Are we losing control of Afghanistan to Taliban rebels

Oh No! We're losing Afghanistan! It's another Vietnam! The sky is falling! Down with Bush!!!



Please. Two years ago the Taliban had about 30,000 to 50,000 fighters. Today it has maybe 500 at best. I'd say they're not doing too well.

This is really nothing new. The Taliban runs away from a battle and hides (in Pakistan), builds up a little force, and then tries to move back into Afghanistan. Always southeastern Afghanistan (because of the Pakistan border, of course). The locals alert the government that the Taliban's back, and we move in and clear them out - kill a few dozen and chase the rest back into Pakistan. This is how things have been working for the past year and a half, the only difference now being that professional Afghan government soldiers are playing a large role in our clean-up operations.

We're going to be in Afghanistan for years, and combat such as this (really not that large-scale; the Taliban is incapable of large-scale military operations at this point) is going to happen for a while yet. Some posters here have hit on the real problem - Pakistan. They have done just enough to keep us from running into their tribal areas and cleaning house, but obviously not enough to actually help us permanently fix the situation.

Of course, to permanently fix the situation we'll have to cross their border into the tribal areas and clean house... Either they will eventually have to do it, or they will eventually have to let us do it, or we will eventually have to just do it without their permission. Until we do... It's like crushing ants but leaving the anthill alone. We're quite good at crushing the ants, and can keep the infestation down to acceptable levels indefinitely, but to really fix the problem we've got to burn that friggen anthill into oblivion...

Osama is most likely in the tribal areas as well.

And whoever said that Saudi and Pakistan are our real problems/enemies in the war on terror was 100% correct. Well, I would amend that to say that segments of the Saudi and Pakistani governments and populations are our real enemies. Al Qaeda would not (could not) exist without either of these factions. One major problem I have with the Bush admin is that we're pussyfooting around with these guys and trying not to offend them. Major mistake, IMHO. Hardball is the only game these guys understand.

 

Oh, and FranchiseBlade -

There would be no Taliban or Al Qaeda in Afghanistan without the Pakistanis (particularly their creators, the ISI and the military). Never mind that they never would have existed in the first place, but even if they did, they would all be dead by now. Pakistan is their sanctuary, and they couldn't exist without it.

I'm currently in Colorado, and there is a Special Forces unit here (10 SFG) that recently got back from a year-long tour in Afghanistan. These are the guys who have been fighting the Taliban up close and personal since we've been there. Probably the most interesting thing I have heard from any of them was that the Taliban were about the worst shots in the world, and were really totally incompetent as warriors, but... More relevant to this conversation were descriptions about how they (the SF guys) used to sit at OPs (obversationn posts) at the Pak-Afghan border and watch Taliban and Al Qaeda guys train. They'd sit there with a set of binos (binoculars) and rifle scopes watching these guys for days at a time, begging to let their snipers go to work on them, but the requests were always denied. Their mission was to observe the enemy training, and if they crossed the border to kill them. But they were not allowed to attack anything across the border.

That sounds an awful lot like the time when they had Osama in their sights but didn't take the shot to me. That is politics at work right there, and it is preventing us from finally and totally defeating the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan once and for all. Thank Colin Powell (who refuses to lay down ultimatums), George Bush (who listens to Colin Powell), and Pervez Musharaf (who is really being held hostage by fanatical religious and military factions, who are not all that different than Afghan Taliban, within his own country) for that...

But it's not even that we don't know where these guys are. We do. But the Pakistanis won't play the game, at least not on our side. Don't think for a second that they are not responsible for our still being there.

 

That would be my bleeding heart ass. I think they are so much of a problem that the fact that t hey remain unaddressed renders the whole pre-emption argument a complete sham.

 

I'll just say - One war at a time, Sam. Everyone will get their turn at the "Moment of Truth" game.

 

The US has been drawing down its forces in Saudi recently and is down to a small skeleton force and some training advisors.

<a HREF="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/latestnewsstory.cfm?storyID=3520498&thesection=news&thesubsection=world">US ends military operations in Saudi Arabia</a>

With the Saudi Royal Family wrapping itself in the creed/motto/slogan:

<b>
The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques
</b>

<a href="http://www.saudiembassy.net/gov_profile/Saudi-king.html">Saudi King Profile</a>

handling the issue of reform/change in Saudi Arabia by the United States will be...............uh...........<i>tricky</i>.

