What accounts for "US loosing" in Afghanistan.

[BLS_1919v2.0]

While you are correct If there was no durand line that the soviets would never have been in Afghanistan because the pashtunistan policy would not be an issue with pakistan(if there would have been a pakistan in that scenerio), but even then I believe Daud Khan should not have pursued this pashtunistan policy the way he did because he backed himself into a corner where he was forced to completely depend on the Soviet Union and isolated himself from everyone else. Once Daud Khan realized it was a failed policy and wanted to diversify his economic partners, thats when the soviets supported a coup against him and forced the Islamists to take to the hills and were forced to depend on Pakistan.

I think Daud should have executed a more moderate approach toward Pakistan and should not have backed himself into a corner with the soviets.

I agree regarding Sardar Daud. However again the issue was the aftermath of British policy which we suffered immensely. What is done is done, we should strive to unite the two inshallah.

[ghundal]

ghundak,

You're simply a member of the dumb cheer crowd as BLS has rightly called you and a prat perhaps too. You quote Sheuer because Brakzai has in a completely different context and kind of debate that you seem to think is somehow noble thing to do. Jerk!

I present my case again. We do not live in 90s and Taliban do not enjoy the support they did when people of Afghanistan were desperate only for stability. Taliban on the other hand right now are considered force of instability whom towards people have attitude that they should be positively neutralised i.e. made peace with and reconciled. I am saying this again, without a doubt they are a force to reckon with and thus are part of a long-term solution for settling the conflict in Afghanistan. On the other hand, this is not about U.S. but an internal issue too: Taliban vs the rest of Afghanistan. Anything in relation to foreigners is directly hinged on the outcome of settlement by Afghans within themselves.

You need to be able to present a factual arguement independently than Sheuer's idea and polemics. Present factual stuff in any form.

Taliban without a doubt have a support within a limited constituency and do not retain their cross--and--mass societal level support they could render in 90. I will simply rest my case to you on three factors borrowed from social movement theory which I think can apply in Taliban case: 1) Political opportunity ; 2) Masses mobilisation ; 3) Resources mobilisation. If you read your Sheuer's aritilce who is a so called prophet for and the like, he is saying that Taliban are after power, something which you muggot brain ruled out in your previous post.

Politically people don't look up to them and as such there is very limited opportunity for them, THEY CAN'T OFFER ANYTHING. On that bassed they cannot mobilise masses. They only have the resources to wage their guerilla war not conqure the country.

They will wage their war of time and slow attrition for as long as they have cannon fodders and enough other resources that keeps their insurgency sustained and will opt for a political settlement when it favours them. Same thing about the U.S. and Afghan government. But I see a unique opportunity when the Afghan government and Karzai in particular has significant degree of differnce in their approach towards war and Taliban. This is an ideal situation when we Afghans can come out more dignified than any one else. I don't know what 2,3, or 4 years from now will hold for us and some time you just have to clinch an opportunity. If Afghans themselves settle their difference there will remain no legtimacy or grounds for any foreigner to wage a war on our country and people and we can show and put them their place united. If Afghans do no settle amongst themselves this war will rage on and on one way or another.

I am not particualary adressing you in this post, but is just my general reply and thoughts in my own thread. So get over it.

I know why your so angry, its because you are defeated. Now, back all these claims up with your evidence that you have. WHy don't you want to do it?

[ghundal]

ghundak,

You're simply a member of the dumb cheer crowd as BLS has rightly called you and a prat perhaps too. You quote Sheuer because Brakzai has in a completely different context and kind of debate that you seem to think is somehow noble thing to do. Jerk!

I present my case again. We do not live in 90s and Taliban do not enjoy the support they did when people of Afghanistan were desperate only for stability. Taliban on the other hand right now are considered force of instability whom towards people have attitude that they should be positively neutralised i.e. made peace with and reconciled. I am saying this again, without a doubt they are a force to reckon with and thus are part of a long-term solution for settling the conflict in Afghanistan. On the other hand, this is not about U.S. but an internal issue too: Taliban vs the rest of Afghanistan. Anything in relation to foreigners is directly hinged on the outcome of settlement by Afghans within themselves.

You need to be able to present a factual arguement independently than Sheuer's idea and polemics. Present factual stuff in any form.

Taliban without a doubt have a support within a limited constituency and do not retain their cross--and--mass societal level support they could render in 90. I will simply rest my case to you on three factors borrowed from social movement theory which I think can apply in Taliban case: 1) Political opportunity ; 2) Masses mobilisation ; 3) Resources mobilisation. If you read your Sheuer's aritilce who is a so called prophet for and the like, he is saying that Taliban are after power, something which you muggot brain ruled out in your previous post.

Politically people don't look up to them and as such there is very limited opportunity for them, THEY CAN'T OFFER ANYTHING. On that bassed they cannot mobilise masses. They only have the resources to wage their guerilla war not conqure the country.

