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Old 1st August 2022, 03:03 PM   #1
dudalb
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US had just conducted a military operation in Afghanistan...

WHite house will release details this evening.
I am not surprised; was pretty sure this would happen.
What has been stated it it was against Al Qaida; remember that promise the Taliban made about not letting Al Qaida type terroist group return to Afganistan?
You just cannot trust the Taliban. Period, end of discussion.

Breaking news: It's Ayman al-Zawahiri. He has beeen #1 on the target lest since Bin Ladin got his. He basically was Bin Laden Chief Of Staff, and was in charge of the detailed planning of 9/11. Won't see any tears from be on his sudden demise.
More just it; It was a Drone Strike in Kabul. which once agianst leads one to question how much we should trust the Taliban Goverment.
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Old 1st August 2022, 03:20 PM   #2
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Where was the operation staged from? Somewhere in Afghanistan?
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Old 1st August 2022, 03:30 PM   #3
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
Where was the operation staged from? Somewhere in Afghanistan?

Nope, you need an airbase or carrier for this kind of drone strike.
I would not be surprised if they don't go into details about this aspect.
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Old 1st August 2022, 03:49 PM   #4
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He's one of those guys that's been off the media's radar for some time (at least, my media's). If I thought about it I'd think he was killed some time ago. But the way Wolf Blitzer is bloviating about it, it seems like it's a pretty big deal.
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Old 1st August 2022, 04:04 PM   #5
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Originally Posted by alfaniner View Post
He's one of those guys that's been off the media's radar for some time (at least, my media's). If I thought about it I'd think he was killed some time ago. But the way Wolf Blitzer is bloviating about it, it seems like it's a pretty big deal.
It is.
He was second in command of Al Qaida at the time of the 9/11 attacks; he was thought be in charge of the actual planning' sort of chief of staff to Bin Laden.
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Old 1st August 2022, 04:05 PM   #6
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Quote:
The New York Times in 2001 described al-Zawahiri as coming from "a prosperous and prestigious family that gives him a pedigree grounded firmly in both religion and politics".[13] The family originated from the Harbi tribe in Zawahir, a small town in Saudi Arabia, located in the Badr area.[14]

Al-Zawahiri's parents both came from prosperous families. Al-Zawahiri's father, Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri, came from a large family of doctors and scholars from Kafr Ash Sheikh Dhawahri, Sharqia Governorate, in which one of his grandfathers was Sheikh Muhammad al-Ahmadi al-Zawahiri (1887–1944) who was the 34th Grand Imam of al-Azhar.[15] Mohammed Rabie became a surgeon and a professor of pharmacy[16] at Cairo University.

Ayman Al-Zawahiri's mother, Umayma Azzam, came from a wealthy, politically active clan, being the daughter of Abdel-Wahhab Azzam, a literary scholar who served as the president of Cairo University, the founder and inaugural rector of the King Saud University (the first university in Saudi Arabia) as well as ambassador to Pakistan, while his own brother was Azzam Pasha, the founding secretary-general of the Arab League (1945–1952).[17] From his maternal side yet another relative was Salem Azzam, an Islamist intellectual and activist, for a time secretary-general of the Islamic Council of Europe based in London.[18] He also has a maternal link to the house of Saud: Muna, the daughter of Azzam Pasha (his maternal great-uncle), is married to Mohammed bin Faisal Al Saud, the son of the late king Faisal.[19]
Quote:
By the age of 14, al-Zawahiri had joined the Muslim Brotherhood. The following year the Egyptian government executed Sayyid Qutb for conspiracy, and al-Zawahiri, along with four other secondary school students, helped form an "underground cell devoted to overthrowing the government and establishing an Islamist state." It was at this early age that al-Zawahiri developed a mission in life, "to put Qutb's vision into action."[31] His cell eventually merged with others to form al-Jihad or Egyptian Islamic Jihad.[25]
Quote:
In 1981, Al-Zawahiri was one of hundreds arrested following the assassination of President Anwar Sadat.[46] Initially, the plan was derailed when authorities were alerted to Al-Jihad's plan by the arrest of an operative carrying crucial information, in February 1981. President Sadat ordered the roundup of more than 1,500 people, including many Al-Jihad members, but missed a cell in the military led by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli, who succeeded in assassinating Sadat during a military parade that October.[47] His lawyer, Montasser el-Zayat, said that Zawahiri was tortured in prison.[48]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_al-Zawahiri

This man, alongside some other immensely privileged, bright, talented men (Osama bin Laden, to name one example) in the Arab world spent most of his life using his resources, gifts, and skills not improving the lives of his community, his co-religionists--to say nothing of the broader world--but instead, threw it all away on a lost cause of jihadist death and destruction. In his case, he spent nearly 60 years of his life dedicated to this foolish, violent, nihilistic cause. And he lost control of his jihad, Exhibit A being ISIS.

