Pepe Escobar for the Saker Blog : Posted with permission
As far as realpolitik Afghanistan is concerned, with or without a deal, the US military want to stay in what is a priceless Greater Middle East base to deploy hybrid war techniques
Nearly two decades after the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan post-9/11, and after an interminable war costing over $ 2 trillion, there’s hardly anything “historic” about a possible peace deal that may be signed in Doha this coming Saturday between Washington and the Taliban.
We should start by stressing three points.
1- The Taliban wanted all US troops out. Washington refused.
2- The possible deal only reduces US troops from 13,000 to 8,600. That’s the same number already deployed before the Trump administration.
3- The reduction will only happen a year and a half from now – assuming what’s being described as a truce holds.
So there would be no misunderstanding, Taliban Deputy Leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, in an op-ed certainly read by everyone inside the Beltway, detailed their straightforward red line: total US withdrawal.
And Haqqani is adamant: there’s no peace deal if US troops stay.
Still, a deal looms. How come? Simple: enter a series of secret “annexes.”
The top US negotiator, the seemingly eternal Zalmay Khalilzad, a remnant of the Clinton and Bush eras, has spent months codifying these annexes – as confirmed by a source in Kabul currently not in government but familiar with the negotiations.
Let’s break them down to four points.
1- US counter-terror forces would be allowed to stay. Even if approved by the Taliban leadership, this would be anathema to the masses of Taliban fighters.
2- The Taliban would have to denounce terrorism and violent extremism. That’s rhetorical, not a problem.
3- There will be a scheme to monitor the so-called truce while different warring Afghan factions discuss the future, what the US State Dept. describes as “intra-Afghan negotiations.” Culturally, as we’ll see later, Afghans of different ethnic backgrounds will have a tremendously hard time monitoring their own warring.
4- The CIA would be allowed to do business in Taliban-controlled areas. That’s an even more hardcore anathema. Everyone familiar with post-9/11 Afghanistan knows that the prime reason for CIA business is the heroin rat line that finances Langley’s black ops, as I exposed in 2017.
Otherwise, everything about this “historic” deal remains quite vague.
Even Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was forced to admit the war in Afghanistan is “still” in “a state of strategic stalemate.”
As for the far from strategic financial disaster, one just needs to peruse the latest SIGAR report. SIGAR stands for Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. In fact virtually nothing in Afghanistan has been “reconstructed.”
No real deal without Iran
The “intra-Afghan” mess starts with the fact that Ashraf Ghani eventually was declared the winner of the presidential elections held in September last year. But virtually no one recognizes him.
The Taliban don’t talk to Ghani. Only to some people that are part of the government in Kabul. And they describe these talks at best as between “ordinary Afghans.”
Everyone familiar with Taliban strategy knows US/NATO troops will never be allowed to stay. What could happen is the Taliban allowing some sort of face-saving contingent to remain for a few months, and then a very small contingent stays to protect the US embassy in Kabul.
Washington will obviously reject this possibility. The alleged “truce” will be broken. Trump, pressured by the Pentagon, will send more troops. And the infernal spiral will be back on track.
Another major hole in the possible deal is that the Americans completely ignored Iran in their negotiations in Doha.
That’s patently absurd. Teheran is a key strategic partner to its neighbor Kabul. Apart from the millenary historical/cultural/social connections, there are at least 3.5 million Afghan refugees in Iran.
Post 9-11, Tehran slowly but surely started cultivating relations with the Taliban – but not at a military/weaponizing level, according to Iranian diplomats. In Beirut last September, and then in Nur-Sultan in November, I was provided a clear picture of where discussions about Afghanistan stand.
The Russian connection to the Taliban goes through Tehran. Taliban leaders have frequent contacts with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Only last year, Russia held two conferences in Moscow between Taliban political leaders and mujahideen. The Russians were engaged into bringing Uzbeks into the negotiations. At the same time, some Taliban leaders met with Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives four times in Tehran, in secret.
The gist of all these discussions was “to find a conflict resolution outside of Western patterns”, according to an Iranian diplomat. They were aiming at some sort of federalism: the Taliban plus the mujahideen in charge of the administration of some vilayets.
The bottom line is that Iran has better connections in Afghanistan than Russia and China. And this all plays within the much larger scope of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The Russia-China strategic partnership wants an Afghan solution coming from inside the SCO, of which both Iran and Afghanistan are observers. Iran may become a full SCO member if it holds on to the nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, until October – thus still not subjected to UN sanctions.
