Afghanistan

[LFC]

Could we be out this year? If we are you can expect Republican howling. If we aren't you can expect Republican howling.

President Biden will announce the U.S. will withdraw from Afghanistan in time for the 20th anniversary of 9/11, knowledgeable sources told The Daily Beast.

Biden is expected to concede that the U.S. will not meet a deadline, negotiated with the Taliban last year, for troops to leave by May 1. Instead, as U.S. diplomats attempt to cobble together a peace process between the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government, his administration is gambling that the Taliban will accept a delay of several months instead of returning to full-blown attacks on the approximately 3,500 remaining U.S. forces.

Laurel Miller, a former State Department special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, expected the Taliban to accept the delay, provided they see real evidence of U.S. withdrawal coalesce imminently.

“If it really looks certain that the U.S. is leaving by September, and the wheels will have to be in motion quickly—it will be in the interests of the Taliban to facilitate that, and that means not attacking U.S. forces on their way out,” Miller told The Daily Beast. “It’s also in their interest to preserve some possibility of good-enough relations with the U.S. and the rest of the world if and when they come to power.”

Biden is expected to announce his decision, which follows a policy review he launched shortly after taking office, as early as Wednesday. The Washington Post first reported this story.

It is unclear if the withdrawal will fully end the U.S. military presence or an exception will remain for special operations forces, U.S. airpower, surveillance activities and missions training an Afghan security apparatus constructed by the Americans. Should the administration seek that, the desired peace process will complicate a residual presence. But an administration official told the Post, “We’re going to zero troops by September.”

[Bact PhD]

On the old board, JackD made the following observation:

Sunk costs: 2,300 American service members killed; 20,000 wounded.

September 11, 2021: everyone out. Hopefully no helicopters on the embassy roof.

Worth it?

My thoughts?

The first few years, when Bin Laden was at large and the Taliban was enabling him to a large degree, there was a case. Once Bin Laden was out of the way, it became increasingly difficult to refer to Afghanistan as the "good" war (contrasted with the fiasco in Iraq), as it was clear by what, 2013 or so(?), the needle wasn't going to move any further regarding any semblance of a civilian government there.

Re the specter of a repeat of 1975, I wouldn't be surprised.

[LFC]

For once there isn't a blindingly clear partisan line on this one. (Yet. If Biden does this I expect the pro-withdrawal Republicans to coalesce in their screeching about Biden pretty quickly.) There are Dems and Republicans on both sides. Liz Cheney, of course, wants us to say and continue to fight the war that her daddy and his boss puppet dragged us into and had no idea how to finish. (Not as bad as their Iraq debacle but still executed with no forward thinking plan.)

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have sharply divided the Republican Party in recent years. A substantial number of Republicans bucked Mr. Trump on the issue, and still believe a robust presence in the region is needed to preserve stability.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican in the House and the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, blasted the policy shift as a capitulation.

“Wars don’t end when one side abandons the fight,” she said in a statement that echoed her father’s hawkish rhetoric in selling the wars at the start. “Withdrawing our forces from Afghanistan by Sept. 11 will only embolden the very jihadists who attacked our homeland on that day 20 years ago.”

[goldenvalley]

Apr 14, 2021 15:20:02 GMT LFC said:

For once there isn't a blindingly clear partisan line on this one. (Yet. If Biden does this I expect the pro-withdrawal Republicans to coalesce in their screeching about Biden pretty quickly.) There are Dems and Republicans on both sides. Liz Cheney, of course, wants us to say and continue to fight the war that her daddy and his boss puppet dragged us into and had no idea how to finish. (Not as bad as their Iraq debacle but still executed with no forward thinking plan.

“Wars don’t end when one side abandons the fight,” she said in a statement that echoed her father’s hawkish rhetoric in selling the wars at the start. “Withdrawing our forces from Afghanistan by Sept. 11 will only embolden the very jihadists who attacked our homeland on that day 20 years ago.”

Is she living in the past?  It seems to me that the point of staying in Afghanistan was to deal with the Taliban, not any Saudi jihadists who have apparently moved on to other places. What do I know, but is there really a danger that jihadists of the type that once lived in Afghanistan now?

In the meantime, we have home grown American bred jihadists that need some attention.  I understand that the experts say that's the greatest terrorism threat now.