It is a bitter, infuriating tragedy that such people who have been given so much and who are so capable in many ways choose such a horrifying, shameful path. Zawahiri's and his cohorts' actions directly and indirectly brought so much ruin to the Islamic world they claimed to be fighting for. That is his "legacy."
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Old 1st August 2022, 04:32 PM   #7
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And the Taliban has some 'splanin to do with thier repeated promise they would not let groups like Al Qaida back into Afghanistan.
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Old 1st August 2022, 07:27 PM   #8
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Originally Posted by dudalb View Post
And the Taliban has some 'splanin to do with thier repeated promise they would not let groups like Al Qaida back into Afghanistan.

They also promised to respect the rights of women and minorities.

Hmmm….
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Old 1st August 2022, 07:53 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by dudalb View Post
remember that promise the Taliban made about not letting Al Qaida type terroist group return to Afganistan?
No, I don't. Cite?
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Old 1st August 2022, 08:17 PM   #10
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Originally Posted by dudalb View Post
And the Taliban has some 'splanin to do with thier repeated promise they would not let groups like Al Qaida back into Afghanistan.
Or they did the "splanin" on the front end as proof they won't harbor Al Qaida.
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Old 1st August 2022, 08:24 PM   #11
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Originally Posted by Allen773 View Post
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_al-Zawahiri

This man, alongside some other immensely privileged, bright, talented men (Osama bin Laden, to name one example) in the Arab world spent most of his life using his resources, gifts, and skills not improving the lives of his community, his co-religionists--to say nothing of the broader world--but instead, threw it all away on a lost cause of jihadist death and destruction. In his case, he spent nearly 60 years of his life dedicated to this foolish, violent, nihilistic cause. And he lost control of his jihad, Exhibit A being ISIS.

It is a bitter, infuriating tragedy that such people who have been given so much and who are so capable in many ways choose such a horrifying, shameful path. Zawahiri's and his cohorts' actions directly and indirectly brought so much ruin to the Islamic world they claimed to be fighting for. That is his "legacy."

Ah, but just think - every night of his life for nearly half of a century he got to sleep in a different bed and always had fresh sheets.
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Old 1st August 2022, 08:38 PM   #12
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Originally Posted by dudalb View Post
And the Taliban has some 'splanin to do with thier repeated promise they would not let groups like Al Qaida back into Afghanistan.
Is there evidence that they let them?
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Old 1st August 2022, 09:33 PM   #13
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Originally Posted by Allen773 View Post
It is a bitter, infuriating tragedy that such people who have been given so much and who are so capable in many ways choose such a horrifying, shameful path.
Yes, let's just call it a 'tragedy' and ascribe it to 'shameful' behavior. That way we don't have to look too closely at how these people came to choose this path.

A Lesson In Hate
Quote:
How an Egyptian student came to study 1950s America and left determined to wage holy war

Before Sayyid Qutb became a leading theorist of violent jihad, he was a little-known Egyptian writer sojourning in the United States, where he attended a small teachers college on the Great Plains. Greeley, Colorado, circa 1950 was the last place one might think to look for signs of American decadence... But the courtly Qutb (COO-tub) saw things that others did not. He seethed at the brutishness of the people around him...

Such grumbling by an unhappy crank would be almost comical but for one fact: a direct line of influence runs from Sayyid Qutb to Osama bin Laden, and to bin Laden’s Egyptian partner in terror, Ayman al-Zawahiri...

Qutb’s gripes about America require serious attention because they cast light on a question that has been nagging since the fall of the World Trade Center: Why do they hate us?

Even by the standards of Egypt, those were chaotic, corrupt times: World War I had completed the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, and the Western powers were creating, with absolute colonial confidence, new maps and governments for the Middle East. For a proud man like Sayyid Qutb, the humiliation of his country at the hands of secular leaders and Western puppets was galling...

During a short stay in Washington, D.C., he witnessed the commotion surrounding an elevator accident and was stunned to hear other onlookers making a joke of the victim’s appearance. From this and a few offhand remarks in other settings, Qutb concluded that Americans suffered from “a drought of sentimental sympathy” and that “Americans intentionally deride what people in the Old World hold sacred.”