All these actors want US troops out – for good. So the solution always points towards a decentralized federation. According to an Afghan diplomat, the Taliban seem ready to share power with the Northern Alliance. The spanner in the works is the Hezb-e-Islami, with one Jome Khan Hamdard, a commander allied with notorious mujahid Gulbudiin Hekmatyar, based in Mazar-i-Sharif and supported by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, more interested in restarting a civil war.
Understanding Pashtunistan
Here’s a blast from the past, reliving the context of the Taliban visit to Houston, and showing how things have not changed much since the first Clinton administration. It’s always a matter of the Taliban getting their cut – at the time related to Pipelineistan business, now to their reaffirmation of what can be described as Pashtunistan.
Not every Pashtun is a Taliban, but the overwhelming majority of Taliban are Pashtuns.
The Washington establishment never did their “know your enemy” homework, trying to understand how Pashtuns from extremely diverse groups are linked by a common system of values establishing their ethnic foundation and necessary social rules. That’s the essence of their code of conduct – the fascinating, complex Pashtunwali. Although it incorporates numerous Islamic elements, Pashtunwali is in total contradiction with Islamic law on many points.
Islam did introduce key moral elements to Pashtun society. But there are also juridical norms, imposed by a hereditary nobility, that support the whole edifice and that came from the Turko-Mongols.
Pashtuns – a tribal society – have a deep aversion to the Western concept of the state. Central power can only expect to neutralize them with – to put it bluntly – bribes. That’s what passes as a sort of system of government in Afghanistan. Which brings the question of how much – and with what – the US is now bribing the Taliban.
Afghan political life, in practice, works out from actors that are factions, sub-tribes, “Islamic coalitions” or regional groups.
Since 1996, and up to 9/11, the Taliban incarnated the legitimate return of Pashtuns as the dominant element in Afghanistan. That’s why they instituted an emirate and not a republic, more appropriate for a Muslim community ruled only by religious legislation. The diffidence towards cities, particularly Kabul, also expresses the sentiment of Pashtun superiority over other Afghan ethnic groups.
The Taliban do represent a process of overcoming tribal identity and the affirmation of Pashtunistan. The Beltway never understood this powerful dynamic – and that’s one of the key reasons for the American debacle.
Lapis Lazuli corridor
Afghanistan is at the center of the new American strategy for Central Asia, as in “expand and maintain support for stability in Afghanistan” coupled with an emphasis to “encourage connectivity between Central Asia and Afghanistan.”
In practice, the Trump administration wants the five Central Asian “stans” to bet on integration projects such as the CASA-1000 electricity project and the Lapis Lazuli trade corridor, which is in fact a reboot of the Ancient Silk Road, connecting Afghanistan to Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia before crossing the Black Sea to Turkey and then all the way to the EU.
But the thing is Lapis Lazuli is already bound to integrate with Turkey’s Middle Corridor, which is part of the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, as well as with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Plus, also part of Belt and Road. Beijing planned this integration way before Washington.
The Trump administration is just stressing the obvious: a peaceful Afghanistan is essential for the integration process.
Andrew Korybko correctly argues that “Russia and China could make more progress on building the Golden Ring between themselves, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey by that time, thus ‘embracing’ Central Asia with potentially limitless opportunities that far surpass those that the US is offering or ‘encircling’ the region from a zero-sum American strategic perspective and ‘forcing’ it out.”
The late Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s wishful thinking “Eurasian Balkans” scenario may be dead, but the myriad US divide-and-rule gambits imposed on the heartland have now mutated into hybrid war explicitly directed against China, Russia and Iran – the three major nodes of Eurasia integration.
And that means that as far as realpolitik Afghanistan is concerned, with or without a deal, the US military have no intention to go anywhere. They want to stay – whatever it takes. Afghanistan is a priceless Greater Middle East base to deploy hybrid war techniques.
Pashtuns are certainly getting the message from key Shanghai Cooperation Organization players. The question is how they plan to run rings around Team Trump.
IMHO anyone who’s done business in the region can see what happened. The Taliban simply took some big $$$ against some US promises, to allow the US to save face till after the elections. Everyone gets their cut and business resumes afterward. They’ve been doing this for thousands of years.
