After a week of silence, the EU is I think the first western nation/group to come into this on Canada's side:
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has asked Saudi Arabia to shed light on the arrests and charges facing women human rights activists, saying that the detainees should be granted due process to defend themselves.
Not exactly strong language, but its these arrests that were the subject of the Canadian tweet that started all this. Apparently what the Saudis especially didn't like was a demand for immediate release, so the EU is not crossing that same line with this statement.
A Saudi Arabian not-for-profit organisation has appeared to threaten Canada with a 9/11-style attack after a nasty Twitter spat between the two governments.
The online row began after Canadian officials urged the Saudis to free arrested human rights activists.
But a Saudi Arabian group lashed out, tweeting a graphic which appeared to show a passenger jet heading towards Toronto's towers in a similar fashion to the 9/11 attacks. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi citizens, and the ringleader - Osama bin Laden - came from a well-known Saudi family.
"Sticking one's nose where it doesn't belong!" the message warned.
The hardest-hit area was the southeastern city of Ghazni, where more than 100 police officers and soldiers had been killed by Sunday, a hospital official said, and the insurgents appeared to be in control of most of the strategic city aside from a few important government facilities.
Ninety miles west, in Ghazni Province, the Taliban seized control of the Ajristan District. The elite army commando unit that had been defending the district disappeared for two days, and their superiors were uncertain of their fate. When they found out on Sunday, estimates of the dead ranged from 40 to 100. Twenty-two survivors were carried to safety on donkeys by rescuers who found them lost in the mountains.
In Faryab Province, 250 miles to the northwest, an isolated Afghan National Army base of 100 soldiers lost more than half of its men in a Taliban assault that ended early Sunday morning. The defenders said they did not expect to last another night.
And 275 miles east of the Faryab base, in northern Baghlan Province, at a base at Jangal Bagh on the strategic highway between Pul-i-Kumri and Kunduz, insurgents killed seven policemen and nine soldiers and captured three other soldiers on Saturday.
...
A spokesman for the United States military, Lt. Col. Martin L. O’Donnell, said that 10 American airstrikes had been carried out on Sunday, five on Saturday and one on Friday... Colonel O’Donnell confirmed that some American troops were in Ghazni.
Ghazni has been under threat for the past year at least, and the situation in the province appears to be worsening. The ANSF may push the Taliban out of the city in the coming days as we've seen in previous attacks on Kunduz and Farah, but the fact that the city has been contested for three days and the heavy casualty rate nonetheless implies that the situation is tenuous. Ghazni is a city of 150,000, not too far southwest of Kabul. The province is essentially located between the southern regions where the Taliban is strongest and the region surrounding the capital, so it has some strategic importance.
It seems like the strategy of holding population centers isn't going to go well.
With the ANSF giving up control of the country side, the Taliban has a lot more room to maneuver their insurgents into the cities, and close quarters urban fighting negates US airpower advantage unless the US is willing to commit to mass property damage and civilian deaths.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Holding the population centers isn't a strategy because someone thought "that's how we'll win". Its the strategy because, since the Soviet invasion, it hasn't been possible to hold the countryside indefinitely. This was how in the 80s the President of Afghanistan got the nickname the Mayor of Kabul.
Holding the population centers isn't a strategy because someone thought "that's how we'll win". Its the strategy because, since the Soviet invasion, it hasn't been possible to hold the countryside indefinitely. This was how in the 80s the President of Afghanistan got the nickname the Mayor of Kabul.
It’s also the late war American strategy in Vietnam. In occupation strategy terms, holding the cities comes before holding the bases, which comes before everybody piling into the choppers and fleeing the country.
Holding the population centers isn't a strategy because someone thought "that's how we'll win". Its the strategy because, since the Soviet invasion, it hasn't been possible to hold the countryside indefinitely. This was how in the 80s the President of Afghanistan got the nickname the Mayor of Kabul.
It’s also the late war American strategy in Vietnam. In occupation strategy terms, holding the cities comes before holding the bases, which comes before everybody piling into the choppers and fleeing the country.
Notice the total breakdown in lines of communications and the complete inability to get reinforcements moving.
Holding the cities isn't a strategy so much as it is throwing in the towel.
Today's updates don't sound like the situation is improving, despite the continued weird attempts at reassurance given by the US military. Who do they think they are kidding with all of this "everything is going fine" shit? Half the articles quoting the US's statements then go on to quote Afghan government officials saying "No, the situation is still really bad" and Taliban sources saying "Yeah we just killed like 100 of them and took over that town," as well as neutral civilians who seem to reinforce that general picture. Anyway:
Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan have taken over most of the rural areas in Ghazni Province, even as they continue to battle the government for control of the provincial capital, according to local officials and residents.
While attention in the past four days has focused primarily on the fight for Ghazni city, where the Taliban appear to control most neighborhoods, the insurgents have also taken over at least four more rural districts in the province, mostly without much of a fight. They have also consolidated their authority in other districts, as local government officials fled.