Sayyid Qutb cut short his stay in America and returned to Egypt in 1951 after the assassination of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the nationalist, religious and militant movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood. Over the next decade and a half, often writing from prison, Qutb refined a violent political theology from the raw anti-modernism of his American interlude. Virtually the entire modern world, Qutb theorized, is jahiliyya, that barbarous state that existed before Muhammad. Only the strict, unchanging law of the prophet can redeem this uncivilized condition.

This philosophy led to Qutb’s execution in 1966. Proud to the end, he refused to accept the secular Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser’s offer of mercy in exchange for Qutb’s repudiation of his jihad. Nasser may have silenced a critic, but the martyrdom of Sayyid Qutb accelerated his movement. The same year the philosopher was hanged, according to journalist Lawrence Wright, the teenage al-Zawahiri formed his first violent cell, dedicated to the overthrow of the Egyptian government and the creation of an Islamist state.
You expected these "immensely privileged, bright, talented men" to dedicate their lives to improving their community, as if they should pay a debt for being 'given' so much. But how often do the "immensely privileged" in our own society do the same? Do we hold such people in high regard while shaming those who exploit their privilege for personal wealth and power, or do we admire those who capitalize on it and yearn to be like them? America was built on people choosing a horrifying, shameful path, and still follows it today - not to retain a 'civilized condition' of religious tradition, but to reward capitalist greed and selfishness.

This isn't a 'tragedy' so much as the expected result of a culture clash. These people didn't become radicalized in spite of their privilege, but because of it. It is the privilege itself that you should be blaming, and the jihadists are victims of it.
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Old 1st August 2022, 11:23 PM   #14
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No. I’m not going to have this conversation.
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Old 2nd August 2022, 12:46 AM   #15
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Originally Posted by Roger Ramjets View Post
No, I don't. Cite?
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/upl...eclaration.pdf

This is a three-page PDF, so here is the key bit...

PART ONE

The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan* and the United States recognize that al-Qa’ida, ISIS-K and other international terrorist groups or individuals continue to use Afghan soil to recruit members, raise funds, train adherents and plan and attempt to conduct attacks that threaten the security of the United States, its allies, and Afghanistan. To address this continuing terrorist threat, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan* and the United States will continue to take the following steps to defeat al-Qa’ida, its affiliates, and other international terrorist groups or individuals:

1. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan* reaffirms its continued commitment not to cooperate with or permit international terrorist groups or individuals to recruit, train, raise funds (including through the production or distribution of narcotics), transit Afghanistan or misuse its internationally-recognized travel documents, or conduct other support activities in Afghanistan, and will not host them."


Did that jog your memory?


NOTE: * "The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan" is the Taliban

NOTE: This was February 29, 2020 when The Fat Orange Turd was still president. He got suckered, as expected.
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Old 2nd August 2022, 10:05 AM   #16
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Qutb saw what he wanted to see and believed what he wanted to believe, including the hateful fantasies he made up for himself. Yes, he and others were privileged, but were they really so gifted? (It's a mistake to expect the wealthy to be educated, or educable.) And if he thought the folks in Greely, Colorado were brutish, what would he think of, say, ISIS if he could see them today? And if he inspired Zawahiri, he'd have a lot of brutishness to explain for himself. Probably with a ream of Koranic blather and plenty of suras too.

Culture clash? More like the cultural insolence of a handful of puffed-up rich boys with ugly imaginations.
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Old 2nd August 2022, 10:53 AM   #17
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Originally Posted by sackett View Post
Qutb saw what he wanted to see and believed what he wanted to believe, including the hateful fantasies he made up for himself. Yes, he and others were privileged, but were they really so gifted? (It's a mistake to expect the wealthy to be educated, or educable.) And if he thought the folks in Greely, Colorado were brutish, what would he think of, say, ISIS if he could see them today? And if he inspired Zawahiri, he'd have a lot of brutishness to explain for himself. Probably with a ream of Koranic blather and plenty of suras too.

Culture clash? More like the cultural insolence of a handful of puffed-up rich boys with ugly imaginations.
I always find Qutb fascinating because I grew up in Greeley and most of my relatives still live there - and it is very conservative. It's not like the guy was stuck in a hippy counter-culture place, or a hotbed of sin and debauchery. He was instead in a very conservative small town. Very, very conservative. Sometimes his history comes up on Greeley-related social media, and locals are shocked and surprised. Then a few years later it pops up again and they are shocked and surprised again, like they've got some sort of odd amnesia on the subject.

Some years later Anwar al-Awlaki attended Colorado State University, not so far away. (I was a student there at the same time.)

