Afghanistan 2021 Onwards
 

What air assets will remain based in Qatar and elsewhere to provide air support - and of course Elint and strikes against Al Qaeda, Daesh etc as the bubble up...

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/n...orward-command

Washington approves establishment of ‘US Forces Afghanistan Forward' command

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has approved the establishment of a new command in Afghanistan that will be tasked with overseeing the few hundred US troops that will remain in the Central Asian country once Washington completes its military drawdown by the end of August.

The Kabul-based ‘US Forces Afghanistan Forward' command will be in charge of protecting the US diplomatic presence in the country, supporting security requirements at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, providing continued advice and assistance to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), and supporting US counter-terrorism efforts, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on 2 July.

The new command, which is currently being stood up, will be led by US Navy Rear Admiral Peter Vasely, whose command will be supported by US Army Brigadier General Curtis Buzzard, who will lead the Defense Security Management Office Afghanistan. That office will be based in Qatar and administer funding support for the ANDSF to include ‘over-the-horizon' aircraft maintenance support, noted Kirby.

As part of the ongoing drawdown process, Austin also approved a plan to transfer command authority over US Forces-Afghanistan (USFOR-A) from US Army General Scott Miller to US Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie, the head of US Central Command (USCENTCOM), added Kirby, pointing out that the transfer is set to become effective later this month.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/mid...s-2033972.html

“(McKenzie) will continue to exercise authority over the conduct of any and all counterterrorism operations needed to protect the homeland from threats emanating out of Afghanistan, and he will lead efforts to develop options for the logistical, financial and technical support to Afghan forces once our drawdown is complete,” Kirby said.

https://www.militarytimes.com/flashp...l-top-concern/

After troops exit, safety of US Embassy in Kabul top concern

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — As the end to America’s “forever war” rapidly approaches, the U.S. Embassy and other diplomatic missions in Kabul are watching a worsening security situation and looking at how to respond.

In the countryside, districts are falling to the Taliban in rapid succession. America’s warlord allies are re-arming their militias, which have a violent history, raising the specter of another civil war once the U.S. withdrawal is finished, expected in August.

A U.S. Embassy spokesperson told The Associated Press that security assessments are frequent these days. Speaking on condition of anonymity in line with briefing rules, she said the embassy is currently down to 1,400 U.S. citizens and about 4,000 staff working inside the compound the size of a small town.

A well-fortified town, that is. Besides its own formidable security, the embassy lies inside Kabul’s Green Zone, where entire neighborhoods have been closed off and giant blast walls line streets closed to outside traffic. Afghan security forces guard the barricades into the district, which also houses the Presidential Palace, other embassies and senior government officials.

The only route out is Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, currently protected by U.S. and Turkish troops. Before America can declare its war over, the security of the airport will have to be settled. Ankara is in talks with Washington, the United Nations and the Afghan government to decide who will protect the airport and who will foot the bill.

For now, the airport is running without interruption, except for restrictions imposed by a deadly third COVID surge that has prompted some countries to suspend flights to Kabul. However, India is not one of them — as many as eight flights arrive weekly from India — and as a result, the virus’ delta variant, first identified in India, is rampant in Afghanistan.

In Kabul, it’s common to hear speculation about when and if the U.S. Embassy will evacuate and shut down, with images resurrected of America’s last days in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war.....

Citing security concerns, the U.S. spokesperson said she couldn’t reveal evacuation plans, or even if that’s a part of today’s conversation, but said the embassy has detailed plans for every scenario to protect its staff.....

Heavily armed guards patrol Wazir Akbar Khan streets, lined with marble mansions of government officials, many of them former warlords. Though united today against the Taliban, they have a brutal history of fighting each other.

For some, a Taliban play for Kabul seems inevitable.

“After the takeover of the districts and some provinces, the Taliban will make a try to enter Kabul,” said Torek Farhadi, a former adviser to the Afghan government. “They will face the regular army, but also the warlords who have accumulated huge wealth out of war related contracts.”

[QUOTE=ORAC;11074170]What air assets will remain based in Qatar and elsewhere to provide air support - and of course Elint and strikes against Al Qaeda, Daesh etc as the bubble up...