Yeah. Far as I can tell, Afghans may take bribes, but if it’s from someone they don’t respect they have no belief that doing so implies anything about their actions afterwards. We may have this idea that once you’ve taken someone’s money you’re in some way committed to them, you the client, they the patron. They just think a fool and his money are soon parted; they don’t stay bribed. Maybe if you’re someone they respect, and you give them a gift, it’ll enhance your relationship, but if you think you’ve bought co-operation with money you’re gonna get a rude awakening at some point down the road.
@Purple Library Guy
Your comment tells me you’re from the region, as am I, and your point is quite accurate: the bribes from a dishonorable partner is treated as such: ie “a fool and his money are soon parted”. I don’t think people from the region appreciate Pepe’s (and foreign media’s) inaccurate and derisive stereotype protrayal of pashtoon leadership character or tradition (“taking bribes”). Your nuanced explanation is much more accurate. The Narco-Terrorist British Empire fell for this simplistic idea that you can bribe your way to get what you want with the Pakhtuns, and they got screwed each time by the pashtoons with British forces being essentially exterminated like vermin each time they relied on these “bribes”.
The irony is that pepe claims that the Americans don’t know the pashtoons (aka the enemy), well Pepe seems to suffer from the same if he doesn’t understand this critical point of Pakhtunkhwa. A bribe given in contempt, by a contemptuous party is treated as such (with contempt), whereas a gift given by a respected sincere party is to treated as an obligation which is defended to death.
The glaring omission in this article is the role of Pakistan in this conflict: they are imploding and have deeply offended pashtoonwali with betrayals and the atrocities they’ve committed to pacify their tribal regions. China wants stability in Afghanistan and will not underwrite Pakistan crossborder support of the Taliban beyond a certain stalemate point.
Still the article does a service on bringing light to an important issue. My reading is Trump wants to get out, bureaucratic inertia within the US government and security apparatus wants to stay, the Chinese want the US to bleed in that region, neither the Russians nor the Indians want the US too pull out too quickly (or even at all) because it will free up Afghan jihadis to infiltrate the lower flank of Russia as well as allow them to enter Indian Kashmir. The fact that Modi seemed so pleased with Trump in his just concluded visits tells me that US isn’t leaving anytime soon (as pepe has concluded too). The Indians have belligerently made it clear that if Kashmir flares up again due to cross border terrorism, they will seize the rest of Kashmir Gilgit Baltistan and put an end to the problem on their own terms. Given how ruthless Modi is capable of being, this is a real possibility. He’s got the military might to do it and the dangerous combination of an electorate growing angry at his failure to deliver on his employment promises: a military distraction and patriotic hysteria would kill 2 birds with one stone.
“whereas a gift given by a respected sincere party is to treated as an obligation which is defended to death.”
I remember a video of a young Afghan fella from 2014 fighting for Donbass. He grew up in Russia as an orphan from the 80s war. The respect and love he had for Russia was awe-inspiring.
If someone has the link, please put it up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc2KeSkl5H0
‘neither the Russians nor the Indians want the US too pull out too quickly (or even at all) because it will free up Afghan jihadis to infiltrate the lower flank of Russia as well as allow them to enter Indian Kashmir.’
Why would the Afghan jihadis infiltrate the two mentioned countries ? Will they be doing it for
some religious/tribal obligation ?
Good points by the OP @SoghdianSon and the one above. There’s a bit of fly in this oinment about India not being happy and all jihadists coming to ferment trouble in Kashmir. For a long time, the Pakistan Taliban was reared a bulwark against India and India has tried to get Sistan-Baluchistan to be a part of Afghanistan.
If anything, most of the current breed of leaders of Afghanistan, mainly the highly respected Hamid Rarzai were schooled (educated) in India. India has been in Afghanistan before the days of Najibullah and the Pashtun (called Pathan in India) has and continues to flourish in western India.
The Pashtuns broke a long standing tradition by hijacking IC 814 to free 3 of their captured men and were facilitated by the ISI. This set an irreversible path between India and the Taliban as they were pawned by ISI.
If there’s peace in Afghanistan, the Americans leave once and for all, and if the Afghan jihadi’s are in India, they’re just paying their dues to ISI and it’s handlers.
So, if India takes matters in its hands and blows up Baltistan and frees Baluchistan, you know where it all started.
