I was there too. The "resurgence", from what I saw, were warlords using specialized arab jihadist bombmakers and snipers and Iran (Cabal) funded muslim chechen and arab mercs. Shit was so convoluted. We had orders not to engage the chechens one day, then a couple weeks later a whole convoy of ANA would get wiped, and the chechens were the only ones with the hardware to do it. Then they were just gone (wiped out quietly or exfiltration - mission complete. (unsolved mystery) tribal warlord politics.)
The "Taliban" were just a populist movement, after we cut their leadership off it was all tribal politics playing out under the name of the Taliban. Every disconnected self serving warlord, many allied with Iran, were calling themselves the Taliban for street cred to revive the movement under their own self serving authority.
Not trying to neg your view of it, but its the view most comprehensible or palatable to how Americans see the world. Nations and governmental politics. Afghanistan was incomprehensible.
And to be fair, I was NOT at 40k altitude either, just my recollections that I'm still in in the process of reinterpretting in hindsight with the new information of how the world's power structure actually works, post redpill.
No offense taken Fren. Great analysis and can verify most. Think about it; a huge country each area cutoff by massive mountains & nasty terrain…point being Taliban didn’t organize any group of warlords & tribes into anything coherent. Like you said, with snake’s head cutoff it’s a jumblefuqq. Side note I was there ‘06-‘08 so a lot’s happened since. All that being said those Chechens are some NASTY warriors. Our guys went after them one time a small tribal leader had hosted a few hundred of them and they’d disappeared after raid started. They were in an elaborate tunnel system under that compound and it was obvious they’d lived there for weeks. (Imagine?). Russia had quite a time with them.
Exactly. Basically as I see it Mohammed Omar WAS the Taliban and without Omar, there is no Taliban. Uniting that rabble was a once in a thousand years occurance. It solidly reverted back to warlordism.
Now, I believe under Omar, the Taliban was actually a force for moderation and righteous populism. The occurances of scumbaggery in Afghanistan would need to be attributed to the base post-soviet broken and depraved warlord culture that he was on the process of reforming -- for that analysis to be correct. Which is not at all a stretch. Omar didn't have time to raise a generation in a nation without warlords, drugs and man-love thursdays.
Taliban today? Hopefully when we leave Afghanistan the original idealism of Omar's populist Taliban will overcome the fake warlord Taliban. Best we can do now is leave and save the good ones that gave it everything because they wanted their country to be badass like America. They would be good Americans really.
They would be good Americans. Several I knew had been schooled in Pakistan and were multi-lingual, intelligent and none of them were flakes. Maybe they were the cream (SF guys)...not sure? 12 years in MidEast...you get used to most being sketchy flakes. So many of the Taliban I saw (dead) had makeup and AK’s had gay stuff on the stocks. It was strange to see frankly. But all the Terps I knew were young Patriots. We’ll see...just another mess.
Gay stuff usually means you're dealing with warlords' expendable dancing boy soldiers. The Taliban was an idea to end warlordism, Omar's idea. Without Omar it was just warlords LARPing for street cred to gain better position. The warlords were on our "side" too. They were using us to knock off competition and take our money and resources. Only people that were fighting for a unified secure Afghanistan were John Rambo's tribe and the Afghanis they personally trained and a few odd patriots who got out and came back to translate, thinking they could help. The rest of Afghanistan was just using us to position themselves and their tribes in better standing in warlord wotld. Which only we didn't get the memo on that. The US big military units were basically just slogging through it. Do the job you are there to do, then go home. Colonel gets his Star, new Colonel for the next go.
I was there too. The "resurgence", from what I saw, were warlords using specialized arab jihadist bombmakers and snipers and Iran (Cabal) funded muslim chechen and arab mercs. Shit was so convoluted. We had orders not to engage the chechens one day, then a couple weeks later a whole convoy of ANA would get wiped, and the chechens were the only ones with the hardware to do it. Then they were just gone (wiped out quietly or exfiltration - mission complete. (unsolved mystery) tribal warlord politics.)
The "Taliban" were just a populist movement, after we cut their leadership off it was all tribal politics playing out under the name of the Taliban. Every disconnected self serving warlord, many allied with Iran, were calling themselves the Taliban for street cred to revive the movement under their own self serving authority.
Not trying to neg your view of it, but its the view most comprehensible or palatable to how Americans see the world. Nations and governmental politics. Afghanistan was incomprehensible.
And to be fair, I was NOT at 40k altitude either, just my recollections that I'm still in in the process of reinterpretting in hindsight with the new information of how the world's power structure actually works, post redpill.
No offense taken Fren. Great analysis and can verify most. Think about it; a huge country each area cutoff by massive mountains & nasty terrain…point being Taliban didn’t organize any group of warlords & tribes into anything coherent. Like you said, with snake’s head cutoff it’s a jumblefuqq. Side note I was there ‘06-‘08 so a lot’s happened since. All that being said those Chechens are some NASTY warriors. Our guys went after them one time a small tribal leader had hosted a few hundred of them and they’d disappeared after raid started. They were in an elaborate tunnel system under that compound and it was obvious they’d lived there for weeks. (Imagine?). Russia had quite a time with them.
Exactly. Basically as I see it Mohammed Omar WAS the Taliban and without Omar, there is no Taliban. Uniting that rabble was a once in a thousand years occurance. It solidly reverted back to warlordism.
Now, I believe under Omar, the Taliban was actually a force for moderation and righteous populism. The occurances of scumbaggery in Afghanistan would need to be attributed to the base post-soviet broken and depraved warlord culture that he was on the process of reforming -- for that analysis to be correct. Which is not at all a stretch. Omar didn't have time to raise a generation in a nation without warlords, drugs and man-love thursdays.
Taliban today? Hopefully when we leave Afghanistan the original idealism of Omar's populist Taliban will overcome the fake warlord Taliban. Best we can do now is leave and save the good ones that gave it everything because they wanted their country to be badass like America. They would be good Americans really.
They would be good Americans. Several I knew had been schooled in Pakistan and were multi-lingual, intelligent and none of them were flakes. Maybe they were the cream (SF guys)...not sure? 12 years in MidEast...you get used to most being sketchy flakes. So many of the Taliban I saw (dead) had makeup and AK’s had gay stuff on the stocks. It was strange to see frankly. But all the Terps I knew were young Patriots. We’ll see...just another mess.
Gay stuff usually means you're dealing with warlords' expendable dancing boy soldiers. The Taliban was an idea to end warlordism, Omar's idea. Without Omar it was just warlords LARPing for street cred to gain better position. The warlords were on our "side" too. They were using us to knock off competition and take our money and resources. Only people that were fighting for a unified secure Afghanistan were John Rambo's tribe and the Afghanis they personally trained and a few odd patriots who got out and came back to translate, thinking they could help. The rest of Afghanistan was just using us to position themselves and their tribes in better standing in warlord wotld. Which only we didn't get the memo on that. The US big military units were basically just slogging through it. Do the job you are there to do, then go home. Colonel gets his Star, new Colonel for the next go.