By Monday, only two of the province’s 18 rural districts were confirmed to be completely in government control.
...
Seven of Ghazni’s districts had effectively already been under insurgent control before the current fighting...
The US is directly engaged in the fighting, as it usually is when a provincial capital is on the verge of falling. So far even the air strikes and special forces don't appear to have enabled the ANSF to turn the tide. though they have helped ANSF hold on to important government facilities in the city. The plan is usually "try to hold out until Kabul finally mobilizes enough reinforcements," but with the surrounding region collapsing it is only going to be more difficult to reinforce the city.
Also, I said that Ghazni is a city of 150k earlier (per a 2015 UN report), but NYT says 270k. That's a pretty major difference and I'm not sure which is correct.
edit - the Taliban also claims to have taken a fifth district, NYT says it hasn't been independently confirmed but in my experience the Taliban is usually truthful when saying "[x district] fell", although they often end up retreating later
edit2 - and now that army base in Faryab that was mentioned in the earlier article has fallen. The base was intermittently being attacked for days or weeks prior; yet another demonstration of Kabul being unable to send reinforcements to contested areas.
What a mess. Does anyone even pretend that Afghanistan is winnable (whatever that means) anymore?
Even the US government has largely abandoned the "winnable" narrative, at least in terms of achieving military victory against the Taliban. Now the ostensible plan seems to be to prevent the Taliban from winning in the hopes that a stalemate eventually leads to negotiations and peace talks.
The Taliban is reportedly retreating or has largely retreated from Ghazni city. ANSF reinforcements and US advisors, special forces and air strikes seem to have prevailed again. But to restore anything resembling security to the city, government forces will have to reclaim a lot of towns and rural areas from the Taliban, who control most of the province now.
I hate to post so robotically about this war but at this point I have run out of phrases to convey my horror and sadness regarding Afghanistan.
I mean, Ho Chi Minh was asking for the US to intervene non-militarily in Vietnam for decades, but the US didn't want to step on the toes of France, a fellow imperialist nation.
So, this is the sort of thing that indicates the US is getting on the warpath to Iran. I've previously been skeptical, waiting for more concrete measures than big talk and more sanctions.
Pompeo announced new body, called the Iran Action Group, at a news conference on Thursday. He said it would be led by Brian Hook, the current director of policy planning at the State Department.
So now we've got a State bigwig heading a group whose sole mission is to go after Iran. They say they're not looking for regime change, but instead to turn Iran into a "normal country"-- yeah right. Its not like I now think war is around the corner. But a group like this is a way of organizing efforts between agencies and countries, of funneling more money and of focusing the propaganda effort. Lets now watch what if anything this group actually does.
So when looking at maps of Afghanistan and reading articles about events there, I've often noticed inconsistencies in the names and political boundaries of districts and provinces. Sometimes a district will be listed as being in one province by one source and in the neighboring province by a different source, or a totally different name for the district will be used by some sources. Apparently I'm not the only one confused here: the Afghan government itself has had difficulty determining the answer to this question. Different government agencies have in the past distributed conflicting information on the number of districts and on which provinces they belonged to. In the run up to district elections (now postponed until next year) this question is not just a bureaucratic problem but also one of political influence. Some interesting quotes:
The new, consolidated district list does still have one small flaw and some major gaps. The flaw is that its serial numbers run up to 389, not to 387. One district – Ghormach – turns up twice. It is listed under both Badghis and Faryab provinces, with the remark – in red – that it had been “temporarily transferred” to Faryab.
The US government isn't sure either:
“There are 407 districts in Resolute Support’s dataset and 399 districts in USAID’s third-party monitor’s dataset.” Both differ from the CSO/IDLG list.
District council elections have been constitutionally mandated since 2004 but have yet to occur, in part due to the inability of Afghan groups to decide what districts exist and which provinces they belong to. Complicating things further, both Karzai and Ghani have made unofficial changes and created "temporary districts" at the behest of local factions or powerful clients. Additionally, parliament is supposed to have constitutional authority over district changes, which opens up a whole new layer of factional politics.
This article is part 12 in an ongoing series of AAN pieces covering the Afghan election. If you're interested in Afghan politics these articles are pretty enlightening and interesting, and it's always nice to see English language reporting about something other than the war there.
edit - I love this provision:
A nomad may participate in district council elections of any district as a voter and or a candidate.
LONDON/RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has called off both the domestic and international stock listing of state oil giant Aramco, billed as the biggest such deal in history, four senior industry sources said on Wednesday.
The financial advisors working on the proposed listing have been disbanded, as Saudi Arabia shifts its attention to a proposed acquisition of a "strategic stake" in local petrochemicals maker Saudi Basic Industries Corp (2010.SE) , two of the sources said.
“The decision to call off the IPO was taken some time ago, but no-one can disclose this, so statements are gradually going that way - first delay then calling off,” a Saudi source familiar with the IPO plans said.
