Since 2001, the United States has spent US$2.26 trillion in Afghanistan, according to Brown University’s calculations in its “Costs of War Project”. Nearly US$1 trillion – the biggest chunk – was spent on Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget. Basically, OCO was special funding created after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 for overseas war operations.
About US$530 billion, the second biggest chunk, was interest payments on the money the U.S. government borrowed to fund the war, hence, generations of Americans will be burdened by this cost (estimated interest cost by 2050 is US$6.5 trillion). Despite having spent US$24 billion on economic development, at least a quarter of Afghans are unemployed, while 90% of the population earn less than US$2 a day.
Washington also spent US$10 billion on counter-narcotics. Yet, 80% of global illicit opium and heroin production today comes from Afghanistan. The best part was despite burning US$88 billion to train Afghan military and police forces, more than 300,000 members of Afghanistan’s well-equipped security forces simply ran away – allowing a rapid takeover of the country by the Taliban.
But can you blame the Afghan army when President Ashraf Ghani was the first who fled to Tajikistan at the first news of Taliban’s arrival? The coward and incompetent president surrendered with barely a shot fired. So, in the war that cost America US$300 million a day for the last 20 years, the world watched how Taliban terrorists walked into the Afghan presidential palace before taking selfies behind Ashraf’s desk.
That was not the only trophies after a jaw-dropping US$2 trillion investment (which is more than the net worth of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and all the 30 richest billionaires in America combined) in Afghanistan. The U.S. lost 2,448 soldiers and 3,846 contractors while 20,000 were injured, not to mention the death of 47,245 Afghan civilians and 66,000 Afghan military and police forces.
The winners, of course, were private contractors and defence companies. Since 2001, at least US$144 billion was spent on reconstruction in Afghanistan. Most of that money went back to American contractors. To make matters worse, a group of 25 Republican senators were stunned over a government report that the Afghan army was made up of “ghost soldiers”.
Those ghost soldiers, revealed in a 140-page report – “What we need to learn: Lessons from twenty years of Afghanistan reconstruction” – was released by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) on 30 July 2021. Apparently, more than 100,000 troops (one third) of the Afghan National Security and Defence Forces (ANDSF) did not exist, but was on the payroll – suggesting corruption.
But those dubious 200,000 soldiers and police existed in early 2020 when the Trump administration negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban to exit from the country by May 1, 2021. By the time Biden was prepared to announce the U.S. withdrawal earlier this year, the number of Afghan forces had dropped to somewhere between 75,000 and 90,000.
However, President Joe Biden didn’t know the fact when he proudly told the American people on July 8 that the U.S. and its partners in Afghanistan had “trained and equipped nearly 300,000 current serving members of the military”. Biden was also clueless about the chaotic situation on the ground when he announced in April that the U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan by August 31.
By the middle of June, Afghan security forces in remote areas had begun to abandon their posts, with many complaining that they had run out of food. It was a walk in the park for the Taliban, who captured more rural territory without serious fighting. Ultimately, the Taliban swept through Afghanistan in less than a month, while the so-called 300,000 Afghan army was nowhere to be found.
Crucially, Biden’s hasty withdrawal without securing a peace deal or a follow-up mission also saw billions of dollars worth of U.S. military weapons and equipment left behind, including MaxxPro MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles, ScanEagle drones, Humvees and brand new helicopters just arrived in Kabul last month.
Intelligence assessment shows the Taliban is in control of more than 2,000 armoured vehicles, including U.S. Humvees, and up to 40 aircraft, including UH-60 Black Hawks, scout attack helicopters, and ScanEagle military drones. Between 2003 and 2016, the U.S. provided Afghan forces with 208 aircraft, but most of those aircraft were used by Afghan pilots to escape to Uzbekistan seeking refuge.
Washington is concerned that the weapons could be used to not only kill civilians, but may potentially be handed over to American enemies like China and Russia. In fact, President Joe Biden’s administration is so worried about the weapons that it is considering a number of options, including airstrike to destroy military hardware like helicopters.
It was already bad that just a month before the U.S. withdrawal, it continued to supply the Afghan army with expensive aircraft, including 35 Black Hawks and three A-29 Super Tocano bombers in July. It becomes worse that since 2003, the Afghan forces were provided with at least 600,000 infantry weapons, including M16 assault rifles, 162,000 radios and other communication equipments, and 16,000 night-vision goggle devices.
Between 2017 and 2019, the U.S. shipped another 4,700 Humvees, 20,000 hand grenades and thousands of small munitions and grenade launchers. The ability to operate at night will be a real game-changer to the Taliban militants. But it could get worse as desperate and corrupt Talibans will most likely sell the huge arsenal of weapons for quick cash as they try to shift to running the country.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan admitted – “We don’t have a complete picture, but obviously a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban”. Colin Clarke, director of policy and research at The Soufan Group, said – “I have full confidence that some of this equipment is going to end up in the hands of al-Qaeda and other bad actors. This is not going to just end with the Taliban.”
