Remember Afghanistan?
By Jeff Kouba
From the VOA, another sign that a troublesome group isn’t going away any time soon…
A regional affiliate of Islamic State on Monday said it had carried out a rocket attack on Uzbekistan from neighboring Afghanistan, the first strike by the terrorist group against the Central Asian nation.
Islamic State Khorasan Province fired 10 rockets at an Uzbek military base in the border town of Termez, the group said in a statement released Monday, according to Site Intelligence, which tracks terrorist propaganda.
IS Khorasan, first formed in 2015, is an affiliate of the Islamic State. Though the US and Afghan militaries did significant damage to IS Khorasan in the years following its formation, it has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks, including the bombing at the Kabul airport last August as the US was, uh, strategically advancing out of Afghanistan as fast as it could.
The site of this attack, Termez, is home to the Afghan-Uzbekistan Friendship Bridge. You may remember it as the bridge the last Soviet forces in Afghanistan used to exit the country.
The group even provided video footage to claim responsibility for the attack.
IS Khorasan has been openly hostile to the Taliban in the past and has clashed with them. The fact they can still operate within Afghanistan and now launch rockets at Uzbekistan does not bode well for peace in the region any time soon.
A Pakistani terror group, TTP, also operates within Afghanistan while launching attacks in Pakistan, such as an attack a few days ago that killed several troops. In response, the Pakistani military struck back inside Afghanistan.
The Taliban accused Pakistan on Saturday of launching cross-border military raids inside Afghanistan, which reportedly caused dozens of civilian casualties.
Local Taliban officials confirmed to VOA on condition of anonymity that Pakistani jets on Saturday bombed several villages in the border province of Khost, killing “at least 30 civilians, including women and children.”
…
Islamabad says the TTP, which is designated as a global terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations, is plotting terrorism against the country from its Afghan sanctuaries.
Pakistani officials have acknowledged a recent spike in TTP attacks, particularly in northwestern districts on the Afghan border, which reportedly have killed and wounded dozens of soldiers.
The latest such attack took place Saturday when militants ambushed a Pakistani military convoy in the volatile North Waziristan district opposite Khost, killing seven troops.
The Pakistan government has repeatedly urged the Taliban rulers to rein in TTP activities since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan last August, days before U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew from the country after 20 years.
Afghanistan is a basket case, and it’s getting basketier.
April 19th, 2022 at 11:07 am
Corruption leads to collapse. Afghanistan preferred corruption under the Taliban, then without the Taliban preferred corruption, and now we are back to corruption under the Taliban.
The US left because Afghans wanted foreigners out. Now we are, and they don’t like that either, because corruption remains a vicious parasite. Without the US and the West, things have become worse, again. It was entirely predictable, but Afghans chose this outcome. When a group of people is self destructive, outsiders can have limited efficacy in improving the situation.
It’s hard not to compare Ukraine’s heroic resistance when their way of life is threatened, to Afghans’ shrug of their shoulders when the Taliban came back. As a taxpayer, I want my money going to starving Ukrainians, because it feels like they deserve it more. Sad to say, but there we go
April 19th, 2022 at 11:32 am
“As a taxpayer, I want my money going to starving Ukrainians, because it feels like they deserve it more.”
Contrast with:
https://fee.org/resources/not-your-to-give/
April 19th, 2022 at 11:35 am
Remind me — how many nukes did we let Pakistan build exactly?
The problem in this region is that, at any point in time, you have a sufficient proportion of religious fanatics, absolutely happy to give their lives for their cause, to ensure you will never have political stability over a prolonged period of time. At the end of the day, 75% of moderates cannot do much if the remainder 25% of the population is ready to blow themselves up or join the war to murder everyone that stands in their way. you don’t need a majority of the population to overthrow a legitimate government — you just need enough people ready to go to war, and support within the military. In a world where people think they are literally doing God’s work by dying to fight the government, this isn’t hard to come by.
