Afghanistan News & Discussion - April 2016

[vera_k]

And how is China going to win without boots on the ground and doing something different than others? Elaborate please on the “More than that” part.

It will help that China is invited in and does not need to invade. With a friendly government in Afghanistan, it would require no more than the number of foreign troops that are departing now. Probably the economic administration would have to be managed by China. And education in country and for refugees and future leaders shipped to China.

[Cyrano]

US needs to put in place an ironclad control on the spares for every piece of equipment they have left behind. Thats the only way of mitigating the risk of having Talibunnies using them beyond what they can service or repair by jugaad.

Also keep a strict watch on all their defense contractors - euphemisn for mercenaires les they go and help out for a few more dollah.

Hope this admin wakes up

[IndraD]

fact checkers of west scramble to kegitimise taliban

[Mort Walker]

US needs to put in place an ironclad control on the spares for every piece of equipment they have left behind. Thats the only way of mitigating the risk of having Talibunnies using them beyond what they can service or repair by jugaad.

Also keep a strict watch on all their defense contractors - euphemisn for mercenaires les they go and help out for a few more dollah.

Hope this admin wakes up

US defense contractors are governed fairly strictly, they won’t violate US law for the fear of being blacklisted for other contracts. The bulk of the 15K US nationals stuck in Afghanistan are many contractors and US government civilian personnel who do the maintenance and logistics on US equipment. That equipment has all been abandoned as witnessed at Bagram air base. Whatever is useful will be divided up between the Pak army and the Taliban.

The Afghan military also flies several HAL built helos. Hopefully those have been deactivated.

[Cyrano]

Good to hear that. One IAF donated helo that was in the news recently seemed to be in dis(re)pair.

[rsingh]

Old man is facing heat now. nyt was fill of common sense today and Fox News jindabad. Old bidden can not hide his failure by running to podium like 20 years old young man. At last anti Biden wave is picking momentum. It seems intelligences agencies had warned him in July.

[hnair]

It will help that China is invited in and does not need to invade. With a friendly government in Afghanistan, it would require no more than the number of foreign troops that are departing now. Probably the economic administration would have to be managed by China. And education in country and for refugees and future leaders shipped to China.

ok. Some kind of “China is a peaceful friend” argument. If we take next door, China was invited in and loved up by pakis. Yet when a few engineers got blown up and pakis started crying about loansharking, all Chinese did was to cry loudly back to pakis. No boots on ground, no advisors, no shipping Zardari’s or Sharif grandkids for re-education on better governance.

The US troops that are there right now had a heavy on-call air support component and a thick satellite driven data network. Does China have the tech needed for that sort of tech intense and human-sparse operations? We haven’t seen that in Ladakh or anywhere else by them. Even with all that, network etc, US operations in stabilizing a govt was abject failure as we saw the way their Afghan-led component folded up. US deployed some well educated afghan planners etc. still failed. Taliban will do better governance with china’s ship-and-train as you call it ?

But that is all speculative and we won’t know. This was your original post, for reference

If any country could pacify this part of the world, it may be China. Others are too hamstrung by domestic politics. Whatever tactics have been used in Xinjiang can be replicated here as well. The BRI road assets can be used to ship malcontents to other locations for training.

This post reference of re-education was not about peace’n progress nation building, but concentration camps. And that is what I really hope the Chinese try to do.

[ramana]

Mort Walker, Its close to 45000 Americans: some Afghan origin abut all US citizens are still left.
Cyrano, What controls on spare parts in Afghanistan already abandoned?
This is like bell the cat type of thinking.

Basically WH cut and run with a willing Pentagon.
And two generals were in charge Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley.
Both should resign for the disgrace they brought to the military.

[ramana]

For all thinking of Kung Pao, China wont be sucked into Afghanistan. They have no such plans to retrieve or cleanup US mess.

[ramana]

What are the chances of Northern Alliance 2.0 based on Panjshir holding the fort this time? Looks like too little too late from the news coming out. Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud have called for anti taliban forces to unite.

