And so it begins, U.S. troops start to withdraw from Afghanistan

[devil21]

That highlighted quote sounds too incredible, did the famous advisor of numerous Presidents really say that...

I think the results speak for themselves as to whether that is his philosophy and the likelihood of the quote being genuine. Talmudists like Kissinger certainly believe such things, regarding the utility of g-word.

[Swordsmyth]

As the US accelerates its withdrawal from Afghanistan, China is worried about the instability to come.
In May, after a series of explosions in Kabul that killed 60 people including several schoolgirls, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said America’s “abrupt” withdrawal was a factor in the violence.
Hua said the US needed to withdraw its troops “in a responsible manner” that avoids “inflicting more turmoil and suffering on the Afghan people.”
What she didn’t say, however, is what China fears the most about America’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan: a revival of the fundamentalist East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and its cross-border agitation and terrorism in China’s volatile Xinjiang region.
The ETIM, also known as the Turkistan Islamic Movement, is an ethnic Uighur militant group active in Afghanistan that has long sought to achieve independence for Xinjiang, which it envisions as a future “East Turkestan.”

The ETIM is also active in Syria’s civil war, where battle-hardened fighters have largely been grouped in Idlib and other northern regions. The United Nations has categorized the group as a “terror organization” since 2002.
Curiously, the former Donald Trump administration removed ETIM from America’s terror list in November 2020, saying at the time there was “no credible evidence” that ETIM still exists.
As the Taliban surges north in the wake of America’s troop withdrawal, it seems likely only a matter of time before the militant group overruns Kabul and its US-backed government, and establishes in its place a new “Islamic Emirate”, as it has repeatedly said it aims to do.


A Taliban takeover, analysts and observers believe, will open new space for groups like ETIM to recruit and radicalize Uighur youth, many of whom are already reportedly deeply disaffected by reports of Beijing’s Uighur “vocational camps” and authoritarian control of Muslim religious practices in Xinjiang.
For Beijing, however, the concern is not merely the spread of radical ideas among Uighur Muslims in neighboring Afghanistan. Rather, it is the threat a resurgence of extremism could pose to its strategic Belt and Road Initiative in the region, not least in Pakistan.

Four of China’s six so-called Silk Road networks, including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), emanate from or pass through Xinjiang. Those roads aim to connect China with Russia, Central, Southern and Western Asia, reaching the Mediterranean Sea.
Specifically, Silk Road networks other than the CPEC that run through Xinjiang include the China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor, the New Eurasia Land Bridge Economic Corridor and the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor.

More at: https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/the-te...ears-the-most/

[enhanced_deficit]

Afghan pullout has US spies reorienting in terrorism fight


AP July 3, 2021

The ETIM, also known as the Turkistan Islamic Movement, is an ethnic Uighur militant group active in Afghanistan that has long sought to achieve independence for Xinjiang, which it envisions as a future “East Turkestan.”

The ETIM is also active in Syria’s civil war, where battle-hardened fighters have largely been grouped in Idlib and other northern regions. The United Nations has categorized the group as a “terror organization” since 2002.
Curiously, the former Donald Trump administration removed ETIM from America’s terror list in November 2020, saying at the time there was “no credible evidence” that ETIM still exists.
As the Taliban surges north in the wake of America’s troop withdrawal, it seems likely only a matter of time before the militant group overruns Kabul and its US-backed government, and establishes in its place a new “Islamic Emirate”, as it has repeatedly said it aims to do.

More at: https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/the-te...ears-the-most/

EM.
Did Trump make Reaganesque move there?



On a related note, that AT mag does not seem to have very optimistic view of things there:

https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/americ...t-afghanistan/

American ghosts of war will haunt Afghanistan

The wild men who fought America's 'forever war' will not and should not be forgotten as a new era of Afghan conflict dawns
by Richard S Ehrlich July 4, 2021

American soldiers on the tarmac of the Bargam airbase. - All US and NATO troops have left the facility, signalling the complete withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan by September 11 this year. Photo: AFP / Jimin Lai

When the US invasion of Afghanistan secured Bagram Air Base in January 2002, a Special Operations officer said he motivated newly arrived 82nd Airborne Division troops with a human skull.
A human skull, given to him by fellow soldiers who purchased it legally online, was mounted in his office at MacDill Air Force Base’s Special Operations Command headquarters in Florida wearing a 82^nd Airborne Division’s beret, he said.
“I’m a skull worshipper,” Special Operations Command Sergeant-Major Raymond Cordell said in an interview at the time in Bagram Air Base, 67 kilometers north of Kabul.
“Young soldiers just tend to relate to things like that. That’s just the nature of people who join the army and do this for a living,” Cordell said.
“As a leader, you try to hone out those things that different soldiers are attracted to. For me, it has always worked to be skulls.”

