Norther Alliance regroups against Taliban

[Jaga]

Pieter, yes, I have heard about the Northern Alliance. I hope like Karl that we will bring all constructive parties together. For now, we don't want to completely destruct any type of stability in Afghanistan. Al queda is even worse than Taliban

[pieter]

Jaga,

Al Qaida and Islamic State (Daesh) in Afghanistan 🇦🇫 are worse and partly foreign. Al Qaida people were and are people from Yemen and Saoudi Arabia from the Arabian Peninsula. From Afghan people I know Afghan people don’t like these uninvited foreign guests. Of Course the Pakistani’s and the Afghan Taliban brought them to Afghanistan.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province (ISIL–KP or ISKP) is a branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) active in South Asia and Central Asia. Some media sources also use the terms ISK, ISISK, IS–KP, ISIS–K or Daesh–Khorasan in referring to the group. ISIL–KP has been active in Afghanistan and its area of operations also includes other countries such as Pakistan, Tajikistan, and India where some individuals have pledged allegiance to it.

Cheers,
Pieter

Source: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant_–_Khorasan_Province

[pieter]

www.google.nl/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58333533.amp

[kaima]

Opinion: I was a combat interpreter in Afghanistan, where cultural illiteracy led to U.S. failure



An Afghan girl walks past a U.S soldier in the Maiwand district in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, on April 5, 2012. (Stringer/Reuters)
Opinion by Baktash Ahadi
Today at 3:51 p.m. EDT



1.5k
Baktash Ahadi served U.S. and Afghan Special Operations forces as a combat interpreter from 2010 to 2012 and is a former chair of the State Department’s Afghan Familiarization course. He is working on a memoir of his service in Afghanistan.

Like many Afghan Americans, I have spent much of the past few weeks trying to secure safe passage from Afghanistan for family, friends and colleagues, with tragically limited success. I also know that many Americans have been asking: Why is this crazy scramble necessary? How could Afghanistan have collapsed so quickly?

As a former combat interpreter who served alongside U.S. and Afghan Special Operations forces, I can tell you part of the answer — one that’s been missing from the conversation: culture.

When comparing the Taliban with the United States and its Western allies, the vast majority of Afghans have always viewed the Taliban as the lesser of two evils. To many Americans, that may seem an outlandish claim. The coalition, after all, poured billions of dollars into Afghanistan. It built highways. It emancipated Afghan women. It gave millions of people the right to vote for the first time ever.


All true. But the Americans also went straight to building roads, schools and governing institutions — in an effort to “win hearts and minds” — without first figuring out what values animate those hearts and what ideas fill those minds. We thus wound up acting in ways that would ultimately alienate everyday Afghans.

First, almost all representatives of Western governments — military and civilian — were required to stay “inside the wire,” meaning they were confined at all times to Kabul’s fortified Green Zone and well-guarded military bases across the country.

Each of my own trips to visit family in Kabul was a breach for which I could have been disciplined. But I’m glad I broke the rules. If my colleagues had been allowed to enjoy the same experiences — the scent of kebab in Shahr-e Naw, the hustle and bustle of Qala-e Fathullah — they might have developed a much better feel for the country, its people and its culture.


As it was, however, virtually the only contact most Afghans had with the West came via heavily armed and armored combat troops. Americans thus mistook the Afghan countryside for a mere theater of war, rather than as a place where people actually lived. U.S. forces turned villages into battlegrounds, pulverizing mud homes and destroying livelihoods. One could almost hear the Taliban laughing as any sympathy for the West evaporated in bursts of gunfire.

Sometimes, yes, we built good things — clinics, schools, wells. But when the building was done, we would simply leave. The Taliban would not only destroy those facilities, but also look upon the local community with greater suspicion for having received “gifts” from America.

Second, the front-line troops were given zero training in cultural literacy. The Marines I worked with were shocked, for example, to hear me exchanging favorite Koran verses with my fellow Afghans, mistaking this for extremism rather than shared piety. When talking to Afghan villagers, the Marines would not remove their sunglasses — a clear indication of untrustworthiness in a country that values eye contact. In some cases, they would approach and directly address village women, violating one of rural Afghanistan’s strictest cultural norms.

