Taliban owns nearly half of Afghanistan now

Submitted by gjohnsit on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 12:13pm

“Our troops will fight to win. From now on, victory will have a clear definition: attacking our enemies, obliterating ISIS, crushing al-Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over the country, and stopping mass terror attacks against Americans before they emerge.”
"One way or another, these problems will be solved — I'm a problem solver — and, in the end, we will win."
- President Trump, August 21, 2017

Trump is currently occupied with conducting a troop surge on the Mexican border against an "invasion" of unarmed women and children.
Around this time last year he was completing another troop surge in Afghanistan. The results of Trump's Afghan troop surge started coming in today, and it wasn't good.

In its quarterly report for the US Congress, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said, "The Taliban now controls more territory than at any time since 2001."
The Afghan government currently controls or influences only 55.5% of the country's districts, marking the lowest level recorded since SIGAR began tracking district control in November 2015.
Translated into layman's terms, the report measures "control" -- in which one side runs an area -- and "influence" -- in which one side has the upper hand.
In November 2015, the Afghan government controlled 72% of districts in the country, but now controls just 56% of them. Insurgent influence or control has risen to 12.5% of districts from just 7% and approximately a third of Afghanistan is a "contested" area.

The report said Afghanistan’s army and police “made minimal or no progress in pressuring the Taliban”. And yet the reality of the situation may be even worse.

Some military analysts say those gains are even more substantial than the U.S. military reports.
A study by the Long War Journal, published by the nonpartisan group Foundation for Defense of Democracies, found that a little over half of Afghanistan’s people live in districts outside of government control.

According to Kabul, there are more than 50,000 militants from 21 terrorist organisations are currently operating in Afghanistan.

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Comments

Submitted by earthling1 on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 12:21pm

The answer is

a new "surge" of money to the MIC.
s/

—

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Submitted by doh1304 on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 1:36pm

Just a couple of quibbles

First, "president Trump - 2007"? I think you meant 2017. And...
remember who coined the term "troop surge"?

—

On to Biden since 1973

Submitted by gjohnsit on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 1:44pm

I remember

@doh1304

remember who coined the term "troop surge"?

It was Dubya.
And then Obama did the same in 2010.
It was always a myth.

Submitted by doh1304 on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 4:53pm

I stand admonished, but I don't mind

@gjohnsit
If we're obliged to remember Obama's evil then we're also obliged to remember W's evil.

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On to Biden since 1973

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 7:56pm

2008 Candidate Obama said "'we' took our eyes off the ball"

@doh1304

in Afghanistan to wage the wrong war {implied, in Iraq).

So, based upon his campaign rhetoric, "surging" in Afghanistan was predictable. Not so predictable based on his campaign rhetoric was his attempt to re-negotiate Bush's Iraq SOFA.

Submitted by divineorder on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 1:47pm

Speculation continues, Eric Prince to save the day?

"[Eric Prince] is exploiting Trump’s twin beliefs that the Afghanistan war is unwinnable, and that the US should somehow profit from Afghanistan’s vast mineral deposits—valued at one point at $1 trillion."

Important piece by @ArifCRafiq.https://t.co/0vBJX5Js1K

— Fatima Ansari (@FatimaAnsari_) November 1, 2018

There is a high probability that the presidential polls will be fraught with the fraud and mismanagement witnessed in every previous election in Afghanistan. A political impasse of some sort is likely. And this is when the Prince plan could re-enter the discussion.
Let’s fast forward to May 2019 and imagine a scenario in which political and security conditions continue to deteriorate in Afghanistan. The Taliban consolidates control over southern Afghanistan as the country is in a political crisis, with allegations of fraud in the April presidential elections.

US talks with the Taliban hit a dead end too, as there is a power vacuum in Kabul. Trump, completely fed up with a war he never wanted to fight, announces in a tweet that the US will begin a withdrawal from Afghanistan.

It would be a decision few in his government would support, but they would have no choice but to accept and work to implement.

—

A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Submitted by boriscleto on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 2:18pm

I wonder if Eric Prince

@divineorder Has ever seen "The Man Who Would Be King"...I know neither Prince nor Trump has ever read Kipling...

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

Submitted by gjohnsit on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 2:22pm

"The Man Who Would Be King"

@boriscleto
One of my top 5 favorite movies of all time.

Submitted by Azazello on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 2:47pm

It's the market-based solution.