The impact on world oil markets while the US would be inducing the change is also another consideration.

I am curious to see how you think the US should handle that matter because I don't see how it can be done (by the US) without creating some very challenging waves throughout the entire world. If the US used a <i>jawboning</i> technique, I have doubts that it would be enough to get a change there.

Military force?
Scary thought.



Pakistan

If the US used a <i>jawboning</i> technique, I have doubts that it would be enough to get a change there.

Military force?
The population is in the neighborhood of 150 million and that raises this question.

<b>Will the US raise and commit the forces necessary to handle that task? </b>

With current active US forces in the range of 1.4 million, we are lacking the manpower for that assignment. Again, I am interested in how you think the US could get a significant change
in Pakistan without creating some very challenging waves.

 

Food doesn't pay the bills, poppy does. Poppy and (especially) pot grow so easily that you could sow a field with seeds, go outside and spit occasionally and a crop would come in.

One problem with prohibition is that you need a government like the Taliban to significantly impact drug production.

Besides, the only reason the crops are so valuable is because they are illegal, which inflates the prices astronomically.

 

Mango:

On Saudi -

The Royal Family needs to be overthrown, both for our security and that of the region and for the long-term welfare of the Saudi people. They are corrupt, they are duplicitous and beyond trust, and they are responsible for spreading most of the global anti-American Islamic fanaticism (via Wahabbiism) that is driving our enemies. Their money is also funding our enemies.

One of the goals (perhaps the main goal) of the Iraq action was to put into motion forces that will spread political and social change throughout the region, to Saudi as well. Where can such changes lead for the Royal Family? Nowhere good from their point of view. But the ball is already rolling on that score, and there is no turning back now.

Of course there is the very real (likely) danger in that event that whoever overthrows the Royal Family will be worse for us than they were - radical Wahabbi clerics leading a popular revolt, most likely. The answer then would be to overthrow that regime and go in Iraq style, remaking the country in an image more amenable to us and the region. Of course, that would be viewed by all muslims everywhere (Americans invading the cradle of Islam) as an intolerable affront to their religious sovereignty...

Either way we go with Saudi it opens up a can of worms that we really don't want opened, perhaps why the administration has apparently taken largely a wait and see attitude with Saudi. I think the plan is to give the Iraq transformation time and see what happens, and then reassess the situation and our options at a later date. I for one have no good solutions to that one.

On Pakistan -

One airmobile division, backed by some armor, could mow through the tribal areas in good order and pretty much clean house. It would be messy, but the only real threat to us in such an instance would be the possibility that regular Pak army decided to oppose us (which they very well might, but wouldn't accomplish much). Keep in mind that it is only really the tribal areas that we're concerned with, not the whole of Pakistan.

What would the Pakistanis' options be? War against the US (suicidal for them, and they really couldn't do much back to us), which would likely flare up into a greater regional war with India involved and go badly for everyone involved, most of all the Pakistanis. Another option for them would be to pretty much just set up a cordon around the tribal areas and let it happen. This option would be humiliating for them and would be very much to our liking (which would also bother them), but it would not result in national suicide. Either way, their options in such an event would not be good.

Personally, I would advocate just lifting the "don't cross the border" order on our forces there. This would have SF ODAs (small squad-sized teams of SF) infiltrating the tribal areas on assassination missions, and mounting limited raids upon Taliban/Al Qaeda strongholds in the tribal areas. This would keep our over-the-border presence in Pakistan relatively limited and greatly reduce the visibility of US operations there, as well as offer us some degree of deniability; but this would still allow us to take the war into their sanctuary, something which needs to be done. I would propose that as opposed to a full-up invasion of the tribal areas. Of course, it still carries risks, but every option there does.

underoverup:

The Afghan government is prone to exaggerating enemy kill numbers, but we are not. When we say we killed 30 Taliban, you can bet that there are (at least) 30 Taliban laying dead on the battlefield. When they say they killed 300, there are probably only 30 dead.

During the large scale operations immediately following the initiation of US activity there, we probably killed around 10,000 or so Taliban. I am talking about the phase where we actually invadede and kicked the Taliban out of power. That number is not at all exaggerated, either.

An example of the way battles worked during that phase: Right at the time that Kabul was falling, the Taliban decided to send a large column (consisting of about 150 vehicles of all types - tanks, trucks, etc - and about 1200 Taliban fighters) to reinforce the Taliban there and retake the city if necessary. We could not allow them to arrive.