All the motivation, firepower, human lives, cash, diplomacy, torture and slogans which the US expended during its 20-year-long war in Afghanistan are now gone with the departure of US forces from Bagram Air Base.
The US-backed Afghan government received control of Bagram this weekend. Looters quickly stripped the base of computers and equipment.

An irony, obvious even then:
Cordell’s 82nd Airborne and other arriving US troops initially slept in Bagram’s Soviet-era beds, among Cyrillic graffiti scrawled on the barracks’ walls, near wrecked and abandoned Soviet MiG-21 warplanes on the bomb-gouged runway.

Today, the graffiti on Bagram’s walls was written by Americans whose dream – of creating a functioning democracy in control of Afghanistan – remained a bloody and expensive nightmare from the beginning.
Bounty hunter Jonathan Keith “Jack” Idema was among the ill-fated Americans who tried and failed in Afghanistan.
Idema was arrested in Kabul, put on trial, convicted and imprisoned in Afghanistan for kidnapping and torturing Afghans.
Idema had become notorious in Kabul for threatening to assassinate American journalists, international aid workers, Afghan mujahideen and anyone else who triggered his volatile temper.
Idema arrived as a civilian in Afghanistan, a self-declared bounty hunter, alongside U.S. invasion forces in 2001.

During the first few years of war, Idema strutted around Kabul dressed in military fatigues and combat boots, with a Russian AK-47 assault rifle shouldered across his back and a holstered Glock pistol.
A handful of paid, armed Afghans formed his posse.


Jack Idema died of Aids-related complications in Mexico. Photo: Agencies

“That’s what I love about Afghanistan, if you tell someone you are going to kill them, they $#@!ing believe you,” Idema said during our interviews in December 2001 and January 2002 in Kabul.
“If I’m in New York and I tell someone I’m going to kill them, they say, ‘Yeah motherfucker? Well, I’m going to kill you first.’ But not Afghanistan. Here they believe you.”
Idema’s kill fantasies ended in May 2004.

“US citizen Jonathan, Keith, or Jack Idema has allegedly represented himself as an American government and/or military official, and the public should be aware that Idema does not represent the American government and we do not employ him,” NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul announced.
Afghan security forces arrested Idema, put him and six colleagues on trial, and imprisoned them in
Afghanistan’s dilapidated Pul-e-Charkhi Prison on Kabul’s outskirts, which also held suspected Taliban and al Qaeda collaborators.
US-installed Afghan President Hamid Karzai pardoned Idema in 2007 in a general amnesty after Idema served three years in Pul-e-Charkhi.
Fast-forward to a seemingly bleak future, when US and international militaries vanish.
If, as widely expected, the Taliban return to power, their Islamist victory may again result in escalating the Muslim insurgency in India’s volatile Kashmir state.

In 1992, when Afghan mujahideen achieved victory and seized Kabul, the most powerful Muslim guerrilla leader in India’s Kashmir was Syed Salludin, supreme commander of Hezb-ul Mujahideen, or Party of Holy Warriors.
Black-bearded Salludin’s 15,000-strong mujahideen were the deadliest and largest of several guerrilla groups fighting against what they cursed as the “Indian occupation forces” in Kashmir.
“If someone does a theft, his hand must be cut off, so society can be saved,” Salludin said in an interview at the time in a safe house in Sopore, Kashmir.
Some of Salludin’s rebels had visited Afghanistan which was admired by Islamist guerrillas around the world as the best and most violent campus available to learn how to fight.
Afghanistan offered at that time – and still does now with Kabul’s limited control of the countryside – sophisticated weapons training with other Islamist guerrillas and proven, experimental, insurgency tactics.
“More than 4,000 Kashmiri militants have received training in Afghanistan and, at present, more than 3,000 are there in Afghanistan now. That’s a total of 7,000,” Salludin boasted back in 1992.

[enhanced_deficit]

Grim end to Afghanistan war: No 'mission accomplished' or 'moment of celebration,' White House says

Biden doesn't think war can be won militiarily

July 8, 2021
By Marisa Schultz | Fox News


Taliban advance, seize more territory as US troops withdraw from Afghanistan

Senior foreign affairs correspondent Greg Palkot reports on US soldiers being pulled out of Afghanistan on 'America Reports.'

