Fall of Kunduz to Taliban is eerily similar to Fall of Ramadi

Submitted by gjohnsit on Tue, 09/29/2015 - 2:31pm

The Taliban used the lunar eclipse during a nighttime assault to storm a provincial capital in Afghanistan. Kunduz is Afghanistan's fifth-largest city.
It was the biggest Taliban victory since 2001. It's also very familiar.

The Taliban’s rout Monday of Afghan forces in the northern city of Kunduz carried an eerie echo of recent battles in Iraq, where another U.S.-trained army has collapsed in combat despite massive support from Washington.

We've been at war in Afghanistan for 14 years, and there has been much debate of recent about when we can finally end America's longest war.
This dramatic victory by the Taliban could easily change the debate.

“I find it nearly inconceivable that President Obama will now proceed with planned reductions in US forces in Afghanistan,” Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister, wrote Monday on Twitter.
U.S.-led forces “should stay,” he said.

Even before the fall of Kunduz, the military was considering leaving U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan after 2016.
Gen. John Campbell, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, is due to testify before a U.S. Senate committee about the situation in Afghanistan next week.

U.S. and Afghan officials have long portrayed the Taliban as unable to move beyond its strongholds in rural areas to capture major population centers. But with the Taliban’s white banner flying over buildings in the center of Kunduz, the battle has raised serious questions about the staying power of the Afghan security forces, which have been trained and armed over the past decade by U.S. and NATO troops.
Both the Iraqi and Afghan armies have received billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, hardware, and instruction from the United States.

The Afghan government knew in advance that the Taliban intended on attacking Kunduz, but couldn't hold the city anyway.

Considering the Republican's false narrative that ISIS came about because Obama pulled out of Iraq, it seems unlikely that Obama can now pull out of Afghanistan, despite the fact that we obviously can never win this war.

There are 13,000 international troops in Afghanistan—9,800 of them Americans, who are supposed to be there for training and counterterrorism missions only, though the number of U.S. raids in the country has reportedly increased. In March, the U.S. agreed to halt the withdrawal of troops this year—the previous goal was to have the number down to 5,000 by the end of 2015—but the U.S. is still committed to a full withdrawal by the end of 2016.

Senator McCain is already blaming this defeat on Obama pulling out U.S. troops.

To complicate matters even further, ISIS in Afghanistan has matured to the point that it is now launching major assaults again Afghan government soldiers.

Approximately 500 Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters attacked several Afghan security force checkpoints on Tuesday in Achin district, east of Nangarhar province, CBS News' Ahmad Mukhtar reports.

It seems everyone has forgotten that NATO soldiers are still being killed in Afghanistan.

The Graveyard of Empires indeed.
So far the Afghan army is having no success in retaking Kunduz.

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afghanistan
kunduz
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Submitted by gjohnsit on Tue, 09/29/2015 - 11:52pm

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Afghanistan was plunged deeper into crisis a day after the Taliban seized the northern city of Kunduz, as the insurgents on Tuesday kept assaulting the reeling Afghan security forces and the government struggled to mount a credible response.

Not only did a promised government counteroffensive on Kunduz not make headway during heavy fighting on Tuesday, but the day ended with yet another aggressive Taliban advance, with insurgents surrounding the airport to which hundreds of Afghan forces and at least as many civilians had retreated, thinking it would be safe.
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Beyond the Taliban’s gains in Kunduz, there was evidence that the insurgents were also pushing a broader offensive in northern Afghanistan, officials said. One particular point of concern was Takhar Province, just east of Kunduz, where the insurgents were said to be heavily assaulting military checkpoints and government facilities in several districts over the past two days.

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Submitted by gjohnsit on Wed, 09/30/2015 - 11:07am

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In a potential major shift in policy, U.S. military commanders want to keep at least a few thousand American troops in Afghanistan beyond 2016, citing a fragile security situation highlighted by the Taliban's capture of the northern city of Kunduz this week as well as recent militant inroads in the south.
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Submitted by gjohnsit on Wed, 09/30/2015 - 11:21am

It's simple, really

What’s going on here? After at least $1.6 trillion in U.S. taxpayer expenditures on these two wars, the governments and armed forces that the U.S. military fought so hard to prop up have yet to instill any sense of valor or self-sacrifice among their own people. It’s not that Afghans and Iraqis lack courage. Iraq waged a bloody nine-year war against Iran that ended in stalemate after half a million soldiers were killed on both sides. The Afghans waged a guerrilla war that led to the Soviet Union’s humiliating ouster. They know when it’s the right time to fight and sacrifice for their country.

This time around, Iraqis and Afghans face a different question: Why should I lay down my life for a corrupt government I don’t support?

They are making a calculation: Will my life be that much worse under ISIS or Taliban control than it is right now?

Americans should be asking why the people whose freedom our troops fought so valiantly to defend are now making crazy calculations and gambling their countries’ future based on the least-worst of two really awful options.

In Afghanistan just a few days ago, we were horrified to read about military commanders who kidnapped boys and raped them as sex slaves. When U.S. military personnel tried to stop them, they were admonished not to get involved.

Afghans have known for decades that these were the depraved sexual proclivities among certain military leaders now in senior command positions. After all, the military leaders were absorbed from among various ragtag militias who rampaged and pillaged the country during the years of civil war that followed the Soviet Union’s ouster.

The Taliban won control of nearly all of Afghanistan because Afghans were sick of the depravity, sick of the corruption, sick of the pillaging. So who did the U.S. ally with after the 2001 invasion? The same sick, corrupt pillagers that the Taliban had ousted.

We have given the Afghan people, and the soldiers entrusted to protect them, almost nothing of such cherished value that they would lay down their life to defend it. By telling our troops to stand aside while child rape occurs, we send the message to Afghans that we are on the side of the bad guys.

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