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On July 14, a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (SVBIED) of the Taliban targeted a joint center of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP) in the area of Bashran Dasht in Lashkargah, the capital of the southern province of Helmand, according to the Taliban news agency Voice of Jihad.
The Taliban claimed that 37 personnel of the ANA and the ANP were killed and 11 others were injured in the SVBIED attack. According to Voice of Jihad, 6 armored personnel carriers (APCs) of the ANA were also destroyed as a result of the explosion.
A spokesman of Lashkargah’s governor, Omar Zowak confirmed to the Afghan TOLO TV that a SVBIED targeted a joint center of the ANA and the ANP in Helmand. However, Zowak said that only one Afghan policeman was killed and 11 others were injured in the attack.
According to the Taliban, the suicide attack is a part of its spring offensive, codenamed “Operation al-Khandagh”, which was launched on April 25 in response to Washington’s decision to increase the US military presence in Afghanistan.
A day earlier, Taliban fighters killed 9 personnel of the ANA in rapid attack in Helmand. These recent attacks are an example of the deteriorating security situation in the southern province.
In the end the decisive bit will be that the Afghan government has direct superpower backing, the Taliban does not.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The Afghan army/security forces must be the most incompetent, useless bunch of cunts on the planet if they can’t fight back against the people that are actually attacking them. Absolutely godamned mother-fucking useless.
The Taliban were originally mostly tough-assed Pashtun mountain people – locals that hate outsiders interfering with their affairs. Imagine someone like the Houthi, except that the Taliban are Wahhabis. You can only beat up on indigenous fighters like that when you get good intel from locals that willingly oppose them and don’t feel threatened by retribution from them. That’s never going to happen in Afghanistan ever again.
No Afghani citizen loves the current failed state and the thoroughly-corrupt Afghan government that much – despite the answers they give Americans when questioned about their Afghan patriotism. In addition, the average Afghan is not going to rat out anyone – not at the risk of getting a visit in the middle of the night by some pissed-off Taliban. The local police are a joke, and always have been. The logic of “Well, if you rat them out, then we’ll get rid of them for you.” has failed Afghanis for 16 years – they know better than to trust the Americans’ naive fantasies. Nothing that the U.S. military or Afghan security forces are doing today will change that.
The latest US attempt – yet more Afghan force ‘advising’ using the newly-formed 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade – may, and probably will make the Afghan forces as a whole marginally more competent and useful. Trouble is that it changes nothing considering who they’re fighting for: the incompetent and useless cunts running Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government. The Afghan Army can kill every last enemy of the Afghan state inside and outside the country, but the Afghan government will still suck. Afghan civilians will never trust it and – by extension – its military. Democracy does not fix a broken, corrupt government EVER, nor does a thoroughly-competent military.