President Biden won't be taking any victory lap on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and instead the White House offered a sober reality that America's longest war just can't be won militarily.
"We're not going to have a mission accomplished moment in this regard," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday referring to the premature "Mission Accomplished" banner that served as the backdrop of former President George W. Bush's 2003 speech on an aircraft carrier. "It's a 20-year war that has not been won militarily."
Biden addressed the nation Thursday about his decision to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan despite the growing threat from the Taliban. During a White House news briefing prior to his remarks, Psaki said while there may be drawbacks to the decision, Biden didn't want to sacrifice more lives and treasure on a war that has gone on for too long.

"He is not going to ask another generation of kids to go and serve in Afghanistan in a war that he does not feel can be won militarily," Psaki said. "That is the core driver of his decision here."
foxnews.com/politics/grim-end-afghanistan-war-no-mission-accomplished-white-house

[devil21]

Taliban hangin' out in China, meeting with top PRC officials
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...ban-go-tianjin

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang explicitly said, “The Taliban in Afghanistan is a pivotal military and political force in the country, and will play an important role in the process of peace, reconciliation, and reconstruction there.”

......................................
Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem stressed that the Tianjin meeting focused on political, economic and security issues, with the Taliban assuring Beijing that Afghan territory would not be exploited by third parties against the security interests of neighboring nations.

Mission accomplished.

[Anti Federalist]

Taliban hangin' out in China, meeting with top PRC officials

Mission accomplished.

Good.

Let the heathen Chinee bleed out in Afghanistan for the next 20 or 30 years.

[devil21]

Good.

Let the heathen Chinee bleed out in Afghanistan for the next 20 or 30 years.

Seems unlikely to happen, since the gist of it is that the region useful to the Belt and Road has been thoroughly cleared by US/NATO over the last 20 years and the Taliban is firmly under Chinese influence now. Taliban is essentially telling top PRC officials that any interference from native Afghanis will be thoroughly stamped out before it causes any disruptions. Whether they can make good on that pledge is unknown but today's Afghanistan sure isn't the same one as during the Soviet days or even 2001. Tech and weaponry advances, plus the general extermination of non-cooperating Afghan factions (The "new Taliban" since installed) says a replay is unlikely imo.

[enhanced_deficit]

Monday, Aug 02, 2021

Taliban hangin' out in China, meeting with top PRC officials
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...ban-go-tianjin




Mission accomplished.

That significant meeting took place two weeks after 9 Chinese nationals working on Belt n Road project were killed and 28 Chinese wounded in bus blast being blamed on Afghan agency NDS per CNN and SCMP reports. And just two weeks after that meeting, Taliban have swept through much of Afghanistan taking over city after city at lightening fast speed and are entering Kabul today amidst reports of Afghan Prez Ghani fleeing the country. Timing might be just coincidence but stunning pace of developments as China and Taliban appear to be coming closer under "enemy of my enemy is my friend' doctrine:


Crusade against July 14 terrorists to punish whoever attacks Chinese nationals
globaltimes.cn Aug 13, 2021 — The Dasu terrorist attack that killed nine Chinese nationals... The NDS is the largest intelligence agency in Afghanistan.
Nine Chinese nationals were killed in a shuttle bus explosion in ... that India's RAW and Afghan NDS have been involved in the Dasu attack, ...
there was a "nexus of Indian RAW and Afghan NDS" in the attack, ...


Taliban militants kill dozens at Afghan intelligence base
BBC News
Jan 22, 2019 — The attack on the National Directorate for Security (NDS) base in central Wardak province came hours before the Taliban held another round ...

China denounces use of terrorism for geopolitical gains and calls for a united front to uphold regional security interests
Sarah Zheng
13 Aug, 2021
Pakistan’s deputy inspector general of counterterrorism police, said video footage, mobile phone data analysis, investigation of local handlers and facilitators, and forensic examination of the car used in the bombing all revealed that the TTP in Afghanistan had planned this attack. “Senior officers of the RAW and NDS were directing them in Afghanistan,” Iqbal added.
scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3144956/pakistan-blames-indian-and-afghan-spy-agencies-bus-blast


Taliban setup base in Syria to assess needs of Jihad
Sat Jul 13, 2013
According to reports a group of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) representatives have recently visited Syria in a bid to assess the needs of Jihad and set up a base.
A TTP official quoted by BBC said the base was set up with the assistance of ex-Afghan fighters of Middle Eastern origin who have moved to Syria in recent years.The official further added at least 12 experts in the field of warfare and information technology have moved to Syria in the last two decades.Taliban group has reportedly opened the base in Syria with a sectarian motive, and to support Sunni Muslims who are believed to be oppressed by Sryia’s predominantly Shia rulers. Senior Pakistani Taliban leader, Mohammad Amin in an interview with the BBC confirmed that the cell to monitor “the jihad” in Syria was set up six months ago.
khaama.com/taliban-setup-...-of-jihad-1653

Ron Paul blasts Obama for funding al-Qaeda in Syria
Jun 16, 2013 -
Ron Paul blasts Obama for funding al-Qaeda in Syria ... U.S. officials said that the decision to arm the militants in Syria had been made weeks ...