They will wage their war of time and slow attrition for as long as they have cannon fodders and enough other resources that keeps their insurgency sustained and will opt for a political settlement when it favours them. Same thing about the U.S. and Afghan government. But I see a unique opportunity when the Afghan government and Karzai in particular has significant degree of differnce in their approach towards war and Taliban. This is an ideal situation when we Afghans can come out more dignified than any one else. I don't know what 2,3, or 4 years from now will hold for us and some time you just have to clinch an opportunity. If Afghans themselves settle their difference there will remain no legtimacy or grounds for any foreigner to wage a war on our country and people and we can show and put them their place united. If Afghans do no settle amongst themselves this war will rage on and on one way or another.

I am not particualary adressing you in this post, but is just my general reply and thoughts in my own thread. So get over it.

Maybe you do not know ho to comprehend a request. You have made a number of claims here in regards to Afghanistan and the Taliban. QUIT wasting my time. You asked for a professional discourse, and I gave one to you. I gave you evidence. I also have given some links to US reports showing increased Taliban reach throughout Afghanistan. You have offered NO EVIDENCE for any of your claims, and have not been able to refute any claims I have made so far.

Till you have done this, it is best you stop making a fool out of yourself with all your self-degrading antics. LOL LOL LOL

I mean you can't providdddddddeeeeeeeeeee ANNNNNYYYYYYYYYY evidence?

You are simply a waste of time. Good luck and have a good day.

[ghundal]

Ok my dear dear fellow Pashtun brother. In all due honesty, I wish the people expressing your ideals had the forces to back such ideas up in Afghanistan- with their moderate ideals combined with opposition to foreigners, they would be a powerful force in Afghanistan like the current Afghan resistance, but as long as they attach themselves to the backsides of foreigners, they will remain losers.

Please read, and address the points made. This goes for BLS, too.


Thanks.

Why West Lost Afghan War

by Michael Scheuer

The former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit says the US-led coalition has already lost the war in Afghanistan. A shake-up in military leadership won't change that.

Recent events surrounding Afghanistan shouldn’t confuse anyone, as the reality of the situation still lies in one simple statement: The US-NATO coalition has lost a war its political leaders never meant, or knew how, to win.

‘Winning’ in Afghanistan was never anything more than killing Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, as many of their fighters and civilian supporters as possible and then getting out immediately with the full knowledge that—as Mao said long ago—insurgencies always rebuild and the process might need to be repeated.

The best and most appropriate response to al-Qaeda’s September 11 raid, then, would have been a unilateral US punitive expedition that inflicted massive death and destruction on the enemy and delivered a clear warning to Islamists not to pick fights with the United States. Indeed, many Islamists expected this response, which is why they poured vitriol on bin Laden and expected the US military to set back their movement a decade, if it did not destroy it completely.

Faced with this criticism, bin Laden simply said ‘wait,’ adding (in paraphrase) that the Americans and their allies can’t stomach casualties, that they won’t use their full military power and will unite Afghans by trying to Westernize them via popular elections, installing women’s rights, dismantling tribalism, introducing secularism and establishing NGO-backed bars and *****houses in Kabul. Bin Laden was right; it seems he is, among other things, a keen student of the West’s past nation-building operations.

Since June 1, the parade of incompetents crossing the Afghan stage is stunning: Gen. Stanley McChrystal, US President Barack Obama, Gen. David Petraeus, Afghan President Hamid Karzai—the list is long. McChrystal, saddled with a dead-end strategy devised by David Kilcullen, John Nagl and other counterinsurgency ‘experts,’ gave access to himself and his staff to Rolling Stone, long among the most anti-military US journals.

For his trouble and indiscreet words, McChrystal was fired by Obama—who, with his senior advisers, merit all the negative things said about them—and replaced by that purveyor of military snake oil, Gen. Petraeus. Even as the transitory success of the Iraq ‘surge’ is unravelling, Petraeus takes the Afghan command saying everything is okay (within a week the Pentagon’s media machine was telling Congress and Western publics that the ‘Afghan war is on track.’)

While this has played out, Hamid Karzai reportedly met with Sirajuddin Haqqani—a major Afghan insurgent leader—and prepared to surrender under the guise of creating a coalition regime. For all his failures and fabulously corrupt relatives, Karzai can easily solve the dilemma the West can’t even frame accurately: Question: What does the Taliban and its allies want? Answer: Power. So Karzai is talking to Haqqani, and probably Taliban leaders, to see if there’s a governing arrangement that will give him a role in post-NATO Afghanistan and doesn’t lead to his execution after the last NATO trooper leaves. The chance of this is near nil, however, and so Karzai and his family will have to step up the pace of their alleged thievery and get ready for an early exit that leaves the West holding the bag.