Good to see you back Dilbu.

Right now they are slim but Dostum forces are said to be linking up with Saleh in Panjshir.
Problem is there is no land corridor to Tajikistan.

[Rudradev]

Hnair and VeraK:

The rapid collapse of the ANDSF-- OBVIOUSLY a case of bribery with Chinese money (via ISI hands)-- is now casting a new light upon the last 2 years of PLA machinations across the LAC.

The Chinese went to a lot of trouble to ensure that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and subsequent Taliban takeover, went exactly the way it did.

Step 1 for XJP was to ensure that the US was kicked out in the most humiliating manner possible-- something they can cite as the collapse of Western imperialism in Asia, resounding proof of American supremacy in decline, etc.

Step 2, just as inevitably, is for PRC to demonstrate that it is in fact the pre-eminent power in Asia-- that its pretensions of being a Middle Kingdom to which all its neighbours owe tribute and vassalage are justified.

Therefore it must-- it MUST-- demonstrate its capacity to "succeed" (by some universally visible and measurable parameters) in Afghanistan where US and Russia failed. It must show that it is the sole, glorious exception to the "Graveyard of Empires". This is the shortcut to establishing that it is in fact the natural master of Asia, and that it has more of a right to dominate the entire continent having greatly surpassed the performance of Alexander/British/Soviets/Americans in Afghanistan.

If we think the Chinese are only concerned about Afghanistan for minerals or because of ETIM, I believe we're making a mistake. Even the cutting off of India from Central Asia is just a corollary (that is all they can hope for vis-a-vis India, as I am sure they know... there is no way the present GOI will allow them to salami-slice another inch of land in Ladakh, ArP, or anywhere else).

The primary objective of the Chinese in Afghanistan is a sort of Ashvamedha Yagna to show their capacity to dominate, tame, and "civilize" Afghanistan itself. What power could have a greater claim on global dominance and empire?

So why, then, have the Chinese been building up forces across the LAC? It is to deter the one power that they know could really screw this up for them. Us. They are threatening the Indian homeland in the hope that India will not do anything to sabotage their exhibition of imperial authority in Afghanistan.

Remember their fetish for drawing nine-dash-lines based on 15th century maps and whatnot. Afghanistan has the same historical resonance for them, because it was part of the Tang dynasty empire (618-907 CE)-- one of the most extensive expansions of any Chinese dynasty. I would go so far as to say XJP has to reiterate the feats of the Tang imperium if he wants to retain his hold on power in the CPC. He's going to bet everything on it.

[nam]

What would really help is providing ATGM supplies to NA ferrying from Ayni. Given that NA managed to fly out their airpower & MI35's, we should be able to maintain them in Ayni.

The bunnies capturing the northern areas is only on paper. The cavemen don't have enough men to man all the cities. So it should not be difficult for NA to get supplies from Tajikistan. Just as the Southern border is porous, so is the northern areas.

Unless they can man entire Tajik border!

One thing we should have done a while back is move in few Para-SF units with ATGM with ANA. We can still deploy them through the Northern region.

[V_Raman]

we all need to remember that AFG was stabilized even with earlier taliban regime - they even stopped the opium! their only issue was OBL - due to tribal loyalties - they did not sponsor any terrorism. they did allow the AI kandhahar plane landing due to pak influence - but treated the passengers with utmost respect. if the present taliban regime is recognized worldwide with no viable NA or resistance - AFG will stabilize itself.

so the real issue will be AFG vs PAK equation and how that affects India - this is where china comes in and is scary. they have both in their pocket. well played indeed. again, i still think indian boots in AFG was the only viable option to prevent this. but it is too late now. USA gave the option to us during vajpayee regime - we rejected it.

now our only option is to hunker down and build up our internal structures to bear the onslaught, unless this new AfPak collapses from within.

[Rudradev]

A lot will depend on whether China can compel Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (via its influence on Russia and the SCO) to refrain from destabilizing Beijing's new client state in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

If you compare the current situation to 1996-2001, one major change is the presence and influence of China. During Taliban 1.0 they were not a factor-- Russia, Iran, and India worked together (via these CARs) to support the Northern Alliance. Russia and Iran today are very much under the Chinese thumb. The -Stans, of course, are under Russia's thumb.

