Saturday, June 02, 2012

Afghan National Army




The image comes from a photo essay in The Atlantic and is of an Afghan soldier's boot after two months' wear. This army is the one Canada is training, and the one meant to carry on the Afghan civil war with the Taleban in the next couple of years after the most of the West leaves . The Afghan government has apparently sourced combat boot orders to Pakistan and other places at the expense of local manufacture and quality control. This army may well fail completely once NATO and the US leave.

6 comments:

H7N9 Watch said...

We've been "training" the ANA for a decade now. What exactly have those trainers been doing all this time?

ThinkingManNeil said...

Failure's been an inevitability since this whole neo-con cock-up began, Boris. The whole goddamn thing was a sham from the get-go and those fuckers and ticket punchers in DC, London, Brussels, and Ottawa knew it - they KNEW IT, and a whole bunch of kids on our side and a lot more innocent Afghanis died or were brutally maimed because of it. And we're sure as goddamn hell not going to be leaving that poor, benighted country better off when we leave it; the Taliban are going to surge back in like wolves and they well be smelling blood. It'll be a goddamn torture porn horror show in that country for the next ten years at least. And still those fuckers at NATO HQ, DND, the Pentagon and various seats of power are thumping their chests saying how good and noble and brave a thing we've done while they prime the pump for the next goddamn meatgrinder war with Iran or China or who knows who to pour other people's kids into, all the while spreading the BS that it's for OUR freedom and democracy and values. What. A. Fucking. Crock. I'm telling you, after we leave Afghanistan and it's plunged into an orgy of reprisal killings and unbridled misogyny, and we at last see we were sold a bill of goods by these fucking warmongers and all our troops died for goddamn nothing and our civil rights evaporate before our eyes under Toews and Harper, then maybe they'll rename that stupid stretch of the 401 to what it should be called -- "Sucker Road".

The Mound of Sound said...

We persistently ignore the fact that no army, no matter how large or well equipped, can defend a government that is not viable.

No Muslim country has achieved a stable government without first overcoming tribalism and warlordism, both of which predominate in Afghanistan. All of the tribes - Pashtun, Baloch, Hazara, Uzbek, Tajik and Turkmen are, to various degrees, enmeshed in trans-border ethnic conflicts.

Defending Karzai's government amounts to defending Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad which is something akin to the defender role in seige warfare.

Even with Western firepower the central government has been hopelessly unable to consolidate control of the countryside. Now that foreigners, such as the Chinese, are poised to begin exploiting Afhganistan's mineral wealth control of the countryside will become far more critical and far more difficult, just the sort of thing to rekindle ethnic conflict.

I'll bet if you looked in Karzai's desk you would find European bank books in the top left drawer and first-class airline tickets in the top right drawer. There are a lot of powerful Afghans who are said to have stashed a lot of money abroad for safe keeping.

Gloria said...

While troops may win the battles, they can't win the war. Afghan people can be their friends during the day, and kill them by night.

To win the war in Afghanistan. They would have to change their religious beliefs and their culture. Anyone thinking they can stop the murder of women, and burning down schools for girls, are dreaming.

Trying to stop the corruption in Afghanistan's government, is just as impossible to stop, as the corruption in Canada's government.

Trying to help Afghanistan become a Democracy is just as impossible, as it is in Canada.

The Afghan citizens have no rights. Canadians have no Civil Rights and Freedoms either.

It's just the other way around. Afghanistan is teaching Harper, how to govern Canada.

Steve said...

What I can never understand is why we have to train troops, we lost the war to these people, they should be training us.

Saskboy said...

Is this what they mean by "boots on the ground"?