[LFC]

Apr 14, 2021 18:02:45 GMT goldenvalley said:

In the meantime, we have home grown American bred jihadists that need some attention.  I understand that the experts say that's the greatest terrorism threat now.

Sadly they figured that out well over a decade ago. Republicans are still fighting reality on this one because those people and their fans make up a big part of their base.

[jackd]

McConnell is already protesting our "losing". Kinda wish Eisenhower had tried to do something about the military-industrial complex other than noticing and naming it.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 14, 2021 19:04:16 GMT jackd said:

McConnell is already protesting our "losing". Kinda wish Eisenhower had tried to do something about the military-industrial complex other than noticing and naming it.

If you have to be in a war for 20 years, I say it's either a draw or it's lost.  I'm not sure the American Empire died there, but it certainly fared no better than any of the others that conducted some kind of war there.

[LFC]

Apr 14, 2021 19:04:16 GMT jackd said:

McConnell is already protesting our "losing".

That alone is an instant disqualification for being a serious person fit to discuss foreign policy. It's a childish squeal of butthurt, nothing more.

The Taliban is going to create a shitshow. They could just hand out for a few extra months but I think they also need performative politics for their base only their performances are with guns.

The Taliban never kept secret what their reaction would be if the Biden administration delays the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, and now that it’s happened, U.S. forces may have to deal with a new, unbridled wave of violence and bloodshed in the months leading up to the new September pull-out deadline.

Hours after news broke on Tuesday that following a “rigorous policy review,” President Joe Biden is planning to have all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11—a break away from the previously agreed May 1 deadline—Taliban military leaders sat down for a policy review of their own. The group then announced it would be boycotting peace talks unless “all foreign forces completely withdraw from our homeland.”

Speaking to The Daily Beast on Wednesday, Mullah Salih Khan, a Taliban group commander from Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, said that the insurgent group is “very much prepared to strike,” against U.S. and Afghan government forces, warning that the militants will turn Afghanistan “into a nightmare” for them.

Mullah Mujahid Rahman, a Taliban subcommander from the Ghazni province, added that the U.S. has “proven they can’t be trusted after retreating from the May 1 deadline,” and that the group is willing to “fight till the end” of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

“We have the pride of defeating about 100,000 invaders from [different] countries in Afghanistan. A few thousand won’t be a problem at all,” he said, referring to the 3,500 American troops still stationed in the country.

Experts say this reaction shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“Afghanistan will likely see an unrestricted fighting season, with attacks on Afghan provincial capitals as well as against foreign forces,” Andrew Watkins, Crisis Group's Senior Analyst for Afghanistan, told The Daily Beast. “It is hard to say if the talks have been entirely halted, but it’s also difficult to see any reason for the Taliban to continue, if, as they seem to suggest so far, the Doha deal has been broken by the U.S.”

There were signs of the violence-to-come even before U.S. officials shared news of the extended deadline, when rumors of a seemingly inevitable delay were swirling both domestically and abroad.

That's pretty much the analysis of the U.S. intelligence agencies looking at this. I suspect actual scholars of the region could have predicted this before George W. Bush ever ordered our troops in and then left them to dangle without a plan or an exit strategy.

Hours before President Joe Biden announced his plans to withdraw U.S. troops from the Afghanistan war, the U.S. intelligence agencies dealt a blow to his hopes for post-American stability. A peace accord between the U.S.-sponsored Afghanistan government and the Taliban is a “low” prospect over the next year, according to a public intelligence report released Wednesday. Starting on Apr. 24, an international conference on peace in Afghanistan will meet in Istanbul, though the Taliban on Tuesday rejected attending. “The Taliban is likely to make gains on the battlefield, and the Afghan Government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support,” reads the 2021 Annual Threat Assessment compiled by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. “Kabul continues to face setbacks on the battlefield, and the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory.”

The Afghan government has proven to be so stupendously corrupt, as is par for the course in that area, that there's no path forward. They've been given space, money, and training to stabilize and create a fighting force to defend themselves. The results have been less than impressive.

[jackd]

The Vietnam experience comes immediately to mind.

[LFC]

Apr 14, 2021 21:17:44 GMT jackd said:

The Vietnam experience comes immediately to mind.