Faux pas such as these sound almost comically basic, and they are. But multiplied over millions of interactions throughout the United States’ two decades of wheel-spinning in Afghanistan, they cost us dearly in terms of local support.

From the point of view of many Afghans, Americans might as well have been extraterrestrials, descending out of the black sky every few weeks, looking and acting alien, and always bringing disruption, if not outright ruin. We failed to understand what made sense for Afghans time and time again. No wonder the Taliban maintained such sway over the past 20 years.

Before long, U.S. troops will be back in Afghanistan, and for the same reason we invaded in 2001: Already, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists are regrouping, as recent attacks make clear. And next time, it will be even harder for the West to garner support, given our betrayal of our Afghan allies.

This isn’t just about Afghanistan. When it comes to cultural illiteracy, America is a recidivist. We failed to understand Iraqi culture, too, so that now, many Iraqis see Iran as the lesser of two evils. Before that, we failed to understand Vietnam. And so on. Wherever our relentless military adventurism takes us next, we must do better.

[pieter]

Dear Ron,

That article of Stringer jounrnalist Baktash Ahadi for Reuters is excellent article from an Afghan American with knowledge from Afghanistan and the USA.

That period in service of the US in Afghanistan must have been a difficult on for Ahadi. He was stuck between two cultures, 2 different mindsets and world views.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stringer_(journalism)

I don’t know if the same ignorance, indifference, lack of knowledge and experience with the local tribal, people’s and religious customs, vulnerabilities and traditions counted for the other NATO forces in Afghanistan? The Polish, Danish, Dutch, British, Italian, Ukrainian, Canadian, Australian, New Zeelandish, Swedish, Norwegian, Greek and Swiss armies in Afghanistan?

Did maybe the Foreign troops from Muslim nations like Turkey, Jordan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have more understanding and empathy for the Muslim culture and traditions of the Afghan people? Or were they seen as Foreign occupying forces which are part of the international NATO lead coalition as well?

The Dutch have experience with the Muslim nation Indonesia and Muslim migrants and refugees from Muslim countries as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon (during the Lebanese civil war), Morocco and Turkey, and our Unifil forces in Northern Lebanon at the Israeli border and in the Northern Golan in Syria.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Holland

Cheers,
Pieter

[pieter]

Ron,

Baktash Ahadi as a combat interpreter from 2010 to 2012 has an excellent inside view into Afghanistan. My experience with Afghanistan is limited, because I only know one Afghan person and some experience of Dutch veterans from Afghanistan. Next to that I know and knew Syrian and Iraqi refugees, Iranians, Turks and Moroccans. In the ethnic sense I have experience with Farsi speaking Persian Iranians, Sunni Muslim Egyptians, Iraqi Kurds, Syrian Kurds, Turkish Kurds (there is a huge difference between the Kurds), Sunni Muslim Turks, Turkish Alevis and Kurdish Alevis, A Syrian Druze, Lebanese Maronite Christians (refugees of the Lebanese civil war, I met a Maronite Lebanese girl in a student home, she had Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), just like my former Afghan colleague), and refugees from the Bosnian, Kosovo and Somali/Sudan conflicts.

I learned about the ethnic and religious diversity, history and culture of Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt by listening and speaking with these people for hours. I learned a great deal about all these countries Ron. My Afghan colleague told me about the history of Afghanistan and the relationship of Afghanistan with Pakistan and India. He went back to the British colonial empire (when Pakistan and India were British and the British wanted to conquer Afghanistan as well), the Era of the Afghan Shah, when Afghanistan was quite modern, the era of the Sovjet occupation and the regime of Mohammad Najibullah (the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from 1986 until 1992), the era of the Civil war between the various Mujahideen war lords (Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Burhanuddin Rabbani and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf) which destroyed Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan, the conquer of Afghanistan by the Taliban in 1996 and how the Taliban ruled most of the country as a totalitarian regime for over five years. The Taliban were removed from power after the US invasion in 2001 but still controlled a significant portion of the country. My Afghan colleague was disgusted by the Mujahideen war lords which men destroyed Kabul in the Afghan Civil War.

