So What’s Happening In Afghanistan?

You’ll be sorry you asked. In short form, we are losing, badly, to a bunch of guys running around with AK-47s which, to be equitable, are fairly expensive weapons even in Kabul with a street price of $1,500 which is also about what brand new in-the-box Night Vision Glasses freshly looted from the U.S. Supply Depot go for.

It’s an amount I don’t customarily carry in my pocket and considering the median wage in Afghanistan is 1, 012, 308 Afghani (I didn’t make this name up, the U.S.Government did) and the exchange rate is whatever you can get for Ur Cow Tokens but generally 67 Afghani to $1 USD (according to the CIA in 2016) meaning about $15K a year or one month of income. Remember, we’re talking downtown Kabul (Manhattan) and not Joe Hemp, Poppy Farmer from Helmund. I doubt he’s ever seen an Afghani (the currency, not the people) and would use it for toilet paper or fuel except it’s not very good at either one of those tasks.

Besides, Joe Hemp, Poppy Farmer from Helmund has all those buckets of filthy U.S. Benjamins to wipe his ass and feed his goats. His daughters sleep in field of crimson (Poppies!) and run naked among the buds to harvest hash (actually a very icky concept like squishing grapes with your feet).

Now occasionally Joe Hemp’s family invite him to a wedding or funeral, you know, one of these boring rituals where you can’t just send a gift and regrets lest crazy Uncle Max decide you’re disrespecting the crazy side of the family and rip up your house with those AK-47s you gave him for his birthday.

Ingrate.

It used to be these things would settle themselves with only a few centuries of bloodshed and they may still, too soon to tell, but the United States Government has adopted the insane policy of bombing just about any gathering larger than a very small herd of goats which a) costs $110, 000 (as opposed to 7.62 x 39 mm which goes for $.21 a round in quantities of 1000), b) doesn’t kill that many people (and almost certainly not the ones who would matter).

I’m going to take a moment and do the math on that. Let’s be generous and say you have all the top leaders of Al-Queda and the Taliban and Daesh having a big old party in the middle of the desert (interesting fact- most Arabs don’t live in the desert) and there are about 100 of them which makes the math easy. Just for fun they brought along their 100 favorite goats.

$1000 a pop. $500 if you count the goats.

But ek. We killed 100 of their top leaders, and their goats!

Umm… think we would notice if 100 Generals died? Hell, include the goats.

Probably not much except…

c) It pisses them off!

You know, if I’m Joe Hemp I’m kind of upset that you keep trying to kill me, and my private army that I pay to keep the poachers away from my daughters and crazy Uncle Max (Allah accept his soul, he wasn’t a bad sort except when he got really wasted) in line and I’ll keep blasting away at you with nice cheap $.21 bullets until you get tired and go away.

It’s not called “The Graveyard of Empires” for nothing. Where do you think they got all these AK-47s?

The Death Toll for Afghan Forces Is Secret. Here’s Why.
By Rod Nordland, The New York Times
Sept. 21, 2018

Taliban insurgents killed so many Afghan security forces in 2016, an average of 22 a day, that by the following year the Afghan and American governments decided to keep battlefield death tolls secret.

It’s much worse now. The daily fatalities among Afghan soldiers and policemen were more than double that last week: roughly 57 a day.

Seventeen years after the United States went to war in Afghanistan, the Taliban is gaining momentum, seizing territory, and killing Afghan security forces in record numbers.

Last week was especially bad, with more than 400 killed, according to an account by diplomats. But even the average numbers in recent months — from 30 to 40 a day, according to senior Afghan officials — represent a substantial upswing from two years ago and appear unsustainable in a country that has been shattered by decades of war.
…
The figure of 400 Afghan soldiers and police officers killed last week leaked out of a meeting last weekend between Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the new American military commander, and Western diplomats in Kabul, according to two of those present, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was meant to be off the record.

Asked about the meeting, the American military spokesman, Col. Dave Butler, did not specifically address the number killed last week, instead saying, “General Miller’s remarks are not accurately reflected by your sources’ recollection.” He added: “He was reflecting on Afghan sacrifice over a several-week period. He was relaying a sense of urgency to the team and encouraging focus on the mission.”

The quiet acknowledgment of higher casualties is coming at a time of alarm about the Taliban’s gains across Afghanistan. More districts than at any time since 2001 — including some provincial capitals — have fallen under threat or outright control by the insurgents over the past year.
…
Last week’s death toll, the highest known toll of any week in the war so far, arrived without any single spectacular attack but was instead made up of numerous smaller attacks in at least 15 provinces and 23 districts, according to reporting by The New York Times.

Times reporters interviewed officials in every province where there were known military operations from Sept. 7 to 14, and according to those officials, a total of 193 government soldiers and police officers were killed in those 23 districts, less than half of the real total.

But official Afghan government policy forbids representatives for provincial and district police and government bodies from divulging casualty details to the news media, so many simply refuse to do so; that most likely accounts for the much higher figure the American military cited last week. The spokesman for one provincial police chief said his boss had recently ordered him to “only give information about our successes, not our failures.”