...
The proposed listing of the national champion was a central part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reform drive aimed at restructuring the kingdom’s economy and reducing its dependence on oil revenue.
This is gonna be the way of things with most reformist prince stories. Lots of fanfare around proposed bold moves that are later talked about less and less about, and then are quietly shelved.
Later it’ll turn out they’re not gonna build that new city that pioneers a new way of living after all.
LONDON/RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has called off both the domestic and international stock listing of state oil giant Aramco, billed as the biggest such deal in history, four senior industry sources said on Wednesday.
The financial advisors working on the proposed listing have been disbanded, as Saudi Arabia shifts its attention to a proposed acquisition of a "strategic stake" in local petrochemicals maker Saudi Basic Industries Corp (2010.SE) , two of the sources said.
“The decision to call off the IPO was taken some time ago, but no-one can disclose this, so statements are gradually going that way - first delay then calling off,” a Saudi source familiar with the IPO plans said.
...
The proposed listing of the national champion was a central part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reform drive aimed at restructuring the kingdom’s economy and reducing its dependence on oil revenue.
This is gonna be the way of things with most reformist prince stories. Lots of fanfare around proposed bold moves that are later talked about less and less about, and then are quietly shelved.
Later it’ll turn out they’re not gonna build that new city that pioneers a new way of living after all.
I don't believe in 2030 either. I've not seen anything that suggests KSA is capable of pulling off economic reforms like this.
I think the listing of Aramco will tell us a lot. That will be huge, and public, and quantifiable. If that goes very well then I'll raise my expectations. If it doesn't do well or if the listing doesn't materialize, well there goes a foundational element of the plan right there.
LWJ has an article out contrasting Pentagon statements to the press regarding Afghanistan with what is actually happening in the country. A lot of it is a matter of interpretation - General Nicholson phrasing things to sound as reassuring as possible and LWJ taking the opposite tack. But the last part is interesting:
“I want to highlight a recent success since we last talked, when over 250 ISIS-K fighters and their family members surrendered to the Afghan security forces in Jowzjan, which eliminated one of the three pockets of ISIS in Afghanistan,” Nicholson claimed.
As LWJ points out, this is a really weird thing to claim - the Talibandefeated ISKP (or 'ISIS-K' as the general apparently calls them) in Jowzjan, in a major battle that resulted in the Afghan government controversially rescuing the surrendering remnants of ISKP fighters (who preferred to surrender to the government than to the Taliban). "We failed to oust these ISIS guys but the Taliban, our main foe, defeated them" is a weird success to want to highlight, but I suppose he was banking on the press not already having read of the event.
Throughout the days of battle for Ghazni city, the US's statements were noticeably divergent from what literally everyone else was reporting/videotaping in the city. NYT, whose reporting generally contradicted the US's narrative, had this to say in a recent follow-up article :
Last week supporters of the Afghan government criticized reporting by The New York Times on the conflict, with some calling it The Taliban Times and questioning the casualty counts.
"The Taliban Times," because they're not uncritically quoting military press statements and are actually trying to figure out what's going on. The US military's reporting on district control has also been misleading: by defining district centers as having "moved" when their officials flee the district toward provincial capitals, districts that are entirely under Taliban control are instead listed as contested. This is part of why the US's data for Afghan territorial control show the Taliban as being far weaker than they are in other estimates.
Anyway, the major divergence from reality in Pentagon statements regarding Afghanistan is sort of upsetting, and reduces their credibility for little gain. I mean does DoD think that they're going to convince Americans that the Afghanistan war is going well?
LWJ has an article out contrasting Pentagon statements to the press regarding Afghanistan with what is actually happening in the country. A lot of it is a matter of interpretation - General Nicholson phrasing things to sound as reassuring as possible and LWJ taking the opposite tack. But the last part is interesting:
“I want to highlight a recent success since we last talked, when over 250 ISIS-K fighters and their family members surrendered to the Afghan security forces in Jowzjan, which eliminated one of the three pockets of ISIS in Afghanistan,” Nicholson claimed.
As LWJ points out, this is a really weird thing to claim - the Talibandefeated ISKP (or 'ISIS-K' as the general apparently calls them) in Jowzjan, in a major battle that resulted in the Afghan government controversially rescuing the surrendering remnants of ISKP fighters (who preferred to surrender to the government than to the Taliban). "We failed to oust these ISIS guys but the Taliban, our main foe, defeated them" is a weird success to want to highlight, but I suppose he was banking on the press not already having read of the event.
Throughout the days of battle for Ghazni city, the US's statements were noticeably divergent from what literally everyone else was reporting/videotaping in the city. NYT, whose reporting generally contradicted the US's narrative, had this to say in a recent follow-up article :
Last week supporters of the Afghan government criticized reporting by The New York Times on the conflict, with some calling it The Taliban Times and questioning the casualty counts.