Although the mujahideen were aided by the Pakistani, American, British, Chinese and Saudi governments, the mujahideen's primary source of funding was private donors and religious charities throughout the Muslim world—particularly in the Persian Gulf. Jason Burke recounts that "as little as 25 per cent of the money for the Afghan jihad was actually supplied directly by states."

The basic units of mujahideen organization and action continued to reflect the highly decentralized nature of Afghan society and strong loci of competing mujahideen and Pashtun tribal groups, particularly in isolated areas among the mountains.

While there were a large number of factions with ideological differences comprising the mujahideen, the most influential were the Jamiat-e Islami and Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin parties. The Afghan mujahideen were generally divided into two distinct alliances: the largest and most significant Sunni Islamic union collectively referred to as the "Peshawar Seven" based in Pakistan, and the significantly smaller Shia Islamic union collectively referred to as the "Tehran Eight" based in Iran. The Sunni "Peshawar Seven" alliance received heavy assistance from the United States (Operation Cyclone), the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, as well as other countries and private international donors. The basic units of the mujahideen continued to reflect the highly decentralized nature of Afghan society and strong loci of competing Pashtun tribal groups, which had formed a union with other Afghan groups under intense American, Saudi Arabian and Pakistani pressure. The alliance sought to function as a united diplomatic front towards the international community, and sought representation in the United Nations and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. The Afghan mujahideen also saw thousands of volunteers from various Muslim countries arrive in Afghanistan to aid the resistance. The majority of the mujahideen's international fighters came from the Arab world, and later became known as Afghan Arabs; the most well-known Arab financier and militant of the group during this period was Osama bin Laden, who would later mastermind the September 11 attacks of 2001 on the United States.

On 25 April 1992, a civil war had ignited between three, later five or six, mujahideen armies, when Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and supported by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) refused to form a coalition government with other mujahideen groups and tried to conquer Kabul for themselves. After four months, already half a million residents of Kabul had fled the heavily bombarded city.

The following years, several times some of those militant groups formed coalitions, and often broke them again. By mid 1994, Kabul's original population of two million had dropped to 500,000. In 1995–96, the new militia, the Taliban, supported by Pakistan and ISI, had grown to be the strongest force. By late 1994, the Taliban had captured Kandahar, in 1995 they took Herat, in early September 1996 they took Jalalabad, and eventually in late September 1996 they captured Kabul. Fighting would continue the following years, often between the now dominant Taliban and other groups (see Afghan Civil War (1996–2001)).

My Afghan colleague told me how vicious and destructive and cruel that Afghan Civil War (1992–1996) was. He talked about the
rape, murder, looting, extortion by the mujahideen fighters of various mujahideen armies. Thousands of civilians were killed, millions driven from their homes, Kabul was heavily damaged.

My Afghan colleague said to me; “You see the terrible Civil War in Syria today. I can’t watch the images of Syria, because it brings back old bad memories of things that happened and what I saw in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is like Syria since 1978. Foreign Powers and Afghan people are destroying Afghanistan. I can’t sleep due to my PTSD.” My colleague had to leave Afghanistan, because journalists were killed there. And he wanted his daughters to have an education.

Like many Afghan Americans, Afghan Canadians, British Afghans, Dutch Afghans, German Afghans, Belgian Afghans, Australian Afghans and French Afghans Baktash Ahadi has spent much of the past few weeks trying to secure safe passage from Afghanistan for his family, friends and colleagues, with tragically limited success. Also Europeans have been asking: Why is this crazy scramble necessary? How could Afghanistan have collapsed so quickly?

