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Afghanistan – U.S. Sneaks Out At Night – Taliban Take Multiple Districts Per Day
This is awkward:
The U.S. left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.
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“We (heard) some rumor that the Americans had left Bagram … and finally by seven o’clock in the morning, we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left Bagram,” Gen. Mir Asadullah Kohistani, Bagram’s new commander said.
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Before the Afghan army could take control of the airfield about an hour’s drive from the Afghan capital Kabul, it was invaded by a small army of looters, who ransacked barrack after barrack and rummaged through giant storage tents before being evicted, according to Afghan military officials.
“At first we thought maybe they were Taliban,” said Abdul Raouf, a soldier of 10 years. He said the the U.S. called from the Kabul airport and said “we are here at the airport in Kabul.”
There is video from the empty base. Hundreds of cars were left behind. The network equipment in the headquarter was ripped out but the base hospital seems to have been left intact. There are even some useful medical supplies stocked there.
Meanwhile the Taliban continue their blitz operation to take over the country. They snatch up district after district especially in the north.
Source: Long War Journal – bigger
I had noticed that two weeks ago:
Remarkably a lot of the districts the Taliban took were not in primarily Pashtun regions but in the north where the population is often Uzbek, Tajik or from other ethnic minorities. Before the U.S. invasion those populations were often anti-Taliban.
The Taliban have probably some 3-4,000 fighters in the north-eastern Badakhshan province but they managed to take 90% of it in just 4 days, 14 of its districts fell in the last 48 hours. Some 1,500 Afghan government soldiers stationed there have fled to Tajikistan. The province capital Faizabad is now isolated and the only place that is still under government control.
bigger
Something is quite curious with this. Badakhshan was a stronghold of the Northern Alliance which in the late 1990s fought against the Taliban. It is the home of the Jamiat-e Islami party which consists mostly of ethnic Tajiks and has its own militia. The leader of Jamiat-e Islami is Salahuddin Rabbani who is now also the chair of the government's Afghan High Peace Council which negotiates with the Taliban.
The mountainous province has 1 million inhabitants. But here are 4 Taliban showing up in a car in the remote Wakhan district. They are not opposed by local militia but are welcomed by the local (male) population.
It is inconceivable that a brigade size Taliban force can seize Badakhshan in a few days and at little cost without having a deal with the militia of the dominant local party. Something must have happened behind the curtains that the media is not aware of.
This is good news as a fast Taliban victory in the north will make a new civil war less likely. The neoconservative Long War Journal is aghast as it explains:
Afghanistan is at risk of complete collapse after the Taliban has made dramatic gains in recent days, striking at the heart of the Afghan government’s base of power in the north while seizing control of large areas of the country – often unopposed by government forces.
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Much of the Taliban gains have occurred in the north. The importance of the Taliban’s northern thrust cannot be understated. The Taliban is taking the fight directly to the home of Afghanistan’s elite power brokers and government officials.
If the Taliban can deny Afghanistan’s government and its backers their base of power, Afghanistan is effectively lost. The government could not possibly keep its tenuous footholds in the south, east, west, and even in central Afghanistan if the north is lost. If the Afghan government loses the north, the Taliban could take the population centers in the south, east, and west without a fight, and begin its siege of Kabul.
I currently do not think that there will be a long 'siege of Kabul' but a negotiated transfer of power.
The events of the last weeks show a more or less controlled retreat or defeat of demoralized government forces and a systematic takeover of most of the countryside and district centers by well prepared Taliban forces. Only the bigger province capitals have not yet fallen though some think that Mazar i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province, will fall tonight.
It seems that there is a willingness of at least certain parts of Afghanistan's current government to let the Taliban take over the country without much of a fight.
That gives me hope that a further long conflict will be avoided. After more than 42 years of war Afghanistan needs peace. While the Taliban rule is harsh it is also somewhat just and certainly less corrupt than the U.S. imposed structures. Afghanistan must be given time to find a new balance from which it can then develop in a way that fits the local circumstances and the local peoples' tradition and morality.
The last 42 years have shown that nothing else will work.
James, thanks kindly for your warm words!
Man, a lot of good discussion here!
