Conquer Club

The Taliban have gained a lucrative new source of income, taking over the main trade gateway into Tajikistan, and beginning to collect customs revenues, as some of Afghanistan’s neighbors tacitly cooperate with the insurgent group.

The American-built Sher Khan Bandar crossing, north of the city of Kunduz, fell to the Taliban on June 22, with 134 border guards and other Afghan government troops fleeing to neighboring Tajikistan. Instead of shutting down after the insurgent takeover, the Sher Khan Bandar complex has remained operational, with tacit understandings reached between the Taliban and Tajikistan, according to local traders.

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said the group had reached out to the governments of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan after taking over several border areas in June.

“We informed all these governments and assured them that the routine work of the border, the customs, will be running as before,” Mr. Shaheen said in an interview. “Even the staff members of the customs, we have not changed them, we told them: Do your work as it was. We haven’t even changed the stamps. The reason is that we don’t want to create problems for businessmen, for traders, for common people.”

Customs revenue from trade via Sher Khan Bandar, which used to run in the tens of millions of dollars, now accrues to the Taliban, Mr. Shaheen added.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/taliban-fi ... 1625495521

Afghanistan is disintegrating fast as Biden's troop withdrawal continues

Earlier this week, a lone Taliban gunman with a red skull cap and a rifle sauntered up to the gates of Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan's fourth largest city, and snapped a selfie. The last time the Taliban controlled the city was 20 years ago, when they left hundreds of captives in steel trucking containers to suffocate and die in the scorching desert heat.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/24/asia/afg ... index.html

HitRed wrote:I want our troops out.

saxitoxin wrote:

HitRed wrote:I want our troops out.

Yes. If Obama-Biden had pulled them out in 2009 the Taliban would have overrun the country but we'd have saved $200 billion and numerous lives. They didn't and we're going to end up in the exact same position with a Taliban-run Afghanistan; but $200 billion and numerous lives wasted.

Dukasaur wrote:

saxitoxin wrote:

HitRed wrote:I want our troops out.

Yes. If Obama-Biden had pulled them out in 2009 the Taliban would have overrun the country but we'd have saved $200 billion and numerous lives. They didn't and we're going to end up in the exact same position with a Taliban-run Afghanistan; but $200 billion and numerous lives wasted.

Yup. And if Bush-Cheney hadn't sent them there in the first place you'd have saved even more.

Associated Press wrote:The U.S. left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.

Before the Afghan army could take control of the airfield about an hour’s drive from the Afghan capital Kabul, it was invaded by a small army of looters, who ransacked barrack after barrack and rummaged through giant storage tents before being evicted, according to Afghan military officials.

The big ticket items left behind include thousands of civilian vehicles, many of them without keys to start them, and hundreds of armored vehicles. Kohistani said the U.S. also left behind small weapons and the ammunition for them, but the departing troops took heavy weapons with them. Ammunition for weapons not being left behind for the Afghan military was blown up before they left.

Afghan soldiers who wandered Monday throughout the base that had once seen as many as 100,000 U.S. troops were deeply critical of how the U.S. left Bagram, leaving in the night without telling the Afghan soldiers tasked with patrolling the perimeter.

“In one night, they lost all the goodwill of 20 years by leaving the way they did, in the night, without telling the Afghan soldiers who were outside patrolling the area,” said Afghan soldier Naematullah, who asked that only his one name be used.

Meanwhile, in northern Afghanistan, district after district has fallen to the Taliban. In just the last two days hundreds of Afghan soldiers fled across the border into Tajikistan rather than fight the insurgents.

https://apnews.com/article/bagram-afgha ... aaa167e623

Dukasaur wrote:

saxitoxin wrote:

HitRed wrote:I want our troops out.

Yes. If Obama-Biden had pulled them out in 2009 the Taliban would have overrun the country but we'd have saved $200 billion and numerous lives. They didn't and we're going to end up in the exact same position with a Taliban-run Afghanistan; but $200 billion and numerous lives wasted.