Americans, Continent Europeans, Australians, New Zealanders and British people don’t understand the pluriform Afghan culture, traditions, customs, tribes, peoples, clans, social codes and history. Afghanistan 🇦🇫 is a divided country of Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, Aimaq, Turkmen and Baloch people. Pakistan 🇵🇰, Iran 🇮🇷 and Saoudi-Arabia have a large influence there next to the USA 🇺🇸, Russia 🇷🇺, China 🇨🇳 and India 🇮🇳. Ofcourse Uzbekistan 🇺🇿 and Tajikistan 🇹🇯 also have influence in Afghanistan 🇦🇫 due to the ethnic Uzbeks and Tajik’s in Afghanistan, who are as Afghan as the Pasthun majority and the Hazara, Aimaq and Baloch people. Afghanistan 🇦🇫 is a complex country with a rich diversity in ethnic, religious and cultural sense. Afghans are proud of Afghanistan, but also proud of their region, local town, city or village, their specific people, tribe and family clan. That makes it so hard for outsiders to understand Afghanistan as a country and nation and Afghan people as a people.

The vast majority of Afghans probably viewed the Taliban as the lesser of two evils. Because they are fellow Afghans, because they ended the terror of the mujahideen warlords and because they fought against foreign Western invaders. That the Taliban were not less vicious than the mujahideen later might have changed the opinions of many Afghan people. Don’t forget that the Taliban came from the Puritinical, Ultra Conservative, Ultra-Orthodox, reactionary, Fundamentalist, Islamist and Jihadist traditions of the various Sunni Muslim Pashtun, Uzbek and Tajik tribes and clans. The Taliban came from the same Salafist, Wahhabi influenced environment as the Afghan mujahideen of the Northern Alliance. Saoudi Arab, Yemenite, Qatar and Pakistan based influence from the mujahideen war against the Sovjets in the eighties. The CIA stood at the side of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Saoedi’s and the various Arab Islamist Jihadist fighters that fought in Afghanistan against the Sovjet Red Army and the Afghan communist army and the notorious Afghan communist secret service KHAD ("State Intelligence Agency"). KHAD was nominally part of the Afghan state, but it was firmly under the control of the Soviet KGB until 1989. KhAD and came under the control of the KGB. This was an agency specifically created for the suppression of the Democratic Republic's internal opponents. However, KHAD has continued to operate after the fall of the Soviet-backed government in 1992 and acted as the intelligence arm of the United Front or "Northern Alliance" during the civil war in Afghanistan (1992-1996). During the Communist regime (1978-1992), KHAD reportedly had some success in penetrating the leadership councils of several resistance groups, most of which were headquartered in Pakistan. By the mid-1980s KHAD had gained a fearsome reputation as the eyes, ears, and scourge of the regime. Its influence was pervasive and its methods lawless. KHAD's activities reached beyond the borders of Afghanistan to neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

The Soviet-Afghan War had drastic social effects on Afghanistan. The militarization of society led to heavily armed police, private bodyguards, openly armed civil defense groups and other such things becoming the norm in Afghanistan for decades thereafter. The traditional power structure had shifted from clergy, community elders, intelligentsia and military in favor of powerful warlords.

After establishment of Karzai government in 2001, KHAD was reestablished and Gen. Arif of the Northern Alliance became its chief.

The international NATO lead coalition, poured billions of dollars into Afghanistan from 2001until 2021. It built highways. It emancipated Afghan women. It gave millions of people the right to vote for the first time ever.

Baktash Ahadi is right when he states that; “The Americans also went straight to building roads, schools and governing institutions without first figuring out what values animate those Afghan hearts and what ideas fill those Afghan minds.”

Representatives of Western governments were required to stay “inside the wire,” meaning they were confined at all times to Kabul’s fortified Green Zone and well-guarded military bases across the country. So these Westerners didn’t got a sense of what lived on the Afghan street, how Afghan’s lived in their neighbourhoods, urban communities, villages and hamlets.

If Baktash Ahadi’s American colleagues in Afghanistan had been allowed to enjoy the same Afghan every day life experiences of food, hospitality and culture they might have developed a much better feel for the country, its people and its culture.

The only contact most Afghans had with American-, British-, Canadian-, Australian-, New Zeelandish, Dutch-, Danish-, Polish-, German, Czech-, Slovak-, Swedish-, Norwegian-, and Ukrainian soldiers and officers came via heavily armed and armored combat troops. The Americans and other Western- and European forces thus mistook the Afghan countryside for a mere theater of war, rather than as a place where people actually lived. NATO forces and their allies turned villages into battlegrounds, pulverizing mud homes and destroying livelihoods. One could almost hear the Taliban laughing as any sympathy for the West evaporated in bursts of gunfire.