Donald Trump has joined critics in grilling President Joe Biden for mishandling of the U.S. troops withdrawal and evacuation strategy in Afghanistan. Trump lectured Biden – “First, you bring out all of the American citizens. Then you bring out ALL equipment. Then you bomb the bases into smithereens – AND THEN YOU BRING OUT THE MILITARY. You don’t do it in reverse order like Biden and our woke Generals did.”
Condemning the Commander-in-Chief, Trump claimed that the withdrawal process would have been more successful if he were still in charge of the White House. The former POTUS mocked Biden – “Everyone knew he couldn’t handle the pressure. The Taliban no longer has fear or respect for America, or America’s power. What a disgrace it will be when the Taliban raises their flag over America’s Embassy in Kabul.”
But blaming Joe Biden alone is quite unfair. Barack Obama could have declared victory and swiftly leave Afghanistan after Osama bin Laden was terminated by a Special Forces SWAT team, but he didn’t. Donald Trump had promised to end the Afghanistan war that it could not win, but dragged his feet in anticipation of winning his second term as POTUS.
Heck, even Pakistan has been playing a double game for years, allowing al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary on its side of the border with Afghanistan and colluding in cross-border supply. The WikiLeaks website had exposed more than a decade ago how Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency secretly aiding and inflaming the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
For decades, the U.S. has given away more than US$1 billion annually to Pakistan for its help in combating al-Qaeda, only for Pakistan to quietly help the Taliban, who in turns work hand-in-glove with al-Qaeda to plot terrorist attacks against U.S. people and interests. At the same time, Pakistan uses Taliban and terrorists as an option to hedge against the rise of Indian’s influence.
Hilariously, a U.N. report to the Security Council said the Taliban regularly consulted with al-Qaeda during its negotiations with the U.S. about a guarantee that Taliban would not allow al-Qaeda to use the Afghanistan soil to threaten the security of the United States. Pakistan’s manipulation of Afghanistan for its own security purposes actually began as early as in the 1950s.
Under a U.S. deal brokered with the Taliban last year under former president Trump, the Taliban promised to prevent jihadist groups from using the country as a base. But everyone knows that the Taliban was never sincere about cutting ties with al-Qaeda. Taliban will definitely offer safety to bin Laden’s successor Ayman al-Zawahiri due to personal links between the two organizations.
Nevertheless, Afghanistan now joins a long list of wars – Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya and Somalia – that America had lost. Interestingly, after World War II, the U.S. seems to keep losing almost all its wars despite flashing F-35 fighter jets, fancy battle ships and high-tech hardware and software – unless it was a conventional war like the Gulf War in 1991.
Armed with its past victories in the World War II, the U.S. always thought it was so powerful that it could involve in any wars around the world, when in fact it knows nothing. Donald Rumsfeld wrote in his memoirs that when the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan, it was relying on old British Empire maps of Afghanistan. Not only the U.S. didn’t understand local terrain, it was ignorant about the complexity of the local conflict.
The greatest impact as a result of the U.S. troop’s withdrawal is perhaps on the estimated 1.6 million more women employed in Afghanistan’s workforce than 20 years ago. With nowhere to escape for the generation of Afghan women and girls who grew up in a somewhat more liberalized time, they now face mandatory “burkas” and evaporated prospects for education and employment.
Now, not only it suffers a humiliation in the Afghanistan war, naughty Chinese social media users have mocked the U.S. troop withdrawal. They said the Taliban’s takeover of the country was smoother and more peaceful than the presidential transfer of powers in the United States, obviously referring to the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, when pro-Trump mobsters swarmed the building.
With the credibility of the U.S. being hammered over the fall of Kabul and the withdrawal of American troops, questions have been raised about the level of commitment of the U.S. in defending Taiwan, should Beijing decides to forcefully take control of the island. In response, Biden said the situations of South Korea and Taiwan were “fundamentally different” from that of Afghanistan.
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August 21st, 2021 by financetwitter
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More likely a good part of the “up in smoke” moolah is used to light up cigars for the fabulously corrupt Yank politicians and their military contractor buddies. And especially the arms industry where the lucrative revolving door system nicely serves Yank politicians, the military, and the CEOs, astronomical fortunes are made in the business of human slaughter.
Seriously, with all the bitching that’s been going on about the incompetence, corruption, lackings in everything, and more, of the Biden regime, our own bunch in gomen would have done as well taking over the US gomen. Sleepy Joe could easily be replaced by Sleepy Sabrina Lowyaatcob, our ketuanan could easily have done a good job.
