Are we back to helping the Taliban?

| October 23, 2020

According to the Washington Post, we are. They say we’re running a “Taliban Air Force” (tongue in cheek) for them by providing air support in the Taliban’s fight against ISIS. If true, things really do go full circle. What could possibly go wrong?

Army Sgt. 1st Class Steve Frye was stuck on base last summer in Afghanistan, bored and fiddling around on a military network, when he came across live video footage of a battle in the Korengal Valley, where he had first seen combat 13 years earlier. It was infamous terrain, where at least 40 U.S. troops had died over the years, including some of Frye’s friends. Watching the Reaper drone footage closely, he saw that no American forces were involved in the fighting, and none from the Afghan government. Instead, the Taliban and the Islamic State were duking it out. Frye looked for confirmation online. Sure enough, America’s old enemy and its newer one were posting photos and video to propaganda channels as they tussled for control of the Korengal and its lucrative timber business.

What Frye didn’t know was that U.S. Special Operations forces were preparing to intervene in the fighting in Konar province in eastern Afghanistan — not by attacking both sides, but by using strikes from drones and other aircraft to help the Taliban. “What we’re doing with the strikes against ISIS is helping the Taliban move,” a member of the elite Joint Special Operations Command counterterrorism task force based at Bagram air base explained to me earlier this year, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the assistance was secret. The air power would give them an advantage by keeping the enemy pinned down.

In reality, even as its warplanes have struck the Taliban in other parts of Afghanistan, the U.S. military has been quietly helping the Taliban to weaken the Islamic State in its Konar stronghold and keep more of the country from falling into the hands of the group, which — unlike the Taliban — the United States views as an international terrorist organization with aspirations to strike America and Europe. Remarkably, it can do so without needing to communicate with the Taliban, by observing battle conditions and listening in on the group. Two members of the JSOC task force and another defense official described the assistance to me this year in interviews for a book about the war in Konar, all of them speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk about it. (The U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan declined to comment for this story.)

More at the source. This article foregoes the usual anonymous sources the Washington Post normally cites, so I’ll give it more creedence. Thanks to Jeff LPH 3 for the tip. Source; Washington Post 

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Afghanistan, Dumbass Bullshit, Foreign Policy, Guest Link, Isis, Taliban

11 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Sparks

They are just different ends of the same turd. Any we bomb and kill is good with me.

rgr769

They all want us dead or converted. The only question is which one is the more imminent and likely threat. Both of them are believers in the same psychotic religion/political ideology.

KoB

When are we going to try this solution to the problem?

Graybeard

I guess this is the doctrine that when two enemies are fighting, you work to keep the more powerful/dangerous one from winning?

I’d be tempted to be an equal opportunity provision for achieving the 72 goats…

RCAF-CHAIRBORNE

The pattern on their cammie man-jammies sorta looks like CDN arid CADPAT.

AW1Ed

WaPo et al needs to unclutch their pearls and grow the fuck up.

“America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests” ― Henry Kissinger

Steeleyi

Well, ISIS is a borderless Caliphate dedicated to the destruction of Israel, apostate Muslim states, and the West, roughly in that order. They use terrorism in the pursuit of their goals, and they recruit worldwide.

The Taliban, while a bunch of thugs, just want to rule Afghanistan, or at least the Pashtun parts of it (they would just as soon kill the Hazari and any Shia). They have never attacked us or our allies or interests outside of Afghanistan.

So, since we are trying to achieve peace with honor, it kind of makes sense in a weird way.

Slow Joe

Fuck this shit, man.
Do you know how many fuckin times…
Neverfuckinmind.

Johnb

“They all want us dead or converted.”

Kinda makes you wonder why the Republicans support bringing millions of them here.

Muqdadiyah19D

Give the Taliban some reflective belts and pay them cash like we did with Concerned Local Citizens in 2007. 🙂

Muqdadiyah19D

*Like we did in Iraq