Soldato
The Taliban are sunni extremists, I doubt they care about Uyghurs. If you want to see how they treat unbelievers, jews, hindus, just look at how they treat other muslims.
Afghanistan - 20 years on
- Thread starter GreatAuk
- Start date
The Taliban are sunni extremists, I doubt they care about Uyghurs. If you want to see how they treat unbelievers, jews, hindus, just look at how they treat other muslims.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58453258
Seriously? various OSINT sources called it. The Taliban seem to be getting plenty of help from China and Pakistan who don't seem to care how they behave.
Bit concerning how out of touch the top of our armed forces appear to be.
Seriously? various OSINT sources called it. The Taliban seem to be getting plenty of help from China and Pakistan who don't seem to care how they behave.
Bit concerning how out of touch the top of our armed forces appear to be.
Just another officer who has been pushed out to continue the lie to save the MoD and government's reputation instead of being honest about what was actually going on.
I sincerely hope it's just a face-saving exercise to deflect blame rather than the alternative that there's a rot developing in the military.
I sincerely hope it's just a face-saving exercise to deflect blame rather than the alternative that there's a rot developing in the military.
Last edited:
It was fairly obvious for awhile the position on the ground was screwed - by the start of August at the latest it should have been plain to anyone paying attention they wouldn't hold to September.
Soldato
Even at the start of August the various militaries, US government, etc. were still talking like 3+ months or that it wasn't inevitable, etc.
A lot of OSINT sources, journalists on the ground with military and so on have been talking about it not lasting that long even back in May/June.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 30 Jul 2013
- Posts
- 29,416
I'm surprised nobody mentioned this story.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58455826
3 "gunmen" tied up a female police officer who was 8 months pregnant and shot her in the head In front of her kids and husband.
The family are claiming it wasn't the Taliban, but you can imagine they said they would come back and kill the children if they were honest about what had happened.
3 other independent witnesses have said it was the Taliban...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58455826
3 "gunmen" tied up a female police officer who was 8 months pregnant and shot her in the head In front of her kids and husband.
The family are claiming it wasn't the Taliban, but you can imagine they said they would come back and kill the children if they were honest about what had happened.
3 other independent witnesses have said it was the Taliban...
How so? the US and UK governments, etc. obviously got caught out by the rate things unfolded and not just by a little bit - when it became obvious Kabul was going to fall to the Taliban in 2-3 hours the US went into full blown panic mode - watching plane radar as things turned was quite something.
My worry now is the west aren't going to recognise the threats of the future and we've cut our defences to paper thin - if they are seriously challenged we lack depth.
I don't imagine the Taliban are some unified force who coordinated this, that's giving them a lot of credit, 3 disgusting cretins committed a crime they won't be held to account for.
The best thing for Afghanistan would've been for us to simply occupy it indefinitely and run the place ourselves, the people there aren't capable of it, we are just so soft it's pathetic.
I’d rather we didn’t spend our withering economic resources trying to police and civilise the world.
You say we are soft, you served?
I think they are meaning politically/socially rather than militarily. The rising opposition to the West don't have the same sensibilities we do and that is going to increasingly put us at a disadvantage in the future.
I wonder how long before those at the top realise the Taliban are laughing at us:
With China, Pakistan and to a limited extent Turkey helping them out (who will have very different demands and don't have the same values as the West) there is only a limited amount they need to show us concessions and they certainly aren't reliant on any help from us.
Last edited:
Soldato
I thought the Taliban speak the Dari variant of Pashto. Them speaking Arabic would be very strange, especially considering they're not Arabs.
Sounds more like someone using the current state of chaos as an excuse to get revenge against this woman.
Arabic would be slightly unusual but the Taliban as taking control of Afghanistan now have a much wider range of peoples than the Taliban of the 90s. Including tribal groups from all over Afghanistan who've thrown their lot in with them rather than be in conflict with them and their ranks increased from external sources including those from conflict zones in the ME and from Pakistan, etc.
The way they left Baghram suggests they expected the ANA would not hold the field.
Soldato
What do you mean by "withering economic resources"? Do you think the UK and West would do better to ignore the rest of the world and let China and Russia spread their influence?
We basically went into Afghanistan and tried to set them up to govern themselves, but corruption is wide spread, drug use is wide spread, education is severely lacking, they have radical religious beliefs that trump basic human rights; we may as well have just stayed and run the place for the foreseeable, this outcome was inevitable as soon as we left. Anyone on the ground would've been fully aware. You only need to watch some footage of the ANA to realise they were an unfit unmotivated fighting force.
What is governing and running Afghanistan got to do with me serving? I can't serve unfortunately due to asthma or I would've probably joined at 21, I've been interested in the military since I was young.
That mindset caused centuries of conflict around the world.