It won’t be any different either if the US gomen is replaced with the monkeys in our crap “opposition”. Already there is that forever ever-ready and never getting anywhere loser Anwar, already well-qualified as a long-time Yank neocon stooge and goy appeaser of Israel, an excellent choice to “Save Malaysia” for the Yanks, and save Yankland from its imaginary enemies.
The recent, and maybe ongoing tussle between our crap “opposition” and the more than likely new crap gomen has been, and will be nothing than the usual misstep after misstep of the crap “opposition”. If they have played the Palace properly, and gauged those in gomen and those other crap parties using a little bit more intelligence, and a lot more wit, the crap “opposition” would have taken over the crap gomen. And then we would have had a different crap gomen entirely the same as the crap gomen.
Failing yet again, I would have thought our bunches of Western stooges would have resorted to unleashing their attack running dogs to deliver a gomen to their angmoh massahs. “Colour revolutions” have failed all around Malaysia, our think- and lookalike to the rentamobs of Hongkong and Thailand feral thugs should have donned colour t-shirts and brought umbrellas to the “revolution”. Our very own chapter of “liberty lawyers” should have turned up with a bigger than a small handful of Rumpoles and Lord Dennings to terrorise wan and all with their fcuking plantation Latin and caveats or their rear cavities.
Where’s neocon stooge Anwar when you really need him to play Renaissance Rizal? With his halal nombor games, where’s his forever “numbers” and SDs to brandish and scare all? And where are those many boxes of many dossiers to whack Snake Pharaoh Memali Mo with?
Where’s that big mouthed serial bullsh*tter “street fighting man” with his Bollywood Nego-Nego dance when he could have summoned his barmy army of foreign-paid and foreign-inspired plantation variety useful stooges to bring down the gomen – and, maybe even the throne, wtf?!
With the Western massahs properly shafted by the Taliban, and in disarray, Anwar should have brought the only joy to his foreign handlers by opening a front here, unleashed the rentamobs, and saved the Western world their massive loss of face, and turning on each other. This is well nigh the “Final Conflict”, short of an all-out world war, there aren’t anymore chance of Western sh*t-stirring and destabilising at will for a while – in fact, if ever! It will be chancy for Uncle Sama to double-deal the Taliban, for a while now, continue to forment déstabilisation in Central Asia.
The EU, and even that English Bulldog Boris dared to be furious with their Uncle Sam. The rest of the greater world, is, of course, laughing at the West.
Not only the angmohs can’t save face, can’t save the Afghans, they can’t save themselves, can’t easily get tf out of Kabul – they need beg the Taliban to get to the airport!
Western countries playing out their useful stooges once they’ve served their purpose is not a new or unique phenomenon. The Brits ignored the plight of their famous frontline shield, the Gurkhas. Hindia was held together by using one tribe against another, then playing out the whole lot of them. When they were useful, all sorts of fantastic and fanciful yarns were cooked up about the bravery, heroism, and loyalty of those subcontinental slaves.
The Hmongs were never in line to be rescued at first by the good ole US of A. And when they were,
once in the US, the Hmongs, like all others of “funny colours” faced racism, hardship, rejection by their white massahs, no Clint Eastwood paradise, Yankland.
If the West wants to save their formerly useful idiots, they can. And every single one of them. The West still has the power and capability of doing that – and more. They can come down heavily on the Taliban. But those damn natives are just not worth saving.
Bear in mind, the creation of the Taliban, etc was by the West, so too is the sellout, dumping of the always dispensable stooges. We would always hear pious words, nice words, praises from their Western massahs, but when convenient, the West would simply dump their “allies”, just how many brown folks does the West want as refugees?
The capitulation to the Taliban was done months ago, the “collapse” didn’t “unfold quickly”, that too was planned. And it happened that way.
“Colour revolutions” were planned long before the useful running dogs came out to serve Western interest. Some time ago, Anwar boasted of his “prediction” about “colour revolutions” all over the world. That was when the neocons were happily blessing him for his stooge role.
Anwar’s “foresight” was not his genius, the cheap political swindler was merely dutifully parroting what his Yank neocon massahs had planned all along, that series of downfall of countries destined by his massahs to fall.
Servile “news” services paid by the West churned out (and still so) all the propaganda to serve their foreign massahs, we have our own nicely brainwashed monkeys at the ready to do “colour” or “umbrella”, they had the training organised by professionals to rabble-rouse and bring down gomens.
Because Afghanistan has all and more goodies the West is salivating over, the tone about the Taliban is now not only conciliatory but even rather grovelling.
