The US military operation in Afghanistan once again encountered Waterloo, Biden was very unwilling, but also very helpless, he could only give the order to retreat, and now this matter is well known and has become an international joke. In these 20 years, the US military does not want to go, but it can not win, spent 2 trillion US dollars, and finally ended up in such a fate, is not the United States known as a military power? Why can't it be hard in Afghanistan? Today, let's reveal how the US military was trapped in Afghanistan.
Origins of the Taliban
In fact, the Taliban is not a secondary two terrorist organization code name, he is a transliteration of "islamic religious school student". Initially, the team was formed in 1994 by 800 students from Islamic schools. Their slogan at that time was "Eliminate the warlords of the division, oppose government corruption, and rebuild the national economy"!
Although they were only a group of young people, but the war was very fierce, dared to charge the front, because of the slogan call ability, in just one year, they organized an armed force of more than 30,000 people, including hundreds of tanks, dozens of jet fighters, which was stronger than the government army at that time, in one war after another, the Taliban fought the government army wow wow. In less than two years, the Taliban have occupied nearly 90 percent of Afghanistan's territory and even the capital, Kabul, as the de facto ruler of Afghanistan.
But this group of students is still young and vigorous, "will only fight the world, will not rule the world", because of improper governance, so that the Afghan economy was made a miasma, at that time, only Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia three countries, willing to recognize the legitimacy of their regime. However, this group of young and vigorous young men actually harbored bin Laden, which attracted endless retaliation from the United States, and afghanistan began a 20-year war era, thus bringing endless suffering to the Afghan people.
The beginning of the U.S. feud with the Taliban
That's when the United States' feud with the Taliban began. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, bin Laden has lived in Afghanistan and has been granted safe haven by the Taliban. The United Nations and the United States strongly demanded that the Taliban hand over bin Laden himself, but the Taliban sternly refused, citing the fact that bin Laden was a guest of the Taliban. The Taliban refuse to talk to U.S. President George W. Bush because they don't want to have anything to do with a politician who is not Muslim, seeing it as an insult to the Islamic world. These statements punched the United States in the face, and finally the United States decided to retaliate against the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Fifteen days after the incident, CIA agents brought large amounts of dollars into Afghanistan to try to use money to make deals with other local warlords against the Taliban. On October 19, the U.S. Special Operations Unit (ODA) contacted the CIA. At the same time, the Operational Operations Unit sent by the Joint Special Operations Command, the British Special Forces MI6 and the 22nd Air Service Regiment formed a joint group, plus ODA and local warlords to form an anti-Tajik alliance. The anti-Tajik coalition, with the assistance of the CIA, began guerrilla warfare operations with the Taliban and Al-Qaida behind enemy lines.
ODA used laser target indicators to guide the air power of the coalition forces, and carried out precision strikes against the Taliban and al-Qaida, a high-tech combat method that directly blinded the enemy, not only the enemy, but even friendly forces, and this strange scene of combining 18th century cavalry tactics with 21st century high-tech tactics was staged in Afghanistan.
The operation took only 49 days to oust the Taliban regime and capture all the important large and medium-sized cities. After this war, the Taliban had to retreat to a remote rural area in southeastern Afghanistan for recuperation and reorganization. After that, the United Nations International Security Rescue Force in Afghanistan arrived in the war zone to carry out post-war reconstruction work, and the United States supported a puppet government and gave this government a set of congress, parliament, and government systems. However, it may be that the Knowledge Reserve of the Afghan People is insufficient, or that the administrative system is simply not suitable for the local situation, resulting in the system never functioning well for a day.
The dispute continues to escalate
The Taliban armed forces, which retreated to rural areas, called on the people to resist the foreign invasion of US imperialism. Although the Taliban do not have much of a good perception internationally, the Afghan people have a high degree of recognition for them, higher than all other armed forces. The local people and the Taliban soldiers and civilians mingled and helped to repel the U.S. garrison many times, and since then, the war has been delayed into a never-ending guerrilla war.
The Taliban learned the lesson of the previous fiasco, and the frontal confrontation would be killed by the US military, so they began to harass the US army and make the US army miserable. Disguised as government security forces, they quietly approached and then suddenly opened fire, and the Patrol Troops of the Us Military were always cold-fired by the Taliban who did not know where to hide, and even the Humvee military vehicles casually passed through an inconspicuous intersection and could be blown away by buried mines. So much so that American soldiers always have to keep their spirits up, beware of Taliban sneak attacks and harassment, and even use expensive Ozkash anti-mine ambush vehicles to go out. Even if the U.S. army is careful, they still lost more than 3,000 people, you know, when saddam Hussein was attacked, there were only more than two hundred people dead on the battlefield, and from here you can see how despicable the Taliban's means are.
Of course, in addition to these, what bothers the US military the most is the strange terrain of Afghanistan. The geography of Afghanistan is so harsh that it scratches your ears and cheeks! Most of the country is high mountains, only a small part is desert, and the Hindu Kush Mountains that run across the country are like Gods reclaiming them with iron plows, high mountains, deep ditches, and a harsh natural environment that makes people who come here eat only soil.