I suspect there will be a little "you can be cool and give us a couple extra months or you can be dicks in which case we'll remotely bomb your asses any time you try to build up your forces." Wanting to take over the country but knowing that you might get a missile up your ass at any moment can focus the mind.

[LFC]

We're moving out bit by bit.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan is between 13 percent and 20 percent complete, the Pentagon's Central Command said Tuesday, as it pushes to beat a September deadline for the pullout.

CentCom said that since President Joe Biden ordered the exit in April, it had removed the equivalent of 115 fully loaded C-17 cargo aircraft worth of material from the country, while consigning more than 5,000 pieces of equipment to a Pentagon agency for destruction.

CentCom has also turned over five facilities to the Afghan Defense Ministry, including Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan, once the second largest military base in the country for US forces.

The US military is declining to be precise about the speed of the withdrawal and likely final date in order to "preserve operational security."

The US Defense Department has to remove its last 2,500 service members and another 16,000 civilian contractors from the war zone by September 11, which will be the 20th anniversary of the Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States that sparked the US-led invasion of the country.

[goldenvalley]

May 18, 2021 18:35:30 GMT LFC said:

We're moving out bit by bit.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan is between 13 percent and 20 percent complete, the Pentagon's Central Command said Tuesday, as it pushes to beat a September deadline for the pullout.

CentCom said that since President Joe Biden ordered the exit in April, it had removed the equivalent of 115 fully loaded C-17 cargo aircraft worth of material from the country, while consigning more than 5,000 pieces of equipment to a Pentagon agency for destruction.

CentCom has also turned over five facilities to the Afghan Defense Ministry, including Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan, once the second largest military base in the country for US forces.

The US military is declining to be precise about the speed of the withdrawal and likely final date in order to "preserve operational security."

The US Defense Department has to remove its last 2,500 service members and another 16,000 civilian contractors from the war zone by September 11, which will be the 20th anniversary of the Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States that sparked the US-led invasion of the country.

Well I guess that's okay.  I feel for the civilians, especially the women, in Afghanistan, but there is nothing the UN or the US can do to create lasting change.  I regret ever going in there.  Same for Iraq.  A lotta stupid macho BS that accomplished nothing but death and destruction.  And maybe fulfilled a certain person's revenge fantasy.

[pnwguy]

Maybe Joe is just bringing home bacon to Delaware. The air base at Dover, besides being the military's central mortuary facility for fallen service people, is also a huge cargo hub. I used to see a steady stream of gigantic C-5 and C-17 aircraft on approach there whenever I would drive past the base on my way to Milford.

[LFC]

May 19, 2021 22:54:23 GMT pnwguy said:

I used to see a steady stream of gigantic C-5 and C-17 aircraft on approach there whenever I would drive past the base on my way to Milford.

My brother will be moving to Felton this summer. I'll have to get a report on the amount of air traffic.

[LFC]

It sounds like the withdrawal is moving forward. The Taliban is, as expected, thumping their chests.

America’s war in Afghanistan featured all manner of bangs: IED blasts, car bombs, airstrikes, and the “mother of all bombs”—the most powerful non-nuclear ordnance ever used.

Its withdrawal from the country, on the other hand, is being conducted with the feeblest of whimpers.

For two decades, Bagram Air Force base was the centerpiece of the U.S. mission to clear out the Taliban and support the fledgling Afghan government. At its peak, it housed thousands of coalition troops. Its hangars were flush with the flashiest American aircraft, including F-16 fighter jets, giant C-130 cargo planes, and ferocious MD-530 attack helicopters.

And more than just a base, it was a symbol of the projection of American military power throughout the globe.

Now, it is scheduled to be handed over to the Afghan government on June 20 with as little fanfare as possible. There will be no elaborate ceremony, no visiting dignitaries with speeches about democracy and human rights. And most importantly for the departing forces: There will be no press.

Other once grand U.S. military installations, such as Kandahar Airfield or Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province, have already been completely abandoned. American allies in other provinces, such as the Germans in Mazar I Sharif, are following a similar blueprint.

Meanwhile, the Taliban is running amok. The group has taken the manner of the U.S. withdrawal as a sign that a long-awaited military victory could finally be on the horizon.

“We strongly believe the U.S. military was terribly defeated in Afghanistan,” Khalid Zadran, a Taliban media official, told The Daily Beast. “And they’re running away from Afghanistan in a hurry.” An ex-minister of the militant group described similar reactions: “Today the Taliban are in the highest military morale,” he said. “And Afghan soldiers are losing the enthusiasm to fight with the Taliban.”

