Afghanistan - 20 years on

This thread is derailing away from what is currently going on - we have threads on Biden, Trump and Harris (and don't complain if you cannot access SC or are thread banned).

Continued derailment will result in thread bans / short holidays, as I want to keep the thread open as the topic is still very much ongoing.
 
This story is pretty outrageous:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...of-afghan-staff-for-taliban-to-find-pr7vh5db0
The papers identifying seven Afghans were found by The Times on Tuesday as Taliban fighters patrolled the embassy. Phone calls to the numbers on the documents revealed that some Afghan employees and their families remained stranded on the wrong side of the airport perimeter wall days after their details were left in the dirt in the haste of the embassy’s evacuation on August 15.
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Perhaps if they were in a rush and unable to follow their SOPs of shredding etc.. someone could have shown some initiative, chucked it all in a skip at least and dumped a load of petrol on top...

Also, the airport must have been a nightmare yesterday after the attack, mention of tear-gassing on the Pen story:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-58354229
He told the BBC "all hell broke loose".

He said: "As we were trying to then flee from the airport we were getting tear-gassed, so we were obviously trying to drive the vehicle when we can't see anything. It was just the most horrific thing."
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I presume that given there are limited medical facilities at the airport and US service personnel who were wounded were immediately evacuated on medical flights out of there that they weren't able to treat any of the Afghan victims, who were instead taken to local hospitals. The problem is the immediate response, can only imagine what happened but given the talk of tear-gassing, I guess presumably afghans were driven back initially and the US military went in to retrieve their personnel while having to ignore/leave any afghans and presumably also keep back others who might want to help them because of the risk of further suicide bombings. That must have been pretty traumatising, not being able to help people, not being able to allow others to come forwards to help them, just getting service personnel to safety while others are dying. In normal circumstances, anyone could be helped, given medical aid, even Taliban fighters... seeing the footage on Twitter though there were bodies of Afghans just left lying there.
 
The Taliban probably can't believe their luck, over 85 billion dollars of equipment and it doesn't look like the US is coming back.

I mean, how incompetent have you got to be to let this happen? How was there no contingency plan? :confused:
 
lemonkettaz said:
montymint, with all due respect the Afghan situation is absolutely linked to Biden, Trump etc... so to say you can't discuss those with regards to Afghan is pretty daft.
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Yeah. perhaps in a post about this situation specifically but people seem to have been getting sidetracked into discussing unrelated stuff just concerning those two.
 
ebilcake said:
The Taliban probably can't believe their luck, over 85 billion dollars of equipment and it doesn't look like the US is coming back.

I mean, how incompetent have you got to be to let this happen? How was there no contingency plan? :confused:
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A lot of it was never coming back. It was going to be handed over to the Afghan Army. Most likely there was compromise between looking like they were leaving nothing behind, and had no faith in the Afghan Army or leaving them some gear and showing some faith but secretly knowing they couldn't maintain it, and thus neither would the Taliban.

Elite units will be able to maintain some of the stuff. But in general Russian/Chinese stuff will need less training and less maintenance in that harsh environment. I assume after 20yrs much of it will be worn out or end of life anyway. Stuff wears out much faster in those climates.
 
OspreyO said:
We've known for 10 yrs they were pulling out. They left Baghram over a month ago. Why wait till the last minute. Makes no sense.
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At least some of those whose details were left made it back to the UK, but what about their families back in Afghanistan. I can't fathom how reckless this is. Kill list and billions of dollars of military equipment, Christmas come early for the Taliban. Heard a saying the other day which resonated somewhat......"you have the watch, we (the Taliban) have the time".
 
Jim Banks, a former US Navy reservist, said that the vast amount of hardware left behind includes 75,000 vehicles, 200 airplanes and helicopters and 600,000 small arms and light weapons.

“The Taliban now has more Black Hawk helicopters than 85 per cent of the countries in the world,” he said in a speech in Washington.
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Sorry but :cry::cry::cry:

EDIT: could this, in any way, be intentional to arm them?
 
Wasn't there a hoohah a few years ago about the US having a backdoor to the software in some helicopters they sold to us?

Can't they just disable the high tech stuff or just blow it up with a drone.
 
I think you need to expertise&parts, pilots? to maintain helicopters - it's not like a kalashnikov

dowie said:
This story is pretty outrageous:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...of-afghan-staff-for-taliban-to-find-pr7vh5db0
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listen to the radio 4 interview with the times journalist - trying to get maximum publicity for his story, and (protesteth too much) had tried to commnicate with all the people who were identified, he has probably caused taliban to go over these embassies with a fine tooth comb - seemed similar to Boris's gaff on imprisoned lady in Iran.


Interesting USA strategy to say they had shared info with the Talliban on Isis-x sect potential terrorist threat, both sowing seeds of distrust, and, future, trust; diplomacy at work.
 
OspreyO said:
A lot of it was never coming back. It was going to be handed over to the Afghan Army. Most likely there was compromise between looking like they were leaving nothing behind, and had no faith in the Afghan Army or leaving them some gear and showing some faith but secretly knowing they couldn't maintain it, and thus neither would the Taliban.

Elite units will be able to maintain some of the stuff. But in general Russian/Chinese stuff will need less training and less maintenance in that harsh environment. I assume after 20yrs much of it will be worn out or end of life anyway. Stuff wears out much faster in those climates.
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We all know it was intended to be used by the Afgan Military, however there should have been a contingency plan in place to stop it falling into the hands of the Taliban if the Afgans refused to fight.

They should have been launching air strikes to destroy every armored vehicle, planes, helicopters, weapon stashes, they know where it's all located. Trump would have bombed the crap of them by now, but then again he would have made sure everyone was out before withdrawing the troops, as that was the original plan.

It's insane to think they had 70,000+ armored vehicles, that's almost one for the every Taliban in Afghanistan. Did the Afgans have fuel for 70k vehicles? lol
 
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