5 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

[karan.1970]

And I thought celebrating deaths was a bannable offence

 

[xTra]

Rip,

5 soldier died, but still no 5 RIP post.

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

RIP..


Do the americans on sites like ********,youtube,mp ... respect our martyrs? nope..

 

[FaujHistorian]

Can the mods please change the 'thumbs up' sign of this thread, it is absolutely disrespectful.

RIP to the soldiers, may God give strength to their families to pass through this testing time.

Thank you.

What you said is the true spirit of a Pakistani defense forum.

Thank you

 

[hussain0216]

They are burning in hell now, how exactly will they rest in peace

 

[scorpionx]

@FaujHistorian:

Last thing my post intended was to celebrate any soldier's death,let me clear it in the beginning.

It costs more to keep marine battalions in two districts of Helmand than providing civilian assistance to entire Egypt.My flag,even if it becomes a Somali one,does not change the painful fact that even after twelve years of bloodiest battle fought with billions of dollars burnt, Talibans still have control over seventy percent of the districts a majority of which falls in way of the disastrous retreat of the British in the winter of 1842.
I believe,spending 100bn dollars a year following a slaughter of thousands of western troops in a battle of not their own,won't solve the issue here.If you obliterate the entire Taliban army with a N bomb just now,they will continue coming after some years if they find any foreign troops present on Afghan soil.
I am not an expert on Military History and strategy like you,but I can't ignore the remarks made by several tribes leaders in Jagdalak in the last illustrious work by William Dalrymple.

Thank you.

 

[FaujHistorian]

And I thought celebrating deaths was a bannable offence

It is.

Just report such posts as soon as they appear.

We need to make sure the PDF standards remain high

And this really nice forum doesn't get hijacked by the extremists and Talib-b@stard sympathizers.


Thank you for keeping a vigilant stance.


peace

@FaujHistorian:

Last thing my post intended was to celebrate any soldier's death,let me clear it in the beginning.

It costs more to keep marine battalions in two districts of Helmand than providing civilian assistance to entire Egypt.My flag,even if it becomes a Somali one,does not change the painful fact that even after twelve years of bloodiest battle fought with billions of dollars burnt, Talibans still have control over seventy percent of the districts a majority of which falls in way of the disastrous retreat of the British in the winter of 1842.
I believe,spending 100bn dollars a year following a slaughter of thousands of western troops in a battle of not their own,won't solve the issue here.If you obliterate the entire Taliban army with a N bomb just now,they will continue coming after some years if they find any foreign troops present on Afghan soil.
I am not an expert on Military History and strategy like you,but I can't ignore the remarks made by several tribes leaders in Jagdalak in the last illustrious work by William Dalrymple.

Thank you.

Ok.

Now I understand.

You are trying to merge many perspectives in your comments. And this is never good.

Here is what I understand as your stance.

1. Economic - 100 bn dollars is not worth spending on Afghanistan ops

2. Military - US army cannot support stability of Afghanistan

3. Military history: What happened to British expeditionary force in 19th century Afghanistan will be repeated in 21st century US forces.


Is this what you are trying to get to?


peace

 

[A.Rafay]

Rest in peace!

 

[scorpionx]

@FaujHistorian:
Exactly so.

 

[Shardul.....the lion]

Rest in peace.............Hoping after US withdrawal peace returns to war torn nation

 

[FaujHistorian]

@FaujHistorian:

Last thing my post intended was to celebrate any soldier's death,let me clear it in the beginning.

It costs more to keep marine battalions in two districts of Helmand than providing civilian assistance to entire Egypt.My flag,even if it becomes a Somali one,does not change the painful fact that even after twelve years of bloodiest battle fought with billions of dollars burnt, Talibans still have control over seventy percent of the districts a majority of which falls in way of the disastrous retreat of the British in the winter of 1842.
I believe,spending 100bn dollars a year following a slaughter of thousands of western troops in a battle of not their own,won't solve the issue here.If you obliterate the entire Taliban army with a N bomb just now,they will continue coming after some years if they find any foreign troops present on Afghan soil.
I am not an expert on Military History and strategy like you,but I can't ignore the remarks made by several tribes leaders in Jagdalak in the last illustrious work by William Dalrymple.

Thank you.

Now that we agree that you were trying to merge many perspectives in your comments.

Here is what I understand as your stance and below are the answers for each of your point.

1. Economic - 100 bn dollars is not worth spending on Afghanistan ops

2. Military - US army cannot support stability of Afghanistan

3. Military history: What happened to British expeditionary force in 19th century Afghanistan will be repeated in 21st century US forces.


Answers and clarifications.


#1 - Even though 100 bn is a lot of money for anyone including USA, but it will be well worth if we could keep Talib-b@stards away from Kabul for another 10 years.

I like President Obama's measured approach to international issues. However he was clearly wrong about doing "serge" in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan never needed 100,000+ soldiers. (I'll explain under #3)

the serge has cost dearly in terms of men and material and off course money like you say 100s of bln.

And this brings me to the second point of yours.