If I am right, China has invested a lot in ensuring that its project in Afghanistan will be a success, and will continue to do so. The failure has to come from within the Taliban-ruled state itself.

[rsingh]

we all need to remember that AFG was stabilized even with earlier taliban regime - they even stopped the opium! their only issue was OBL - due to tribal loyalties - they did not sponsor any terrorism. they did allow the AI kandhahar plane landing due to pak influence - but treated the passengers with utmost respect. if the present taliban regime is recognized worldwide with no viable NA or resistance - AFG will stabilize itself.


so the real issue will be AFG vs PAK equation and how that affects India - this is where china comes in and is scary. they have both in their pocket. well played indeed. again, i still think indian boots in AFG was the only viable option to prevent this. but it is too late now. USA gave the option to us during vajpayee regime - we rejected it.

now our only option is to hunker down and build up our internal structures to bear the onslaught, unless this new AfPak collapses from within.

Allah be praised, saar where you got this idea from? Plane land in Afghanistan according to plan. Bunnis had machine guns aimed at doors. They made everybody to stay in plane for all the time. Hijackers were going out and in without any fear of being shot at. They blocked runway. What has happened to you?

[rsingh]

we all need to remember that AFG was stabilized even with earlier taliban regime - they even stopped the opium! their only issue was OBL - due to tribal loyalties - they did not sponsor any terrorism. they did allow the AI kandhahar plane landing due to pak influence - but treated the passengers with utmost respect. if the present taliban regime is recognized worldwide with no viable NA or resistance - AFG will stabilize itself.

so the real issue will be AFG vs PAK equation and how that affects India - this is where china comes in and is scary. they have both in their pocket. well played indeed. again, i still think indian boots in AFG was the only viable option to prevent this. but it is too late now. USA gave the option to us during vajpayee regime - we rejected it.

now our only option is to hunker down and build up our internal structures to bear the onslaught, unless this new AfPak collapses from within.

Nope we don't remember. May be I have lost memories. How were they earning money. Not from donation by Qatar. That was for operations by Al qaida. Please correct me.

[rsingh]

Rudradev wrote
The rapid collapse of the ANDSF-- OBVIOUSLY a case of bribery with Chinese money (via ISI hands)-- is now casting a new light upon the last 2 years of PLA machinations across the LAC.

This argument is typical case of " I can twist any fact to win the argument ". Pakistani do this in TV shows. So according to you China bribed NA solders to not to fight. Or the higher officials were paid? I see not a single order to disbanded. I think ( which I am doing a lot these days) that every Afghanistani is loyel to his tribe and not to country. 95% Afgans want Sharia law. There are some educated women in metropolitan cities whi hate burka. In rural area it is their choice. Ask any burka clad woman ( in free world) to remove burka because she has nothing yo fear. There are no Talibans in London,Paris. She will never agree. It is in the blood. How will they agree? Let them to be ruled by China et all. It is of no significance for us. Wait few months and see.

[Mort Walker]

The WSJ is reporting the State Dept. thought that Kabul would fall to the Taliban once turned over on 31st August.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/confidenti ... 1629406993

About two dozen State Department officials serving at the embassy in Kabul sent an internal memo to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and another top State Department official last month warning of the potential collapse of Kabul soon after the Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the cable.

The cable, dated July 13, also called for the State Department to use tougher language in describing the atrocities being committed by the Taliban. The classified cable represents the clearest evidence yet that the administration had been warned by its own officials on the ground that the Taliban’s advance was imminent and Afghanistan’s military may be unable to stop it.

The US Secretary of State visited India on 28 July 2021. Did he inform New Delhi of the impending disaster? Or did he lie to the GoI? If he lied, then this US government has set India-US relations back by decades.