Not to mention, the weather is generally more than 30 degrees in the summer, often minus 30 degrees in the winter, the average rainfall throughout the year is less than 240 mm, far below the 400 meters of crop survival line, Afghanistan is not suitable for human survival at all, the human ancestors here, after the defeat of the world, had to flee here, they have long been familiar with the low-cost life here.
This is accompanied by the complex ethnic makeup of Afghanistan, a land of just 650,000 square kilometers, inhabited by more than 20 ethnic groups, each with a different language, distributed in high mountains and deep valleys with an average altitude of more than 1,000 meters. This is even more to make the US military angry, to give a very vivid example:
A group of US troops were ordered to go to a small village in a valley to encircle and suppress the Taliban elements, the US troops climbed a high mountain of more than 2,000 meters on foot, because the mountain was too high to drive up, it was difficult to find a small village, wanted to find the local people to help find the Taliban, the result was that they could not understand their language, and it was difficult to find a translator guide, understood, the people casually pointed in one direction, said on the mountain, and then the US military climbed the 2,000-meter high mountain upside down, and entered the village with a gun in a hurry, and it turned out that this was another language. This translation is also not understood. The U.S. military was angry and stomped on the ground, while the real Taliban elements had already received the news transfer.
The US military can only pick up people when they enter the mountains, and the snow will close the mountains in winter. A Taliban armed force only needs to find a random village, provide it with water and food to operate, practice marksmanship in the village in the winter, and then come out in the summer to sneak up on the US army, the US army will change into civilian clothes as soon as it comes, go directly to herd sheep, and the people here will also give you cover, this method of warfare makes the US army nervous and war-weary.
Let's talk about the military expenditure of both sides, let's talk about the Taliban first, in your impression, is the Taliban very poor? You can think wrong, people have money, not to mention the rich coal and iron ore resources, let's say that Badakhshan Province, which has always been controlled by the Taliban, is rich in a natural gem called lapis lazuli, which is popular all over the world, providing a huge source of funds for the Taliban, billions of profits per year, and no tax. Moreover, Islamists around the world often fund the Taliban, not to mention more than a billion a year. That much money is enough for the Taliban to squander against the U.S. military.
The United States is completely different, in order to let the US military fight here with peace of mind, the government is to give water and food, military expenditure is even more indispensable, the per capita military expenditure of the US military in Afghanistan is about 5 million US dollars, which is more than 110 times the military expenditure of the Russian army. They demanded that American soldiers must drink a bottle of water to replenish their water within an hour, and that they should have bath water anytime and anywhere, and that they should be the best equipped, with individual equipment worth $100,000 per person. There are also high transportation costs, all of which are airlifted, after all, Afghanistan is deep inland and cannot engage in cheap water transportation. Every year, the U.S. government allocates $45 billion to the Afghan battlefield, and 16,000 U.S. soldiers burn $13 billion a year for their living expenses, an average of $810,000 per person per year, which is enough to spend two trillion dollars. Where is the war, this is the proper burning of money. All over the world, except for the United States, no country wants to sit idle and burn so much money to provoke Afghanistan. Invading Afghanistan? That's a naked show of wealth!
In comparison, even if the Taliban were once beaten to the point of losing their armor at the beginning of the war, controlling only 7% of the country at their worst, and most of them were still poor and remote, 20 years later, the Taliban quietly recovered 50-70% of Afghanistan's territory, and in February 2019, the United States released data that the Taliban accounted for only 46%, began to fight back in March, and in July 2021, they had controlled 80% of the territory.
Can the United States really not get them? No, of course not, not indeterminate, but can not be drawn, if the United States is determined to destroy the Taliban, directly bomb the whole map of the plane, even the mountains and people to bomb together, absolutely can drive the Taliban to extinction, but in that case, you believe that the US debt can exceed 50 trillion US dollars. With this spare money, it is better to build a few more aircraft and a few aircraft carriers to deal with the greater threat of Iran. Speaking of the past so many years, the original hatred, the United States has long been repaid almost, there is really no need to do so. So here staged a scene where the US military did not want to go but could not win the battle, and was stuck in a dilemma here.
In Afghanistan, the military costs people, costs money, and there is not much gain, and every U.S. president understands this truth, but no one dares to touch the mold of the military-industrial complex. Mr. Trump, a businessman by origin and the most reckoning, took the risk of proposing to withdraw his troops from Afghanistan but was unfortunately not re-elected. Biden and he have not been dealing with each other, but they are surprisingly consistent on this matter, and the resolution proposed by Trump, coupled with the intensification of the epidemic, finally made the military loose on this matter and agree to withdraw. Therefore, the Afghan people can now win peace, and we must also thank Comrade Chuan Jianguo. These are the various enmities and grievances between the US military and the Taliban.
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