I was wondering how come I missed the news about the Taliban signing COMCASA with the USBart S wrote:
The communication equipment would likely not be usable by Bunnies/Porkies as it requires a significant software ecosystem and probably has been/will be soft-killed by the US military.
good point.Bart S wrote:The communication equipment would likely not be usable by Bunnies/Porkies as it requires a significant software ecosystem and probably has been/will be soft-killed by the US military.chetak wrote:
It is the secure communication devices that are going to cause the most damage and will be the most difficult to counter. These will be deployed in cashmere, punjab and rajasthan sectors as also along the border areas including nepal and beediland where drug running and infiltration routes already exist
The encryption may be very difficult to break unless uncle gives us the means to do so.
All militants are good when they help Terroristan get Jaziya from US to fight militants.rsingh wrote:^^^
God gracious. What kind of militant were those? Bad ones or Good ones?
trained people are available in plenty in the armed forces of the gelf countries, pukestan and turki using the same humvees, MRAPs and helos and a lot of them are Indian and paki ex servicemenjamwal wrote:Yes, all those helicopters and military vehicles need intensive maintenance by highly trained manpower. Even if they landup in pak, a lot of that stuff will need to be cannibalised to keep the rest running. Only problem is rifles, ammunition and other weapons.
The Harbin Z-20 is a medium-lift utility helicopter produced by the Harbin Aircraft Industry Group (HAIG). It was first flown on 23 December 2013 and has a maximum takeoff weight in the range of 10 tonnes (22,000 lb).[2][3] The Z-20 can operate from locations above 4,000 m (13,000 ft) in altitude as well as from the Liaoning aircraft carrier.[4][5] It is regarded to be comparable in performance to the US-made Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, which civilian variant Sikorsky S-70C-2 has been used by the People's Liberation Army since 1984
CDS statements on afghanistan have confirmed. One thing to add is that Pulwama attack was planned from Afg.shyamd wrote: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.ldev wrote: 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.
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.
Sorry, had missed your earlier posts. You paint a very plausible scenario. That is certainly what Pakistan will want. Correct on GOI's part to be watchful. Only time will tell. Any confirmation about the "joint" over the horizon strike/reconnaissance capability that the US wants to retain for monitoring/retaliation. There were some signals in the wind that India may get involved in some capacity. If true, that would mitigate against some of the risks of the terror camps being shipped off to Afghanistan's "un-governed" areas.shyamd wrote:CDS statements on afghanistan have confirmed. One thing to add is that Pulwama attack was planned from Afg.shyamd wrote: 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.
Or, what if the armored vehicles and high-tech equipment show up in chiniland....I bet that the small arms and ammunition will be showing up in Cashmere within a matter of weeks.jamwal wrote:Yes, all those helicopters and military vehicles need intensive maintenance by highly trained manpower. Even if they landup in pak, a lot of that stuff will need to be cannibalised to keep the rest running. The only problem is rifles, ammunition and other weapons.
the taliban seem to be very keen to continue "trade" with India and that too via the wagah border, per today's toilet rag. They are also keen on "supporting" the chabahar port and to these ends, one feels that they might be "able to prevail" on the pakis to "release" commander Kulbhushan Jadhav as a "gesture of sincerity/goodwill"ldev wrote:Sorry, had missed your earlier posts. You paint a very plausible scenario. That is certainly what Pakistan will want. Correct on GOI's part to be watchful. Only time will tell. Any confirmation about the "joint" over the horizon strike/reconnaissance capability that the US wants to retain for monitoring/retaliation. There were some signals in the wind that India may get involved in some capacity. If true, that would mitigate against some of the risks of the terror camps being shipped off to Afghanistan's "un-governed" areas.shyamd wrote: CDS statements on afghanistan have confirmed. One thing to add is that Pulwama attack was planned from Afg.
One has a strong feeling that the pakis as well as the talibanis would have removed India entirely from the afpak equations in their preconditions set for the US.shyamd wrote:Re: recon/strike capabilities
They'd need access to TSP airspace for those ops. every regional power from Russia, PRC, Iran to TSP want US physical presence out...they might tolerate drones though..
To do this US will strike a deal with TSP ( to not touch JeM and LeT .... US may pass on intel to GOI at best) with leverage that US will start arming the predators IA and IAF will get. AFAIK the drones GOI get will be used only for ISR.
IMO GOI won't be able to take much kinetic action against these camps unless it has support of Russia and Iran (as they have next strongest influence).