On July 8th when the US president was questioned about a comparison to Saigon 1975:

“Mr. President, some Vietnamese veterans see echoes of their experience in this withdrawal in Afghanistan. Do you see any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam?” Biden was asked on July 8. Biden replied:

None whatsoever. Zero. What you had is you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our embassy — six, if I’m not mistaken. The Taliban is not the South — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.

What is happening is that the Taliban are lying to the US and the world. The world sees what's going, but the US government is lying to its public.

The US president and his administration must resign enmasse. They have cause grave damage to the region and the world.

[Rudradev]

This argument is typical case of " I can twist any fact to win the argument ". Pakistani do this in TV shows. So according to you China bribed NA solders to not to fight. Or the higher officials were paid? I see not a single order to disbanded..

It's clear what happened. At first ANDSF was putting up a tough fight. Then all of a sudden they started surrendering everywhere. Why else would they do this, unless the senior officers & govt officials were bribed and instructed the field commanders to stand down?

And where were you standing, that you could see or not see such orders being issued?

This as I mentioned before was the exact same pattern seen in the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. At first, a slow advance & street fighting with a lot of resistance in the south (battle of Nasiriyah alone lasted 10 days). Then suddenly Baghdad had fallen in 7 days. That was revealed to be a case of US bribing Iraqi generals to stand down.

Since you seem to watch a lot of Pakistani TV shows, can I ask what is your alternative explanation? Jinns?

[Mort Walker]

Mort Walker, Its close to 45000 Americans: some Afghan origin abut all US citizens are still left.

There is no clear answer on this.

The White House claimed Tuesday the “self-identified” number of Americans in the country is about 11,000.
Tuesday’s media reports suggested 10,000 to 40,000 Americans remained in Afghanistan. The Associated Press reported Thursday 15,000 were stranded. About 2,900 have been evacuated since Sunday.

[vera_k]

CNN reporting hostage release negotiations are underway in Kabul.
Direct and daily talks with Taliban to salvage Biden's Afghanistan crisis

[aharam]

Watching the situation, I am not convinced that China is going to intercede in Af for national H&D or to show they have arrived. They are not so stupid, although, my own devil's advocate argument argues otherwise. I fail to see what they wanted to accomplish with Galwan, because it was a complete failure for any objective other than to put India on the backfoot for any upcoming Taiwan adventures. Basically, a don't hit me in the future when I am otherwise engaged. And I would expect strategic planners in India way smarter than me have already gamed a China facing a possible US conflict in Taiwan and the possibilities it enables.

China is following a US based information-centric model that focuses on the force multiplier of information warfare and most importantly information fusion across sensor domains to reduce human footprint. This is a good trade-off that the US does, to maximize its advantage - technological over manpower. It is also geared towards warfare against conventional adversaries - and Af, like Iraq was a nation building exercise, which means, it was a counter insurgency exercise. There is no conventional army with its logistics tail and fixed installations to target here. And a counter insurgency is a very different ball of wax than an invasion. Put simply, consider the following scenario. Take a town invaded by an occupying force. If your army is small, your manpower is small, the town square has a few soldiers in it. To a sniper they are attractive low cost targets with no real chance of retribution - US built a sniper force to combat this. Now take the same scenario in counter insurgency like India - in that town square for every five civilians, there is a solider. In a busy square where you can hide, as an enemy sniper, all you see are dozens of soldiers everywhere - not exactly a take a shot situation unless you are suicidal, but that's another story altogether.

By moving to the US model with lower manpower, China is yielding its capabilities on other classes of operations. Af is outside its core capabilities - it requires a large number of hardy soldiers, and high tooth to tail ratio, which is not the US model, except its overstretched special forces. The US model was built based on its strengths in manufacturing and technology and its weaknesses in manpower. Supplanting China here, which has different structural capabilities is premature.