@divineorder
Good article here: Paper Cuts: The American President and the Prince of War

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Submitted by wendy davis on Fri, 11/02/2018 - 9:43am

cheers to bonnie and

@Azazello

POGO, and you, too. now i know where i'd read of erik's grand plunder plans: the military times. but i was also reminded of a book for which david petraeus had written the forward. it involved a rather mercenary plan for a modern silk road in afghanistan, one karzai was buying into, so to speak:

Petraeus, General David Gen. David Petraeus: We Can't Leave Afghanistan Now, They Have Trillions of Dollars of Minerals, whale.to

"If Afghanistan can become the central Asian 'roundabout,' to use President Karzai's term, to where it can be the new Silk Road, think of the implications for that, recalling that, of course, Afghanistan is blessed with the presence of what are trillions, with an 'S' on the end, trillions of dollars worth of minerals if, and only if, you can get the extractive technology, the human capital operated, the lines of communication to enable you to get it out of the country and all the rest of that. Very big 'if.' And of course, there's a foundation of security that would be necessary on, on which to build all of that. But, again, the prospects are very significant if you can achieve objectives." -- Gen. David Petraeus, Meet the Press, Sunday, August 15th, 2010

the valuations are from 2010, of course.

Submitted by edg on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 2:40pm

The real problem is that nobody wants to win.

Nobody in the US government or the MIC really wants to win any of these interminable but lucrative wars. There are too many fortunes being made, too many cushy consulting jobs being offered, and too much defense industry profit being generated for anybody to seriously consider ending the phony war. Winning in Afghanistan (or elsewhere) would be like killing the Golden Goose.

Submitted by divineorder on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 2:49pm

Right, heh, that’s the bottom line.

@edg

...http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176490/tomgram%3A_william_hartung%2C_the...

Tomgram: William Hartung, The Pentagon's Plan to Dominate the Economy

—

A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Submitted by Pluto's Republic on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 5:44pm

When has the US ever won a war?

@edg

Since WWII? And even that grows more dubious over time.

Perhaps that's not their intention. They just revv the war engines and make pretend bombing runs for years and years to asset strip the American people and push their lucrative weapons sales internationally.

—

IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"

Submitted by wendy davis on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 6:55pm

plus, the taliban keep

@edg

the opium growing and flowing.

and to all: it's Erik Prince, brother of darling betsy devos, Xianist secretary of education. but i'd thought boss tweet had turned his offer to do all the counter-insurgentcy work in afghanistan./s what do his mercenary armies make in a day? (shhhhh.)

remember when his mercenaries were training 'our allies' in the war how to shoot? they'd never even been taught how to site in their rifles. boy, howdy, did i love that. Kapow: "oopsie, sorry i blew your head off by mistake, sergeant."

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 8:05pm

And people say America has nothing left to export!

@edg

Silly people!

Submitted by janis b on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 11:49pm

Some countries export dairy, some tourism.

@edg

America exports war.

Submitted by dystopian on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 6:21pm

So the Taliban beat the U.S worse than the Russians? LOL

"According to Kabul, there are more than 50,000 militants from 21 terrorist organisations are currently operating in Afghanistan."

There, we fixed it. Just like Iraq and Lybia. 'Cept we're still there fixin' it. But oh man did ya see the size of that gravy train? Bullets, bombs, boots, and bibles... not to mention $1200 covfefe cups.

—

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 10:11pm

Thank you!

@dystopian

I laughed when I first learned of it; I laughed when Spicer "addressed it;" but then I forgot about it...until I read your post.

May I never forget covfefe again. Amen

Submitted by janis b on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 11:53pm

Can you imagine if ‘spell check’

@HenryAWallace

was around in the times of Bush? He might have sounded coherent. How many stupid presidents does America need before it checks itself into the local asylum? I liked it better when there was at least a tiny possibility of sanity.

[video:https://youtu.be/OXrcDonY-B8]

The tragedy is that it's all too real.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Fri, 11/02/2018 - 4:56am

The intelligence of the POTUS du jour

@janis b

does not seem to matter when it comes to doing the things that are right from the perspective of most Americans.

Whether or not Bush had spell check, he certainly had enough people around him to correct his spelling. However, his entire white house seemed loathe to use Google to do background checks before naming someone to a position. For example...https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/nyregion/19kerik.html

Perhaps the Bush Number 2 White House staff were just averse to computers in general? https://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/12/us/white-house-vandalized-in-transiti...

I thought Clinton was the smartest man I'd ever been exposed to (so to speak). Obama was not as smart, IMO, but he was smart enough to have shaped up from his high school and Occidental days to transfer to Columbia U and, later, Harvard Law. Yet....

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCznHilLo3M]

Perhaps only sociopaths run for the office? (or is it pyschopaths? I tend to conflate those two.)

What really worries me, though, is that I think I may know how "covfefe" came about. I think Trump started to tweet something negative about press coverage, noticed he'd typed "covfefe" instead of "coverage" and thought to himself, "Ah, screw it, I'm too tired to finish this tweet." However, he then sent the tweet by mistake. Been there, done similar things (but not in tweets). It's still funny, though--and Spicer was even funnier.

OK, I'll behave now.

Maybe.