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/n...orward-command

Good article thanks. My understanding is that, at present, the Taliban (and other ACM) do not have access to Specific hardware that would necessitate Elint support so that would not be my highest priority.

Another Afghan War lost.................. that's Britain's 4th - you'd think we'd learn................

I’m curious, as you’ve popped up on every thread of this nature with a similar sentiment , how long you spent in Afghanistan?

the Taliban are committed and willing to die for their cause, but they aren’t some ninja type of master tactician. They didn’t win the war, Western politicians surrendered. It started withGeorge W shifting forces to the sideshow in Iraq at a critical time, was confirmed by Obama announcing a withdrawal and now completed by Biden’s last flight out of Saigon exodus

Please don’t regale us with the view of the Daily Mail editor.

Bush...Obama...Biden....why no mention of Blair et al?

Also...how many Generals...from both the US and UK Militaries presided over this twenty year War....and allowed yet another Vietnam and Iraq happen?

Care to take up that part of the discussion of what went wrong?

How many of them "went along to get along....and get promoted"?

Because I titled the thread 2021 onwards because it’s intended to be about the future, not raking over the previous 20 years.

Please feel free to start a thread covering 2001 to 2021 if you wish to rake over the coals - doing so in this thread would inevitably mean the original intent would be swept away - at which point I’ll erase my first post - and the thread.

Well, the path forward is already interesting, with China building a 4 lane road to the country at their short shared border over the Wakhjir Pass, earlier an important link in the Silk Road.
The US on leaving foolishly destroyed all the gear too big to remove. Had they left their massive truck and equipment park, there would have been a commercial link in the reasonably near future. As is, nothing remains but destruction.
The Chinese have money and ample civil engineering resources, they surely would love to be on the ground floor in rebuilding Afghanistan.. There is just the small matter of religion.
Perhaps the Taliban will soft pedal that aspect, to get the country back to some semblance of progress. Considering that, Vietnam is now friends with the US to balance China, possibly the Taliban will evolve similarly, if the US turns the page.

The remaining Turkish military may seize control of the Opium and drug trade and force the poor Afghanies to quit cold Turkey .
Might mean even cheaper drugs for Europe . That might be a good thing if the junkies do not have to steal as much to feed their addictions .
Either way it may turn into a street drug gang tribal turf war like Seattle , NewYork and Chicago .
The same gangs with roots in Afghanistan , India , Pakistan , Iran , throw a few Triads and Friendly Societies into the mix and you could have the ingredients for a global civil war creating a dystopia like most video games try to emulate .
Mad Max was set in 2021 .

ORAC,

Unfortunately one cannot isolate the past from the present or the future....as it all has connections, influences, old wrongs, and debts owed that shall determine how the future turns out.

Likewise, Religion, Politics, and government shall all play a role in how this turns out....how do you ignore those influences without looking to the past.

China has some policies that are going to be a cause of discord with the Taliban it would appear....so I would be surprised that the new China -Afghanistan shall be a smooth road to travel in the future.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/25/...c-cooperation#

The asshole of the world. There's no reason for any American or European to die there again. Just monitor for nukes and bomb the **** out of them when they're getting close. The Israelis learned this decades ago.

The Pashtun like to fight and are good at it. The Taliban recruit heavily from that part of the population. The rest? We'll see if they have the stomach to fight for what they want. If they don't, the Taliban will be in charge again in a few years, with ample support from the Pakistanis,


The last time the Taliban ran Afghanistan they were a remarkably incompetent government. Like ISIS they will find it is a lot easier killing people and blowing stuff up than actually running the place. Afghanistan has been resistant to central government dictatorship for 500 years. The Taliban will eventually wear out their welcome and Afghanistan will revert to its traditional decentralized provincial power certres.

As an Australian I will paraphrase Bismarck;

“The whole of Afghanistan is not worth the bones of one Australian SAS”

Mission creep and lack of clearly defined definitions of success at its worst.Why do we in the West keep doing it?

Plus , as Asturias56 has pointed out, a comprehensive ignorance of history.

I’m extremely happy we are out.

"I’m curious, as you’ve popped up on every thread of this nature with a similar sentiment"

Because when I see people making the same mistake over and over again I feel despair.