Once the Taliban pushes to overthrow the Afghan government, and you know they will ASAP, I wonder how long it will be before we start dropping piles of ordinance on their heads. They can easily continue to function as a rebel organization but if they band together in large numbers to take Kabul then they become vulnerable to U.S. air power. I'm afraid we aren't going to really be fully out any time soon.

[LFC]

Bagram has now been fully evacuated.

For nearly two decades, Bagram airfield has been the epicenter of America’s efforts to avenge 9/11 in Afghanistan. But, early on Friday morning, the U.S. military left the base for good. According to the Associated Press, the airfield was formally handed over to the Afghan National Security and Defense Force—a major step towards President Joe Biden’s aim to have all U.S. troops leave Afghanistan before Sept. 11. An unnamed Afghan official told Reuters news agency that there will be a ceremony this weekend to mark Bagram returning to Afghan control. It’s been reported that the vast majority of U.S. military personnel will leave Afghanistan by July 4, months ahead of the 9/11 anniversary.

[LFC]

The Afghan government is angry over how the U.S. pulled out of Bagram.

Afghanistan military officials are not happy about how the U.S. left Bagram Airfield—the epicenter of its operations in the country for nearly two decades. U.S. forces moved out of the base early Friday, but its new commander said the U.S. gave Afghan officials absolutely no warning that they were abandoning the facility. “We [heard] some rumor that the Americans had left Bagram... and finally by 7 o’clock in the morning, we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left Bagram,” Gen. Mir Asadullah Kohistani said, according to the Associated Press. The general accused the U.S. of shutting off electricity at the base, leaving behind around 5,000 Taliban prisoners, and allowing looters to ransack the base before Afghan forces were able to regain control. One angry Afghan soldier commented to the Associated Press: “In one night, they lost all the goodwill of 20 years by leaving the way they did, in the night, without telling the Afghan soldiers who were outside patrolling the area.”

The Afghan government has proven itself to be horribly corrupt and the military infiltrated with Taliban sympathizers. Is it any wonder that the U.S. military decided to leave them with nothing at Bagram? The last thing they want to do is leave the Taliban a nice, modern, functional military base. I'm sure they were also more than a little leery of letting them know the details of the withdrawal to protect against attacks.

[LFC]

The U.S. is trying to pull out Afghans who helped us since they'd almost certainly be slaughtered by the Taliban if they remain.

The Biden administration will begin evacuating thousands of Afghans who worked for the US government later this month, ahead of an August 31 deadline for the end of US military operations in Afghanistan.

Current and former Afghan translators, interpreters, and others who have worked with the US government in Afghanistan are facing deadly danger as the US drawdown continues and the Taliban reclaims territory once controlled by Afghan and coalition forces.

As Task & Purpose reported this month, “an estimated 70,000 Afghans who have worked for the United States — and their family members — are at risk of being killed as the Taliban push for a final victory.”

Because of that danger, according to a senior administration official, flights for “interested and eligible Afghan nationals and their families who have supported the United States and our partners in Afghanistan and are in the [Special Immigrant Visa] application pipeline” will begin in the last week of July as part of Operation Allies Refuge.

The Special Immigrant Visa, or SIV, program allows Afghans who work or worked “by or on behalf of the U.S. government in Afghanistan,” as well as family members, to qualify for visas and lawful permanent resident status in the US.

[Bact PhD]

And, the Taliban has entered Kabul; the individual who passed for a president has left the country. From most accounts, the only surprise was the speed: Early estimates said 6-12 months, and a more recent estimate put it at 90 days.

Yes, flashbacks to 1975 are abounding.

Except this time, the Faux Noise crowd is howling.

[pnwguy]

Aug 15, 2021 18:31:10 GMT Bact PhD said:

And, the Taliban has entered Kabul; the individual who passed for a president has left the country. From most accounts, the only surprise was the speed: Early estimates said 6-12 months, and a more recent estimate put it at 90 days.

Yes, flashbacks to 1975 are abounding.

Except this time, the Faux Noise crowd is howling.