@Daniel
Because it’s the only life they (Taliban grassroots) know, and they have both religious and financial incentives to do so. Did you not pay attention to President Putin’s comments that most of the jihadis in Syria were mercenaries and if you took away their funding and salaries most of them would return to their own countries.
It would be very easy for anti russians countries to organise and fund these Newly idled Afghan jihadis very cheaply to re-create havoc in Russia. Likewise, it will be much easier and cheaper for Pakistan and Wahabist in Qatar and Saudi to fund the same battle hardened Afghan pashtoons to restart an insurgency in Indian Kashmir. A similar pattern emeged when the Soviets exited Afghanistan: the western and Pakistan created “Mujahideen” stated created chaos in Iran, India, Central Asian republics, takistan and Russia.
Historically Baluchistan should have belonged to Afghanistan and they’d have had sea access instead of being a buffer state. Pakistan forcefully annexed it and the Afghans and the proud Pashtuns seem to igonore that fact and act against the Baluchs (because theyre not Pashtun)
You are misreading Trump. Trump is a tool, put in the position of president to follow orders. Trump is also an excellent salesman & will say what needs to be said to get what he wants. Trump is loyal to his bank accounts and those that feed his narcissistic mindset. Not to the US Military. The ONLY reason Trump claims to want to “bring troops home”, is for election purposes. It worked so well for the last election.
The Real Trump
Trump. 9/11, truth part 1
https://youtu.be/A4eQl3J_L6I
Pt 2
https://youtu.be/GnsZpOGXhog
Trump is Obama 2.0 Same Agenda Same End Game
https://youtu.be/PtmN4qjz4LQ
Meet Trump’s handlers
Bolton Exposed
https://youtu.be/hs35O_TBbbU
That is exactly correct. The Taliban well know that the US is not agreement capable. Which is why their demand is simply the removal of US troops. All the complexities in the arrangement outlined in detail by Pepe are the usual Zio Nazi MSM obfuscation, EXACTLY like Petreyas’ ‘Iraqi Surge’. Which was a simple payoff to Iraqi warlords that allowed troops to be withdrawn. US MSM easily portrayed it as a victory to the dumbed down masses. It’s easy to see that the same principle in force here. I believe it’s a mistake to allow the Zio Nazis to save face. But exorbitant amounts of money could achieve a win win scenario. IMO the primary dynamic in US foreign policy is the 2020 election. If the Deep State can get one of their flunkies in power, all agreements and bets are off.
Pepe, taking us deep into culture to comprehend the political realities, illuminates the civilization that supports the Taliban foundation.
Always, the Americans disregard the fundamentals. They never understand the people they hope to bomb into submission.
That only worked in WWII. Since then, in limited wars, culture and civilizational values is what counts.
The lesson should have been learned the easy way for the US. Just look at Russia-USSR in WWII. They were never going to be defeated by the German war machine.
Likewise, the North Koreans in the ’50s, Vietnamese in the ’60s-’70s, and the Afghanis-Taliban in the ’00s-’10s.
The US, often with massive assistance from their vassal-allies, has failed to win the wars they started.
Of course, the US will not be leaving Afghanistan for a long time. Like Iraq and Syria, they have the entire region to lose, the Central Asia in the former, the Middle East in the latter.
Likely, it will take Iranian missiles secretly supplied to the Taliban and used on the American bases necessary to produce enough “traumatic head injuries”, Trumpian headaches, to convince the military that total disaster is in the cards.
The Taliban are cautioned by the Iranians and Russians for now. Let the draw-down take place. Evaluate the result. Then, perhaps, apply the coup de grace.
What gets my goat is that Jimmy Carter boycotted the olympics b/c russia invaded Afghanistan. Now some years later this has become U.S. policy without an after thought of the boycott. Can anyone say gvt hypocrisy, or has gvt (and citizens), got such a short memory span that they don’t recall this fact?
February is harvest time for poppy’s, the cease fire will hold for at least harvest time, everyone wants their cut of the poppy harvest.
Excellent, Pepe Escobar.Tour de force.
What about India? It looks that it takes more and more seriously its assigned role of the spanner in the SCO wheels.
India is a SCO founding member. What spanner (wrench) in the works you talk about? Just want them to fold and open the front door and back door to the Chinese?
You are so right in pointing this out. Not only was Pakistani malfeasance in Afghanistan largely ignored by this article, but also India’s potentially very aggressive future reaction has been ignored too.