It never was just about Afghanistan. The US, China and India have a lot to lose
14 Aug 2021
Bloomberg
As the Taliban take over the country, other jihadist groups are already carrying out attacks in the region. Chinese interests are the first in line.
The spillover has already begun, before the Taliban have even reached Kabul. City after city is falling as the Islamist insurgents draw closer to the capital.
“Central Asian jihadists have been flexing their muscle, anti-China jihadists have attacked Chinese personal in Pakistan, more regional violence is extremely plausible — the threat is ongoing, and we are just talking about an escalation from this point onwards".
Chinese interests in Pakistan have already taken a hit. In April, a car bomb exploded at a luxury hotel hosting Beijing’s ambassador in Quetta, not far from Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan. The attack was claimed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or the Pakistani Taliban, a loosely organized terrorist group with ties to al-Qaeda, based along the vast Afghan-Pakistan border.

Last month, a bomb blast on a bus traveling to a dam and hydro-electric project in Dasu, near the Pakistan border with China, killed 12 people, including nine Chinese citizens. No one has claimed responsibility, but Beijing was so concerned that it hosted Taliban representatives for a meeting with Foreign Minister Wang Yi. At stake is $60 billion in projects in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a crucial part of President Xi Jinping’s wider Belt and Road Initiative, along with significant Chinese mining interests inside Afghanistan.
While this wasn’t the Taliban’s first visit to China, the seniority of the Chinese representatives was unprecedented, as was the very public message that Beijing recognizes the group as a legitimate political force, Yun Sun, the Stimson Center think tank’s China program director, noted this week in an essay on the national security platform, War on the Rocks. After posing for photographs with the group’s co-founder and deputy leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Wang described the Taliban as “a crucial military and political force in Afghanistan that is expected to play an important role in the peace, reconciliation, and reconstruction process of the country."


Afghan president flees the country as Taliban move on Kabul

Aug 15, 2021
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s embattled president left the country Sunday, joining his fellow citizens and foreigners in a stampede fleeing the advancing Taliban and signaling the end of a 20-year Western experiment aimed at remaking Afghanistan.
The Taliban, which for hours had been in the outskirts of Kabul, announced soon after they would move further into a city gripped by panic throughout the day as helicopters raced overhead to evacuate personnel from the U.S. Embassy. Smoke rose near the compound as staff destroyed important documents. Several other Western missions also prepared to pull their people out.
apnews.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-kabul-bagram

[enhanced_deficit]

Israeli Experts Say US Pullout from Afghanistan Sending Wrong Message to Middle East and Beyond

08-13-2021
Julie Stahl, CBNNews.com

JERUSALEM, Israel - After nearly 20 years, the US is pulling its troops out of Afghanistan, leaving a power vacuum that is quickly filling up with the radical Taliban group.
And some Israeli experts are concerned that the US pullout is sending the wrong message to the Middle East and others like China, Russia, Iran and Turkey.
“The fact that the United States is leaving will empower groups like the Taliban and other extremists,” said Seth Frantzman, author of ‘Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machines, Artificial Intelligence, and the Battle for the Future’.


Related

The Immorality of Leaving Iraq and Afghanistan
By Dennis Prager



How American Politics Got Troops Stuck—and Killed—in Afghanistan

[enhanced_deficit]

Historians will be asking, why this story broke in 2020:

03-05-2020
And so it begins, U.S. troops start to withdraw from Afghanistan


but not in 2017 following America First revolt in Nov 2016?

03-05-2017
And so it begins, U.S. troops start to withdraw from Afghanistan


During first couple of years in the White House, why America First revolution's leadership thought ending the longest war and bringing US troops home was less important than prioritizing moving of Israel embassy, organizing numerous global social justice campaigns as important as they were?
On whose pressure (unrelated factoid, Jeffrey Epstein was no longer free then) Afghan/mideast troops surges and war escalation took place during first 2-3 years of MAGA First Presidency?

[devil21]

Unconfirmed but Chinese planes taking over Bagram.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...fghan-alliance

[Swordsmyth]

Unconfirmed but Chinese planes taking over Bagram.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...fghan-alliance

https://biznewspost.com/automobile/s...gram-air-base/
Satellite Imagery Contradicts Reports Of Foreign Aircraft At Bagram Air Base

[Pauls' Revere]

Maybe they landed. Emptied cargo and took off again?

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/...24535572971520

[GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged]

It dawned on me as to why they left all the equipment behind.

They want to buy the equipment again.