Northern Colorado is clearly a hotbed of Islamic extremism.
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Old 2nd August 2022, 11:46 AM   #18
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Originally Posted by crescent View Post
Northern Colorado is clearly a hotbed of Islamic extremism.
Presumably this is sarcasm?
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Old 2nd August 2022, 11:54 AM   #19
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Originally Posted by dudalb View Post
Breaking news: It's Ayman al-Zawahiri.
I'd like some corroboration that we actually got him, and not somebody else. We've successfully pulled off this sort of thing before, so it's certainly possible, but we've also ****** up before too.
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Old 2nd August 2022, 12:00 PM   #20
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Originally Posted by dudalb View Post
Nope, you need an airbase or carrier for this kind of drone strike.
I don't think the US has any carrier-based armed drones in inventory right now.

Also, don't you still need someone on the ground, confirming in near-realtime that the targeted location still has the target? Whether it's a Navy SEAL in the bushes with a 3000x scope and a laser pointer, or an informant with a burner phone swearing to the target's location, some part of this operation must have been on the ground in Afghanistan, right?
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Old 2nd August 2022, 12:45 PM   #21
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/upl...eclaration.pdf

This is a three-page PDF, so here is the key bit...

PART ONE

The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan* and the United States recognize that al-Qa’ida, ISIS-K and other international terrorist groups or individuals continue to use Afghan soil to recruit members, raise funds, train adherents and plan and attempt to conduct attacks that threaten the security of the United States, its allies, and Afghanistan. To address this continuing terrorist threat, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan* and the United States will continue to take the following steps to defeat al-Qa’ida, its affiliates, and other international terrorist groups or individuals:

1. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan* reaffirms its continued commitment not to cooperate with or permit international terrorist groups or individuals to recruit, train, raise funds (including through the production or distribution of narcotics), transit Afghanistan or misuse its internationally-recognized travel documents, or conduct other support activities in Afghanistan, and will not host them."


Did that jog your memory?


NOTE: * "The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan" is the Taliban

NOTE: This was February 29, 2020 when The Fat Orange Turd was still president. He got suckered, as expected.
As pointed out, they also promised to respect the rights of WOmen.
(In rest Captain Renault in "Casaclanca voice) I am shockee....SHOCKED...to find out that relgious fanatics actually lie.....
I am soo puzzles as to why some "Progressives" are apologist for these right wing Islamic regimes . And please don't come back with the "Some Christians are just as bad" whatabout response. Both are bad.
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Old 2nd August 2022, 12:51 PM   #22
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
I don't think the US has any carrier-based armed drones in inventory right now.
I believe you are correct. I've seen a bunch of stories about a naval MQ-25 drone in the testing stage, but that's for areal refueling, not for missile strikes, so it wouldn't work for this mission even if you wanted to use a prototype.

Quote:
Also, don't you still need someone on the ground, confirming in near-realtime that the targeted location still has the target? Whether it's a Navy SEAL in the bushes with a 3000x scope and a laser pointer, or an informant with a burner phone swearing to the target's location, some part of this operation must have been on the ground in Afghanistan, right?
I can imagine a possible scenario where you might not need that (for example, signals intelligence which could identify his cell phone location and intercepts might confirm that he's using it), but that seems less likely than a local informant. You certainly want SOMETHING to confirm his presence at the strike time and location, because you really don't want to miss.
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Old 2nd August 2022, 02:21 PM   #23
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Originally Posted by dudalb View Post
As pointed out, they also promised to respect the rights of WOmen.
And what did the US promise?

