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2021-07-12 Afghanistan

Two Districts Fall as Battles Continue Near 10 Cities

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Posted by trailing wife 2021-07-12 00:00|| || Front Page|| [10 views ] Top
File under: Taliban

#1 The Taliban is hoping to use FUD to compel mass surrenders. Here's a report from a recent Reuters embed:

Afghan special forces begin with a prayer.

Reuters joined them on a late-night combat mission in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar.

They’re heading to a district where earlier Taliban fighters and Afghan security forces backed by local police fought for hours.

Insurgents had attempted to take the area, unleashing RPGs and heavy machine gun fire.

... the special forces are now fending for themselves as they move silently from house to house.

This time the area is abandoned.

Air strikes by the Afghan Air Force pushed back the Taliban fighters.

Here’s major Mohammad Din Tasir.

"What we heard in the report and what we saw on the scene did not match. In this village, they said that two or three hundred enemies are here, but we came and spoke with the people and inspected their houses. In fact, the residents had evacuated their families because of the conflict between the government and the enemy, so their children and families didn't get hurt."

It's believed the Taliban is spreading propaganda about how many areas they’ve captured to spread confusion and fear.

Information operations are a wonderful thing, but this is the modern era. People exchange information, and once it's discovered that most of the Taliban's victories are so much fluff, resistance will harden. Note also that in Afghanistan, a surrender isn't always a surrender. There are always weapons cached in preparation for the right opportunity.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2021-07-12 12:43|| 2021-07-12 12:43|| Front Page Top

#2 Good find, Zhang Fei.

Posted by trailing wife 2021-07-12 13:50|| 2021-07-12 13:50|| Front Page Top

#3 Good find, Zhang Fei.

The Taliban claim to be attacking everywhere. Assuming they are, ammo alone must be costing a significant sum. Let's say there are 10,000 of them, and each soldier gets 200 rounds a day. That's 2m rounds every single day. Including transportation, assume each round costs 50 cents. That's 1m simoleons per day, and that's just ammo. What about food and medical care for the injured? Payments for the kin of the Taliban dead and maimed?

We are paying the government $400m a month. The Taliban might be incurring a tenth of that amount in expense, but that's still a good chunk of cash. I'm skeptical the Pakistanis have the funds to sustain this for very long. Unless the Chinese are funneling aid to the Taliban through Pakistan*.

When the Taliban first won power, the various mujahideen factions were exhausted from fighting the Russians and then each other. In contrast, the Afghan government has been fighting a fairly low tempo war against the Taliban for 20 years. They've taken casualties, but nothing like the last two decades of the 20th century. A figure like 10% is probably high.

* Xi Jinping would have to be a degenerate gambler to do this. What if the Taliban decide to up the ante and help al Qaeda detonate a nuke in NYC? How's a trade embargo on China combined with potential retaliatory strikes on China supposed to help him stay in power?

Posted by Zhang Fei 2021-07-12 14:51|| 2021-07-12 14:51|| Front Page Top

#4 Good posts, ZF, as usual.

The headline the Western media are ready to run is "Afghan Women Massacred by Taliban." Which would put both Washington and any potential Taliban supporters in a tight spot.

Posted by Matt 2021-07-12 15:05|| 2021-07-12 15:05|| Front Page Top

#5 Xi Jinping would have to be a degenerate gambler to do this

Going by entire Covid story, not to mention his Neo-Maoism, what makes you think he isn't?
Furthermore, there are rumors that his control of PLA is less than perfect.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2021-07-12 15:12|| 2021-07-12 15:12|| Front Page Top

#6 Going by entire Covid story, not to mention his Neo-Maoism, what makes you think he isn't?
Furthermore, there are rumors that his control of PLA is less than perfect.

Xi's not a Maoist, any more than his predecessors were. He's an emperor, riding Leninism (in the guise of democratic centralism aka rule by one man) to get to his destination. It's the divine right of kings in an era when kings are out of fashion. The Communist Party is just another conquest-based aristocracy complete with fiefs in the form of state-owned companies. Favored aristos and hangers-on get imperial monopolies just like their equivalents of yore.

As to uncontrollable elements of the PLA, those aren't looking for national glory - they're looking for a lever to wrest the throne for themselves. How does bringing US nuclear strikes upon Chinese cities provide that lever?

The Taliban and al Qaeda got together to stage 9/11 even though they benefited from the US campaign to expel the Russians from Afghanistan. If there's one thing anyone knows about them, it's that they are snakes in the grass. And if there's one thing that Chinese strategic thinkers look at, it's past behavior. An ally reckless enough to attack two major US landmarks just for the heck of it, despite past assistance from the US, is no ally at all.

