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2021-08-05 Afghanistan

Taliban Killed 'Possibly 800-900 People' in Kandahar: Tadin Khan

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Posted by trailing wife 2021-08-05 06:47|| || Front Page|| [14 views ] Top
File under: Taliban

#1 I remember the time about 6 years or so ago when, after atrocities like this the survivors said, "those who did this could not have been muslims'.

Survivors don't say this anymore because 'those who did this could only have been muslims' doesn't sound comforting

Posted by Lord Garth 2021-08-05 10:21|| 2021-08-05 10:21|| Front Page Top

#2 Dron wrote re BDA's and ghost soldiers: [The devil is in the cooking of numbers by the ANSDF itself, and the Afghan MoD officials, those oversmart sunnis who would add thousands of ghost solders, officers, equipment and buildings to their records just to skim from the budget. While a goddamn war was going on.]

In the Afghan milieu, the principal issue is trust. The problem is that the nation is not a nation yet, with a leader capable of marshaling the resources of its territory and people into a gigantic fist. So local leaders conjure up ghost soldiers in order to hoard resources for situations like this. They know that when they're up the creek, they're on their own. When they're under attack is when they start digging into their caches. And the central government figures that the locals are holding back resources, so they're dilatory with aid, lest the Taliban attack the capital with everything they have.

This boomerangs throughout the system, meaning that the most honest of the local leaders are hung out to dry, since they accurately reported their numbers and kept aside no excess for a rainy day. When they say they are being overrun and out of men and equipment, they really are in desperate straits*. If the area they are holding is critical to the control of neighboring areas, its loss can lead to a cascade of defeats.

Nonetheless, at the macro level, unless China is a secret funder of the Taliban, with the money being laundered through Pakistan, there is no way the Taliban can match the government's resources $5b in annual aid from the US. That's not even counting value of the B-52 (and presumably both drone and fighter bomber) strikes allegedly being used in behalf of Afghan government troops.

* That is why honesty is a lousy policy in the Afghan milieu. Any local leader who is honest is asking to get overrun. Given that if he and his men are killed, his kin and the kin of his followers will starve, he'd be wise to set aside something extra, even if it's for ammo and equipment that he knows won't be forthcoming on a timely basis from Kabul when it's a question of life-and-death, and he needs it now, not six months later.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2021-08-05 10:47|| 2021-08-05 10:47|| Front Page Top

#3 Link to the speculated B-52 strikes.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2021-08-05 10:56|| 2021-08-05 10:56|| Front Page Top

#4 For anyone wondering why these clashes have been going on for a couple of months, Tet lasted almost 9 months. In its worst week, 568 GI's died.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tet_Offensive

Posted by Zhang Fei 2021-08-05 11:24|| 2021-08-05 11:24|| Front Page Top

#5 I was wondering, Zhang Fei. Thank you for this and your other explanations — I am now less abysmally ignorant.

Posted by trailing wife 2021-08-05 12:31|| 2021-08-05 12:31|| Front Page Top

#6
Your insights and explanations are enlightening as ever, Zhang Fei.

Posted by Dron66046 2021-08-05 12:52|| 2021-08-05 12:52|| Front Page Top

#7 shoud have let them have the shithole along time ago.

Posted by Chris 2021-08-05 15:42|| 2021-08-05 15:42|| Front Page Top

#8 and after it was all over charlie was depleted in numbers, short of ammo and food. We could have marched up the Ah shau, turned right on the ho chi min trail and gone all the way to Hanoi. I'm still pissed they made us stop at the border.

Posted by bman 2021-08-05 16:02|| 2021-08-05 16:02|| Front Page Top

#9 and after it was all over charlie was depleted in numbers, short of ammo and food. We could have marched up the Ah shau, turned right on the ho chi min trail and gone all the way to Hanoi. I'm still pissed they made us stop at the border.

IMHO, they should have flattened every North Vietnamese city with incendiary bombs, more or less the way Tokyo lost 100K dead in a single night. That would have brought North Vietnam to the peace table early. We sustained 60% of the GI dead we lost during the Pacific War. If we had imposed casualties on North Vietnam similar to Japan's - 2.5m, I expect they would crawled on their hands and knees to beg for an end to the bombing. Heck, we could have asked, medieval-style, for the family members of the Politburo to be handed over as hostages, to be killed if the guerrilla campaign resumed in the South. The marvel of modern laws of war is that we've reduced our fighting men to the status of disposable widgets while putting on a pedestal the fighting men of the enemy and the civilian support base that keeps their war machine alive.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2021-08-05 17:35|| 2021-08-05 17:35|| Front Page Top

#10 well said ZF

Posted by Chris 2021-08-05 17:56|| 2021-08-05 17:56|| Front Page Top

#11 Amen #9

Posted by Frank G 2021-08-05 19:01|| 2021-08-05 19:01|| Front Page Top

#12 Zhang Fei for President in 2024 (or sooner if possible).

Posted by Besoeker 2021-08-05 19:12|| 2021-08-05 19:12|| Front Page Top

#13 Well said ZF. WWII was 'total war'. Nam was I believe, more of a 'police action'.

And don't forget (or forgive) the antics of Walter Cronkite (spit!) and the media.

Posted by CrazyFool 2021-08-05 22:57|| 2021-08-05 22:57|| Front Page Top

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