Iran will want the drones out as they'll be suspicious that it'll be used against them.. Iran have leverage with TSP due to returning shia fighters from Syria
India is getting the armed version of the drones, 30 in total, 10 for each service, dual capability strike/reconnaissance. The 2 currently on lease with the IN for the last 8-9 months are the un-armed version and used for ISR in the IOR operating in conjunction with the P=8s. Apparently a successful trial and hence the move to order 30. The drones have significant loiter time but the range is not adequate for them operate from the current US bases in the Gulf to do strike/reconnaissance over Afghanistan. So basing closer is a must......Will it be Jacobabad again.....shyamd wrote:Re: recon/strike capabilities
They'd need access to TSP airspace for those ops. every regional power from Russia, PRC, Iran to TSP want US physical presence out...they might tolerate drones though..
To do this US will strike a deal with TSP ( to not touch JeM and LeT .... US may pass on intel to GOI at best) with leverage that US will start arming the predators IA and IAF will get. AFAIK the drones GOI get will be used only for ISR.
IMO GOI won't be able to take much kinetic action against these camps unless it has support of Russia and Iran (as they have next strongest influence).
Iran will want the drones out as they'll be suspicious that it'll be used against them.. Iran have leverage with TSP due to returning shia fighters from Syria
All these issues can be overcome if India can base the drones it is acquiring in Ayni. Win, win for all. Russia should not object it is concerned with extremism from Afghanistan bleeding over in the CARs and the Indian drones will control that. The US can benefit from the intelligence and India is a more palatable choice for basing in Tajikistan vs the US. And there are no issues with recurring overflights over Pakistan or Iran. It will also truly test whether Russia is only concerned about extremism coming into the CARs or whether it is also concerned about not antagonizing China with an Indian military presence very close to the Wakkan corridor and China's sensitive Xinjiang border with Afghanistan. And Pakistani terror camps can be struck at will if they are moved into Afghanistan.shyamd wrote:Re: recon/strike capabilities
To do this US will strike a deal with TSP ( to not touch JeM and LeT .... US may pass on intel to GOI at best) with leverage that US will start arming the predators IA and IAF will get. AFAIK the drones GOI get will be used only for ISR.
IMO GOI won't be able to take much kinetic action against these camps unless it has support of Russia and Iran (as they have next strongest influence).
nam wrote:Mentioned this on the other thread. If we need to knock off any yahoo camps in Afghanistan.. then our cruise missiles will be flying through PoK (Indian terrority), in to Wakhan corridor and then to the target.
The funny part is is if we don't publicly announce it, Pak will hardly know where it flew from. Ladakh, karakoram etc all have beautiful valleys for a cruise missiles to fly.
Along with Nirbhay, DRDO needs to spread up stealth CM. Pak are welcome to try to stop it.
Don't know how accurate this report is but This is why I thought it was a good idea for India to engage in Afghanistan. Better to fight away from home.Evidence on ground shows the level of violence in Jammu and Kashmir has gone up significantly over the last month.
via@ARanganathan72 9:08 PM · Aug 29, 2021The best, most prescient commentary on Afghanistan comes from the man who predicted as early as two years ago precisely the events unfolding currently, but no one listened.
ESSENTIAL read this, from the ex- RAW Chief @Vikram_Sood https://pic.twitter.com/lvNVvkfsen
this is the correct link: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/pa ... 23943.htmlCyrano wrote:'I commanded Afghan troops this year; we were betrayed''
Ghani’s hasty escape ended efforts to negotiate an interim agreement for a transition period with the Taliban that would have enabled us to hold the city'
By Sami Sadat, For the past three and a half months, I fought day and night, nonstop, in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province against an escalating and bloody Taliban offensive. Coming under frequent attack, we held the Taliban back and inflicted...
Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/pa ... 23564.html
We can all compare this withdrawal with the Soviet one:g.sarkar wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... t-takeover
Gunfire fills the air in Kabul as Taliban celebrate airport takeover
Guardian staff and agencies, Mon 30 Aug 2021
Taliban spokesman says Afghanistan has ‘gained complete independence’ as fighters enter hangars occupied by US forces hours earlier
As the last US military transport aircraft lifted off from Kabul airport, celebratory gunfire from the Taliban rang out across the Afghan capital on Monday night.
Taliban fighters, who had taken the city without force just two weeks earlier, revelled in the end of America’s longest war and in their own astonishingly swift rise to power.
US Army Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, steps on board a C-17 transport plane as the last US service member to leave Hamid Karzai international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.
After 20 years, last US flight departs Kabul, leaving Afghanistan to its fate
In a short statement after the US announced its exit just before midnight local time, Taliban spokesperson Qari Yusuf said: “The last US soldier has left Kabul airport and our country gained complete independence.”
