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Originally Posted by Slims
Will:
The Soviet Union killed so many regular Afghans that they made enemies of the entire country.
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What do you think we're doing now? Even the watered down reports of civilian deaths coming out of Afghanistan and Pakistan are really high. The total number of civilian deaths is almost certainly in the mid to high tens of thousands, far higher than it would have been had we not made the mistake of invading.
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Originally Posted by Slims
They also had less technology (which helps, but doesn't win the war, I know), a less palatable ideology and made a lot of mistakes which we have learned from. They also became tied to their bases and conducting only large operations...Something we are having trouble with but have not fully fallen into.
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Unmanned drones, the highest current level of US military technology, regularly kill civilians. It's getting so bad that in June the United Nations Human Rights Council released a 29 page report detailing the killing of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. Doesn't this all seem a bit too familiar?
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Originally Posted by Slims
The Northern Alliance had pushed (slightly) out of the mountains as far as bagram airfield. They were stuck there in a stalemate and had been for several years. The airfield is only a handful of kilometers from the mountain safe havens and that is why they were not pushed back...The taliban had the NA guys near bagram outnumbered 10 to 1 but were fatalistic enough to believe that all they would gain would be a few kilometers of plain before being stopped by the NA at the base of the mountains.
Likewise in Nangarhar the NA controlled the northern mountains but not the dominant plain or the airfield.
The NA controlled most of the northern provinces but very little overall of the central and southern provinces. They had a large presence in the East but were not in control of any of the key industrial (such as it is in Afghanistan) or commerce centers.
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Respectfully, I disagree. The idea of the stalemate was pushed on us in the runup to the bombings of Taliban training camps in order to make the NA look like they couldn't win and the Taliban look a lot stronger than they were. Were the Taliban and NA evenly matched? Absolutely. Still, in late 2000 and early 2001, the NA were making huge inroads both in the North and East. Moreover, the Taliban were losing a lot of the support of the people.