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49 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Seems totally surreal that the Taliban have essentially won via the strategy and tactics of capitalism/ market forces.  From the article above their budget is $1.6billion which is equivalent to half a day of US defence spending so you’d have hoped someone would have had the foresight to rattle the biscuit tin in the direction of the various tribal factions even to keep them onside for pretence for a few years. 

 

There was a Doctor of War Studies on Sky this morning saying the failings were political in that they tried to win the hearts and minds of the locals but were only dealing with moderates really in the cities whereas the various factions in the sticks weren’t really included.  It’s pretty much the root cause of the Britain’s shambles in the 19th Century and it was the regions, funded by the west, that were at war with the Soviet’s for a decade so pretty depressing history is littered with making the same mistakes over and over. 

It was a known shit show for decades and nothing was done. Just suppressed.

I had also forgot that the Taliban had only been in power 5 years since 2001.

Check this out

 

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1 hour ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Seems totally surreal that the Taliban have essentially won via the strategy and tactics of capitalism/ market forces.  From the article above their budget is $1.6billion

The author is writing about the MAGA talking points as well, buzz words of Merkel and immigration etc.

Stephen Miller is different. Last night on Twitter, Miller brought back another old template from the Forever Wars, one that puts a more recent MAGA phenomenon in perspective. He extracted the nativist ore from the carbonized husk of the war. 

In response to the reports that Biden is seeking to bring to the U.S. 2,500 Afghans who served the United States during the war, Miller tweeted that “Biden & his radical deputies will use their catastrophic debacle in Afghanistan” – watch Miller wash Trump’s hands of this decision – “as a pretext for doing to America what Angela Merkel did to Germany & Europe.” By that, the Camp of the Saints fan is referring to MAGA’s view that Merkel compromised the racial and civilizational integrity of Europe by seeking to admit Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS. (Set aside for a moment that Europe has a deep Islamic heritage; I am simply begging you to read about the Ottoman Empire and al-Andalus.) 

Underscoring the point, Miller continued that Biden wants to import “many hundreds of thousands” of Afghans into the United States. I’m not going to link to his tweets. But it needs to be pointed out that Miller is inventing this figure as propaganda. 

https://foreverwars.substack.com/p/white-replacement-theory-v10-is-returning

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2 hours ago, Morrisandmoo said:

It's also the fact that our ability to report problems is much greater than our ability to solve problems (even with the best will in the world). And people eventually turn a blind eye to misery which is unchanging and outwith their control. 

The reality is that the fate of the people in Afghanistan is now largely in the hands of the Taliban. And there is nothing much we can realistically do about that. No matter how bad we feel. 20 years of war didn't keep the fuckers down. It's a long slog now to try to move the Taliban towards a more tolerant worldview. 

The fact the Taliban are rich should help. They will want to spend their money. And they have something to lose by being dicks to everyone. The media continuing to shine a light on them will help, so hopefully our attention holds for as long as it can. 

I dont necessarily disagree with this , and I hope you are correct with your last paragraph, though I suspect that unless the Taliban are causing problems for the West the medias interest will simply move onto the next outrage. 
My point was more in reaction to Kumnios post about people clinging onto the plane.  We are shocked by this yet, as you say, will eventually turn a blind eye. 
We will never, ever , know what it is like to live like that. On the news last night they covered Afghanistan , and the pictures of people trying to get on the plane, then it moved onto the next news story and a guy who ran a company in England which served afternoon tea, and how the covid pinging was causing havoc in his business. I am not saying this was not a concern for the guy but the difference in what we see as a problem in our lives , and what others have to contend with, could not have been more revealing  in those two back to back news stories. 

I agree there is no short term quick fix for this particular situation. 
I dont however feel that cutting the UK’s foreign aid budget is particularly sympathetic to the overall plight in countries far worse off than our own. 

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1 hour ago, phart said:

The author is writing about the MAGA talking points as well, buzz words of Merkel and immigration etc.

Stephen Miller is different. Last night on Twitter, Miller brought back another old template from the Forever Wars, one that puts a more recent MAGA phenomenon in perspective. He extracted the nativist ore from the carbonized husk of the war. 