Quote:
3. The United States re-affirms its readiness to continue to conduct military operations in Afghanistan with the consent of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in order to disrupt and degrade efforts by al-Qa’ida...
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Old 3rd August 2022, 04:49 AM   #24
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Originally Posted by Roger Ramjets View Post
And what did the US promise?
You asked for a cite, and I supplied one in post #15. Seems you forgot (or ignored) it.
"1. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan* reaffirms its continued commitment not to cooperate with or permit international terrorist groups or individuals to recruit, train, raise funds (including through the production or distribution of narcotics), transit Afghanistan or misuse its internationally-recognized travel documents, or conduct other support activities in Afghanistan, and will not host them."
The Taliban has breached the terms of an agreement it signed up to - so that voids the agreement, and its now open season on any terrorist leaders in Afghanistan.
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Old 3rd August 2022, 04:58 AM   #25
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I'm not sure the agreement has been breached. The presence of a terrorist is not itself a breach. There was a terrorist present. The Taliban consents to the US going after terrorists. The US went after the terrorist that was present. All according to Hoyle, Queensberry, and, as far as I can tell, the agreement in question.
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Old 3rd August 2022, 10:21 AM   #26
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
I'm not sure the agreement has been breached. The presence of a terrorist is not itself a breach. There was a terrorist present. The Taliban consents to the US going after terrorists. The US went after the terrorist that was present. All according to Hoyle, Queensberry, and, as far as I can tell, the agreement in question.
This is kind of where I was at with the whole thing too. It kind of sounds like everything went the way it should have gone.
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Old 3rd August 2022, 10:53 AM   #27
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
You asked for a cite, and I supplied one in post #15. Seems you forgot (or ignored) it.
"1. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan* reaffirms its continued commitment not to cooperate with or permit international terrorist groups or individuals to recruit, train, raise funds (including through the production or distribution of narcotics), transit Afghanistan or misuse its internationally-recognized travel documents, or conduct other support activities in Afghanistan, and will not host them."
The Taliban has breached the terms of an agreement it signed up to - so that voids the agreement, and its now open season on any terrorist leaders in Afghanistan.
It was already open season, under the terms of the agreement. The Taliban agreed not to host any terrorists, and also agreed that the US could hunt any terrorists that ended up in there in spite of the Taliban not hosting them. The US agreed to go ahead any terrorists that ended up there.

Where did the Taliban breach the agreement? Were they hosting this guy? Or was he there in spite of them?
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Old 3rd August 2022, 12:37 PM   #28
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
It was already open season, under the terms of the agreement. The Taliban agreed not to host any terrorists, and also agreed that the US could hunt any terrorists that ended up in there in spite of the Taliban not hosting them. The US agreed to go ahead any terrorists that ended up there.

Where did the Taliban breach the agreement? Were they hosting this guy? Or was he there in spite of them?
He was being hosted in a house located in the Sherpur neighbourhood of Kabul, part of the former "Green Zone". All of those houses (which once belonged to Afghani Government ministers) were confiscated by the Taliban and are now owned by members of the Haqqani Network, a political faction within the Taliban with strong ties to the Pakistani intelligence community. That makes it a direct breach of the Doha Agreement, which all of the Taliban, including the Haqqani, signed up to.
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Old 3rd August 2022, 12:48 PM   #29
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
He was being hosted in a house located in the Sherpur neighbourhood of Kabul, part of the former "Green Zone". All of those houses (which once belonged to Afghani Government ministers) were confiscated by the Taliban and are now owned by members of the Haqqani Network, a political faction within the Taliban with strong ties to the Pakistani intelligence community. That makes it a direct breach of the Doha Agreement, which all of the Taliban, including the Haqqani, signed up to.
Unless the Hqqqani tipped us off.

Which I doubt, but I can't disprove either.

In any case, either they breached the agreement and we aren't bound to it either, or both parties acted within the agreement. So in that sense it kind of doesn't matter: in no case did we do anything wrong by carrying out this strike (assuming that the target was correctly identified, which I'm still waiting for confirmation of).
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Old 3rd August 2022, 02:03 PM   #30
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Haqqani tip-off, or a rival faction? You could write a decent spy thriller about this kind of thing. Maybe the Haqs wanted Z gone, so they promised him sanctuary and then turned him in. Get rid of a pest and score some points with the Big Bad at the same time...
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Old 3rd August 2022, 06:56 PM   #31
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
Haqqani tip-off, or a rival faction? You could write a decent spy thriller about this kind of thing. Maybe the Haqs wanted Z gone, so they promised him sanctuary and then turned him in. Get rid of a pest and score some points with the Big Bad at the same time...
As Jael hosted Sisera.
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Old 3rd August 2022, 09:38 PM   #32
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
Haqqani tip-off, or a rival faction? You could write a decent spy thriller about this kind of thing. Maybe the Haqs wanted Z gone, so they promised him sanctuary and then turned him in. Get rid of a pest and score some points with the Big Bad at the same time...
I think this is a reasonable view given the very muted public response of the Taliban leadership. I mean, in the past, after something like this, the usual response would be the declaration of Jihad, and fatwā against those involved. Instead, they call it a "violation of international principles" and make statement to the effect that it might close the door on future co-operation. Compared with their previous form, this is a veritable "Tsk tsk, that was very naughty of you"
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Old 17th August 2022, 06:01 PM   #33
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Meanwhile a mosque is Kabul was bombed today; apparently ISIS is now operating in Afghanistan.
Oh, the irony.
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