Yup. And if Bush-Cheney hadn't sent them there in the first place you'd have saved even more.

jusplay4fun wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:

saxitoxin wrote:

HitRed wrote:I want our troops out.

Yes. If Obama-Biden had pulled them out in 2009 the Taliban would have overrun the country but we'd have saved $200 billion and numerous lives. They didn't and we're going to end up in the exact same position with a Taliban-run Afghanistan; but $200 billion and numerous lives wasted.

Yup. And if Bush-Cheney hadn't sent them there in the first place you'd have saved even more.

On one hand, I can somewhat justify the US involvement in Afghanistan to get Bin Laden. Once Ben Laden was killed, the US should have started to withdraw soon thereafter and the let the Afghanis go back to the tribal wars they have been fighting for some 1000+ years. The US was there far too long.

BUT there was NO justification in my mind for the US to go into Iraq and get rid of Saddam Hussein. Yes Saddam was terrible to the Iraqi people (Kurds and Shiites), or most of them, and yes, his sons were even more cruel, but those reasons do not justify the war to get rid of a country's ruler.

I agree with both Duk and Saxi on this one. How OFTEN does THAT occur...????

No! Justification!....Who do you think Made Saddam ?....The USA...In the late 70's...to fight IRAN...Who do you think built the Taliban?...The USA...In the early 80's...to fight The Soviet Union/Russia...Here we go again... Leaving... Leaving behind millions of dollars in weapons for the Taliban to use... ...

jusplay4fun wrote:I see Afghanistan as run by Tribal Leaders and not a true nation, NOT as we understand that term in the West. China, Japan, and others are NATIONS; Afghanistan is a collection of many tribes (in a mountainous area of the world) that shift loyalty, often quickly and based on who is currently winning.

This is somewhat like the War of the Roses and the battle where Richard III is killed. (And this was part of the inspiration for the Game of Thrones.)

The US did not learn the lessons of defeat by the British and by the Soviets in Afghanistan. Shame on Bush, Cheney, Obama-Biden, and a bit on Trump. He started the withdraw process. He did not complete it before leaving office.

jonesthecurl wrote:

jusplay4fun wrote:I see Afghanistan as run by Tribal Leaders and not a true nation, NOT as we understand that term in the West. China, Japan, and others are NATIONS; Afghanistan is a collection of many tribes (in a mountainous area of the world) that shift loyalty, often quickly and based on who is currently winning.

This is somewhat like the War of the Roses and the battle where Richard III is killed. (And this was part of the inspiration for the Game of Thrones.)

The US did not learn the lessons of defeat by the British and by the Soviets in Afghanistan. Shame on Bush, Cheney, Obama-Biden, and a bit on Trump. He started the withdraw process. He did not complete it before leaving office.

"Nation" for the most part is a recent invention, historically speaking. 19th century in most cases, earlier in a few.

Igbo people
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Before the period of British colonial rule in the 20th century, the Igbo were a politically fragmented group, with a number of centralized chiefdoms such as Nri, Aro Confederacy, Agbor and Onitsha.[20] Frederick Lugard introduced the Eze system of "warrant chiefs".[21] Unaffected by the Fulani War and the resulting spread of Islam in Nigeria in the 19th century, they became overwhelmingly Christian under colonization. In the wake of decolonisation, the Igbo developed a strong sense of ethnic identity.[22] During the Nigerian Civil War of 1967–1970, the Igbo territories seceded as the short-lived Republic of Biafra.[23] The Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, a sectarian organization formed in 1999, continues a non-violent struggle for an independent Igbo state.[24]

saxitoxin wrote:Supposedly the Taliban are gonna slow walk the final push to secure the surrender of Kabul on November 13, which would be the 20th anniversary of the Biden-backed Bush regime capturing it.

Dust off the burqas, ladies!

Maj Ferrara did not specify the type of aircraft used but the Daily Mail reported earlier on Saturday that President Joe Biden ordered B-52 bombers and AC-130 Spectre gunships to strike enemy fighters advancing towards cities such as Kandahar.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/2 ... n-advance/