Kabul, Afghanistan (AP) -- Taliban fighters entered the outskirts of the Afghan capital on Sunday and said they were awaiting a “peaceful transfer” of the city after promising not to take it by force, but panicked residents raced to the leave, with workers fleeing government offices and helicopters landing at the U.S. Embassy.

In a nationwide offensive that has taken just over a week, the Taliban has defeated, co-opted or sent Afghan security forces fleeing from wide swaths of the country, even though they had some air support from the U.S. military.

On Sunday, they reached Kabul. Three Afghan officials told The Associated Press that the Taliban were in the districts of Kalakan, Qarabagh and Paghman in the capital.

phuketrichard wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 5:23 pm
The people of Kabul come out from their houses for the welcome of Taliban and gathered on the entry gate of Kabul. This is different from what media tells us. This shows that peoples of Afghanistan are with Taliban

John Bingham wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 5:50 pm

phuketrichard wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 5:23 pm
The people of Kabul come out from their houses for the welcome of Taliban and gathered on the entry gate of Kabul. This is different from what media tells us. This shows that peoples of Afghanistan are with Taliban

It's also possible that they are terrified into doing this, considering how fast the National Army that was supposed to protect them crumbled.

phuketrichard wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 6:01 pm

John Bingham wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 5:50 pm
shots of my 1st trip there in 75

it was a great country to visit an super friendly people

Excellent shots, the guy in the huge sunglasses is hilarious. However I don't see any women. I'd imagine most were segregated and wore burkas outside the capital?

Fail at any one and we are likely to lose.

1. History. Going all the way back to the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1839, very few foreign powers have thoroughly pacified indigenous Afghan forces. In the minds of the insurgents in Afghanistan — and critically, also in the understanding of the majority of Afghan civilians — they believe the narrative that their forefathers succeeded in eventually wearing out every invading army, no matter how long it took. To succeed in our effort today, we have to change their deeply held views — which is itself a Herculean task.

2. Pakistan. Nothing is possible in Afghanistan without the complicity and cooperation of Pakistan. For us to accomplish our national goals, Pakistan must shut off the flow of fighters back and forth across the border. So long as the insurgent forces have a safe haven from which to recruit, rearm, refit and then re-attack, we will not succeed. We must now do what we have failed to do in the past nine years: Convince the Pakistani government that it is in its self-interest to back the U.S. at the expense of its sometimes-surrogates of the Taliban.

3. Government corruption. Beginning shortly after the formation of the post-Taliban government in early 2002, corruption in Afghan governance has risen to levels that go well beyond even culturally acceptable norms. Afghanistan has for years been ranked as the second-to-worst of all world governments in terms of corruption (beaten only by Somalia). The thought that we can reverse this in the next 12 to 18 months when the current Afghan leadership demonstrates no will to do so borders on fantasy. If we do not repair this dysfunction, the people of Afghanistan will never embrace their government nor feel safe enough to stand against the insurgency.

4. Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) capability. It’s not a matter of how many men fill uniforms in the ANSF, it is a matter of how capable and honest they are. By every objective evaluation, the ANSF is more than a decade from attaining a minimal independent operating capability.

5. The playbook. When Petraeus burst onto the wider public scene in 2007, his ideas, strategy and efforts were unknown to our enemies. In the intervening three years, however, the Taliban has extensively studied the 2007 Iraq surge, analyzed what al-Qaida did wrong, what Petraeus did right, and has read the counterinsurgency manual cover to cover. As a result, we are facing an enemy who is well-versed in our COIN methods and is proving very effective at thwarting them.

6. The battle for hearts and minds. Too many in the West imagine the “battle for hearts and minds” as being a contest between the U.S. on the one side, the Taliban on the other and the people of Afghanistan in the middle. Each side tries to woo the Afghan citizens to come to its side. But this is not accurate. Rather, the U.S. is on one side, trying to convince the Afghan people their best chance for a good future lies with us, enticing them with building projects, new schools, roads and promises of a bountiful future if only they’ll reject the Taliban. On the other side, however, you’ve got the Taliban telling the people that if they work with the Western coalition or the Afghan government, the Taliban will kill them, slit their throats, murder their children, destroy their homes, assassinate their leaders and destroy their crops.

Against this remarkably unbalanced engagement, our side has to achieve an enormously higher standard than the enemy, because it is not enough to promise many things, nor even to provide many physical benefits. The people of Afghanistan ask a standing question, and thus far we have not provided a compelling, satisfactory answer: What good is a new road and a wonderful schoolhouse if I do not live to use it? Despite our best “strategic communications” messages to the contrary, the people of Afghanistan see clearly that our promises of security are not being met, while the Taliban’s threats of death are. Until we change this dynamic, we will not win the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan and they will not turn against the insurgency.

7. Cost and what’s possible. If we continue with our current strategy, in the next three to five years we may be able to check the increase in violence and stabilize it at current levels, perhaps even tamping it down to 2008 levels. But that is about the best we can hope for. It is unlikely that any American will consider the expense of more than a decade of war, hundreds of billions of dollars, and the loss of thousands of Americans killed or wounded to be worth it.