Still, it is rather heartwarming the sight of those military K9 travelling in comfort on those planes out of the Afghan hell. While the poor Afghans had to travel on the outside of aircrafts, rather like them hordes of Hindians of the subcontinent travelling atop and on the sides of trains… Wonder what it would be like, comes the day their “assets” have to be repatriated, them foreign massahs have to choose between their K9 and their local running dogs…
Yes, the Afghan “rescue” is not easy. If it were Western countries will see more than plenty of those folks with “funny colours” and “funny religion and weird culture among “Civilisation”. There’s the always and forever loads of talk about “freedom, democracy… ” – so long as the funny folks don’t come to the West, thank you!
I won’t worry about those military goodies “falling into the wrong hands”, it has been reported the Talibans have already made gifts of them to the Chinese, and even the Russians. Most of the goodies have long had Chinese equivalents, sometimes more superior versions. The Chinese are, of course, eyeing Afghanistan’s lithium and copper – which is the new gold. Afghanistan has lovely quantities of gold, of course – and lots of other minerals, and oil. Stuff behind the real reason the West sent its “nation’s best” to die for. And that suits Ketuanan Cina fine, the West can always die for China, thank you!
Anyway, the moral of the story is the West fights, the Talibans fight, Ketuanan Cina wins. With Ketuanan Cina already happily digging copper all this while while the West is fighting and dying in Afghanistan, it’s more win-win for Ketuanan Cina.
It is an even greater win-win when Blinken has begged Ketuanan Cina for help over Saving Private Ryan, getting the many many stuck Yanks out of Afghanistan. And with the way the Yanks played out its allies over Afghanistan, Taiwan may be another lose-lose for the Yanks. And, of course, a now really terrified Taiwan – which Ketuanan Cina is taunting with a lot of help from a Taliban-defeated US! Damn Yanks will not think twice before dumping their Taiwan stooges soon as Ketuanan Cina more than harass the island, maybe like sailing a little boat closer to the Taiwanese coast…
Those military goodies will in due course be offered on eBay. Or the more halal Lelong.
Btw, if you see them military goodies on offer, go for the night-vision scopes. You would have difficulty importing them into Bolehland but creative thinking may come in useful, seek out the rare species in Bolehland who can actually think to help you.
Go for the special edition Oakley shades, they are doubly tough and scratchproof. They look flashy even without guns, you need to constantly shove them upwards as most Asians are not with the bridge of nose the Taiwan-made shades are designed for. Keep the label cards on the shades for all to see as Malaysians will only think the shades are shoddy and cheap Vietnamese made imitations.
The chest-height pistol holsters are also cool when used to hold your handphone. But may look a bit kinky like you are wearing a one-cup bra. Those with an added bullet pouch are sought after, you can store your earphones in them. Don’t use them if you end up in police custody and you are Hindian, the police uncles will thump you properly, or execute you upon seeing a drunk and an empty holster, be warned!
For you fcuking kiasu types, no need to check and compare prices, the military gears for Afghanistan are not offered elsewhere (except China, where they are mostly made). Expect a much higher price than their non-military equivalents as they are items to die for.
If they are not new “surplus” gear, and if you are lucky, their previous owners may have jolly well died for you to own a piece of history.
One mustn’t finish without saying a few words on the quiet and “soft” power of glorious Ketuanan Cina. Remind oneself the West fought twenty years in Afghanistan – in order for it all to end with the Chinese first to be offered the goodies, the copper, the oil, the gold, yes, the lithium too!
The lesson here is be like Almighty Ketuanan Cina, sit back, fold arms, do nothing. And them Afghan goodies will fall on your lap. With the free gifts, too!
Watsmore, the Yanks are the first to crawl to Almighty Ketuanan Cina too, please help us Grandpa, we is fcuked in Afghanistan..!
Is that smart of Ketuanan Cina or is that smart of Ketuanan Cina?
That sure would take more than Ketuanan Malaysia to get under them shady coconut trees to take years to figure out (no maths, please!)
And is Mother Hindia the only dark-brown off-white country to lose over its half-baked Afghanistan intrigue – and suffer massive loss of money? Yes, it very definitely is – another fcuking buncha bloated corpse floating and sinking glorious hitech Hindian submarine in the Mother Gangrene river… Priceless!
Last demo of great Hindian Maharishi wisdom Hindia did for Afghanistan was to send a plane load of artillery shells to the crumbling Afghan gomen that collapsed the next day. It was like the great idea of sending a load of wonky deckchairs to a sinking Titanic, bless the wise Hindians! Next Hindia will try on intrigues with their dodgy proxy the Bollockistan Liberation Tameel Tigers sabotaging the BRI that Hindia is immensely jealous of.
Next stop for the Taliban – Kashmir!
Hindia is the new Afghanistan, may the multitude of primitive tribes rise up! Haleluyah..!
Hey, Anwar, time to liberate Tamil Nadooo, eh ?!
Or rehash yerself, return as the comeback(side) kid for the Snake Pharaoh Mangali Monster, liberate Keralalaland! Mmmuahahaha… Hari Hari..!