Mao was just another founding emperor who achieved his goals using the realpolitik embodied in the classic Chinese works, the Water Margin and the Three Kingdoms, as his user manuals. Lu Bu was an ambitious military commander with his own army who had repeatedly betrayed previous superiors to whom he had sworn fealty. In the aftermath of a defeat, he attempted to surrender to Cao Cao, the shogun who ruled in the emperor's name (i.e. held the purse strings and commanded the troops). Cao Cao had Lu Bu killed. He wasn't about to give the man a chance to stab him in the back. The Taliban is the current day equivalent of Lu Bu in its duplicity. Hard to see the Chinese do much except sell them weaponry.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2021-07-12 16:32|| 2021-07-12 16:32|| Front Page Top

#7 As to uncontrollable elements of the PLA, those aren't looking for national glory - they're looking for a lever to wrest the throne for themselves. How does bringing US nuclear strikes upon Chinese cities provide that lever?

Wouldn't be the first time a fraction in an internal strife underestimated foreign response to their games to gain internal influence by appealing to national chauvinism - you really think anybody wanted WWI?

To come back to COVID, now that Chinese used biological weapons - and won, there will be arms-race (and most of China's opponents are better at this than China). And bioweapons not like nukes - where there is no deniability (today experts can tell you where the bomb was made). On bioweapons however, there is deniability - if you kept development secret. Which, may tempt somebody to use bioweapons if sufficiently provoked.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2021-07-12 16:50|| 2021-07-12 16:50|| Front Page Top

#8 Wouldn't be the first time a fraction in an internal strife underestimated foreign response to their games to gain internal influence by appealing to national chauvinism - you really think anybody wanted WWI?

They wanted victory, not the casualties thereof. Re national chauvinism - Wag the Dog is fiction. China's not the West. Xi, like every Chinese ruler before him, is surrounded by ostensible sycophants who are waiting for their moment in the sun. Nobody cares about slogans - if you get a bunch of people killed, you will be killed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Yang_of_Sui#Late_reign

It wasn't even Chiang Kai-shek's fault that the Japanese invaded China, and he did take 10x the casualties the Communists did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War

But he got the blame and that was a factor in his regime's collapse. Re people who are waiting in the wings, here's an example, of the closest confidant to the First Emperor who, before the deceased emperor's corpse has had the time to be debrided of its flesh by maggots, kills two of his heirs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Gao#Coup_following_Qin_Shi_Huang's_death

Closer to the present, Deng Xiaoping ousted both the de facto (Mao's wife Jiang Qing) and de jure (Mao's hand-picked successor Hua Guofeng) rulers of China after Mao's death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Qing#1976_coup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Guofeng#Ousting_and_death

It wasn't ideological - it was pure power politics, with ideology as elevator music.

There's this trope that Chinese leaders think long term. That's not only false - the complete opposite is true, given the Chinese tendency towards rebellion and mutiny, all built up on the sly until the right moment arrives. If you don't spend your time fending off challengers, there is no long term. What is always true is that they look for historical analogues, sometimes going back thousands of years. Technologies change, but power struggles among men follow the same ancient patterns.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2021-07-12 17:51|| 2021-07-12 17:51|| Front Page Top

#9 China's not the West. Xi, like every Chinese ruler before him, is surrounded by ostensible sycophants who are waiting for their moment in the sun.

Change of headman/dynasty =/= change of policy.
For example: China vs. Vietnam 17 centuries of conquest.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2021-07-12 18:17|| 2021-07-12 18:17|| Front Page Top

#10 Change of headman/dynasty =/= change of policy.
For example: China vs. Vietnam 17 centuries of conquest.

That's a completely accurate picture of Chinese leaders - they have a world view that would be familiar to any pre-WWI Western leader, all the way back to Alexander. Personal fame and glory means territorial annexation. But, to paraphrase what Thatcher once said, there is no such thing as China. There is Xi Jinping, a host of contending factions, and a billion Chinese, a good chunk of whom would not be thrilled at losing their sons, fathers, uncles, nephews, et al. A century before Spartacus, China's first illiterate peasant emperor turfed the First Emperor's ruling family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Gaozu_of_Han

The guy took power in the aftermath of what might called a draft riot. The idea of the docile Chinese peasant is a myth. It wasn't even until the American Revolution 2000 years later that *any* non-aristocrat member of society took the reins of power by force in the West. That's why Chinese rulers tend to expand incrementally and avoid overly-ambitious moves that might risk it all. They look at historical examples like the First Emperor, who expanded massively only to have his empire collapse after his death and his clan wiped out.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2021-07-12 18:52|| 2021-07-12 18:52|| Front Page Top

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