Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan

Russia will promptly react to Afghanistan-related threats, says security official

Afghan government’s loss of popular support fuels Taliban’s rise, expert says

Airbornewolf wrote:

Airbornewolf wrote:

GarryB wrote:
@AirborneWolf, thanks for sharing.... I hope this is good therapy for you too...

War is organised violence that would mean serious jail time if you did it in peace time, but some billionaire wants to make a little more money, so off they go...

Thanks garry and everyone else for the support .

@Garry

Haha well, you know the saying "what has been seen, can not be unseen?" .
I am good, i have no nightmares or anything. Just a few things gives me sometimes an reminder of events there. nothing more.

For me, it is more that almost nobody knows what happened out there.
this war went on for 20 years and people in the west can not even point out Afghanistan on the map.

And hollywood makes one movie "the outpost" and its portrayed like this unique event.
it was not unique, it happened out there on an regular basis.

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FOB Martello 2006. Dutch-owned and manned on the route from Kandahar to Tarin-Kowt, Uruzgan.
They got assaulted from 360 degrees from mountains just like in the movie.
The troops where playing cards when the bullets started flying trough their tents.
Gunners crawled to their YPR APC's to man the 25MM cannons. Without power, they switched to mechanical control and just fired at every muzzle flash they saw.
One mortar operator ran in his underwear under heavy fire to get the ballistic calculator from his tent.
The Dutch AH-64's in Tarin Kowt did not even wait for approval of RC South. They wanted to save their guys on the ground.
The next morning Dead taliban hung in the concertina wiring of their camp everywhere.
The Dutch closed the FOB shortly after this, as the location could not be properly defended.
The Dutch instead turned to their PZH-2000 systems for defense on the route and increasing the size of the platoons heading out.

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Nomad Base 2009, canadian owned.
calling in over RC-south HF NET. requesting CAS (close air support). Their request was not valid
As their own position and enemy position where the same. We also tought they where just making an mistake under pressure.

RC-South requested to check the data, enemy and friendly where identical.
The Canadian officer that was clearly in panic shouted they are one and the same. Taliban where storming Nomad Base after blowing the main gate with an suicide bomber truck.
He did not know where the others where on base, he was in there with his medic and an soldier and locked down the bunker doors.
He heard gunfire but could not tell from who.
their own infantry was out 40 minutes, they had no means of reaching them anymore. suspecting the FM antenna's where shot on the roof.
The only radio that worked was the HF RC-South Radio.
We looked at eachother in horror, but so RC-south as it took them 4 seconds before responding.

French Rafale's where refueling mid-air for the way home. they where empty on the wings.
They where ordered by RC South to stop refueling immidiatly and break off to check out Nomad Base. Tanker was to remain on station untill further notice.
RC South ordered all aircraft in the air curently not tasked in CAS to report weapon loadout.
RC South contacted the infantry's FAC (foward air controller) specialist that contacts and directs CAS aircraft on target.
RC south learned they had received the FM transmission and where heading at maximum urgency back to base.

RC south tried to contact nomad Base, no response.
In our Ops, we looked up the coordinates. they where way beyond artillery range.
even flying our AH-64's could not reach it and have enough fuel to come back.

the Rafale's reported back to RC-south. Main gate was gone, watchtowers lay down, and an crater at the main entrance with fire surrounding it.
multiple non-nato vehicles on base and still on approach to the base. There still seemed to be combat going on.
They saw large dust clouds of the infantry platoon in the distance returning to base.
RC South asked if they had guns. French Rafale replied with "yes,not used".
RC South gave the command to kill anything non-nato around the base. no warning shots.
Rafale's acknowledged, discussing who would take north of the base and the other took south in order not to get in eachother's way.

Eventually the infantry made it back to Nomad base, and all we heard was Nomad Base reporting they secured the Base as their own infantry cleared the base of Hostiles.
Overhead F-15's confirmed the Canadian LAV's where at the command bunker. turrets rotating and dismounted NATO infantry around them.
We heard nothing more after that.

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White compound, Dutch. 2007. it is also known as the battle of Chora.
The base was technically not assaulted directly. but the infantry inside where cut off and surrounded by advancing Taliban.
as the last route of escape was about to close, they called Dutch Command.
They received their final order. Stand and fight untill reinforcements arrived.
The Dutch Millitary could not accept another Srebrenica.
So the dutch troops there where cut off, and stood with their backs against the walls.
I spoke to guys that where there, they written goodbye letters to their fammily's.
buried it deep on base and told Command where it was.
They went on to do what needed to be done.
i know it sounds surrealistic, but it really happened. look it up if you want.

The Dutch PZH-2000's auto-loader worked overtime shelling Taliban.
An 155MM auto-loading giving continuous fire is something to behold.
Intermittent radio traffic of the PZH-2000 receiving and confirming targeting data with the heavy mechanical machinery on the background.
As a shot goes out, everything in the Ops-room shakes and vibrates in a few seconds of interval.