#2. Afghanistan may never be "fully tamed", but it can be kept in relative stability (from Afghanistani standards). And I hope this is what President Obama has in mind for 2014+ period.

Here is my reason for stating this:


#3 - For an honest war historian, 1985 was a turning point in the history of Afghan wars.


Before 1985, Every Afghaninstani invasions was done by slow paced long caravans of soldiers, their ammo, and their food and water.

In 1985 Russian commies took their ground slow moving ground forces out of mountains (and into large cities/regions) and replaced them with fast moving air-cavalry.

This new method was so devastating, that every major hot spot of Muj was cleansed by the end of 1986.

And Commies almost won.

Americans had been watching Russian air-cavalry subdue town after Afghanistani town and Muj on the run.

That's when Stingers were introduced and Russian use of air-cavalry came to an abrupt end and so did the Russian adventures in Afghanistan.


Here is why Russian use of air-cavalry was so effective in Afghanistan.


Afghanistan or its most rugged parts are like collection of tea-cups sitting right next to each other in an endless array.

peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys, tea cup next to tea cup and so on and on and on.


Most of the Afghan villages are at the bottom of such teacups.

In order to go from one village to the next, the road circles around the cup, inching up towards the rim of the cup and then descends into the bottom of the adjoining teacup.

This geography makes Afghan villages and small towns to be isolated from each other, and thus moving a large caravan of army from one tea cup to the next is an arduous process.


this geography allowed a small number of Muj sitting high close to the rim of the cups to pick on large Russian convoys with devastating results. The same thing happened to every large convoy, every large army that invaded Afghanistan.

Why,

these large convoys had to crawl along the walls of the teacup, go up an up and then descend down to the next valley in a lumbering way.

This unique geography has made Afghanistan as an ungovernable (in modern sense) territory.


However in 1985, Russians brought in air-cavalry. So there was no need for large snaking and crawling convoys.

One squadron of Russian helicopters typically had 3-4 gunships, and 2-3 commando troop carriers. There were typically 1-2 low flying fixed wings up above.


This squadron could easily mop up 2-3 villages or one medium town in one day.


This brand new technique was not only saving Russian troops, but also resulted in killing most of the Muj sitting up on the teacup rim, or down in the village.

there was no way Afghan Muj could counter this technique.


Afghanistani geography that had protected Afghanistani militants now became death trap. Muj from one village could not easily get to the next, before Russian mop up.

No fing way.


and Russians pretty much swept through major parts of Afghanistan in almost a year.

then Russians met the Stingers.

CIA and ISI trained Muj in the use of stingers and Russian air-cavalry became largely ineffective.

3 Afghanistani Muj with 2-5 stingers could easily wipe out the entire squadron of the air-cavalry and sometimes their fixed wing support.


This was the time for huge losses for the Russian army aviation and air force.


Thus by late 80s, russians lost the will to stay in Afghanistan and left.



Fast forward to the horrible incident of 9/11. Americans were now ready to invade Afghanistan.

they had learned the lessons from Soviet invasion, so they went in with a small contingent instead of large scale invasion force.


US army numbers remained remained low, until President Obama came in the office.

He had made the election promise to do a "serge" in Afghanistan without ever taking into account the lessons from 1985 era.

The serge then resulted in 100,000+ NATO troops and the costs sky rocketed to 100s of blns.


I suspect the US+NATO will go back to 10,000 plus or minus numbers, thus greately reducing the cost and still providing the necessary stability to Afghanistanis.

Will this see an end to Taliban?

No.

Will it stop Taliban from taking control of Kabul,

You bet your bottom dollar! yes.

and this is the right strategy for Afghanistan.

-- Air control and not ground occupation.


Hope this all makes sense.


Military history is complicated, and it may take volumes to put exact figures and maps and combat ops even for a 7 day war, let alone Afghanistani wars that stretch now for almost half a century.


peace.


p.s. I hope one day Afghanistani people attain peace and prosperity.

A healthy, peaceful, and prosperous Afghanistan is in the best interest of the whole region and especially Pakistan.

 

[FaujHistorian]

Five more terrorist dead? ....

A Pakistani American calling dead American Soldiers with derogatory terms.

Shame, utter shame for this disloyalty to your country and to your nation.


peace

 

[Digital Soldier]

The Americans donated dollars to Pakistanis in order to fight the Taliban but Pakistani military used that money to train their proxy fighters (Taliban) that killed 5 young soldiers yesterday.

 

[FaujHistorian]

The Americans donated dollars to Pakistanis in order to fight the Taliban but Pakistani military used that money to train their proxy fighters (Taliban) that killed 5 young soldiers yesterday.

Please provide some reasoning please.

Otherwise the above quoted material will simply remain the way it is written ie. brain f@rt

 

[Digital Soldier]

Please provide some reasoning please.

Otherwise the above quoted material will simply remain the way it is written ie. brain f@rt

Instead of using the American donation to fight Taliban, they are creating Taliban by that money and send them to neighbor countries for destructive purposes.

Pakistani support for extremists persists | Asia | DW.DE | 29.04.2013