The counter argument would be, look at Xinjiang. I would argue that their "invasion" of Xinjiang was a long time ago, and they simply don't understand the most basic aspects of a multi-cultural society. Should they attempt the same "experiment" in Af, India should encourage China and watch a lesson being learned in what you can and can't do in a multi-cultural society with the world watching on. Strength derives from a multi-cultural society - it is not a weakness, and yet China does not even comprehend that India for all its political noise is not going to split on state or language boundaries anymore and hook up with them. Look at the US - it now has more brown people than white. It is going through its period of redefining values, and restructuring society to deal with this basic demographic change, but the thing to note is it is trying to deal with it and not attempting a whole scale Sinicization as Xinjiang is. China in aping the US model is missing the basics of society, its composition and its strengths.

My own belief is that China will make nice with the Taliban to prevent Xinjiang from becoming a hot spot for them - antagonizing the Taliban will have asymmetric costs to them that they are well aware of.

Please take this with the appropriate dosage of NaCl.

Cheers
Aharam

[rsingh]

Rudradev

Since you seem to watch a lot of Pakistani TV shows, can I ask what is your alternative explanation? Jinns?
Last edited by Rudradev

Saar., Jin was in my post. It made the text disappear. I explained already. Read it again.
Wait for sometimes and you will see rmore eports of cowerd behavior of solders..Apart from loyalties to their own tribes, have you seen any Muslim military putting any serious resistance? iraq Iran war was no exception. They do better in gorilla type campaigns. Hamasaki, Talib etc are not regular armies.They win here and there. Create terror in unsuspecting the public.Even Pakistan with regulR army is no where in direct battle.

[chanakyaa]

Once the chatter about legitimacy starts, it is interesting to note that Afg's foreign reserves after 20 years have risen dramatically...

Bunnies 1.0: Less than $1 billion
Bunnies 2.0: $7-$8 billion

Some reports are coming out saying that bunnies can't access national reserves. How can you legitimize the regime (not immediately, may be over time) and legally prevent bunnies from accessing national reserves at the same time?

Afghan central bank's $10 billion stash mostly out of Taliban's reach

[arshyam]

Taliban won't be successful in stabilizing Afg. It may appear stable for a few months, as most opposition is shell shocked and need time to re-group. But re-group they will, and, inevitably, Afghanistan's fissures will start widening. We need to remember that despite all positive press, the Taliban is a Pashtun-dominated group, notwithstanding the recent reports of Tajiks and Uzbeki tribes joining it. It's like Tibetans in the PLA - sure, you'll get some cannon fodder here and there, but not the unqualified support you need to run a stable militaristic force over the long run.

India should talk to the Taliban as they appear to be dominant today and may not be under the paki thumb as they were earlier, but we should keep our channels with the new Northern Alliance open. They need to be sustained, even if they are limited to the Panjsher valley at this point, so they could regroup and start fighting back after some time. The role of the stans is critical here, as their land border holds a chance of establishing contact with the resistance in Panjsher. Without a land connection, no real sustenance can happen. The Chinese will try to neutralize this so the Talibs via the pakis are amenable to their overtures, and grant favoured access to BRI-like stuff to the Chinese. At the same time, the stans won't cross the line laid by Mother Russia, who's interests appear to align with the Chinese at this point, but it is perhaps more a marriage of convenience to get the Americans out than anything else. In the long run, I don't think it is in Russia's interests to let the Chinese run rampant through Afg and the stans - they'll want to retain their pre-eminence and not give more strategic space to the Chinese. So my reading is that the Russians will also keep a channel open with the Northern Alliance in the hopes of using them against the Taliban and the chin-pakis. So that's where our interests would align.

I am not sure where/how Iran would fit it to this mosaic - their interests align with the Chinese as long as their borders are quiet. Beyond that, would they be content paying a tribute to Beijing while opposing the Saudi/Sunni coalition? The Talibs are also sunni, so that makes it all the more interesting. My point is, Iran is already unreliable, and their interests here appear (to me) clouded, so we can't rely on them against the Talibs - the stans seem to be a better bet.

Bottomline is, a stable Afghanistan under Talib rule is NOT in India's interest, as that would embolden the bakis at our borders and provide some halo effect to the Chinese, to whichever extent they get involved. Either we need a friendly govt in Kabul that rules over all Afg (an almost impossible expectation going by history), or one where they are fighting amongst themselves and occasionally poke at the bakis. That alone will ensure some peace and quiet in our borders.