In Afghanistan India is allied with Iran and Russia in it’s support of the Northern Alliance portion of the Afghan power structure – in direct opposition to Pakistan, which has been supporting the Salafist and wahabbists factions of pashtoon society (using Saudi money). However, lately, due to Pakistan being near the edge of bankruptcy and because of their recent rift with Saudi Arabia and the Emirates over Pakistan’s refusal to counter Iran in Yemen, Saudi financial support is more difficult. That coupled with China not being keen to finance overt Pakistani support of Islamist elements (China has shown passive support of Pakistan Islamist terrorists by blocking sanctions on UN recognized Pakistan islamic terrorist like masood Azar and other mass killers, but they have not, yet, directly funded Pakistan terrorists like Saudi Arabia has). In addition, the Indians are also supportive of the Ashraf Ghani government along with the USA.
To date the Indian role has been, a quiet one: to build roads, dams, educational infrastructure, hospitals, etc while providing training to key Afghan military and police units while gathering intelligence on the ground.
Judging by past events however, the above situation is going to change: a few months ago the Indians very rapidly and quite efficiently executed some completely unexpected steps: virtually overnight, they stripped their Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir of statehood, downgraded it to the status of a federally administered territory and stripped it of 70% of its area, handing this over to their newly formed Buddhist majority territory of Ladakh. One has to gudgingly admit that they executed this very smoothly, having completely blindsided Kashmir Muslim opposition and having, very effectively, neutralized any campaign of opposition. However, it does raise the question: why did the Indians do this so suddenly and implement it almost on a war footing? The answer can found in what Trump and US were doing with the Taliban in Afghanistan at the time: it appeared that they were very close to peace deal back then (days away). The Indians panicked that their worst case scenario was about to happen; ie that soon Afghan jihadis would be free to head to Indian Kashmir to start increasing havoc, chaos and violence 10 fold from what they had now. So they restructured Kashmir to better contain the expected wave of Islamist terrorism to just the Sunni majority Kashmir valley while pushing out of the way local kashmiri politicians from interfering with counterterrorism operations by moving adminstration of the area directly to New Delhi. They also, in a very premeditated way, started to lay the political, legal, logistical and military groundwork to set the stage of seizing the small regions of Kashmir held by Pakistan (Gilgit Baltistan and Pakistan Kashmir). Luckily for the Indians, those peace talks between the US and the Taliban broke down after the Taliban idiotically carried out a suicide bombing attack on US forces just days before the US-Taliban deal was to be signed.
The trigger for an Indian military intervention and annexing of all of Kashmir could lay inside the Afghanistan and the US-Taliban peace deal.
No reckoning here of the fact that both India and Pak are nuclear powers.Is there any realpossibility of aggressive militry action? Will not such military acion be stopped by Great Power intervention sooner than you can say “jack robinson” ?
Worth highlighting here again!
“The bottom line is that Iran has better connections in Afghanistan than Russia and China. And this all plays within the much larger scope of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The Russia-China strategic partnership wants an Afghan solution coming from inside the SCO, of which both Iran and Afghanistan are observers. Iran may become a full SCO member if it holds on to the nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, until October – thus still not subjected to UN sanctions.”
What about India?
India, it seems, she still has much domestic forces to deal with and history/borders issue to play with, so “I” was switch from India to Iran (and soon after the virus-circus is over, may, just may include, in testing capacity, Iraq). If and when India is firm, if she follows where the sun rise or where the sun sets, if its not too late, we can always envision to see RIIIC as possible future. I would think?
So the Pashtuns wants a SCO-in-action? that badly? Ha! Well, well… what time is it pls?
What about India?
India cannot be trusted.
India is an American ally in all but name.
This is especially true after Trump and Modi’s recent lovefest visit and the announcement of a US-India Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership.
The US-India Strategic Partnership: Geopolitical Pivot In Favor of US After Trump’s Delhi Visit
https://www.globalresearch.ca/india-geopolitical-pivot-complete-trump-successful-visit/5704814
Joint Statement: Vision and Principles for the United States-India Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/joint-statement-vision-principles-united-states-india-comprehensive-global-strategic-partnership/
Trump to promote anti-China strategic alliance in visit to India
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/02/24/inus-f24.html
India conceals the fact that it effectively joined the Anglo-Zionist Empire with empty rhetoric about its “multi-alignment policy” and nominal role in BRICS and the SCO.