In response to the reports that Biden is seeking to bring to the U.S. 2,500 Afghans who served the United States during the war, Miller tweeted that “Biden & his radical deputies will use their catastrophic debacle in Afghanistan” – watch Miller wash Trump’s hands of this decision – “as a pretext for doing to America what Angela Merkel did to Germany & Europe.” By that, the Camp of the Saints fan is referring to MAGA’s view that Merkel compromised the racial and civilizational integrity of Europe by seeking to admit Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS. (Set aside for a moment that Europe has a deep Islamic heritage; I am simply begging you to read about the Ottoman Empire and al-Andalus.) 

Underscoring the point, Miller continued that Biden wants to import “many hundreds of thousands” of Afghans into the United States. I’m not going to link to his tweets. But it needs to be pointed out that Miller is inventing this figure as propaganda. 

https://foreverwars.substack.com/p/white-replacement-theory-v10-is-returning

Cheers for that - thought this bit was particularly stark:

I listened to Joe Biden’s Afghanistan speech this afternoon. I waited to hear him say that America will do the only honorable thing and admit Afghan refugees en masse. I waited to hear him argue that these are people who are desperate, who have lived through horror, who want their children to know safety. Instead he said that America will continue to prioritize its own citizens, other allied foreign citizens, and a somewhat expanded pool of Afghans who worked with Western organizations. Then he added that he will “maintain a laser focus on our counterterrorism mission there [in Afghanistan] and in other parts of the world.” 

It was War on Terror politics masquerading as the end of a war. Until those politics are directly challenged – dare I say replaced –there will be no way for America to act honorably. There will only be a way for America to consign millions of vulnerable people to the fate that its disastrous wars prepared for them. But Biden and worse people, like Emmanuel Macron, prefer to leave those politics unchallenged, as if we haven’t just lived through what happens when nativism grows in strength.

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4 hours ago, TDYER63 said:

It is bigger in as much as the Taliban are a  threat to the West therefore will create more coverage, but as far as concern about the welfare of the innocent  people in Afghanistan is concerned it will slowly become unimportant,  and emphasis will move back to terrorism that threatens the US and UK. 
I am not saying that isn’t important, but it always ends up with how it affects us, not them.  
With the Syrian refugee crisis it was shock to start with and we must do what we can to help. Now its  ‘ oh , but we cant afford to keep them here’ .  

From Joe’s press conference yesterday can already see the narrative changing in that the blame lies with the Afghan army and by extension their people for allowing the Taliban back in – The British Empire in the 19th century, the Soviet Union in the last century and now the US spunking $750bn a year on military couldn’t defeat them but the local army are expected to just step up to the plate.  There was various military folk yesterday saying they’d nae chance as the infrastructure and tactics they’d been taught to use weren’t available.    The president fleeing with loads of wedge, the military dissolving, folk letting the Taliban in, men on the runway unwilling to fight is all being used to divert attention from whatever omnishambles has resulted in yesterday’s seemingly inevitable climax.   

 

For me your Halloween projection seems wildly optimistic – I’ll give it two weeks until we’re seeing pictures of dinghies again complaining the French are doing fuck all to curb the swarm every day crossing the channel.  The fact there’s three times more refugees in France than the UK settled and they received four times more applications in 2019 than the UK did will go unreported along with how the new system Patel put in place is making it even more difficult to get in/verging on impossible so going to make smuggling more rather than less likely.   

 

We’ll move on to Haiti within a fortnight I reckon when Cholera probably breaks out there following the earthquake as we can collectively all feel sad without any compunction our government actions contributed – well unless the UN send soldiers carrying it and post camp upstream so end up pissing in rivers again but even then they’ll probably play diplomatic immunity card to delay it getting out

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2 hours ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Cheers for that - thought this bit was particularly stark:

I listened to Joe Biden’s Afghanistan speech this afternoon. I waited to hear him say that America will do the only honorable thing and admit Afghan refugees en masse. I waited to hear him argue that these are people who are desperate, who have lived through horror, who want their children to know safety. Instead he said that America will continue to prioritize its own citizens, other allied foreign citizens, and a somewhat expanded pool of Afghans who worked with Western organizations. Then he added that he will “maintain a laser focus on our counterterrorism mission there [in Afghanistan] and in other parts of the world.” 

