Now it seems that the near-instantaneous collpse of the Afghan army was obtained, basically, by bribing the officers:
The spectacular collapse of Afghanistan’s military that allowed Taliban fighters to walk into the Afghan capital Sunday despite 20 years of training and billions of dollars in American aid began with a series of deals brokered in rural villages between the militant group and some of the Afghan government’s lowest-ranking officials.
The deals, initially offered early last year, were often described by Afghan officials as cease-fires, but Taliban leaders were in fact offering money in exchange for government forces to hand over their weapons, according to an Afghan officer and a U.S. official.
Over the next year and a half, the meetings advanced to the district level and then rapidly on to provincial capitals, culminating in a breathtaking series of negotiated surrenders by government forces, according to interviews with more than a dozen Afghan officers, police, special operations troops and other soldiers.
Why did they agree to sell out? In part, because a lot of the Afghan soliders and cops hadn't been paid for six months, likely because the higher-ups were stealing their pay.
Would you fight for someone who can even be bothered to pay you or supply you with ammunition?
The peasants are revolting.
ReplyDeleteSome of the soldiers only existed on the books for pay-grifting purposes.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's this, from Show Me Progress, that I keep in my "no fair remembering stuff" file:
The United States is committed to withdraw from Afghanistan all military forces of the United States, its allies, and Coalition partners, including all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel within fourteen (14) months following announcement of this agreement, and will take the following measures in this regard…
With the start of intra-Afghan negotiations, the United States will initiate an administrative review of current U.S. sanctions and the rewards list against members of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban with the goal of removing these sanctions by August 27, 2020…
With the start of intra-Afghan negotiations, the United States will start diplomatic engagement with other members of the United Nations Security Council and Afghanistan to remove members of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban from the sanctions list with the aim of achieving this objective by May 29, 2020…
Signed in Doha, Qatar on February 29, 2020…
-Doug in Sugar Pine
Poor Afghanistan. Maybe we should just leave them alone and figure things out in their own way. I think they are stupid uninformed sharia bigots. I don't like the way they treat their women and i don't like the way they rape their slave boys.
ReplyDeleteIt is time to leave them to their own understanding.
Donald trump's famous negotiations with the Taliban was a payoff. No fighting was necessary because there was plenty of cash to bribe all military officers and buy the weapons from the apathetic afghan grunts. It worked smoothly.
ReplyDelete