Footage from inside the city showed loud gunfire ringing out, lighting up the skyline as Taliban fighters fired into the sky to mark the end of two decades of US military presence.
“The last five aircraft have left, it’s over!” said Hemad Sherzad, a Taliban fighter stationed at Kabul’s international airport. “I cannot express my happiness in words … Our 20 years of sacrifice worked.”
Video shot by a reporter for the LA Times showed Taliban fighters, wearing US army uniforms, entering a former US military hangar at the airport and inspecting the helicopters inside.
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https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/10326566 ... withdrawal
The Taliban Is Celebrating Its Takeover Now That The U.S. Withdrawal Is Complete
The Associated Press, August 30, 2021
KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban fighters watched the last U.S. planes disappear into the sky over Afghanistan around midnight Monday and then fired their guns into the air, celebrating victory after a 20-year insurgency that drove the world's most powerful military out of one of the poorest countries.
The departure of the U.S. cargo planes marked the end of a massive airlift in which tens of thousands of people fled Afghanistan, fearful of the return of Taliban rule after the militants took over most of the country and rolled into the capital earlier this month.
"The last five aircraft have left, it's over!" said Hemad Sherzad, a Taliban fighter stationed at Kabul's international airport. "I cannot express my happiness in words. ... Our 20 years of sacrifice worked."
In Washington, Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, announced the completion of America's longest war and the evacuation effort, saying the last planes took off from Kabul airport at 3:29 p.m. EDT — one minute before midnight Monday in Kabul.
"We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out," he said.
With its last troops gone, the U.S. ended its 20-year war with the Taliban back in power. Many Afghans remain fearful of their rule or of further instability, and there have been sporadic reports of killings and other abuses in areas under Taliban control despite the group's pledges to restore peace and security.
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Gautam
anupmisra wrote:Telebunnies are likely to use the abandoned arms, ammunition, and vehicles against the holdout regions like Panjshir (unless the west and India supply Amrullah Saleh and others with matching materials).
Interesting that the same zalmay khalilzad who was commenting on Soviet withdrawal, was now responsible for the chaotic withdrawal of USAMaria wrote:
We can all compare this withdrawal with the Soviet one:
Iran welcomes the departure of U.S. forces from its eastern neighbor but could have concerns about the potential reemergence of Sunni-Shia tensions with the Taliban back in power.
It’s also worth noting that during the post-2001 insurgency, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was active in Afghanistan. By 2013, it was recruiting tens of thousands of Afghans [PDF] to serve in one of the militias it used in Syria. The question now is whether Iran can continue recruiting Afghans for its various militias under the new Taliban reign.
But the situation today is different. The Sunni Taliban are no longer just a guerrilla force; they now rule the country. An offshoot of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, another Sunni group, also operates in Afghanistan, and the country could attract similar militant groups, which would raise concerns in Iran. Instability in Afghanistan, conflict among its various factions, and Sunni militancy all present Iran with a strategic problem that it likely did not anticipate. The new Iranian government was already dealing with a struggling economy and a third wave of COVID-19 infections. Now it faces unpredictability on its eastern front.
It is unlikely that developments in Afghanistan will alter Iran’s level of support for proxies in Syria and particularly Iraq; backing proxies is already a strategic priority. But if the sectarian divide between Iran and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan sharpens, Iran could further rely on the Shiite proxies that it has trained and armed. The new Iranian government has pledged to prioritize relations in the immediate neighborhood more than its predecessor, which spent much of its time trying to draw Western investors and dealing with the nuclear issue.
MOSCOW — Russia’s ban on the Taliban as a terrorist group has not stopped Moscow officials from stepping in to support it by calling for the freeze on Afghanistan’s financial reserves to be lifted and for Western countries to lead a global conference to help rebuild the country’s economy.
Russia’s presidential envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, said Monday that the international community should unfreeze the Afghan government’s reserves or risk a spike in illegal narcotics and arms traffic.
Speaking to state-owned television, he also called for an international conference to support Afghanistan’s recovery under the Taliban’s leadership, so that the United States and its allies could “correct at least some of the mistakes they have made” in the past 20 years.
The United States froze Afghan central bank reserves held in U.S. institutions on Aug. 15. The bank has about $9.5 billion in reserves, about $7 billion of which is held in U.S. institutions. The International Monetary Fund blocked Afghanistan’s access to $460 million in emergency reserves, while the World Bank halted funding to Afghanistan last week.