Going back to Karlof @ 22 who notes that Islamist extremism seems to be a force that is waning:
‘Saudi funding of Wahhabi-Terrorist recruiting Madrassas has almost ceased; Pakistan’s policy under Khan has also been altered; and it must be noted that the two were previously in lock-step…’
Indeed, and commenter AK74 gives a clue @ 56, listing just some of the many cases of western use of Islamist extremism and militancy over the decades, from Chechnya, to Syria, Kosovo etc:
‘In short, the Anglo-Americans are the world’s leading terrorist nations…
Terrorism is who the fuck they are.’
Well, all good things must end I suppose, lol—and I think we may be seeing that the imperialist deployment of Islamist terrorism as a useful [and powerful] geopolitical tool has possibly run its course!
This is why I don’t place much stock in the idea that the Taliban is a ‘mortal enemy’ of Russia, much less China, as at least a couple of commenters here have posited.
It is a changing world. Things are much different on the radical Islamism front than they were even a decade ago—which btw, was when China was being racked with outside-sponsored Uighur terrorist violence on a quite disturbing scale [to name just one example, never mind Syria, Iraq etc].
If Karlof’s intuition is correct, we may in fact be seeing nothing less than the endgame failure of the imperialist-sponsored global terror project! Very significant indeed!
They’ve been trying hard for 40 years, and now the inevitable failure and collapse seems to be at hand—just as the Red Army came a-knocking on a certain Austrian gefreiter’s bunker door, back in the day.
One could, I suppose write a book about this subject [I hope someone does]. And the many small, but persistent pushback victories along the way, from the axis of resistance.
Russian pushback in the Caucasus and Syria; Chinese pushback in Xinjiang, Iranian pushback in West Asia, etc etc.
Plus the abject chaos resulting in places like Iraq and Libya, where even those willing to go along to get along [hello EU and Nato] have been shocked and awed with the unforeseen consequences of massive human migration, domestic extremism etc.
I think the world at large has mostly had it with going along with the ‘war on of terror’ narrative. At least the ordinary folks who choose to think.
Not to mention the consolidation of the resistance forces. Yes, Pakistan is now on board, firmly even, I would say.
Saudia appears to be looking ‘outside the box’ that it has been dutifully confining itself to. Maybe MBS is going to surprise all, especially Washington, which seems to be increasingly snappish towards towards the Petro-dollar kingdom, lol!
[I note in passing here the recent good reporting on this site on that corner of the world too.]
Bottom line: I think the world has already changed—and the Taliban of today is not necessarily the antagonist to major powers like Russia and China [I have to mention in particular one absurd comment here, where the Taliban is somehow posited as a mortal enemy to China and its efforts in Xinjiang].
The days when this might have been true was when that same US was sponsoring that same Taliban and its Al Qaeda and Mujahedin forebears! And using these and other terrorist forces against those same countries which we now refer to as the axis of resistance.
There is only so much inversion of truth that the professional liars of the Imperium can get away with. I think we have already passed that tipping point!
Bottom line is I agree with the commenters here who see a Taliban-led Afghanistan becoming a responsible player in the region—with the help and support of the major players, as well as the immediate neighbors.
Minor note: Afghanistan is already ‘observer’ status in the China-Russia-led SCO, which was founded as a security alliance whose major aim is to counter instability and terrorism in the region [naturally we know where that terrorism comes from, lol!].
If Russia and China are engaged diplomatically with the Taliban, which is a near certainty, and in fact possibly quite deeply, then the Taliban-led government’s following on the road into the SCO is going to be a big part of the overall regional security architecture.
Again, as with MBS and Saudia, we may well be surprised to see that the Taliban are changing horses. [Erdogan is somewhat in this boat too, although in typical Turkic horsemanship, he seems to have mastered the skill of riding two horses at the same time, lol!]
The fact is that the Imperium is losing on all fronts. It is a visibly shrinking old man, who despite the grandiose talk of MAGA or ‘America is Back’ cannot change the fact that the rest of the world is getting bigger and steonger, while the old man is getting smaller and sicker, and increasingly bedeviled by all kinds of inevitable blowback.
Big problems ahead for the delusional disneylanders!
Of course that is not to say that they won’t keep trying to make trouble, in Afghanistan, in Syria, Iraq, Iran and other places [Myanmar].
Only their punch is not nearly what it once was. And the counterpunches from the resistance seem to be landing hard and heavy! [See Al Asad airbase!]
Posted by: Gordog | Jul 7 2021 17:05 utc | 82
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