And as these parties circle the Afghan drain, Lindsay Graham, a much but inexplicably respected Republican senator from South Carolina, said: ‘This is a chance to start over completely [in Afghanistan].’ At the start of the US Civil War it was said South Carolina’s fatal flaw was that it’s too small to be a nation and too big to be an insane asylum. Sen. Graham has reconfirmed this truism

After nine years, it is utterly impossible to restart Western policy in Afghanistan. Too many Afghans are dead; too many Afghans and non-Afghan Muslims have joined the Taliban-led insurgency; too much pro-Taliban money is pouring into Afghanistan from wealthy donors on the Arabian Peninsula and across the Muslim world; too much Western funding has been stolen and sent abroad by Karzai’s cronies; too much popular support for the war in the West has been squandered; too many U.S.-NATO troops are dead or maimed; too much has been done by the West to push Pakistan toward the abyss by demanding its military do Western dirty work; and too much time has been wasted on counterinsurgency theories and policies that avoid killing the enemy and his civilian supporters. The one thing the West ‘can start over completely’ is a revision of the plans for withdrawal that moves up the departure date.

The bottom line is that the United States and NATO stand defeated in Afghanistan. Under McChrystal, Petraeus, or Obama himself the counterinsurgency strategy now being flogged has been intellectually bankrupt from its inception. No better proof of this can be found than the fact that the part of the policy meant to address the Afghans’ ‘quality of life’ has been a substantial success.

There are 3 million-plus more Afghan children in school today than in 2001; more electricity and potable water are available; many roads and irrigation systems have been rebuilt; and more primary health care is being delivered. Kilcullen, Nagl and their colleagues argued that such success would prompt the Afghans to turn away from the Taliban’s religiosity and nationalism and isolate that purportedly small force from a population swelling with delight and loyalty to Karzai because of material improvements. In short, a social science-powered, mini-New Deal in Afghanistan would win with minimal use of US-NATO military power because Afghans would joyfully jettison God and country for better teeth and smoother roads.

Well, no such thing occurred. As the trend line for these accomplishments rose, the positive trend line for the Taliban-led insurgency rose faster. The once southern-Afghanistan-based insurgency spread across the nation; the Taliban and its allies struck in Kabul at their pleasure; and the large military/social-work operation to clear insurgents from Marjah District in Helmand Province—framed as the test case to validate US-NATO strategy—became, in McChrystal’s words, an endless, ‘bleeding ulcer’ as the Taliban has gradually reasserted control there.

The enraging and unifying impact on Afghans of the US-NATO occupation of the country; Western support for the unrepresentative and corrupt Kabul regime; and the secularizing campaign by Western governmental agencies and NGOs has not and will never be negated by purer water and more refrigeration. The Afghans will appreciate and pocket the material improvements even as more of them take up arms to drive out occupiers they perceive as the enemies of God and Afghanistan. Western leaders should have recalled they’re not fighting Westerners, for whom more ice cubes and tetanus shots might have been enough to give up their faith.

A year after Obama outlined this new strategy at West Point it lay in shreds and tatters: the Taliban, et. al are more powerful and geographically dispersed, and the Afghan people are no less Islamic or nationalistic. The ever-present avenging angel of history ignored is exacting its pound of flesh and is still hungry. And the bin Laden-inspired Islamists are nearing victory over the world’s last superpower, a win that will have a galvanizing anti-US impact in the Islamic world by showing Muslims the impossible is possible.

The tragedy of this reality is that it would have taken no highly classified intelligence data or deeply penetrating brain power to predict its occurrence. A week’s reading at the local library about the occupations of Afghanistan by Alexander the Great, the British Empire and the Soviet Union shows each empire was sooner or later defeated and evicted—Alexander lasted longest because he built Greek colonies—by the most basic Afghan trait which has been transparently and overwhelmingly dominant since the 4th century B.C.: Afghans refuse to tolerate foreign occupation and rule.

Reading history’s lessons also would have shown that the one foreigner who had the most successful strategy for Afghanistan was Genghis Khan. He killed all the Afghan fighters and their families he encountered, built mountains of their skulls to remind Afghans that Mongols are not to be trifled with and then got his army out of the country to India as quickly as possible. George W. Bush had the chance to play Genghis for about a year but didn’t. Instead, he and his clone Obama defied history to try to win the love of Afghans and international applause. In the end, both men earned and richly merited what we see today—abject Western defeat.

Michael Scheuer is the author of ‘Imperial Hubris’ and former chief of the CIA’s Bin Laden Issue Station

Comrade NA,

Im still waiting for your reply to this with evidence . Till then, keep making a fool out of yourself.

[MDresden]

It is as it is.

[Toramana]

yara ghwandal khana...your discussions are very elightening...

[ComradePashtun]

lol this old thread again.

[ghundal]

well you ran away from it.

dude your a waste, keep ranting

[ComradePashtun]

Okey, if you say so.