"The Taliban Times," because they're not uncritically quoting military press statements and are actually trying to figure out what's going on. The US military's reporting on district control has also been misleading: by defining district centers as having "moved" when their officials flee the district toward provincial capitals, districts that are entirely under Taliban control are instead listed as contested. This is part of why the US's data for Afghan territorial control show the Taliban as being far weaker than they are in other estimates.
Anyway, the major divergence from reality in Pentagon statements regarding Afghanistan is sort of upsetting, and reduces their credibility for little gain. I mean does DoD think that they're going to convince Americans that the Afghanistan war is going well?
Yes.
It's not even that hard. No one is really paying close attention.
LWJ has an article out contrasting Pentagon statements to the press regarding Afghanistan with what is actually happening in the country. A lot of it is a matter of interpretation - General Nicholson phrasing things to sound as reassuring as possible and LWJ taking the opposite tack. But the last part is interesting:
“I want to highlight a recent success since we last talked, when over 250 ISIS-K fighters and their family members surrendered to the Afghan security forces in Jowzjan, which eliminated one of the three pockets of ISIS in Afghanistan,” Nicholson claimed.
As LWJ points out, this is a really weird thing to claim - the Talibandefeated ISKP (or 'ISIS-K' as the general apparently calls them) in Jowzjan, in a major battle that resulted in the Afghan government controversially rescuing the surrendering remnants of ISKP fighters (who preferred to surrender to the government than to the Taliban). "We failed to oust these ISIS guys but the Taliban, our main foe, defeated them" is a weird success to want to highlight, but I suppose he was banking on the press not already having read of the event.
Throughout the days of battle for Ghazni city, the US's statements were noticeably divergent from what literally everyone else was reporting/videotaping in the city. NYT, whose reporting generally contradicted the US's narrative, had this to say in a recent follow-up article :
Last week supporters of the Afghan government criticized reporting by The New York Times on the conflict, with some calling it The Taliban Times and questioning the casualty counts.
"The Taliban Times," because they're not uncritically quoting military press statements and are actually trying to figure out what's going on. The US military's reporting on district control has also been misleading: by defining district centers as having "moved" when their officials flee the district toward provincial capitals, districts that are entirely under Taliban control are instead listed as contested. This is part of why the US's data for Afghan territorial control show the Taliban as being far weaker than they are in other estimates.
Anyway, the major divergence from reality in Pentagon statements regarding Afghanistan is sort of upsetting, and reduces their credibility for little gain. I mean does DoD think that they're going to convince Americans that the Afghanistan war is going well?
Yes.
It's not even that hard. No one is really paying close attention.
I agree that Americans aren't paying close attention to Afghanistan, but at this point I sort of feel like "Afghanistan isn't going well" has been the headline for so long that it has become an almost instinctive truth among most people. People who pay no attention probably won't hear the general's statement, and those that do will see it framed by contradicting statements from everyone else. Maybe I'm oversimplifying a bit but it seems like pretty clumsy PR to me.
I've been wondering if Taliban casualties are actually a propaganda win for them. Isn't it part of the culture, like most warrior cultures, that dying in combat is an honorable and righteous thing? If thousands of their fighters died in an attack, they can say "we have had thousands of martyrs for Allah against the great Satan."
As long as they maintain their organizational cohesion, the propaganda victory means they just keep winning over more of the population and keep drawing eager young men, ready to die for a righteous cause.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
LWJ has an article out contrasting Pentagon statements to the press regarding Afghanistan with what is actually happening in the country. A lot of it is a matter of interpretation - General Nicholson phrasing things to sound as reassuring as possible and LWJ taking the opposite tack. But the last part is interesting:
“I want to highlight a recent success since we last talked, when over 250 ISIS-K fighters and their family members surrendered to the Afghan security forces in Jowzjan, which eliminated one of the three pockets of ISIS in Afghanistan,” Nicholson claimed.
As LWJ points out, this is a really weird thing to claim - the Talibandefeated ISKP (or 'ISIS-K' as the general apparently calls them) in Jowzjan, in a major battle that resulted in the Afghan government controversially rescuing the surrendering remnants of ISKP fighters (who preferred to surrender to the government than to the Taliban). "We failed to oust these ISIS guys but the Taliban, our main foe, defeated them" is a weird success to want to highlight, but I suppose he was banking on the press not already having read of the event.
Throughout the days of battle for Ghazni city, the US's statements were noticeably divergent from what literally everyone else was reporting/videotaping in the city. NYT, whose reporting generally contradicted the US's narrative, had this to say in a recent follow-up article :
Last week supporters of the Afghan government criticized reporting by The New York Times on the conflict, with some calling it The Taliban Times and questioning the casualty counts.
"The Taliban Times," because they're not uncritically quoting military press statements and are actually trying to figure out what's going on. The US military's reporting on district control has also been misleading: by defining district centers as having "moved" when their officials flee the district toward provincial capitals, districts that are entirely under Taliban control are instead listed as contested. This is part of why the US's data for Afghan territorial control show the Taliban as being far weaker than they are in other estimates.
