Download the free Ground News app at https://ground.news/hilbert to compare more than 50,000 news sources. By threading multiple perspectives from thousands of publications through a
.. show full overview
Download the free Ground News app at https://ground.news/hilbert to compare more than 50,000 news sources. By threading multiple perspectives from thousands of publications through a neutral platform, Ground News frees people from algorithmic restraints, illuminates blindspots and makes media bias explicit.
Afghanistan, after 20 years of war, over a hundred thousand dead and more than a trillion dollars spent by the US and Nato, has this week fallen to the Taliban. This came after the armed group agreed a 'peace deal' with the US in Doha in 2020, their offensive beginning in earnest on the 1st of May 2021. By August, the Taliban were at the gates all the country's provincial capitals and controlled around 70% of its total districts. One by one, Zaranj, Kandahar, Lashkargah, Kunduz, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad fell, often with little or no real resistance from the Afghan National Army until only Kabul remained. On the 15th of August, Taliban fighters entered the suburbs and soon overran the capital, on the same day declaring the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as the former President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and the green-red-black tricolour was torn down from the presidential palace.
In this video I address why the Afghan National Armed Forces were so inneffective at stopping the Taliban advance, despite billions of dollars and around 2 decades of training and support from the United States and their allies. I will further look at the role, or lack thereof, of the various warlords such as Ismail Khan, Abdul Rashid Dostum, and Atta Muhammad Noor who were famed for their dogged resistance in the face of the Taliban in the 1990s. Finally, I will look at the strategies employed by the Taliban to grind down their opponents and facilitate the mass surrender of the Afghan National Army as well as how they managed to cripple the government in Kabul.
Go Fund My Windmills (Patreon):
https://www.patreon.com/HistorywithHilbert
Join in the Banter on Twit