Some argue that it’s only some fringes of the population, almost exclusively in remote in tribal areas. Beyond the fact that’s exactly what we were sold about the Taliban in Helmand province and another few Afghan provinces, we also wouldn’t have the first clue whether these guys have passive support or even spies relatively high up in various levels of the Pakistani administration or even in the military.
Whether it’s Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Irak, Syria, Lybia, Yemen… It looks like it’s just a never ending repetition of what is largely the same story. As long as they don’t solve the issue of the religious fanatics in the Muslim world, they’ll never discover the meaning of democracy, peace, or prosperity.
The problem is, this time, we’re talking about a nuclear power.
April 19th, 2022 at 12:13 pm
Gotta admit the greatest Diplomat™ in the white house full of adults™ strategy is working as intended. First, brilliant orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan and now the wooshing sound of terrorists filling the vacuum.
This is going to be interesting to watch. Who will help Uzbekistan? China? Russia? Iran? Will Diplomat™ send troops into Afghanistan to prop up Taliban? What to do? What to do? Maybe Easter Bunny can point the demented idiot in the right direction?
April 19th, 2022 at 12:22 pm
Failed State wants neighboring Failed State to become even more failed, and now gets sucked into the turmoil? So much of the problems in Pakistan could be fixed if they moderated their religion and the young men could get laid.
April 19th, 2022 at 12:31 pm
Biden has set us up for the next 9/11.
Let’s go Brandon!
April 19th, 2022 at 12:47 pm
So, basically, “foreign policy wonk” Joespeh Robinette Biden, has allowed the Taliban to regain control of Afghanistan, which led to a resurgence of ISIS in Afghanistan, greenlighted Putin’s invasion of Afghanistan, and by accusing Putin of war crimes has brought us closer to thermonuclear war.
And that was all in the first 15 months of his presidency.
Hang on, it’s going to be a rough ride.
April 19th, 2022 at 1:12 pm
History is filled of events where fathers, sons and brothers went and fought to protect their families from those who would wish them harm and to ensure a better future. The men of Afghanistan, with the exception of a small number truly braves ones rolled over and made no attempt to secure a future for their country. The West did its best over a 20 year period and poured in over $2 Trillion we now owe Afghanistan nothing.
April 19th, 2022 at 1:32 pm
Good Lord, Emery.
This is about the worst take on Afghanistan I have ever come across. We were in Afghanistan to keep it from becoming a terrorist haven, not because we wanted the Afghani’s to have a “better future.”
Jesus, you are dumb as a stump.
April 19th, 2022 at 2:00 pm
Invading and occupying Afghanistan was the mistake. It was like Algeria for the French from the very start. You can’t have a conversation with someone who doesn’t want to listen.
At that point you are left with not too many options.
Hindsight is always a great gift, so all the after analysis from woolly makes the whole thing worse than it was. It was a lost cause from Day One as the challenge to civilize a tribal and regressive society isn’t just a military mission. I lost some respect for this analysis, because woolly fails to acknowledge the role of Pakistan in the Afghan war. Pakistani agencies were actively supporting the Taliban all along which is in public domain now and should have been called out. After all who was supplying the so called “light guns” to defeat a sophisticated army.
April 19th, 2022 at 8:52 pm
Woolly’s comment is a fundamentally false canard that has been peddled by the advocates of militarized western interventions across the developing world since Vietnam. If only we had stayed the course goes the argument.
But when the initial intervention is based on false assumptions and lack of understanding of cultures and societies different from western societies from the git go, then the eventual failure is inevitable no matter how much endurance is applied to the problem.
The problem is fundamentally with policy makers at the highest political levels who buy into the false reasoning pushed by interventionists. They buy the slogans instead of reasoned assessments. Similar to Woolly —they are naive.
April 19th, 2022 at 10:58 pm
Emery thinks the status quo in Afghanistan, as of June of last year, was worse than what we have now.
Words fail me.
April 19th, 2022 at 11:52 pm
MP, isn’t it about time you stopped humoring trollbot blather and started to ignore that waste of bandwidth? With you on board, it will leave only JD, who for some reason continuous to think trollbots are real people.