Anyway, the major divergence from reality in Pentagon statements regarding Afghanistan is sort of upsetting, and reduces their credibility for little gain. I mean does DoD think that they're going to convince Americans that the Afghanistan war is going well?
Yes.
It's not even that hard. No one is really paying close attention.
I agree that Americans aren't paying close attention to Afghanistan, but at this point I sort of feel like "Afghanistan isn't going well" has been the headline for so long that it has become an almost instinctive truth among most people. People who pay no attention probably won't hear the general's statement, and those that do will see it framed by contradicting statements from everyone else. Maybe I'm oversimplifying a bit but it seems like pretty clumsy PR to me.
I think the general concensus is more that Afghanistan is just kinda stalled. I don't think the extent to which it's going to shit is really in the public consciousness. It's not Iraq in late Bush Years or something like that.
And it doesn't matter if they pay attention to the general, they still have to spin their narrative and frankly it will be the main news more then any other news about Afghanistan and I think you are kidding yourself if you think it's gonna be framed with contradicting statements. That would imply there will be news about Afghanistan making any real headlines more then direct statements from the government. Which isn't happening already and is why the public doesn't know much about the situation.
I think you are paying too close attention to Afghanistan to put yourself in the headspace this PR is after.
What does ISIS have to do with Afghanistan? The only thing that the Taliban and ISIS have in common are that they're ultra-conservative Islamist factions, and ISIS has about zero chance of making progress in Afghanistan given the local sentiments.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
LWJ has an article out contrasting Pentagon statements to the press regarding Afghanistan with what is actually happening in the country. A lot of it is a matter of interpretation - General Nicholson phrasing things to sound as reassuring as possible and LWJ taking the opposite tack. But the last part is interesting:
“I want to highlight a recent success since we last talked, when over 250 ISIS-K fighters and their family members surrendered to the Afghan security forces in Jowzjan, which eliminated one of the three pockets of ISIS in Afghanistan,” Nicholson claimed.
As LWJ points out, this is a really weird thing to claim - the Talibandefeated ISKP (or 'ISIS-K' as the general apparently calls them) in Jowzjan, in a major battle that resulted in the Afghan government controversially rescuing the surrendering remnants of ISKP fighters (who preferred to surrender to the government than to the Taliban). "We failed to oust these ISIS guys but the Taliban, our main foe, defeated them" is a weird success to want to highlight, but I suppose he was banking on the press not already having read of the event.
Throughout the days of battle for Ghazni city, the US's statements were noticeably divergent from what literally everyone else was reporting/videotaping in the city. NYT, whose reporting generally contradicted the US's narrative, had this to say in a recent follow-up article :
Last week supporters of the Afghan government criticized reporting by The New York Times on the conflict, with some calling it The Taliban Times and questioning the casualty counts.
"The Taliban Times," because they're not uncritically quoting military press statements and are actually trying to figure out what's going on. The US military's reporting on district control has also been misleading: by defining district centers as having "moved" when their officials flee the district toward provincial capitals, districts that are entirely under Taliban control are instead listed as contested. This is part of why the US's data for Afghan territorial control show the Taliban as being far weaker than they are in other estimates.
Anyway, the major divergence from reality in Pentagon statements regarding Afghanistan is sort of upsetting, and reduces their credibility for little gain. I mean does DoD think that they're going to convince Americans that the Afghanistan war is going well?
Yes.
It's not even that hard. No one is really paying close attention.
I agree that Americans aren't paying close attention to Afghanistan, but at this point I sort of feel like "Afghanistan isn't going well" has been the headline for so long that it has become an almost instinctive truth among most people. People who pay no attention probably won't hear the general's statement, and those that do will see it framed by contradicting statements from everyone else. Maybe I'm oversimplifying a bit but it seems like pretty clumsy PR to me.
I think the general concensus is more that Afghanistan is just kinda stalled. I don't think the extent to which it's going to shit is really in the public consciousness. It's not Iraq in late Bush Years or something like that.
And it doesn't matter if they pay attention to the general, they still have to spin their narrative and frankly it will be the main news more then any other news about Afghanistan and I think you are kidding yourself if you think it's gonna be framed with contradicting statements. That would imply there will be news about Afghanistan making any real headlines more then direct statements from the government. Which isn't happening already and is why the public doesn't know much about the situation.
I think you are paying too close attention to Afghanistan to put yourself in the headspace this PR is after.
I agree. I think people think Afghanistan is sort of a fuck up, ongoing problems etc. I don't think people are aware that the Taliban are slowly winning the war for control of the country.
Russian propaganda websites and conservative news outlets, what's the difference?
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Russian propaganda websites and conservative news outlets, what's the difference?
You'd have to ask the Russian propaganda websites impersonating liberal news outlets.