I know this sounds cold-blooded, but it is what it is. At the end of the day, we don't need to bleed in our hearts for any Afghani democracy or human rights - the so-called historical ties we keep referring to has always hurt us more than it benefited, and this trend has sustained right from the days of Shakuni and Gandhara. Sometimes I wonder if Afg is the way it is due to the role it's prince Shakuni played in fomenting the Mahabharata war in India - so their karma is this curse of constant instability and civil-war. Anyway, there is no reason for us to look beyond real-politik.

[rsingh]

Once the chatter about legitimacy starts, it is interesting to note that Afg's foreign reserves after 20 years have risen dramatically...

Bunnies 1.0: Less than $1 billion
Bunnies 2.0: $7-$8 billion

Some reports are coming out saying that bunnies can't access national reserves. How can you legitimize the regime (not immediately, may be over time) and legally prevent bunnies from accessing national reserves at the same time?

Afghan central bank's $10 billion stash mostly out of Taliban's reach

That is not a problem. A legitimate country is deprived if reserves and kept under sanctions....,Belarus. All over arrest of journalist

[ramana]

Mort Walker, Its close to 45000 Americans: some Afghan origin abut all US citizens are still left.

There is no clear answer on this.

The White House claimed Tuesday the “self-identified” number of Americans in the country is about 11,000.
Tuesday’s media reports suggested 10,000 to 40,000 Americans remained in Afghanistan. The Associated Press reported Thursday 15,000 were stranded. About 2,900 have been evacuated since Sunday.

Sure you can believe Ice Cream Joe and his mediaoits.

Their word is solid as jello.

[Manas]

The WSJ is reporting the State Dept. thought that Kabul would fall to the Taliban once turned over on 31st August.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/confidenti ... 1629406993


The US president and his administration must resign enmasse. They have cause grave damage to the region and the world.

Wait a minute, that is uncalled for.

Werent we told by the MSM for the last 4.5 years how mean Trump's tweets were. How incompetent his administration was. Please also dont forget that some learned, distinguished math wizards on this forum have told us how science based, diverse, inclusive and brim full of competent people this administration is filled with. Werent we told that Trump has damaged NATO and is deserting allies and the U.S. isnt respected by anyone in the world ! Beware, America is truly back under POTUS Biden !

Oh ! are you asking, wondering why would the world's most powerful military with the Mr. Most Diverse/Inclusive Sec Def and the CJCS Gen. White Rage in charge did not have a plan to evacuate U.S. civilians/citizens and Afghan allies first, followed by non essential embassy personnel, followed by $B's of equipment and lastly the few 100 troops left guarding the airport boarding the last 2 C5s or C17s out of Kabul. Because Mr. Diverse Sec Def and Gen. White Rage were busy making sure the U.S. armed forces are learning the proper pronouns and critical race theory !

BTW the mess in Afghanistan is moderate compared to the mess on the southern border !

[Mort Walker]

There is no clear answer on this.

The White House claimed Tuesday the “self-identified” number of Americans in the country is about 11,000.
Tuesday’s media reports suggested 10,000 to 40,000 Americans remained in Afghanistan. The Associated Press reported Thursday 15,000 were stranded. About 2,900 have been evacuated since Sunday.

Sure you can believe Ice Cream Joe and his mediaoits.

Their word is solid as jello.

Therein lies the problem. There are no quantifiable numbers as the White House is worried about tens-of-thousands becoming perennially hostage. Which may happen, as the Taliban may say - "you freeze our funds, we freeze your people."

[jamwal]

So much for influence of education and uniform over extremism.
People ignore traitors of 1947 and 1984 in India. Here is one more from a neighbouring country.


