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gums 18th Oct 2021 14:05

Salute!

to Nuts and others about trying to help the 'stan.....

check out this op ed and it will explain a lot. Sure, some political jabs that could have been omitted, but the basics are there. It is one big reason an analogy with the Saigon evacuation does not compute. And my squad covered the evac in 1975, and I worked with the VNAF for three years, understood their culture and such.
The ''stan has never existed as a country except western folks drew some lines on a map. I also had two Afghan students when an instructor at Air University. Oh yeah, the first Pakistan and Israeli folks to check out in the Viper. Just some background...

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/202...el-greenfield/

Gums sends...

NutLoose 18th Oct 2021 14:32

I for one would be more comfortable if a proviso was in place that women were allowed to work and get an education etc, before funding was available to them and it being in increments throughout the year with checks being carried out that these things were being adhered too. That way some progress might happen.

Pie in the sky I know, but better than nothing.

ORAC 20th Oct 2021 15:13


gums 20th Oct 2021 16:23

Salute!

Not sure who the "we" or the "they" are.....

Mao had a good explanation of the guerrilla tactics in his Little Red Book, and Uncle Ho's folks did a good job versus the French about 6 years later. Another five years go by, and this dude in Cuba pulls off a coup.

As the op ed piece I posted earlier points out, the 'stan is an arbitrary group of lines on a map. I must admit that most humans within those lines have much in common as far as physical appearance and genetic attributes, but about the only unifying thing there is a certain religion, and even it has two strong different sects.

There is no "common" foe nor desire to form a union as we saw here in the colonies except one...
The villages and families just want to be left alone.

But unlike we colonists, mostly from Europe, the Taliban would wish to impose a heinous social existence on all of them in the name of he who cannot be mentioned. One of our fundamental tennants was that the government or anyone else should not force religious practices upon the whole of the populace. After all, many of us migrated here to escape religious persecution. So no establishment of a national religion has been a biggie in the U.S. since 1787.

Gums sends...


Asturias56 21st Oct 2021 07:26

Mainly correct Gums - bu the idea that people can hold different views to you and not be attacked, imprisoned, driven out or just abused is under attack even in the "liberal" west

ORAC 23rd Oct 2021 09:23

Not sure 102 is a lot to brag about, but every life saved is worthwhile.


ORAC 26th Oct 2021 08:16

Politico: (Tuesday 26th). Presumably to be covered on BBC Parliament or elsewhere.

AFGHANISTAN FALLOUT: Defense Secretary Ben Wallace and head of the Armed Forces Nick Carter appear together at Tobias Ellwood’s Commons defense committee this afternoon, which is currently holding an inquiry into the U.K.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. They’re up for two hours from 2.30 p.m.


melmothtw 26th Oct 2021 08:47


Not sure 102 is a lot to brag about, but every life saved is worthwhile.
Indeed, about a third of the capacity of a single Voyager.

Ninthace 26th Oct 2021 10:42

It looks like Afghanistan is heading for a major famine this winter. Some families have already been reduced to selling their children to get enough money to live.

Bob Viking 26th Oct 2021 12:55

Ninthace
 
Selling children? Seriously?! Is that genuine?

BV

ORAC 26th Oct 2021 13:35

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/160896...fghan-taliban/

https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/22...-into-marriage


ORAC 26th Oct 2021 13:38

Defence Committee coverage just started on Sky News.

twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1gqxvleglkpGB?t=14m54s

skridlov 27th Oct 2021 08:13

There is no shortage of books about Afghanistan and its history. One of the most insightful is William Dalrymple's "The Return of a King". To say that history repeats itself is an understatement.

ORAC 27th Oct 2021 17:28

Looks like a lawyer has got out almost as many as the government….


NutLoose 31st Oct 2021 12:04

Jeez, words fail me

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-59107046

ORAC 23rd Nov 2021 13:46


NutLoose 7th Dec 2021 01:54

Why oh why does this not surprise me, what a total shambles, it would even be farcical if it wasn’t people were dying because of these action in the U.K..

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...bul-evacuation


Tens of thousands of Afghans were unable to access UK help following the fall of Kabul because of turmoil and confusion in the Foreign Office, according a devastating account by a whistleblower.

A former diplomat has claimed bureaucratic chaos, ministerial intervention, lack of planning and a short-hours culture in the department led to “people being left to die at the hands of the Taliban”.



The evidence of Raphael Marshall was deemed so serious that an internal inquiry was launched when he presented his account to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) permanent secretary, Sir Phillip Barton, at the end of August.




At one point at the height of the crisis, he says he was the only person working on the evacuation desk, and was having to make life and death decisions on individuals to be evacuated on the basis of entirely haphazard criteria.

He has claimed Raab showed a misunderstanding of the haphazard process and desperate position at Kabul airport by delaying several emergency evacuation referrals.

Rather than acting immediately, Raab – he said – insisted on further, better formatted evidence. “It is hard to explain why he reserved the decision for himself but failed to make it immediately,” Marshall says.

Marshall claims some of those that needed Raab’s consent never reached the airport, and in another case the team went ahead without waiting any longer for a response by Raab.

Marshall has also questioned whether Downing Street had been correct to tell parliament that all emails from Afghans attempting to leave the country had been processed by 6 September.

The whistleblower also reveals the uproar inside the Ministry of Defence when Boris Johnson ordered an Afghan animal charity to be given priority for evacuation

In his testimony, Marshall claims: “There was a direct trade-off between transporting Nowzad’s animals and evacuating British nationals and Afghan evacuees, including Afghans who had served with British soldiers.”

The civil servant worked for a team responsible for helping people whose lives were at risk due to their connection with the UK.

In his testimony, Marshall estimates between 75,000 and 150,000 people (including dependants) applied for evacuation under the special case scheme.

The vast majority of these applicants feared their lives were at risk as a result of their connection to the UK and the west and were therefore eligible for evacuation.

In a 39-page statement to MPs on the foreign affairs select committee, Marshall estimates fewer than 5% received help.

Marshall says: “At the height of the crisis on the afternoon of Saturday 21 August, I was the only person monitoring and processing emails in the Afghan special cases inbox.

“No emails from after early Friday afternoon had been read at that point. The number of unread emails was already in the high thousands, I believe above 5,000, and increasing constantly.”

Marshall said that, given the excess demand for places, it was critical that credible selection criteria were applied, but he says this did not happen. Instead, he claims the criteria provided were entirely subjective.

“Staff were scared by making hundreds of life and death decisions about which they knew nothing,” he says.

Specific failings include a rigidly enforced eight-hour working day culture, the inability to match the computer systems of the FCDO and the Department for International Development (DfID) – which had merged with the Foreign Office in 2020, the lack of computers for soldiers in Kabul calling forward selected evacuees, a complete lack of expertise including language skills, and a lack of coordination with US allies.He claims the parallel Arap scheme was equally dysfunctional, saying that on the evening of Thursday 26 August, there were 4,914 unread emails in the Arap specific inbox.

There was confusion between the two email inboxes meaning cases were left for days without anyone noticing, he alleges.

For five nights in succession, he claims no night shift staff were deployed. DfID staff recruited to help “were visibly appalled by the system”.

Yet despite the urgency of the situation, the default expectation remained that staff in the FCDO would only work eight hours a day, five days a week. FCDO employees were only asked to work shifts for which they volunteered.

Martin the Martian 7th Dec 2021 12:34

And on Breakfast TV Raab describes him as a low ranking desk officer, with the insinuation that he didn't know the full picture.:ugh:


ORAC 7th Dec 2021 21:52

Two sides to every story…..


ORAC 15th Dec 2021 22:41



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