Or, conversely, certain liberal news sites impersonating American propaganda outlets. They can weigh in on this too, amid shocking revelations North Korea borders Russia. Seriously, did you guys know this?
Moscow has apparently rebuffed Ankara's proposal to "separate opposition groups from terrorists" in the Idlib holdout before the upcoming Syrian governmental offensive. Russian FM Lavrov suggested to his Turkish counterpart (Cavusoglu, a founding member of the AKP) that the Idlib forces have run out Syrian and Russian patience, having used their proximity to target government positions. Russia, Iran, and others continue to offer to mediate a cease-fire for Idlib and other regions, but this seems unlikely to manifest. Idlib is increasingly characterized as the "last Rebel holdout" in Syria, with John Bolton warning of American retaliation if Damascus should use chemical weapons in the assault. Ankara has suggested any government assault will be an inevitable "human catastrophe".
What does ISIS have to do with Afghanistan? The only thing that the Taliban and ISIS have in common are that they're ultra-conservative Islamist factions, and ISIS has about zero chance of making progress in Afghanistan given the local sentiments.
ISKP (Islamic State Khorasan Province) has a couple tiny pockets of presence or control in Afghanistan (one less since the Taliban vs. ISKP battle in Jowzjan). Their main base is in eastern Nangarhar Province, near the porous border with one of Pakistan's most troubled regions. They do seem to be having difficulty expanding - partly because the US sometimes seems to prioritize them as targets and because they must fight both the Afghan government and the Taliban (edit - and also because nearly everyone in Afghanistan hates them) - but they've nonetheless managed a fairly steady stream of mass-casualty attacks. As in other countries, a sectarian genocide against the Shia Muslim minority in Afghanistan appears to be their main goal. They've repeatedly bombed markets and mosques and residential areas in Shia towns and neighborhoods, and have carried out massacres in Shia villages. While Afghanistan has had episodes of ethnic cleansing in the past, ISKP has nonetheless brought the level of brutality of the war to a whole new level - the Taliban and the Afghan government both do plenty of fucked up shit too, but ISKP's total embrace of terror and genocide is uniquely horrifying in Afghanistan, as it is everywhere else IS appears. They regularly sneak suicide bombers into Kabul and inflict massive casualties on a variety of targets. The thing that sucks about a group like this is that through their seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers they can cause a great deal of damage to a society even if their manpower, armaments, public support, and territorial control are all negligible.
Their members vary in nationality, with a mix of Pakistani, Afghan, and Central Asian fighters being most dominant. Probably some Arabs too. But their leadership, at least in Nangarhar, appears to be largely Pakistani - in a way this IS branch is an evolution or rebranding of parts of the fractured Pakistani Taliban (TTP or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known for being violently anti-Shia) organizations. "Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan" had at one point pledged allegiance to them, but their leader later recanted and apologized, and the group split between those who followed their leader and those who stayed in ISKP.
So, the ISIS guys who fought in Iraq and Syria don't have a lot to do with the situation in Afghanistan, but their open-source ideological and organizational blueprint has nonetheless had an effect. This post was made under the assumption that you actually wanted an answer to the first part of your post.
US President Donald Trump has ordered more than $200m (£155m) in economic aid which was to be allocated to Gaza and the West Bank be redirected elsewhere.
I question the wisdom of laying on extra economic pressure. If the PA gets overthrown then Hamas or a similar group could take charge and the US would certainly not like that.
US President Donald Trump has ordered more than $200m (£155m) in economic aid which was to be allocated to Gaza and the West Bank be redirected elsewhere.
I question the wisdom of laying on extra economic pressure. If the PA gets overthrown then Hamas or a similar group could take charge and the US would certainly not like that.
Posts
Not exactly strong language, but its these arrests that were the subject of the Canadian tweet that started all this. Apparently what the Saudis especially didn't like was a demand for immediate release, so the EU is not crossing that same line with this statement.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-canada-eu/eu-seeks-details-from-saudi-arabia-on-women-human-rights-arrests-amid-canada-row-idUSKBN1KW0JX
Showing the world the truth about their ideology... cowards (for threatening to attack civilians).
Ghazni has been under threat for the past year at least, and the situation in the province appears to be worsening. The ANSF may push the Taliban out of the city in the coming days as we've seen in previous attacks on Kunduz and Farah, but the fact that the city has been contested for three days and the heavy casualty rate nonetheless implies that the situation is tenuous. Ghazni is a city of 150,000, not too far southwest of Kabul. The province is essentially located between the southern regions where the Taliban is strongest and the region surrounding the capital, so it has some strategic importance.
With the ANSF giving up control of the country side, the Taliban has a lot more room to maneuver their insurgents into the cities, and close quarters urban fighting negates US airpower advantage unless the US is willing to commit to mass property damage and civilian deaths.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
It’s also the late war American strategy in Vietnam. In occupation strategy terms, holding the cities comes before holding the bases, which comes before everybody piling into the choppers and fleeing the country.