EDIT:
Same "Sheru" mentioned below
https://www.nitinpai.in/2021/08/20/on-d ... he-taliban

On Diplomatically Engaging the Taliban

Rezaul Hasan Laskar reports that some members of the Taliban leadership informally reached out to Indian authorities a few days ago “requesting” that India retain its embassy in Kabul. Sher Mohammed Abbas Stanekzai, a top-tier Taliban leader based in Doha (and an early-1980s alum of the Indian Military Academy Dehradun) assured his Indian interlocutors of the safety of the Indian mission and its diplomats.

This should surprise us, but only mildly. The surprise arises from the antipathy the Taliban has shown towards India’s role in Afghanistan and its complaints (echoing Pakistan’s) about the activities of Indian missions in the country.

Beyond that, Stanekzai’s overture is quite understandable. If and when the Taliban take over the reins of power, their relationship with their backers and allies will undergo a simple, but profound shift. No sovereign likes to be treated as a puppet. The Taliban leadership is acutely aware that their ranks comprise of fighters, not administrators, called upon to govern a war-torn land-locked country, with precarious finances and unsustainable economy. Those who put you on the throne will demand their pound of flesh at the best of times, but given Afghanistan’s current situation, China, Pakistan, Russia and Iran are unlikely to spare any time before they start pressing the new regime to accomodate their interests.

To balance this pressure, the Taliban regime will need counter-weights. New allies and also new causes that reduce the leverage its backers have over it. Who are those new allies? Not the West, for now. Gulf Arab countries, perhaps, but given their past experience in prevailing over their Afghan-inspired radicals, they will not be overly enthusiastic. The relationship with Iran complicates matters even further. So it is understandable that the Taliban will want to engage New Delhi. Of course, on their own terms.

[Dilbu]

Remnants of ANA willing to fight are rallying to the call of Northern Alliance.

[Rudradev]

There is a serious push in the usual quarters to market the Taliban to the Indian public as OK sort of chaps. "Country boys with a sense of honour", as the Briturd General said.

Normalizing the Taliban is at least as important to the BIF as bashing Modi/BJP/RSS. The effort to create equivalence between Hindutvavadis & Taliban as "extremists" is so that Pappu/Mamata/Kejri & Dimran can then be projected as doyens of reasonable centrist moderation by contrast.

[Rudradev]

Remnants of ANA willing to fight are rallying to the call of Northern Alliance.

Now tell us all that they will lose the fight onlee

[RajeshA]

Excellent Analysis!

Corroborates my earlier theory.

[Ashokk]

Hindus and Sikhs shifted to safe place for India evacuation

Indian embassy officials shifted about 60 Hindus and Sikhs on Thursday from Gurdwara Singh Sabha in Karte-Parwan, Afghanistan, to a safe place for evacuation to India, local Sikhs from Kabul said. Many of these Sikhs have said they prefer evacuation to Canada or the US rather than India because they have no roots there and because of the condition of evacuees who have been in India for a while.

[chetak]

Once the chatter about legitimacy starts, it is interesting to note that Afg's foreign reserves after 20 years have risen dramatically...

Bunnies 1.0: Less than $1 billion
Bunnies 2.0: $7-$8 billion

Some reports are coming out saying that bunnies can't access national reserves. How can you legitimize the regime (not immediately, may be over time) and legally prevent bunnies from accessing national reserves at the same time?

Afghan central bank's $10 billion stash mostly out of Taliban's reach

this is precisely why the pakis and the talibs are jamming up kabul airport, and they may well be identifying and isolating high value targets that will be used to trade for access to funds.

the pakis have already been there and done that. This time around, they will not let go so easily without their many pounds of flesh and they will avenge their imagined humiliation over the decades by the amerikis, the euro goras and especially, the Indians.

like taqiya, rape, slavery and mutilation, revenge is very much a sanctioned and sanctified doctrinal narrative, actively encouraged their civilization as well as culture.

