Afghan Troops , what is the point ?? .....

.... " Havent got the political will "   Funny name for Baws.

  ISLAMABAD (AP) — The U.S. and NATO have promised to pay $4 billion a year until 2024 to finance Afghanistan’s military and security forces, which are struggling to contain an advancing Taliban. Already, the U.S. has spent nearly $89 billion over the past 20 years to build, equip and train Afghan forces.


  Cheaper to have got a fleet of Uber Taxis.!

Where there is conflict, rich people are getting richer whilst ordinary people are losing their sons, daughters, husbands and mothers.

This is a war you can never win. The British Empire was defeated in Afghanistan in the 1860 s, the Russians in the 70s ,
The USA and Nato in the last few years , if you don't learn from history you are doomed to repeat it.

had one of the worst days of my life about 15 years ago a girl i worked with at corals in Bishop Auckland rang me in a very bad way to tell me her husband had been blown up in Afghan, i can still remember the call and will do till the day i die,
what made it even worse she gave birth only a few weeks later.

Lee Brownson

RIP.

Sleep well Tony Blair.

And all the other politicians in both the main parties who supported that same war, brians. Only one political party opposed it as their party policy.

Its up to all the politicians in the west to point the finger at the countries that finance these truly evil people. Not one politician that I have listened to has had the courage to do this.Neither Trump,Biden,Johnson,or Merkel have ever mentioned that Putin and Pakistan's numero uno,Imran Khan are financing the taliban. They are frightened of upsetting Pugin,and are all frankly gutless.

Putin not pugin.Sorry my spellchecker is dislegsic.

Doesn't look good does it.
So what's the answer?
I don't there is one.
It's just the way things are out there.
But what about the bigger picture?
Doomed!
We're all doomed I say.
And I'm not joking here.

Thanks for your contribution ericster aka private Frazier,aka John Lawrence.(a great actor)

Oh no the spellchecker strikes again.should read John Lawrie

No worries bryan.

Was wanting to post that I meant to say ...  "I don't THINK there's one " .... but never mind.

Seriously though bryan:
With covid,
Global warming,
The potential for global "warring", ultimately,  because of what's going on in Afghanistan,
and we pretend it's not happening.
Heads in sand,
lemmings and cliff comes to mind.

You are right ericster there probably isn't an answer. But at the end of the day if the politicians in the democratic west fail to call out a totalitarian state like Russia for financing this abhorrent regime they have failed the people they represent.

First I've heard that Russia are financing the taliban.
Pakistan needs to be brought to book-were not for them,there wouldn't be a problem today. They've armed,fiananced and given sanctuary to the taliban. Only a few days ago an Afghan minister accused them again of it.

The US are fully aware this has been going on,but had hoped by selling F16's etc and billions in aid they'd buy off Pakistan.

Sadly this hasn't worked,and poor people of Afghanistan are paying the price

Well the 20 years spent training up an Afghan Army with billions of dollars thrown @ it and countless/pointless lives lost hasnt worked out to well.

Mrspock,you have made my point,not many people are aware of the Russian connection because the politicians and news media are frett,(as Mrs Thatcher would say),of Putin. Irrespective of your political standpoint Mrs Thatcher would not have been frightened of calling out the Russian bully.I got my imfo.from the New York Times,a paper that is Group one class compared to the handicappers we have in this country.Sadly I am not up on how to transfer that particular piece of newsprint onto this post.I was very surprised how cheap it was to buy online,way,way cheaper I would imagine than an american would pay.

No different to when the US used to fund & arm the Mujahedeen v the USSR when they were in Afghanistan.

They caved in so quick, you'd think they had been trained by the French.

You cant win a war fighting against ghosts.just let them get on with it.

Mr Management- certainly not trained by the French. If they had been, not only would they have caved in quickly, but there'd be a fully fledged Michelin 3 Star restaurant in Kabul with a Maitre D waiting to welcome & seat the Taliban leader & his troops!

It just goes to show the old adage; you can’t polish a turd.

Any attempt at encouraging civilisation in that 5hitty backwater was doomed to fail when they are underpinned by religion from the dark ages.
It’s like trying to attach a foreign limb, gets rejected as soon as the drugs are withdrawn.

Everything from the economy to school teacher’s wages is subsidised by the West, might as well stop that now because all it’s doing is helping the Taliban.

I’d nuke em from afar once a year to keep em honest.

Was the name changed because we funded the Mujahadeen and so it was embarrassing to start fighting them against our own weapons, so we pretended they were Taliban and a much different group. Bit like prostitutes are  now sex workers and binmen are council operatives. Well not much like, but you get my drift.

Not exactly. The Taliban seem to have been formed to fight the Mujadeen because they weren't stict enough Islamists. At the time though the Mujadeen were seen in the west as fanatics and WSERE funded by the Americans to fight the Russian-backed government. No doubt a lot of American armaments fell into the hands of the Taliban then and no doubt are doing now.

3rd world countries full of religious fanatics will never change.

Afghanistan’s military and security forces, which are struggling to contain an advancing Taliban therefore becomes a taliban themself as they all looks the same what  a waste of funding

Aug 15, 2021 -- 11:03AM, DIFERENT GRAVY 12 wrote:

3rd world countries full of religious fanatics will never change.

That [does] seem to be the way of things GRAVY12

With regard to religious fanatics & the UK, to quote the award winning film Poltergeist-"They're here!"

Not only are they"here" Slicer but we are kowtowing to them.

10,000 have sailed in on rubber boats this years and some are being housed in 4 star hotels. The first text they send after arriving is to tell others it is the promised land and buy a dinghy asap!