Three SF operators, one of them an attached Air Force FAC (Forward Air Controller, their equivalent of my MOS), set up an OP on a cliff overlooking the main highway from Kandahar to Kabul. They had 19 Northern Alliance troops with them for local security, and a number of US aircraft circling overhead (2 B-52s loaded with smart bombs among them). When the column came into view, they waited until the entire column was within view, and then called fire (air strikes) on its front, tail, and middle sections, trapping the column where it was. Over the next half hour or so they proceeded to call fire on the column, which resulted in the column's total destruction. Three guys with a handfull of aircraft killed over a thousand enemy in half an hour...

Such engagements have been characteristic of many of the "battles" (slaughters, more accurately) that have taken place there. They are not all like that - more hunter-killer actions now than anything else - but they all have the same result: a lopsided battle with lots of dead Taliban. No exaggeration necessary.

 

They were just talking on the news about a "fierce" gun fight involving SOF around the mountaineous region of Afghanistan (near Pakistan), so it looks like they are close...

 

Treeman: "On Pakistan -

One airmobile division, backed by some armor, could mow through the tribal areas in good order and pretty much clean house. It would be messy, but the only real threat to us in such an instance would be the possibility that regular Pak army decided to oppose us (which they very well might, but wouldn't accomplish much). Keep in mind that it is only really the tribal areas that we're concerned with, not the whole of Pakistan.

What would the Pakistanis' options be? War against the US (suicidal for them, and they really couldn't do much back to us),"

What a warmonger. Hey, let's attack another country.

 

underoverup:

I guarantee you that unless the Pakistani government knows about a particular mission, and we have thier permission, we have not sent anyone across the border. Most of the joint US/Pakistani raids on Al Qaeda hideouts we've found there have taken place with FBI operatives, not uniformed military or Special Forces. None have taken place in the tribal areas.

This is a source of frustration for the SF guys. They are not being allowed to really do their jobs out of sensitivity for the Pakistanis' pride (and Musharaf's political situation).

The Taliban sanctuaries lie within Pakistan proper, in the tribal areas. The mountain zones on our (Afghan) side see only staging areas, not sanctuaries. The problem is not so much watching the border - we can actually do that fairly well. The problem is with not being able to touch the Taliban/Al Qaeda base camps on the other side.

Well, for one I did not say that I'd recommend sending across large contingents, I said I think we should send small teams (SF ODAs) across. I specifically mentioned that, don't know if you caught it...

Second off, it would not be 'suicide' even if we did cross with a large contingent. We would demolish everything in our path if we chose to, the locals on the other side would be pretty much powerless to stop any such incursion. Even the Pak Army couldn't stop it. Suicide, no. It would just be a major embarrassment to the Pak government, and political (and maybe military) ramifications would follow.

You've got that backwards. It is harder to get a completely accurate enemy KIA count with bombing runs and artillery fires than it is with a firefight. With a bombing run, you don't know which body parts go where, or who was vaporized by what blast. The best you can do is count your targets before the blast goes off... But with a firefight you just go around counting bodies afterwards.

glynch:

I'm talking about attacking people that we are already at war with, glynch. The Taliban. Al Qaeda. They just happen to be hiding out in Pakistan right now. But I suppose you just had to say it... It's been a while since you've had the opportunity to call me that. Gotta get your fix...

 

"When we killed Pie Face, we gained a whole new level of respect because he was one of our own."
---Edward James Olmos, American Me




We should have taken down Saudi and left Iraq alone. More than twice the reserves and the ability to unilaterally set world price by supply control.


Take down the royals. Create a meritocracy, and ship the extremists out or kill them off. Saudi needs to be dragged into the 21st century, and if we need to carve out their holy shrines and make them Vatican like cities, ok.

But it's time for the tail to stop wagging the dog. We found the oil, we brought it up, and we made the mistake of allowing that control to slip away in the national impotency which followed the Vietnam debacle. In other words, we should have gone to war in 1973, but an ill conceived war in SEA prevented us from doing that. So our true national interest was largely capitulated as we caved in on the Mideast upstarts 30 years ago, while we languished in a war without sufficient political support.

Iraq was a poorly conceived war, but the Royal family of Saudi needs killing, and we should do it. So do the extremist clerics. Some people are just no damn good and need killing.