Notice the total breakdown in lines of communications and the complete inability to get reinforcements moving.
Holding the cities isn't a strategy so much as it is throwing in the towel.
As Taliban Fight for Ghazni City in Afghanistan, Nearby Districts Fall
The US is directly engaged in the fighting, as it usually is when a provincial capital is on the verge of falling. So far even the air strikes and special forces don't appear to have enabled the ANSF to turn the tide. though they have helped ANSF hold on to important government facilities in the city. The plan is usually "try to hold out until Kabul finally mobilizes enough reinforcements," but with the surrounding region collapsing it is only going to be more difficult to reinforce the city.
Also, I said that Ghazni is a city of 150k earlier (per a 2015 UN report), but NYT says 270k. That's a pretty major difference and I'm not sure which is correct.
edit - the Taliban also claims to have taken a fifth district, NYT says it hasn't been independently confirmed but in my experience the Taliban is usually truthful when saying "[x district] fell", although they often end up retreating later
edit2 - and now that army base in Faryab that was mentioned in the earlier article has fallen. The base was intermittently being attacked for days or weeks prior; yet another demonstration of Kabul being unable to send reinforcements to contested areas.
Afghanistan? What's that? Never heard of the place and certainly not of any sort of conflict going on there.
The Taliban is reportedly retreating or has largely retreated from Ghazni city. ANSF reinforcements and US advisors, special forces and air strikes seem to have prevailed again. But to restore anything resembling security to the city, government forces will have to reclaim a lot of towns and rural areas from the Taliban, who control most of the province now.
I hate to post so robotically about this war but at this point I have run out of phrases to convey my horror and sadness regarding Afghanistan.
If it means dropping MOABs, then yes.
Conservatives?
Seeing how the US (under Trump, no less) has entered into direct negotiations with the Taliban, I'm going to say no, nobody believes that anymore.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
They're special...but not that special. You've probably heard of these places, Libya and Syria.
On a brief detour from the topic of Afghanistan, here's a conservative Turkish paper losing its shit over Rojava's negotiations with the Syrian government in Damascus. It's (perhaps) worth reading because of the shift in narrative from an expectation of acceptance from Damascus of the "inevitability" of Operations 'Euphrates Shield' and 'Olive Branch'. There's been a lot of coverage in particular of Amnesty International's increased criticism of the Turkish occupation. There is plenty of expected suspicion of government intentions from Kurdish media, and insistence that Kurdish forces won't be helping the retaking of Idlib, and it's pretty easy to see that many government authorities don't see the Kurds as reliable either. On the other side of the triangle, F.S.A.-aligned antigovernment authorities are cracking down on those promoting "reconciliation" in territory they still control, perhaps strengthened by the viability of the F.S.A. with the Turkish military.
As Idlib assault winds up, we'll see which messaging war wins out I guess.
So now we've got a State bigwig heading a group whose sole mission is to go after Iran. They say they're not looking for regime change, but instead to turn Iran into a "normal country"-- yeah right. Its not like I now think war is around the corner. But a group like this is a way of organizing efforts between agencies and countries, of funneling more money and of focusing the propaganda effort. Lets now watch what if anything this group actually does.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/16/pompeo-creates-new-group-to-coordinate-punitive-measures-against-iran-brian-hook-policy-planning-special-representative-tehran-middle-east-nuclear-deal-sanctions-trump/
The US government isn't sure either:
District council elections have been constitutionally mandated since 2004 but have yet to occur, in part due to the inability of Afghan groups to decide what districts exist and which provinces they belong to. Complicating things further, both Karzai and Ghani have made unofficial changes and created "temporary districts" at the behest of local factions or powerful clients. Additionally, parliament is supposed to have constitutional authority over district changes, which opens up a whole new layer of factional politics.
This article is part 12 in an ongoing series of AAN pieces covering the Afghan election. If you're interested in Afghan politics these articles are pretty enlightening and interesting, and it's always nice to see English language reporting about something other than the war there.
edit - I love this provision:
This is gonna be the way of things with most reformist prince stories. Lots of fanfare around proposed bold moves that are later talked about less and less about, and then are quietly shelved.
Later it’ll turn out they’re not gonna build that new city that pioneers a new way of living after all.
Yup, I stand by my take from 10 months ago.
As LWJ points out, this is a really weird thing to claim - the Taliban defeated ISKP (or 'ISIS-K' as the general apparently calls them) in Jowzjan, in a major battle that resulted in the Afghan government controversially rescuing the surrendering remnants of ISKP fighters (who preferred to surrender to the government than to the Taliban). "We failed to oust these ISIS guys but the Taliban, our main foe, defeated them" is a weird success to want to highlight, but I suppose he was banking on the press not already having read of the event.