The good things — clinics, schools, wells, were destroyed by the Taliban. The Taliban looked upon the local community with greater suspicion for having received “gifts” from America.

How is it possible that the front-line troops were given zero training in cultural literacy. Why weren’t they instructed about Afghan social codes, social etiquette, Afghan norms and values, Islamic prudishness and modesty, traditions, customs, the various peoples, tribes and clans, the patriarchal Sunni Muslim and Shia Muslim culture in Afghanistan, the various political fractions, groups, parties and movements, Afghan dress codes and Afghan man woman relationships?

We Westerners (not only the Americans) failed to understand what made sense for Afghans time and time again. No wonder the Taliban maintained such sway over the past 20 years.

Baktash Ahadi is right when he states that U.S. troops will be back in Afghanistan for the same reason the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001: Already, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists are regrouping, as recent attacks make clear. And next time, it will be even harder for the West to garner support, given our betrayal of our Afghan allies.

A British minister or politician called upon the UK government to sent 10,000 British troops to Afghanistan 🇦🇫. What today’s politicians forget is that the Afghan’s know their history and remember the British colonial rule in India and Pakistan.

The Afghans remember that in 1830 Britain intended to gain control over the Emirate of Afghanistan and make it a protectorate, and to use the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire, the Khanate of Khiva, and the Emirate of Bukhara as buffer states blocking Russian expansion.

In 1838, a British expeditionary force marched into Afghanistan and arrested the Afghan ruler Dost Mohammad Khan (December 23, 1793 – June 9, 1863) sent him into exile in India and replaced him with the previous ruler, Shah Shuja. Following an uprising, the 1842 retreat from Kabul of British-Indian forces and the annihilation of Elphinstone's army, and the Battle of Kabul that led to its recapture, the British restored Dost Mohammad Khan as ruler and withdrew their military forces from Afghanistan. In 1878, the Second Anglo-Afghan War was fought over perceived Russian influence in the region, Abdur Rahman Khan replaced Ayub Khan, and Britain gained control of Afghanistan's foreign relations as part of the Treaty of Gandamak of 1879. In 1893, Amir Abdur Rahman signed an agreement in which the ethnic Pashtun and Baloch territories were divided by the Durand Line, which forms the modern-day border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Afghans also remember the Third Anglo-Afghan War (Persian: جنگ سوم افغان-انگلیس‎; Pashto: د افغان-انگرېز درېمه جگړه‎), also known as the Third Afghan War, the British-Afghan War of 1919. In Afghanistan, it is known as the War of Independence. It began on 6 May 1919, when the Emirate of Afghanistan invaded British India and ended with an armistice on 8 August 1919.The war resulted in a treaty with the Afghans gaining independence and control of foreign affairs from Britain, and the British recognising Durand line as the border between Afghanistan and British India. According to British author Michael Barthorp, it was a strategic victory for the British because the Durand Line was reaffirmed as the border between Afghanistan and the British Raj, and the Afghans agreed not to foment trouble on the British side. However, Afghans who were on the British side of the border did cause concerns due to revolts.

So Afghan’s independently of the Taliban, mujahideen, Northern Alliance, Shah supporters, the Marxist-Leninist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) with it’s hardline Khalq and moderate Parcham factions resent the British, Sovjets and partly the American, European and Western (Canadian, Australian, New Zeelandish) military coalition or alliance in Afghanistan.

Afghan people are very proud, independent, autonomy and sovereignty loving people, staunch Muslims, traditionalist and very suspicious of any foreign influence, infiltration, attack, aggression or invasion.

Cheers,
Pieter

[pieter]

Sources;

www.britannica.com/topic/mujahideen-Islam
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_mujahideen
www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2fopinions%2f2021%2f08%2f18%2fmujahideen-resistance-taliban-ahmad-massoud%2f
www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-key-facts-islamic-militant-group-2021-08-15/

[pieter]

Folks,

If you really want to help Afghanistan in a military, financial, economical and social way that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Since 2001, according to Aljazeera English, the United States has spent $2.26 trillion in Afghanistan, the Costs of War Project at Brown University calculates – an investment that has yielded a chaotic, humiliating end to America’s longest war.