Moscow has been calling on the West to “accept the reality” of the Taliban’s victory, while pressing the Taliban to form a government that includes different political and ethnic groups, a move seen as its best hope of winning international support.
At the same time, Russian officials are warning that no one should expect the Taliban to meet Western standards for democracy and cultural and religious practices.
Me thinks two fold sir:chetak wrote:ldev wrote:
there has to be a catch but haven't been able to figure it out yet.
Michael Leiter was director of the National Counterterrorism Center from 2007 to 2011.
One narrative emerging out of the tragedy in Afghanistan is both wrong and potentially counterproductive: the conclusion that our withdrawal represents a return to a pre-9/11 situation that puts us at risk in the same way that led to the deaths of almost 3,000 Americans 20 years ago.
Little if anything about Afghanistan has turned out as the United States had hoped when our military engagement began. But purely from a counterterrorism perspective, the United States and our allies have made incredible strides since 9/11 — in Afghanistan and beyond — that make us vastly safer than we were the last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. Moreover, the global Sunni violent extremist movement, while far from eradicated, has been weakened in important ways over two decades.
As a result, although the Taliban’s victory is a blow, we must guard against a response that is skewed by an un-nuanced, dated view of the terrorism threats we actually face in this new environment.
When al-Qaeda launched its horrific attacks in September 2001, it operated with near complete impunity in Afghanistan. Although the Taliban and al-Qaeda were not operationally linked, the protection and haven that al-Qaeda enjoyed allowed it to recruit and train operatives and deploy them around the globe. At the same time, the United States and its allies were poorly positioned to address such threats. Both individually and as a coordinated team, the U.S. counterterrorism community was unable to muster the resources, capabilities and focus to stop a relatively small group of committed plotters.
Two decades later, this picture is dramatically improved. The individual elements of the U.S. counterterrorism community are likely the most integrated part of the entire U.S. government. Add to this the global nature of allied counterterrorism efforts, and the result is a significant, worldwide network of allies that share information and coordinate operations in a manner wholly different than in 2001. {Wouldnt this have happened without spending billions of dollars and lives in Afghanistan}The return of a potential al-Qaeda or Islamic State haven in Afghanistan poses a clear challenge to Western counterterrorism capabilities, but it presents a significantly less threatening problem than was once the case. The lack of a robust physical presence for U.S. intelligence and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan — as well as the absence of a moderately able and trustworthy local partner — removes key capabilities and, in turn, protections.
Still, the U.S. ability to monitor and disrupt plotting in distant lands has never relied solely on such conditions, as has been readily apparent in Yemen and Somalia. Counterterrorism work will be more difficult, but it will be far more effective than it was the last time the Taliban controlled Afghanistan. Technical intelligence, innovative local partnerships and continued engagement with key local counterterrorism allies — as imperfect as these are in the region — provide a package of capabilities that can fill many gaps.
Meantime, the threat of Sunni violent extremism has diminished since 9/11. Thanks to U.S., Afghan and others’ efforts, al-Qaeda is a shell of its former self — one of the true successes of our years in Afghanistan. Of course, the Islamic State has partially filled the void, but even here the dynamic has changed significantly. Unlike pre-9/11, it is abundantly clear that the Taliban — for all of its evil — is at least for now aggressively anti-Islamic State in ways that it was never anti-al-Qaeda.
These counterterrorism gains are not isolated to Afghanistan. In fact, global terrorism related to Sunni violent extremism has been steadily declining across the globe, most notably in the United States and Western Europe, since 2014. This is attributable in part to the dismantling of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, but arguably it is also driven by the movement’s refocusing on the “near” versus the “far” enemy. Although the Islamic State and its adherents still aspire to strike in Western capitals, that is not nearly the priority it was in 2001.
Terrorism of many sorts continues domestically and internationally, but the data is unmistakable that in most cases — and especially in the United States — it is both manageable and not nearly of the scale feared in 2001.
Appreciating what has changed for the better since 9/11 is essential to avoid repeating some of the mistakes of the past two decades. We know that if U.S. national security priorities are overly dominated by terrorism fears, we will make poor and unachievable choices — such as trying to nation-build in ways that fail to appreciate local conditions and traditions, or adopting practices that endanger our moral standing and alienate key populations. In addition, we will squander scarce resources that are more necessary than ever to address pressing strategic challenges such as the rising global influence of China and enhancing cybersecurity.
The Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan is not good for the United States and our withdrawal has undoubtedly — at least for now — shaken some of our allies’ faith in us. It’s fine to regret what we failed to accomplish. We should also recognize what we did achieve — and ensure this informs our counterterrorism and broader national security policies moving forward.