US Politics

[uls]

mukha naman sila mabaet

[Athrunzala]

Swerte naman ng Afghan President. Helicopters and cars full of cash!

Ito ang tunay na Brewster's millions the movie!

[Monseratto]

Kabul 2021 after the Fall...

[uls]

mukha naman sila mabaet

Taliban trolling Biden

[Monseratto]

While everyone else is leaving, Qatar Transports are bringing the Taliban leadership.

There is a lots of uncertainty about what exactly is happening in Afghanistan, or what is going to happen. So, here an attempt to sort out at least the few corner stones of this affair. As always, I’m trying to avoid being impressed by what we do get served by the mainstream media: its superficial reporting is neither providing backgrounds nor context. This is why so many people do not understand Afghanistan, nor what is going on there.

1.) How did the Taliban secure all of Afghanistan ‘in a matter of days’?

The impression that the Afghan armed forced folded up and the Taliban overrun all of Afghanistan in a matter of days is wrong. It’s created by the mass of the media and you all not following the situation there, before ‘suddenly’ focusing on it. Actually, the Taliban were in quite firm control over more than 50% of the country already the last year, more than 70% about a month ago, and the Afghan armed forces began falling apart almost as soon as the USA signed the cease-fire with the Taliban and announced its intention to withdraw (see Doha Agreement of 2020) last year. That said, no doubt: the last two weeks saw them rapidly taking over numerous major urban centres, too. How comes? The ‘tactics’ in question is actually nothing new: it was applied by the Taliban already during their first advance, back in 1994-1996, and by the USA during its intervention of 2001. I call it ‘advance-by-bribe’. The essence is: the advancing party bribes top military and civilian authorities in the area of its interest; these order the armed forces under their command to give up. The advancing party then moves in. There is very little fighting, actually, but have no doubts: an operation of this scale and extension is taking years to organise and months to execute. Just think about all the necessary negotiations with corrupt Afghan governors and military commanders…

2.) Who took over/is taking over there?

It’s three parties:
a) Crucial party is Qatar, which – in 2008-2014-period – took over as the primary sponsor of al-Qaida, Nusra, Hamas, and the Taliban - represented through its government and diverse private financiers, and operating through its Qatar State Security (local equivalent of the CIA and the FBI). Qatar is the ‘enabler’.

b) Second most important is Pakistan. Acting through the Afghan Bureau of its Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI, which is the local equivalent to the CIA), Pakistan was instrumental in organisation of the original Taliban, and is – traditionally (see: since 1994) – exercising the command and control over Taliban armed forces (the ISI is running about 20 training camps for Pakistani, Kashmiri, Taliban, and different foreign jihadists in Pakistan already since decades; its tentacles have been traced all the way from the USA via Nigeria to the Philippines over the time). Pakistan is the ‘executor’.

c) Taliban, led by Amir al-Muminin (leader since 2016), and his three ‘political deputies’ Mullah Abdul Ghani Bardar (co-founder and leader of the ‘Political Office’ in Doha); Mullah Muhammad Yaqoob (son of Mullah Omar, original Taliban leader); and Sirajuddin Haqqani (leader of the Haqqani Network). Taliban are the ‘tool’.

3.) What’s the aim of this alliance?

This is hard to answer for the lack of details. Obviously, as an US ally, a country housing a major US military base, and one of biggest customers for US (and West-European) weapons systems, Qatar is not keen to propagandise its motivation and activities related to supporting (quasi)Islamist extremism. On the other hand, it’s powerful enough to avoid being sanctioned into oblivion – as one would expect to happen with a country sponsoring really all the major jihadist ‘outlets’ there are. That said, it seems the Qataris are curious to establish some kind of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as evidence that this kind of state can ‘work’ nowadays.

Pakistani aims are gravitating around securing the reasons for that country’s existence, and the resulting conflict with India: Islamabad is thus searching for gaining ‘strategic depth’ vis-à-vis New Delhi, and ‘converting the Afghan barbarians’ to the ‘right religion’. The Pakistanis are going to tell you that they are ‘the same’ with the Afghans; Afghans have their own opinion in this regards; indeed, most of those I happen to know despise Pakistan from the bottom of their hearts…

…and the Taliban are an inter-tribal movement (that’s what’s making them so ‘superior’ to most of other major actors in Afghanistan), striving to create a state of the kind they’ve been indoctrinated to create in Madrassas (religious schools) and ISI’s training camps of Pakistan. This comes from the fact that originally, the Taliban were anything else than ‘Afghans’: at least 30% (some say two times that) were foreigners (Pakistanis and Arabs), while the mass of Afghan members grew up in refugee camps of Pakistan. That said, there’s no doubt that over the last few years they did attract lots of ‘genuine’ Afghans: youngsters primarily from the countryside, deeply disgruntled by endemic corruption of the US-crafted Afghan government, and lack of outlooks.

4.) What’s going to happen with Afghanistan next?

In short term, the Taliban are going to establish themselves in power, kill whoever is opposing them (summary executions of local notables are already going on – of course, well away the cameras of Western news-teams). Qataris are going to continue sponsoring them (while maintaining friendly relations to all the Western powers), and the Pakistanis are going to continue commanding and advising their armed forces (while continuing to pretend being the ‘most important non-NATO ally’ of the USA). Turkey under Erdogan – which is already neck-deep in an alliance with Qatar – is likely to join this alliance. China might follow provided the Qataris offer enough commercial incentives. And then they’re all going to face the same problems the US & NATO were facing for the last 20 years. Then, by now it should be clear that bringing Afghanistan under control – primarily with help of bribes - and retaining and securing that control, are two entirely different things. That said, as long as Qatar is flush with cash, and continues financing this, and most of the Western powers remain keen to cash from maintaining their ‘friendly relations’ to Doha while looking away at its links to jihadism, they should have no major problem in reaching their short term aims. What’s going to happen in the long term: no idea.

Note for those who might have doubts about all of this, or demand sources, I recommend reading this:
ASSESSING THE U.S.-QATAR RELATIONSHIP

[Athrunzala]

WikiLeaks
*wikileaks
·
Aug 18

Julian Assange speaking in 2011: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war" #Afghanistan

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status...262642688?s=21

[ray_noel]

Malakihang money laundering in the expense of civillian people sa afghan….

Baka kasabwat mga drug cartel din jan…


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[uls]

taliban having fun

[Athrunzala]

taliban having fun

enjoyed na, free pa!

[uls]

haha

[Athrunzala]

haha

See you in The Sack of Taipei .... next! lol

[StockEngine]

[uls]

i guess the US needs to start a war with someone para madistract mga tao sa afghanistan

[Yatta]

The Ides of August

Afghan government corruption, and the U.S. role enabling and reinforcing it. The last speaker of the Afghan parliament, Rahman Rahmani, I recently learned, is a multimillionaire, thanks to monopoly contracts to provide fuel and security to U.S. forces at their main base, Bagram. Is this the type of government people are likely to risk their lives to defend?

[StockEngine]

Too easy...

[Athrunzala]

Osama bin Laden BANNED al Qaeda from trying to assassinate Joe Biden because he believed he would be an incompetent president and 'lead the US into a crisis'


Osama bin Laden predicted Joe Biden would be incompetent president and 'lead America into a crisis' | Daily Mail Online



Really? ...and this is from the Daily Mail UK.

[Yatta]

[StockEngine]

Acosta was good asking trump during press briefings...

now with biden.. CNN doesn't ask alot now. Geez I wonder why..

[StockEngine]

Since CNN doesn't have content.. maybe they'll be journalists...

[StockEngine]

With Biden being weak, China is emboldened to attack Taiwan ..