First you would have to have a huge military expedition force of the International Western Alliance (the 28 NATO partners and their non-NATO-Western allies; Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, Georgia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea), reliable Afghan partners (the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan of Ahmad Massoud, Amrullah Saleh and Bismillah Khan Mohammadi), civilian support (after winning hearts and minds) and a strong diplomatic effort and commitment and contact with all Afghan tribes, peoples, clans, clanleaders, tribal leaders (Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Turkmen, Baloch, Hazara, Aimac, Pashayi, Nuristanis, Afghan Arabs -from the war with the SovjetUnion-) and political leaders. Both from the Taliban side and from the side of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (also known as the Panjshir resistance and the Second Resistance), a military alliance of former Northern Alliance members and other anti-Taliban fighters who remain loyal to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, created after the 2021 Taliban offensive, under the leadership of the Afghan politician and military leader Ahmad Massoud and the first vice president of Afghanistan Amrullah Saleh.

The National Resistance Front of Afghanistan exercises de facto control over the Panjshir Valley, which is largely contiguous with Panjshir Province and, as of September 2021, is "the only region out of the Taliban's hands". The alliance constitutes the only organized resistance to the Taliban in the country, and is possibly planning an anti-Taliban guerilla struggle. The resistance has called for an "inclusive government" of Afghanistan; one of their objectives is speculated to be a stake in the new Afghan government.

The ideology of the the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan is based on a decentralized state (autonomy for the tribal regions, Federalism), Multiculturalism and Social justice. It opposes the Taliban which was and is supported by the Pakistani Armed Forces and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) (Urdu: بین الخدماتی سراغرسانی‎), the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan.


The fighters of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan in the Panjshir Valley have an array of arms and vehicles, including RPGs and Humvees Ahmad SAHEL ARMAN AFP


Panjshir is a narrow valley deep in the Hindu Kush mountains, with its southern tip around 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of the capital Kabul Ahmad SAHEL ARMAN AFP

An international military coalition and front which wants to defeat the Taliban needs to be huge, powerful, strong, well funded (Financial means, defence budgets), unconquerable, well equipped, mighty, use an ‘Iron Fist’ policy, must be well educated in Afghan affairs, tradition, customs, history, present and near future (predictions), and knowledgeable of Afghan politics, diplomacy, economy, infrastructure, health care, social security of Afghan people, the human rights of Afghan people, education, Afghan languages (Pasthu, Dari, Urdu, Tajik, Uzbek, Aimac, Hazara, Balochi and etc.) and Afghan tribal circumstances, area’s, borders, habits and traditions and customs. If you go in you have to educate, teach, and train your soldiers and officers for Afghanistan. That cultural, historical, ethnic and political knowledge comes next to the military training. Only in that way you can understand Afghanistan, win hearts and minds and be military and construction successful.

In the Patriarchal, Old fashionate, tribal, masculine, Ultra-conservative, Ultra-Orthodox and often Fundamentalist (Sunni Muslim & Shia Muslim), and with clan rivalry and tribal conflicts riddled Afghanistan you have to know the national, international, regional and local facts on the grounds in the Geopolitical context. You have to be confident in your own cause, resolute, dominant, decisive, clear, and in the same time use the Afghan various tribal social codes, social manners, know the Afghan way of making deals, negotiations, combat, friendship, loyalty and enmity, honor killing, distrust and the Afghan nationalism and Patriotism. Be reliable, be loyal to allies, keep your appointments, make no promises you can't fullfill and help the Afghan population with road construction, bridge construction, building schools and hospitals and repairing damaged houses of families. Have good contacts and ties with the tribal elders, the Clan leaders and leaders of various political parties, fractions, militia's and groups. You have to understand that next to the Taliaban you also have the Islamic fundamentalist, Islamist, Jihadi Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (Hezb-e-Islami, HIG) political party and former militia of Afghan politician and former mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. On 10 February 2014, Gulbuddin's HIG group executed an attack which killed two US civilians, Paul Goins and Michael Hughes, and wounded two other Americans and seven Afghan nationals. HIG was also responsible for a 16 May 2013 suicide VBIED attack in Kabul, which destroyed a US armored SUV and killed two US soldiers, four US civilian contractors, eight Afghans—including two children—and wounded at least 37 others. The attack marked the deadliest incident against US personnel in Kabul in 2013. And next to that the Turkic political party National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan (Junbish) of the founder and notorious general Abdul Rashid Dostum and leader Sayed Noorullah Sadat. Junbish has been described as "an organisation heavily peopled with former Communists and Islamists," and is regarded as somewhat secular and left-leaning. Its voter base is mostly Uzbeks, and it is strongest in Jowzjan, Balkh, Faryab, Sar-e Pol, and Samangan provinces. Areas under Junbish control, such as Naqlia base, were frequently cited as suffering serious human rights abuses, including rape, murder and looting.