History proves that foreigners intervening in places like the Yemen, Afghanistan, Congo, etc leads to a disaster for all parties. They have very serious problems and these can't be fixed by a few foreigners coming in hoping to change things in a few years using military strength or money or people. They have to sort themselves out.

You left out Vietnam………..
I wonder if there is a 2021 version of “The Pentagon Papers” hiding out there.

Using your logic the United States should have sat out WWI and WWII, Korea, The Suez Canal, Vietnam, Gulf War I, not supported Israel, Somalia, or even the Cold War I suppose.

I do fully agree with your despair over making the same mistakes over and over....it is not the jumping in that is the major mistake....it is why and how that causes the problems.

The last real War we fought was WWII...the rest have been "limited Wars"....and we can see how all of those have turned out.

If we are to engage in War...it must be done to win by destroying the enemy's ability and will to fight.....with no limit to how it is done.

ROE's, Lawyers, and the reluctance to get right down to the business of destroying the enemy is our Achilles Heel.

I agree with much of what you say - Vietnam was one that could have been won, or at least strung out for longer. A decent Govt in the South would have helped. I think

Yemen and Afghanistan are more difficult - they all fight each other at the drop of a hat but if a foreigner appears they're turn on them first - I've known families like that

And when it's everyone against you, not organised forces, it becomes hard to wipe out the whole country

Very much agree, but the near term will be messy as the Taliban take over, which they appear to be on course to complete this summer.
Perhaps we will be able to resist the calls for intervention for 'humanitarian reasons' this time, unlike in Syria, Libya or Kosovo.

At least the original British interventions in Afghanistan had some intellectual and pragmatic justification, namely to stop the threat (probably nonexistent) of Russian interference in India.
The justification for the US intervention in Afghanistan was equally valid , namely to capture Osama Bin Laden and shut down Al Qaeda , but rapidly disintegrated with the total inability to understand Pakistans position and a refusal to negotiate with the Taliban, who probably would have given Bin Laden up.
Hence 20 years of folly.
The USA since WW2 has never really worked out what its Superpower status really means.
Empire or not ?

a quote from a newspaper article this last weekend.

'the basic error we made, was we thought that democracy could be brought about from the barrel of a gun'

The problem with being the only Superpower has its own problems....as Tuk opines.

Throw in the changes in Government we go through every four to eight years depending upon who wins the National Election and one can understand the confusion that can bring to International politics.

If the Chinese are genuinely smart they shall beat us by means of Trade and Industry....and really cheap labor.

But...they too shall have to be very careful in managing their own growth and domestic financial situation.

For now the Russian Bear has had its claws trimmed...but over time they too can become a major player in the World Markets....especially if they get a lock on the energy supply to Western Europe.

We have to be looking way into the future when negotiating current deals....such as the pipelines from Russia to the West while stopping new pipelines between Candada and the USA.

China has maybe 20 years before the burden of carrying an enormous number of old people becomes overwhelming. Problem with a one-child policy is that eventually each child has to pay for two parents ........ especially in a country with such a poor social service provision as the PRC. The population has just about stopped growing - they don't have any inward migration to fill the gaps.

Presumably the Chinese strategy is to build up enough assets world wide near term that the returns will then help support their aging population, sort of Belt and Road as a Social Security payer.
No idea whether that can work, but it seems more sensible than blowing $15 trillion on completely counterproductive Mid East wars.

You wouldn't think so from where I'm sitting.

Mind you, they are on occasion as inscrutable as the Chinese, sometimes been in meetings with a bevy of mid-ranking GRU officers discussing this and that and found that four hours later, at conclusion, we've progressed backwards. That is a feat, they certainly knocked back the after meeting (gratis) Vodka's though.

Chinese? Long multi hour meetings and not ONE smile. In fact one Chinese chap smiled at me after a meeting once and I was genuinely shocked. They are the true tacticians!

Flash....as compared to in the past....was my reference....for sure they are not benign and at times Putin seems to want to see the old glory days of the Soviet Union return.

They have proven to very worthy adversaries over the years as we well know.

Or....we have proven ourselves to be easy targets far too often.

