said:

All of that is true but Afghanistan has been a nation for a long time and there have been no calls for its dissolution (I believe) from any of the groups you mention. Unlike Macedonia, for example, which a significant minority of people in the Balkans totally reject is a nation in its own right, or Kurdistan which the Turks will never accept exists. The Afghans I know very much see themselves as a nation but they are mostly educated and from Kabul. 

 

I don't buy into the whole 'Afghanistan is a mess of warring tribes and will never be pacified' stuff. This result was inevitable but imo as much because of NATO failings as Afghanistan's history, or ethic makeup. The graveyard of Empires thing is a bit of a myth too (America isn't an Empire) and I don't see it as relevant to the current situation. Reminds me of all the bollocks about the Balkans that was spouted in the 90s, which also ended up making the situation worse. 

 

As for Adam Curtis.....

Haha! What are your critiques, obviously a lot of his output is conspiracal but Bitter Lake is very very good? And Burial are great.

 

3 hours ago, Brizzle Fox said:

Err.... 

 

Hey, you hang in there sisters, everything will be OK in the end.  Just wow. 

 

This guy. No words. 

I agree this is pretty grim.

[bovril]

Just now, Lionator said:

Haha! What are your critiques, obviously a lot of his output is conspiracal but Bitter Lake is very very good? And Burial are great.

I enjoy his stuff, but it's very manipulative. When you read about some of the things included in his programmes you realise how incredibly superficially he's covered them. It's wikipedia-esque. 

[fuchsntf]

On 16/08/2021 at 17:44, Buce said:

 

Am I right in thinking that you trekked in Afghanistan, @fuchsntf?

 

What's your take on all this?

Yes on the Pakistan Borders as the Russians were being humbled...

Without going into documentary or Detail of thought...

 

Just a quick for me Logical thought, which I had even from those days...

Neither USA, UK had no right to put Military personelle, on ground troups into this problem...

Al queda,Taliban, Wouldnt  have won much ground or sympathy...

A molehill that became a mountain ,there were Afghanistan und Pakistan Areas that Really put Women down,but there were many Mountain regions

where Women were respected & their girls went to school.  So lies were Conveniently  built up

 

We put uniforms into Afghanistan, thats was like a Red scarf to a bull...The Mountain- folk Wanted Military Equipment help But not a foreign-army..AGAIN

They detested the Taliban....But they detested Foreign Military Power more...a Jihad cause was Made where it wasnt necessary..

whether True or Logical or not, These People Believed they could settle this niggling problem of Al queda, or Taliban..

the First months conflict brought Hunger & starvation, Refugee camps...

Thats when the taliban Provided food & support..

That created New Conscripts from many uneducated/educated people, who saw the west as enemies and Not the saviour, and the Taliban like the mujahideen before. them as the Real saviours...

the West decided to fight instead of comunicate.....All those lives, lost and  ffs for what !!!!

....A Military conflict instead of a Political one...

 

I Dont want to go further, our Goverments cause our own shit....Then are  totally ignorant of what locals Desire & Not just what they want

These People protected us, took Care of us und the better Hosts than any western country

 

Edited 17 August 2021 by fuchsntf

[Sly]

The speed of advancement by the Taliban has been equally impressive as it is worrying. 
 

The scenes today of people clinging to aeroplanes as they take off are horrifying. What drives a person to cling to a flight, which will ultimately result in the loss of their life. 
 

Some of the stories coming out that the Taliban are already making females wear burkas, told them to stay away from universities etc.

 

If this is true and not propaganda then the world has wasted billions of pounds but more worryingly, incurred a significant death count. Not finishing the job that was started 20 years ago, has left this feeling like a totally pointless waste of time and effort. 

Edited 16 August 2021 by Sly