An international Western Military Alliance, a NATO force of the armies of the 30 member states plus Western allies like Australia and New Zealand should formate, build up and maintain the largest Western Allied Forces military alliance since the Second World War with combined landforces, Airforces, Navy, special forces, Military engineering, medical and intelligence. This must be larger than the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that was in Afghanistan from 2001 until 2014, and larger and better equipped than the Resolute Support Mission (RSM) or Operation Resolute Support, the NATO-led multinational mission in Afghanistan that lasted from 1 January 2015 until 31 August 2021.


Military vehicles of the Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan


The soldiers of the Polish Commando Special Forces Group (Jednostka Wojskowa Komandosów – JWK) have been stationing in Afghanistan for over a dozen years. 5 years ago, they started training the Afghan Police National Mission Unit (NMU). According to the mandate of the “Resolute Support” mission, they also support their partners in combat. Today with the rest of the foreign forces of the international alliance the JWK left Afghanistan.

A Western force that would te-enter Afghanistan would need 150,000 to 300,000 men and women or more (up to half a million). It needs a large international coalition Airforce equipped with AH-64 Apache, AH-1 Cobra, Mil Mi-24, Mil Mi-28, Kamov Ka-50, Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopters, heavy Stealth Bomber bombers (Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit), heavy artillery, a lot of fire power (of heavy machine guns -FN MAG 7.62 mm general-purpose machine guns, the German MG 3 general-purpose machine gun chambered for the 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge, the Polish UKM-2000 (Uniwersalny Karabin Maszynowy, "Universal Machine Gun"), a 7.62×51mm NATO general-purpose machine gun, the Czechoslovakian Universal Machine Gun Model 1959 (Czech: Univerzální kulomet vzor 59) general-purpose machine gun which is still used by the Czech and Slovak armies, the French AA-52 (full designation in French: Arme Automatique Transformable Modèle 1952), the American M240 (officially the Machine Gun, 7.62 mm, M240), the old American M60 (still used by many Armies, replaced in the US army with the more modern M240), and the Mark 48 (or Mk 48, or Maximi) which is used by special forces, and thus also a lot of Special Forces. SAS, Navy Seals, the Australian Special Operations Command (SOCOMD), the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM), the New Zealand Special Air Service (1 NZSAS Regt. The NZSAS was deployed in Afghanistan 2 times; in the period 2001–2005 and in the period 2009–2012), the German Kommando Spezialkräfte (Special Forces Command, KSK), from the Netherlands the Dutch Marines, Commando’s and Airborne troops (Luchtmobiele Brigade), Dutch artillery (Vuursteun Commando), the Dutch Airforce (with Apache attack helicopters, their F16’s and their Joint Strike Fighters (Lockheed Martin-F-35 Lightning II), the French with their Foreign Legion, the Belgians with their Special Operations Regiment (Known until 3 July 2018 as the Light Brigade the regiment is Belgium's special operations and rapid response unit), and the Polish Wojska Specjalne; Jednostka Wojskowa Grom, Jednostka Wojskowa Komandosów, Jednostka Wojskowa Formoza, Jednostka Wojskowa Nil, Jednostka Wojskowa Agat and the 7 Eskadra Działań Specjalnych. In every modern war you have also Military contractors. In the past Western allied presence in Afghanistan (2001-2021) there were about 20,000+ foreign Military contractors in Afghanistan. In a future conflict this may be a higher number.