Throughout the days of battle for Ghazni city, the US's statements were noticeably divergent from what literally everyone else was reporting/videotaping in the city. NYT, whose reporting generally contradicted the US's narrative, had this to say in a recent follow-up article :
"The Taliban Times," because they're not uncritically quoting military press statements and are actually trying to figure out what's going on. The US military's reporting on district control has also been misleading: by defining district centers as having "moved" when their officials flee the district toward provincial capitals, districts that are entirely under Taliban control are instead listed as contested. This is part of why the US's data for Afghan territorial control show the Taliban as being far weaker than they are in other estimates.
Anyway, the major divergence from reality in Pentagon statements regarding Afghanistan is sort of upsetting, and reduces their credibility for little gain. I mean does DoD think that they're going to convince Americans that the Afghanistan war is going well?
Yes.
It's not even that hard. No one is really paying close attention.
As long as they maintain their organizational cohesion, the propaganda victory means they just keep winning over more of the population and keep drawing eager young men, ready to die for a righteous cause.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I think the general concensus is more that Afghanistan is just kinda stalled. I don't think the extent to which it's going to shit is really in the public consciousness. It's not Iraq in late Bush Years or something like that.
And it doesn't matter if they pay attention to the general, they still have to spin their narrative and frankly it will be the main news more then any other news about Afghanistan and I think you are kidding yourself if you think it's gonna be framed with contradicting statements. That would imply there will be news about Afghanistan making any real headlines more then direct statements from the government. Which isn't happening already and is why the public doesn't know much about the situation.
I think you are paying too close attention to Afghanistan to put yourself in the headspace this PR is after.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I agree. I think people think Afghanistan is sort of a fuck up, ongoing problems etc. I don't think people are aware that the Taliban are slowly winning the war for control of the country.
(Amid Microsoft's reporting of Russian propaganda websites impersonating conservative news outlets.)
Russian propaganda websites and conservative news outlets, what's the difference?
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
You'd have to ask the Russian propaganda websites impersonating liberal news outlets.
Or, conversely, certain liberal news sites impersonating American propaganda outlets. They can weigh in on this too, amid shocking revelations North Korea borders Russia. Seriously, did you guys know this?
Moscow has apparently rebuffed Ankara's proposal to "separate opposition groups from terrorists" in the Idlib holdout before the upcoming Syrian governmental offensive. Russian FM Lavrov suggested to his Turkish counterpart (Cavusoglu, a founding member of the AKP) that the Idlib forces have run out Syrian and Russian patience, having used their proximity to target government positions. Russia, Iran, and others continue to offer to mediate a cease-fire for Idlib and other regions, but this seems unlikely to manifest. Idlib is increasingly characterized as the "last Rebel holdout" in Syria, with John Bolton warning of American retaliation if Damascus should use chemical weapons in the assault. Ankara has suggested any government assault will be an inevitable "human catastrophe".
ISKP (Islamic State Khorasan Province) has a couple tiny pockets of presence or control in Afghanistan (one less since the Taliban vs. ISKP battle in Jowzjan). Their main base is in eastern Nangarhar Province, near the porous border with one of Pakistan's most troubled regions. They do seem to be having difficulty expanding - partly because the US sometimes seems to prioritize them as targets and because they must fight both the Afghan government and the Taliban (edit - and also because nearly everyone in Afghanistan hates them) - but they've nonetheless managed a fairly steady stream of mass-casualty attacks. As in other countries, a sectarian genocide against the Shia Muslim minority in Afghanistan appears to be their main goal. They've repeatedly bombed markets and mosques and residential areas in Shia towns and neighborhoods, and have carried out massacres in Shia villages. While Afghanistan has had episodes of ethnic cleansing in the past, ISKP has nonetheless brought the level of brutality of the war to a whole new level - the Taliban and the Afghan government both do plenty of fucked up shit too, but ISKP's total embrace of terror and genocide is uniquely horrifying in Afghanistan, as it is everywhere else IS appears. They regularly sneak suicide bombers into Kabul and inflict massive casualties on a variety of targets. The thing that sucks about a group like this is that through their seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers they can cause a great deal of damage to a society even if their manpower, armaments, public support, and territorial control are all negligible.
Their members vary in nationality, with a mix of Pakistani, Afghan, and Central Asian fighters being most dominant. Probably some Arabs too. But their leadership, at least in Nangarhar, appears to be largely Pakistani - in a way this IS branch is an evolution or rebranding of parts of the fractured Pakistani Taliban (TTP or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known for being violently anti-Shia) organizations. "Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan" had at one point pledged allegiance to them, but their leader later recanted and apologized, and the group split between those who followed their leader and those who stayed in ISKP.
So, the ISIS guys who fought in Iraq and Syria don't have a lot to do with the situation in Afghanistan, but their open-source ideological and organizational blueprint has nonetheless had an effect. This post was made under the assumption that you actually wanted an answer to the first part of your post.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45303989
I question the wisdom of laying on extra economic pressure. If the PA gets overthrown then Hamas or a similar group could take charge and the US would certainly not like that.
Trump probably thinks Hamas is in charge already.
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