[g.sarkar]

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... pse-504977
Opinion | Why Afghan Forces So Quickly Laid Down Their Arms
Opposing Afghan factions have long negotiated arrangements to stop fighting — something the U.S. either failed to understand or chose to ignore.
ANATOL LIEVEN, 08/16/2021
In the winter of 1989, as a journalist for the Times of London, I accompanied a group of mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province. At one point, a fortified military post became visible on the other side of a valley. As we got closer, the flag flying above it also became visible — the flag of the Afghan Communist state, which the mujahedeen were fighting to overthrow.
“Isn’t that a government post?” I asked my interpreter. “Yes,” he replied. “Can’t they see us?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied. “Shouldn’t we hide?” I squeaked. “No, no, don’t worry,” he replied reassuringly. “We have an arrangement.”
I remembered this episode three years later, when the Communist state eventually fell to the mujahedeen; six years later, as the Taliban swept across much of Afghanistan; and again this week, as the country collapses in the face of another Taliban assault. Such “arrangements” — in which opposing factions agree not to fight, or even to trade soldiers in exchange for safe passage — are critical to understanding why the Afghan army today has collapsed so quickly (and, for the most part, without violence). The same was true when the Communist state collapsed in 1992, and the practice persisted in many places as the Taliban advanced later in the 1990s.
This dense web of relationships and negotiated arrangements between forces on opposite sides is often opaque to outsiders. Over the past 20 years, U.S. military and intelligence services have generally either not understood or chosen to ignore this dynamic as they sought to paint an optimistic picture of American efforts to build a strong, loyal Afghan army. Hence the Biden administration’s expectation that there would be what during the Vietnam War was called a “decent interval” between U.S. departure and the state’s collapse.
While the coming months and years will reveal what the U.S. government did and didn’t know about the state of Afghan security forces prior to U.S. withdrawal, the speed of the collapse was predictable. That the U.S. government could not foresee — or, perhaps, refused to admit — that beleaguered Afghan forces would continue a long-standing practice of cutting deals with the Taliban illustrates precisely the same naivete with which America has prosecuted the Afghanistan war for years.
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The central feature of the past several weeks in Afghanistan has not been fighting. It has been negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan forces, sometimes brokered by local elders. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported “a breathtaking series of negotiated surrenders by government forces” that resulted from more than a year of deal-making between the Taliban and rural leaders. In Afghanistan, kinship and tribal connections often take precedence over formal political loyalties, or at least create neutral spaces where people from opposite sides can meet and talk. Over the years, I have spoken with tribal leaders from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region who have regularly presided over meetings of tribal notables, including commanders on opposite sides.
One of the key things discussed at such meetings is business, and the business very often involves heroin. When I was traveling in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, it was an open secret that local mujahedeen groups and government units had deals to share the local heroin trade. By all accounts, the same has held between Taliban and government forces since 2001.
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Gautam

[nam]

So the cavemen have raided our consulate. No response from GoI!

Looks like the lot wants to make us their enemy.

[shyamd]

I think that Pakistani influence in Taliban 2.0 will be much less than Taliban 1.0. Taliban 2.0 has been influenced by Qatar and MB, leadership in Doha for many years. And therefore also under Turkish influence.

Be careful....maybe ISI want us to think that. From speaking to people I'm getting the sense all dirty business (terror training) will be shipped of to Afghanistan from places like Mansehra and PoK. TSP will follow the international community publicly...i.e. if the powers recognise, they will recognise... if they don't then TSP won't.

The impact will be TSPA will come out of FATF and look clean... they'll say all terror planning/training is happening from "ungoverned places".

Iran has close ties with many in Talebs but they aren't trusted.

UAE has approached Turkey for alliance on Afghan file.

[chetak]

what happens now..........

will the talibs stone, rape, flog and maim people in the women's council who disagree with them


Afghanistan just took its seat on the UN women's rights commission and if the new Taliban regime gets recognized it means the terrorists who lash women and girls for going to work and school will be sitting on the world's top women's rights body.

We are pleased to announce AFG's historic win on the election of Members of the UN Commission on Status of Women (@UN_CSW) for the term 2021-2025. Despite AFG being a member of the UN since 1946, this will be the first time AFG will occupy a seat on this important commission.

viaAfghanistan Mission@AfghanMissionUN · Sep 15, 2020