Soldiers of W GROM in Afghanistan. W GROM (full name: Jednostka Wojskowa GROM im. Cichociemnych Spadochroniarzy Armii Krajowej, English: Military Unit GROM named in honour of the Silent Unseen of the Home Army) is one of Poland's premier special missions units.


Polish Special Forces soldiers of JW GROM land in Afghanistan with a Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter


Polish Special Forces soldiers of JW GROM land in Afghanistan approach a transport helicopter.


Polish Special Forces soldiers of JW GROM on a mission in Afghanistan


Polish JW GROM (Jednostka Wojskowa Grom) special forces operator in front of the ruined Darul Aman Palace, Kabul, Afghanistan, War in Afghanistan. Many years before the palace’s complete restoration in 2019.


A Hungarian Airforce Mil Mi-24. A batch of 12 Mi-24s were to be overhauled for the Hungarian Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 2018, which signed a contract with Russian Helicopters in the fall of 2017. According to the contract, the 12 aircraft were to be completed within 10 months. The Mil Mi-24, Mil Mi-28, Kamov Ka-50 attack helicopters of the Western allied forces would come from the Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Georgian, Romanian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Hungarian Airforces who fight together with the British-, American-, German-, Dutch-, Danish-, Belgian-, French-, Swedish-, Norwegian- AH-64 Apache, AH-1 Cobra and Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopters against the Taliban, ISIS (Daesh), Al Qaida and probably Pakistani forces.



In the Arabian Sea or the Persian Gulf (Arab Gulf) the American navy must be ready to launch cruise missiles on targets in Afghanistan. Modern heavily armed drones must be used in combination with satellite and on the ground reconnaissance and navigation.

In the case of a New international presence in Afghanistan heavily fortified military bases/camps must be reestablished. Again the international Western community will have to invest in an Afghan army which has to be trained, an Afghan police force, Afghan state institutions, law and order, an Afghan Rechtsstaat in Afghan fashion, a Federal state structure, the Afghan infrastructure, schools (education), health care, employment (job creation), peace and stability.

While I wrote this down I do not believe that the international community will be willing and able to spend billions of dollars on Afghanistan. But I do believe that the US, the UK, France 🇫🇷, Australia 🇦🇺, the Netherlands, and probably Germany 🇩🇪 and Italy 🇮🇹 as well will hit Afghanistan hard if from Afghanistan Al Qaida or Islamic State (Daesh) will hit Europe, the USA 🇺🇸 or Western targets in the Middle East, Asia, Africa with new bloody terrorist attacks.

They will invade or not invade Afghanistan again, but they will be able to hit targets in Afghanistan with military drones, cruise missiles or air attacks with stealth bombers with large-yield MOAB bombs or heavily armed Attack helicopters. They could sent in Special Forces with special tasks and assassination squads from Secret Services (CIA or MI6 teams). These special forces often wear beards and moustaches and Afghan clothes in Afghan Pashtun, Tajik or Uzbek style and merge as much into the local population as they can. They know the terrain in which they operate, they know the facts on the ground and are different than regular army troops, Marines or Military police units.

Cheers,
Pieter

www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/8/16/the-us-spent-2-trillion-in-afghanistan-and-for-what
www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2021/08/16/the-war-in-afghanistan-cost-america-300-million-per-day-for-20-years-with-big-bills-yet-to-come/?sh=9d805877f8dd
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/09/world/middleeast/afghanistan-war-cost.html

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The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB /ˈmoʊæb/, colloquially known as the "Mother of All Bombs") is a large-yield bomb, developed for the United States military by Albert L. Weimorts, Jr. of the Air Force Research Laboratory. At the time of development, it was said to be the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in the American arsenal. The bomb is designed to be delivered by a C-130 Hercules, primarily the MC-130E Combat Talon I or MC-130H Combat Talon II variants.

The MOAB was first deployed in combat in the 13 April 2017 airstrike against an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province (ISIS) tunnel complex in Achin District, Afghanistan.

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