As the drone footage showed Taliban picking up the weapons of the dead Taliban. The Dutch fired on them again.
As the Taliban advanced closer and closer on the Dutch white compound the battle grew fiercer and fiercer.
The Dutch pulled all their forces together in the region for an massive counter-attack.
As they advanced towards the white compound they met heavy resistance. an APC got hit with casualty's, but they kept pressing on into the enemy.
They knew they had to break the Taliban before they stormed the White compound with all the men inside.
Radio traffic frantic with casualty reports, the Dutch AH-64's overhead telling troops to hold on.
That they are coming back in 15 minutes with fresh munitions from TK (tarin kowt, Camp Hadrian of the Dutch nearby)
Dutch F-16's radio in irritation they can not wait, they need clearance to land and need servicing and reload so they can go back.

credit where credit is due, the american airforce when they learned about the battle at Chora at KAF went with bombs to the Dutch and asked them how much they needed for the next run.
Their command did not gave their approval. they just showed up wanting to help. "off duty"
They got their own F-16 technicians to help the Dutch to turn the aircraft around back to take-off as fast they could.

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.....but sure, these are isolated incidents right?.

OEF (operation enduring freedom) and ISAF (international security and assistance force)
sound like these peacefull and calm operations. dish out some Democracy here and there....

We where dealing with full-blown war between spring and fall.
there was nothing peacefull about it.

you control an area peacefully up to spring, and Taliban come back over the border from Pakistan in the hundreds of thousands.
the majority misguided young, violent people with an ideological mindset that are never in short supply. and an minority of highly proffesional and dangerous mercenary's.
People in the west are given this portrayal taliban are just an collection of peasants with AK's. they are not.
they are an network spanning iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Taliban Commanders never go to the same area twice.
They work like western millitary's, they do deployments. gather in the winter months in pakistan/india and go back to the conflict zones with lessons learned.
An bomb-maker or commander that was active in afghanistan and where you just grabbed some intell on. dissapears.
and appears the next year in another country to do his work like Iraq.

And we really create "our" as being NATO, Enemy's most of the time.
Most of these taliban specialists have a background where we either killed their fammily in an collateral-damage strike or the intelligence services took an fammily member from them or the agressive foreign policys we enforce in the middle east.
I will never justify terrorism and the only place for them is on the end of an gun-barrel.
But i feel we also carry responsiblility for their choice in carreers.
you can not bomb an fammily and expect the child to grow up not having serious resentment for the party that killed his own fammily in his own country.
i have been at sites where the americans obliterated entire towns with B-1 strikes and propelled them into low-orbit around the earth.

i really understand if you stumble from the rubble as an shell-shocked zombie looking for your relatives. and grow up with some serious resentment.
An father came up to us, holding his dead child all grey from the dust and asked us to fix it.
Our medic checked and told him the kid was dead, the father just nodded and shuffled away from us.
We all told eachother it really is no wonder they hate the americans and us in extension.
We really felth unworthy of the uniform we wore. ashamed.

going back to the taliban and Afghanistan,
they just execute succesfully what they did with the soviet union. wage war by attrition. Afghanistan is perfect for it.
There is no unity in its population, its above 2000 meters above sea-level. So your airforce does not perform as it should.
its enviroment with its fine dust and sharp rocks is perfectly made to wreck vehicles and aircraft engines.

Taliban is not stupid either, they mostly try to try out the enemy they are dealing with.
they often do some ambushes to see the responses of the units.
They know we rotate forces and they are not quite the same.

For example, one unit has an strong sense of duty and does not shy away from combat.
another unit replacing it, might be very cautious. and does not like to engage unless they are sure they are in complete control.

Taliban knows then to just wait out to the next rotation, and shift their strategy to I.E.D's.
Or go on the offense and engage directly with the enemy.

it happened often.
I have seen "standard" infantry units that where just as disciplined as elite units. Where they took casualties, secured the Medevac site and pressed on with the engagement.
Where they redistributed their command structure and Men and went back to engaging the enemy.

and i have seen "standard" infantry units that where complete cowards.
even when RPG's got shot at their FOB gaurd towers they where too scared to go out and engage the Taliban.
leaving their replacements to pick up the pieces.

I have no words for cowardice. it is simply disgracefull.
History will always remember by your deeds.
you should try to live up to that in your service and duty in my opinion.

I hate being used for the wrong reasons, but i really believe in honor and serving your country.
But not when your own politicians sell you and your allies out.
And paint the russian contractors that help you as the bad guys in media back home.

if not for the Russians, NATO ran out of supplies a long time ago in Afghanistan.

and yes, this is me in the picture.

Cowboy's daughter wrote:The Taliban is not slowing down.

They continue to take ground, Afghan forces continue to surrender to them.

One twitter showed the Taliban executing persons by blowing them up with a land mine.

& they are burning Afghan persons' houses.


https://twitter.com/WorldBreakingN9

Airbornewolf wrote:i really would have given you an good answer, but i do not know what the answer is to fix Afghanistan.

Cowboy's daughter wrote:https://twitter.com/WorldBreakingN9

Sujoy wrote:Hundreds of Taliban fighters are being trained in jihadi group Lashkar e Taiba's camps at Hyderabad, a town in Pakistan’s Punjab province located between Faisalabad and Dera Ismail Khan in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The training was done with the support of the Pakistani military

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/paks-terror-groups-join-taliban-war-india-wary-101625942135382.html