Washington Post: Our secret Taliban air forceGood snapshot of how insane US foreign policy is.
— Paul Gottinger (@PaulGottinger) October 22, 2020
US military—who spent 2 decades fighting the Taliban—are now acting as their Air Force. https://t.co/s21LLGcT8J
Inside the clandestine U.S. campaign to help our longtime enemy defeat ISIS
Army Sgt. 1st Class Steve Frye was stuck on base last summer in Afghanistan, bored and fiddling around on a military network, when he came across live video footage of a battle in the Korengal Valley, where he had first seen combat 13 years earlier. It was infamous terrain, where at least 40 U.S. troops had died over the years, including some of Frye’s friends. Watching the Reaper drone footage closely, he saw that no American forces were involved in the fighting, and none from the Afghan government. Instead, the Taliban and the Islamic State were duking it out. Frye looked for confirmation online. Sure enough, America’s old enemy and its newer one were posting photos and video to propaganda channels as they tussled for control of the Korengal and its lucrative timber business.
What Frye didn’t know was that U.S. Special Operations forces were preparing to intervene in the fighting in Konar province in eastern Afghanistan — not by attacking both sides, but by using strikes from drones and other aircraft to help the Taliban. “What we’re doing with the strikes against ISIS is helping the Taliban move,” a member of the elite Joint Special Operations Command counterterrorism task force based at Bagram air base explained to me earlier this year, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the assistance was secret. The air power would give them an advantage by keeping the enemy pinned down.
Last fall and winter, as the JSOC task force was conducting the strikes, the Trump administration’s public line was that it was hammering the Taliban “harder than they have ever been hit before,” as the president put it — trying to force the group back to the negotiating table in Doha, Qatar, after President Trump put peace talks there on hold and canceled a secretly planned summit with Taliban leaders at Camp David. Administration officials signaled that they didn’t like or trust the Taliban and that, until it made more concessions, it could expect only blistering bombardment.
In reality, even as its warplanes have struck the Taliban in other parts of Afghanistan, the U.S. military has been quietly helping the Taliban to weaken the Islamic State in its Konar stronghold and keep more of the country from falling into the hands of the group, which — unlike the Taliban — the United States views as an international terrorist organization with aspirations to strike America and Europe. Remarkably, it can do so without needing to communicate with the Taliban, by observing battle conditions and listening in on the group. Two members of the JSOC task force and another defense official described the assistance to me this year in interviews for a book about the war in Konar, all of them speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk about it. (The U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan declined to comment for this story.)
Read more ....
Update: Two Decades After 9/11, Pentagon Is Providing Covert Air Support To The Taliban (Zero Hedge)
WNU Editor: Why are fighting these tribal wars? Another snapshot on how insane U.S. policy in Afghanistan has become.
9 comments:
The U.S was committed to insanity once they invaded Afghanistan with the aim of nation-building.Literally trillions of dollars completely wasted.
To a Puritan way of thinking this makes no sense and is anathema. However things have been done this way since the Middle Ages and way before.
And every country does it if they want to survive.
Caecus,
Maybe so. After 911, were we going to snatch Obama bin Laden and his lieutenant out from under the noses of the Taliban without a fight and without casualties?
Supposing we could do it but is take 2, 3, 5 or 10 years, what does that mean for the country to wait that long?
Supposing we did a smash and grab. We smash the Hell out of the Taliban, they run to their benefactors in Pakistan, a coalition of Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and others form a government, we leave after all of 2 or 3 months, and the Taliban comes back and trashed to country all over again with Pakistani assistance. Then what? The US is going to get blamed for the war dead, the lack of a functioning government during the fighting between a coalition government and the Taliban, the Taliban government following shortly afterwards, etc.
Certainly, the feckless and stalwart Colin Powell would blame us for breaking The Pottery Barn Rule. He would not be alone. There are great problems with people of Powell's stature throwing down moral markers and not backing them up, with logical argument, political capital, or anything at all.
for all your bluster and name-calling, what have you done? what would you advise? easy to do nothing and badmouth others
ISIS is the real threat to us not the Taliban, enemy of our enemy is an acquaintance .
SD,
I agree. In the short term the Taliban is not a threat to us. At least in the past they only wanted to govern their country by stoning women in soccer stadiums and such. Or so they said.
That was 2 decades ago. Are they of the same mind?
The Taliban were literally a creation of Pakistan. Is Pak Attack content to merely have Afghanistan as a client and buffer state?
The Taliban had no ambition outside their borders, but they had guests, who did. These guests killed us by the thousands. So how honest were the Taliban assurances? Does it really matter. if the Taliban were honest, but they keep on having guests like AL Qaeda?
ISIS is bad? We must destroy it? ISIS is Al Qaeda 2.0. The Taliban gave succor to Al Qaeda 1.0.
The Taliban said they only wanted to rule their country. Aggressors have said that in the past while they were still consolidating their current gains. After the Taliban assassinated Massoud and then beat his leaderless Tajiks, would the Taliban been singing the same song?
No one really cares that we flew out the Pakistan military out of Kunduz. They only care in so far as it effects local politics in the US and they can get rid of Cheney and others. If you set aside the question of Cheney and his decision (The decision was & is defensible. It is no different than a medieval warlord giving a castle garrison terms of surrender, where they surrender a castle and they can walk to friendly lines unmolested.), The Kunduz Airlift and subsequent roll up of Pakistani spies serving along the Taliban years later shows that Pakistan has bigger plans than just having Afghanistan as a buffer state.
Dear Heart (11:19),
I did call Colin Powell feckless and sarcastically called him stalwart.
He has done a few things.
+ He let Scooter Libby swing from a gibbet. Perhaps he did it, because Scooter is Jewish?
+ He threw his considerable weight and moral authority (@ the time) behind the Pottery Barn Rule, when George Bush was president, but not when Barack Insane Obama was president.
Remember Libya?
+ He had the cursus honorum and popularity to run. He passed.
+ He gave Bush faint praise and toadied up to Obama.
I described Colin Powell. I didn't use any cuss words or imply anything unseemly about him. I did question nonetheless his moral compass and I have every right to do so.
Remember the 1st amendment?
Maybe you don't. Maybe you need a reading volunteer to help you sound out the words.
https://readingpartners.org/volunteer/
https://proliteracy.org/Get-Involved/Volunteer
https://www.readandspell.com/volunteering-to-teach-adults-to-read
Qui bono?
Who benefited from 9/11? I can think of only one country, the same one benefiting from the Wuhan flu unleashed upon the world.
China. Someday it won't surprise me at all to find out China was the funder and prime backer to Osama. Maybe hidden on those hard drives Obama kept so secret is the proof. Find out who benefits is usually a reliable indicator for suspects.
It's time to let Eric Prince deal with it.
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