They will definitely be howling.  But so are moderate Dems and sympathetic journalists.  I do think the speed of the collapse and the inability to rescue those Afghans that want out is a legitimate black mark for Biden.  I am curious why there wasn't a deal cut with Pakistan or India to take hundreds of thousands of educated or cooperative Afghans, in exchange for vaccines and large amounts of American cash. 

The sad reality is that such a sizable minority, if not majority, of Afghans really WANT the kind of rule that the Taliban delivers.  As we say with the unvaccinated here, you can't fix stupid....at least in a generation.

[goldenvalley]

I suspect there was a plan for everything. Seems uncharacteristic of the Biden Administration to not attempt some sort of plan for the Americans and Afghanis that should be evacuated. A Trump Administration, yeah I could believe that he said pull the troops and that's the only objective.

After 20 years of American presence it's clear that the Afghanis trained to be a military really weren't interested in being one and defending any territory whatsoever. It may be that the civilian population didn't care much for nationhood either. I fear for the women in the urban areas. Their lives are going to be horrible.

ETA:  Well here's some explanation of what happened:

The spectacular collapse of Afghanistan’s military that allowed Taliban fighters to walk into the Afghan capital Sunday despite 20 years of training and billions of dollars in American aid began with a series of deals brokered in rural villages between the militant group and some of the Afghan government’s lowest-ranking officials.

The deals, initially offered early last year, were often described by Afghan officials as cease-fires, but Taliban leaders were in fact offering money in exchange for government forces to hand over their weapons, according to an Afghan officer and a U.S. official.

Over the next year and a half, the meetings advanced to the district level and then rapidly on to provincial capitals, culminating in a breathtaking series of negotiated surrenders by government forces, according to interviews with more than a dozen Afghan officers, police, special operations troops and other soldiers.

This is a sad read. I wonder why American CIA or military intelligence didn't know about this, if they didn't know.  Did none of their embedded folks catch scent of it?

[Deleted]

I'd heard something of this on CBC a few days ago - it's gobsmacking that 'the fall' was so swift. Afghanistan appears to still be a nation of tribes united only against outsiders - but switching sides only takes a bribe. Graveyard of Empires indeed. Women are going to have a very tough time and I hope all those people who worked with the US and allied forces manage to get to a country of safety. What a clusterfuck

[pnwguy]

Interesting that Frum is not one of the people piling on Biden.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/bin-laden-2001-end-war-afghanistan/619767/

[Deleted]

Fareed Zakaria's comment yesterday caught my attention. There's lot of easy talk among some circles that stated for 18 months US took to combat casualties in Afghanistan. The small troop presence could have been sustained indefinitely as it propped up the government in Kabul and kept the Taliban at bay. Those who point to this factoid forget to mention the entire context. The Taliban had refrained from shooting at US troops while negotiating with the Trump administration. In the meantime, the Taliban continued it offensive against the Afghan government forces, and in fact were regaining territory. Sooner than later, especially if the US didn't agree to withdraw, our troops would have become embroiled in the fight in a direct manner.

Biden has always wanted to leave Afghanistan. The calculus is clear in his mind. There's very little geo-strategic value in that landlocked country. If indeed there are minerals to exploit, American companies will figure out a way. I do not know if the goal on keeping a lid on Afghanistan so that its mess doesn't spill over long distances can be achieved without some degree of control on the ground. Relinquishing responsibility, withdrawing chaotically, failing to achieve stable transfer of power will reenergize Jihadis all over the globe. I'm also struck by the Afghans utter unwillingness to fight for their own country. They are ready to follow their tribal chieftains but not the duly established government.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 16, 2021 14:11:24 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

I'm also struck by the Afghans utter unwillingness to fight for their own country. They are ready to follow their tribal chieftains but not the duly established government.

I suspect we USA-ers never bothered to learn about tribal chieftains and the power of the tribe in Afghanistan and simply assumed that they felt a link to the folks in Kabul and the larger country. They worked fine with the American military when it came to getting the Soviets out of their territory.  After that...it was a return to what they wanted.

It was the same in Iraq...the Shia-Sunni split in that country fueled some of what happened there.  Again the USA (and perhaps the rest of the world) didn't bother to learn or to take such things into account.  So can we say quagmire?  Yup and that was ok because the military was strong and pretty well financed except for the enlisted salaries.  The military suppliers were happy and that's what counts.