It was War on Terror politics masquerading as the end of a war. Until those politics are directly challenged – dare I say replaced –there will be no way for America to act honorably. There will only be a way for America to consign millions of vulnerable people to the fate that its disastrous wars prepared for them. But Biden and worse people, like Emmanuel Macron, prefer to leave those politics unchallenged, as if we haven’t just lived through what happens when nativism grows in strength.

Yeah it's bad. My friend works for DFID and Afghanistan is her "portfolio" atm, not had a chance to speak to her fully about it yet but it will be grim.

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2 hours ago, TDYER63 said:

I dont necessarily disagree with this , and I hope you are correct with your last paragraph, though I suspect that unless the Taliban are causing problems for the West the medias interest will simply move onto the next outrage. 
My point was more in reaction to Kumnios post about people clinging onto the plane.  We are shocked by this yet, as you say, will eventually turn a blind eye. 
We will never, ever , know what it is like to live like that. On the news last night they covered Afghanistan , and the pictures of people trying to get on the plane, then it moved onto the next news story and a guy who ran a company in England which served afternoon tea, and how the covid pinging was causing havoc in his business. I am not saying this was not a concern for the guy but the difference in what we see as a problem in our lives , and what others have to contend with, could not have been more revealing  in those two back to back news stories. 

I agree there is no short term quick fix for this particular situation. 
I dont however feel that cutting the UK’s foreign aid budget is particularly sympathetic to the overall plight in countries far worse off than our own. 

Yeah, we are very lucky to have been born in this country. 

I do have a feeling that a lot of our foreign aid has ended up in the wrong hands or done no good at all. Which probably made it easier to cut the budget. But we should fix that (reality or perception) and (as you say) increase the amount we are giving/helping other countries. 

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1 hour ago, Morrisandmoo said:

Yeah, we are very lucky to have been born in this country. 

I do have a feeling that a lot of our foreign aid has ended up in the wrong hands or done no good at all. Which probably made it easier to cut the budget. But we should fix that (reality or perception) and (as you say) increase the amount we are giving/helping other countries. 

Define “a lot” - 1%, 10%, 50%, 75%?

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2 hours ago, Morrisandmoo said:

Yeah, we are very lucky to have been born in this country. 

I do have a feeling that a lot of our foreign aid has ended up in the wrong hands or done no good at all. Which probably made it easier to cut the budget. But we should fix that (reality or perception) and (as you say) increase the amount we are giving/helping other countries. 

Wrong hands, ffs Rwanda gets foreign aid and then sponsor arsenal for 3 years 

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36 minutes ago, aaid said:

Define “a lot” - 1%, 10%, 50%, 75%?

Enough to either actually undermine the effectiveness of the objectives being pursued or to create a perception of ineffectiveness such that public trust may be undermined. 

A combination of previous national audits, multiple unfavorable media reports and the budget actually being cut underpins my assessment that either (1) the spend has not been as effective as we wanted to be or (2) the effectiveness of the spend has not been sufficiently demonstrated to the public to maintain support. 

Lack of transparency makes it difficult to say which is which. 

The effectiveness of Official Development Assistance expenditure - National Audit Office (NAO) Report

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9 minutes ago, Morrisandmoo said:

Enough to either actually undermine the effectiveness of the objectives being pursued or to create a perception of ineffectiveness such that public trust may be undermined. 

A combination of previous national audits, multiple unfavorable media reports and the budget actually being cut underpins my assessment that either (1) the spend has not been as effective as we wanted to be or (2) the effectiveness of the spend has not been sufficiently demonstrated to the public to maintain support. 

Lack of transparency makes it difficult to say which is which. 

The effectiveness of Official Development Assistance expenditure - National Audit Office (NAO) Report

So the perception of waste rather than waste per se

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10 minutes ago, 86glebestreet said:

So Arsenal are advertising Rwanda through the goodness of their hearts 

No, Rwanda are sponsoring Arsenal presumably to raise their profile internationally and because the President is and Arsenal fan.  

Do you think that only countries, organisations and people who are penniless should receive assistance?

 

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17 minutes ago, Morrisandmoo said:

Either one is damaging. And by all accounts both can be managed better when it comes to foreign aid.

 

I wouldn’t disagree with that but you have to agree that most of the criticism comes from bad faith actors who have their own agendas and is based on lies and half-truths eg, the Daily Mail.