And here lies the problem, clueless politicians way out of their depth!

Meanwhile, the Taliban called China 'a welcome friend' in helping reconstruction and said they would guarantee the safety of workers and investors if they return. The spokesman claimed the Taliban already control 85% of the country.
See: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/polit...ource=rss_feed

Not a thickness of paper between his and Trump’s policy in the region. I wonder what it means for the counter insurgency operations in Africa as Daesh and there like expand into sub-Saharan states. The mention of Yemen is interesting considering the pressure to lessen support for SA in that conflict.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a...ance-r2s2cvwhs

Afghanistan is not worth more US lives, says Joe Biden as Taliban advance

President Biden insisted that fears of a bloody Taliban takeover of Afghanistan would not reverse the US troop withdrawal as fighting raged in the west of the country for control of a provincial capital.

With the Pentagon saying that the pull-out was “90 per cent complete”, Biden, 78, said that the US mission would be over by August 31 and that the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces had to take responsibility for defending the government of President Ghani amid fears that Kabul would soon come under attack….

The president said that the US would continue to provide military training and humanitarian assistance but made clear that he was not willing to risk any more American lives in an Afghan civil war….

It was “not in the national interest to continue fighting” now that al-Qaeda had been defeated there, he added.

“I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome,” he said…..

Jen Psaki, Biden’s spokeswoman, conceded that “it is a 20-year war that has not been won militarily” but said that “we did exactly what we intended to do”.

The threat from al-Qaeda and Islamic State now came from other countries such as Syria, Yemen and Somalia, she said.…

The spiralling violence in northern Afghanistan has stoked fears in the surrounding former Soviet republics that ethnic tensions within their own countries could be ignited…..

Russia has said it will step in to protect the former Soviet states if it has to.

Will the Russians be fighting a political insurgency or a religious based insurgency?

China has its own issues with the Religion of Peace in those regions within China that has significant numbers of adherents to that particular religion.

What happens if Al Qeada finds new support by elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan?

It was precisely because the Taliban refused to give up Bin Laden that the US and its allies invaded.

When Persia was the world empire
 

They had tried to civilise some ruffian squabbling Greek city states. But got a bloody nose at Plataea.
​​​​​

“Never Mind, we’ll do it ourselves” written by Alec Bierbauer and retired Col. Mark Cooter is well worth the read if you want a little insight on the Bin Laden issues, before and after 9/11.
Details the use of Predator, to include the initial trialing and arming with Hellfire, the interagency fighting, indecision, and the SA-3 donut hole, amongst other things, from after Bosnia, through to almost current times.

Doesn't it also depend on what we were trying to achieve? Perhaps, we got too tied up trying to "make everything right" in our own eyes regarding democratic institutions, women's rights etc. I'm for all those things, but frankly, it's impossible to do it for a country that wouldn't do it for themselves. As ugly as things will get after we depart, it wouldn't be any different 20 years from now, except for the loss of too many of our troops (including allies) in the meantime. I don't see a perfect solution. Perhaps we should have stuck to "getting Al Queda" and establishing just enough defensive security for that, and leaving when that's achieved all that we could.

Yes, except that was the invasion itself that welded the Taliban onto Al Qaeda.
Prior to the invasion Mullah Omar was under pressure to break ties with Al Qaeda.
The Talibans ambitions were and remain local , not global. Many in the Taliban were irritated by Bin Ladens campaign against the US. It was seen as a liability and a distraction.
The US could have handled it differently and peeled the Taliban off.
But that leaves the Taliban in charge.
It was a conundrum.
Twenty years later we are back where we started.

Why doesn't the Afghan National Army work with all the training and equipment given? Without it we will be back to blown up Buddhas in no time.

The Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1978, but the whole thing was too much for them and they left the country ten-years later in February 1989.
Photos show Soviet troops in Kabul and as they departed the country in February 1989. (Photos from US Dept. for Defence and Novosti).

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....aac70fbea5.jpg
Soviet Troops in Kabul


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....5e1cbbab8b.jpg
Soviets Departing February 1989

I'm only familiar with the man from the Tom Hanks movie but I gather that Charlie Wilson played no small role in encouraging the Soviet Army to turn tail for home.