And we have tens of thousands living rough in all our cities. The world has gone fckin mad.

Yep.

Always seems to go over the heads of some people that it's not religion that's the problem but those who twist it to suit themselves

Its the nature of a theocracy that uses the unknown as a weapon full stop.
The 'good' imans are no less absurd in their claims than the 'bad' ones.

All muslims believe the moon split in two one evening and then rejoined...just because.
And that stars are lamps that will fall to earth.

Send in Rambo and Kingsman. They did extremely well in ridding undesirables anywhere.

Aug 15, 2021 -- 1:36PM, MJK wrote:

Always seems to go over the heads of some people that it's not religion that's the problem but those who twist it to suit themselves

Right again.
Let's face it:
What [is] religion ?
Gossip rumour and hear-say.

Not forgetting Colonel Trautman, impossible. They ere there in 1988 and its still hell on earth!

Pmsl

(Ex) President Ghani thinks the olympics is still on….his exit and fall of government just broke the 100m sprint record.
They almost beat the Americans out of their own country.

I don’t think any of them can complain now they will get lynched, they had the chance to govern their own affairs and completely blew it.

A capitulation that is an utter insult to all those who attempted to help that dump of a country.

I think it’s all now pretty clear who have been stealing wages and hiding behind the efforts of foreigners.

Aug 15, 2021 -- 2:23PM, ericster wrote:

Aug 15, 2021 -- 12:36PM, MJK wrote:Always seems to go over the heads of some people that it's not religion that's the problem but those who twist it to suit themselvesRight again.Let's face it:What [is] religion ?Gossip rumour and hear-say.

For non religious people it is. Not everyone is in that boat so generalising is wrong. My point again is that it's not religion's fault when some commit horrendous acts in its name. It's the individuals who are to blame.

Renamed as Talibanistan

They seem a bit more organised than the Scottish though tbf

Taliban now got all the weaponry given by the West to the Afghan Army.  so we've basically armed the Taliban .... it's like something from a Carry On film.

"it's like something from a Carry On film."

Carry on up the Khyber?

lets be honest theres millions of afghans who wouldnt go out of their way to support the taliban but would agree /have been brought up on their views on women, and if the choice is between the taliban and a corrupt gov held together by western support/incursion,not suprising millions arnt to fussed either way

So what happened to the Afghan army. ? 100,00 troops highly trained and armed by us . There has been no pitched battle, are we to assume they just laid down their armed and joined the other side or dumped their ( our ) uniforms and became simple unassuming peasants.
But of course, it is not their fault its ours, whose troops were blown up and maimed in Afghan interests, a country that can't be bothered to fight for itself. We “ betrayed them “ , what a joke .

100,000  troops.

100,000  troops.

Billions sent to the Afghan Gov , some people have got the lot

Troops werent getting their wages, massive embezzlement in govt departments, Taliban promised no reprisals, families safe and no loss of any land as long as they signed upto a form of reservist army.

Can someone tell me why this country and many others subscribe to the United Nations?  It cannot be the responsibility of America to be the world's policeman.

The ex president left in a helicopter with cases full of cash. Lets all donate to Oxfam & the like to make sure these people live better lives than we do. At least he won't have to arrive on the Kent coast in a dinghy like many of his countrymen!

Dads Army under the leadership of Captain Mainwaring would have put up more resistance than the Afghan army.

Corruption/fraud beyond belief.

The Afghans had better weapons, better training & superior numbers. They also had a vertical yellow stripe running down their backs!

of course if the taliban had oil fields instead of poopy fields they,d be in the royal enclosure at ascot discussing prince andrews next bunga bunga party

There was no need to withdraw from Afghanistan.
I think the UK has lost one soldier there since 2016.

What they've done is handed over control to the Taliban in order to get the conflict in the region going again. They knew the Afghans wouldn't fight. But if they had then so much the better.

Which is what the policy has been in the Middle East ever since the British created the state of Israel.

We go from one country to another starting wars. Don't tell me they happen by accident.

it does seem extremely strange.  what exactly did they think the taliban would do when they pulled out & left the tin pot army in charge ...

Indeed, Dad's Army on duty. It was hardly going to end well.

In defending the withdrawal, Biden and Pentagon officials have repeatedly returned to the capabilities and advantages of the 300,000-strong Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. Yet the notion of a coherent Afghan military that could hold its own in a fight appears to have been an $88 billion fiction -- the amount of US taxpayer dollars spent on building up the Afghan military and police. Moreover, it is a myth the US should have seen coming, experts say.

John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, warned repeatedly over the years that the Afghan military suffered from corruption, drug addiction, theft and tens of thousands of "ghost soldiers." These fictitious soldiers would be added to payrolls so corrupt officers could collect their salaries. In October 2019, the US helped eliminate some 50,000 of these soldiers from the Afghan military books.
That was but one problem of many that plagued the Afghan military and police force. Officials sold weapons for cash, stole the salaries of subordinates and sometimes left them without enough food or water, as was documented in quarterly special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction reports for years.

Without US military support and US contractors, Sopko warned in March following the release of the 2021 High-Risk List report for Congress that "the survival of the Afghan state as we know it" was in peril. He was correct, and it went down far faster than anyone had expected.

From cnn.com

We ain't got homes for our homeless(a lot are ex-forces) but we have them for 20,000+ Afgans, and now the UK cant afford the rise of the triple lock OAP rise but we have money to support our new inhabitants. what a strange Country we live in.

Yup!

How many Afghans will America be taking in ?

The other week the phone rang but I was in the toilet at the time. When I checked the number the country code was 004 which is Afghaniston