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14 minutes ago, Morrisandmoo said:

Taliban leadership still saying and doing all the right things. 

2 years of American negotiation plus Chinese/Russian coaching on show. 

Let's hope they do mean what they say and it's not just style over substance.

I’m sure there’ll be some cracking hot takes as to how New Taliban are too woke. 

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I prefer to call them by their original name the Mujahedeen, back when they were described as plucky freedom fighters ridding Afghanistan of those disgusting Russian occupiers. Luckily back then they acquired stinger missiles from somewhere denying the Russian airforce a safe space from which to obliterate them from above, untouched, just like the USAF has been doing for the last 20 years.

(Funny how the evil russians just never gave the 'Taliban' the modern day equivalent of the stinger. Noooo let's coach them in PR instead... :lol: These clowns must think folk button up the back.)

To be fair the Taliban look like completely reasonable fair minded gentlemen in comparison to the latest creation, "Taliban II: Unleash The Nutters' or ISIS.

Another creation to attack the enemies of the folks pulling the strings. 

I am sure that will all work out great as well... no blowback whatsoever... nope, none.

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51 minutes ago, aaid said:

No, Rwanda are sponsoring Arsenal presumably to raise their profile internationally and because the President is and Arsenal fan.  

Do you think that only countries, organisations and people who are penniless should receive assistance?

 

Some president he is, giving money to Arsenal instead of helping his own people, do you think a lot of people see visit Rwanda on the Arsenal shirt and say, Oh I must visit Rwanda,🤣

Countries who are poor should get assistance as long as it goes to those who need it

 

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I don't have a dog in this Rwanda fight but I can recall seeing some adverts on UK TV for a while advertising Rwanda. I remember thinking when they revealed the country was Rwanda 'FFS! good luck with that one'. (Maybe this is where the aid money went, recycled back into some wanky but connected advertising firm in the UK. I honestly would not be surprised considering how bent this usually all is. ;) )

Just like that more recent one advertising Saudi Arabia as a tourist destination. FFS, aye I am packing my bags as I type this... :lol:

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On 8/17/2021 at 8:33 AM, TDYER63 said:

It is bigger in as much as the Taliban are a  threat to the West therefore will create more coverage, but as far as concern about the welfare of the innocent  people in Afghanistan is concerned it will slowly become unimportant,  and emphasis will move back to terrorism that threatens the US and UK. 
I am not saying that isn’t important, but it always ends up with how it affects us, not them.  
With the Syrian refugee crisis it was shock to start with and we must do what we can to help. Now its  ‘ oh , but we cant afford to keep them here’ .  

Just heard on the radio we're taking up to 20,000 with up to a quarter coming in the first 12 months.  Following that abomination that we've been complicit in completely fucking up we're looking to take a maximum of 5,000 in a year.  By which time the Taliban will have their feet under the table with the UK government likely hoping they can get away with not taking in a further 15,000 if at all possible.  Scotland's share of that would be 500 a year but will likely take more which on the one hand is admirable but on the other simply accepting it isn't - they should be challenging the figure the UK are taking in as abhorrently and grossly inadequate.   

Wouldn't be massively surprised if this started to fall down the news agenda and disappear for a while within a fortnight.  

Edited by ThistleWhistle
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28 minutes ago, aaid said:

I wouldn’t disagree with that but you have to agree that most of the criticism comes from bad faith actors who have their own agendas and is based on lies and half-truths eg, the Daily Mail.

Yes I do, but we can control that less. 

We need parliament to step up and deliver far more transparency in Government spending generally (not just foreign aid). The amount of corruption swept under the carpet with a confident "it was perfectly right" is outrageous (e.g. multi-million pound covid contracts awarded to any cunt so long as they're a relative of a minister).

Very weird world we live in when something very wrong and corrupt goes away if a UK minister just says that is was "correct and reasonable" or something to that effect. 

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32 minutes ago, 86glebestreet said:

Some president he is, giving money to Arsenal instead of helping his own people, do you think a lot of people see visit Rwanda on the Arsenal shirt and say, Oh I must visit Rwanda,🤣

Countries who are poor should get assistance as long as it goes to those who need it

 

And if you read the blog from DIFD they're pretty clear that the aid they supply is being targetted directly.

Funnily enough, those countries with despotic leaders are usually those where the population are most in need of assistance

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