But in reality, India will be an American and Zionist Trojan horse in South Asia and beyond.
This is why Russia and Pakistan are engaged in a major economic, military, and diplomatic rapprochement with Russia expressing interest in the N-CPEC+ energy/trade transportation corridor; developing a common strategy regarding American-sponsored terrorism in Afghanistan; and even holding military exercises with each other.
Russia and Pakistan to Hold Joint Military Drills in the Pakistani Mountains
https://warsawinstitute.org/russia-pakistan-hold-joint-military-drills/
China, Russia, Pakistan joining hands on Afghan problem: Report
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/sign-of-worry-for-india-china-russia-pakistan-joining-hands-on-afghan-problem-says-report/articleshow/57985232.cms?from=mdr
The Indo-‘Israeli’ Trans-Arabian Corridor Will Push Russia Closer To Pakistan
http://thealtworld.com/andrew_korybko/the-indo-israeli-trans-arabian-corridor-will-push-russia-closer-to-pakistan
@Anonymous
You are right. India is a traitor. It has sold its soul to the evil empire.
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/02/28/indias-geopolitical-pivot-is-complete-after-trumps-successful-visit/
India is just another btch of Israel
Afghanistan: Longest War Winding Up
By Brig. General Asif H. Raja, Pakistan – February 26, 2020
When George W. Bush decided to invade Afghanistan to avenge terrorist attacks allegedly master
minded by Osama bin Laden (OBL) and also to ensure homeland security, India offered its full services
and tried hard to convince Washington to tackle both Afghanistan and Pakistan simultaneously.
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/02/26/afghanistan-longest-war-winding-up/
With Iran being mentioned here as cultivating relations with the talibs, however Pepe needs to be mindful that if the US/ ISAF leave, much of the financial and supply burden to the Kabul gubment will fall on Iran and indirectly on Russia and China too. It’s a tall ask considering Iran’s commitments in the SyRaq and beyond. However, Iran will not tolerate a hostile wahabbi/ jihadi Talib gubment in kabul. Zarif has quipped a few times that the Talibs can certainly share power, but will never be allowed to have a dominant role. So some indications that Iran will as it does today, continue to back the Afghan gubment just as it did during the Northern Alliance days. Iran sells subsidized fuel to the land locked Afghans among many other vital commodities and food, which are actually paid for by the US from the US Aid/ coalition funds. Worse comes to worse, Iran is prepared to divvy up Afghanistan along Pashto/ Persian lines, if that is what it will take. The entire North and West about 2/3rd’s of the country is Persian speakers with the Persian speakers enjoying a comfortable 60 to 40 in population advantage.Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Russia, India, and Turkmenistan will not tolerate a wahabbi jihadi talib dominated set up in Kabul either. The US has comfortably nested itself in Afghanistan against this regional back drop, they won’t be going away anytime soon. The Talibs don’t have the ooomph on their own to take Kabul, twenty odd years and counting now. Controlling territory in Nangarhar, Paktia, Paktika, Qunduz and Qandahar close to their supply lines in the FATA/ Balochistan areas in their own backyards with covert ISI backing is not a mean feat. They have always had home field advantage and hideouts across the porous border with Pakistan. So Afghanistan is much ado about nothing. I bet Trump will push NATO to take on more responsibilities, just like he is trying to do in Iraq, instead of leaving.
My belief is that Afghanistan is mostly about preventing Eurasian Integration which Pepe the Great has been talking and writing about since the early ’00s. The Empire must have “Boots on the Ground” to prevent it and that is why they will never leave voluntarily. The ‘Grunts’, E-3s&4s have to start refusing to go for it to end, but that is highly unlikely.
Shuravi and Mujahideen reconciliation
Return to Afghanistan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zez008NPZhv
Published 2013/07/18
Khabarovsk took part in the action of reconciliation of former enemies in Afghanistan (video)
Afghan war veterans seek information from the mujahideen about the missing soldiers of that war
P.S.: Shuravi (Persian شوروی, šouravī – Soviet, from Arabic. شورى, Shura – council [1]) is the historical
name of Soviet citizens in Afghanistan. It came from the Afghan name of the Soviet civilian and military specialists who worked in large numbers in Afghanistan since 1956.
Former Afghan Mujahideen about Russians and the USSR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEQ997Pbtjs
Published 2018/05/16
“We are waiting for the Russians”
You can change the videos’ subtitles to English