Timeline for Is there an overview of battles between the Afghan Army and Taliban forces during the Resolute Support Mission (2015-2021)?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
23 events
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| Aug 26, 2021 at 6:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackPolitics/status/1430772015112364034 | ||
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:41 | answer | added | Venture2099 | timeline score: -1 | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:38 | comment | added | JJJ♦ | @Venture2099 any assessment based on performance in battle would be a (partial) answer to the question. When you said assessments I assumed you meant some assessment in a training situation, I'm hesitant about accepting that because it may not be indicative about real-world performance. | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:33 | comment | added | Venture2099 | I have no doubt you are about to wield your diamond but at present, your question in the comments is not even close to the question you have asked above. You have also said you will not accept NATO assessments of the Afghan National Army (no one mentioned target practice..not sure where you got that from). Your reference for the validity of this question was a question that was closed. What specifically are you asking for? | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:27 | comment | added | JJJ♦ | @Venture2099 no, I'm asking for any answer that shows performance in battle. I'm not interested in non-combat assessments (e.g. performance in target practice or in interviews). That doesn't make it a bad-faith effort, I'm happy with whatever answer sheds some light on actual performance (even if they come from NATO forces, but as you say they're probably not publicly available). Feel free to argue that it's a bad faith question on meta, but I'm afraid this comment exchange isn't productive. | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:24 | comment | added | Venture2099 | That question was closed. And rightly so. Your use of quotation marks around the word "objective assessment" also indicated that this question is a vehicle for you to argue or otherwise debate some aspect of Afghanistan rather than seeking a genuine answer. | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:22 | comment | added | JJJ♦ | @Venture2099 no, I'm asking for public data. I image there might be something like my answer here about the Indian Pakistan conflict. Of course it's possible that answer might not exist, but there's a chance it's out there. Why do you think that's off-topic? | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:19 | comment | added | Venture2099 | ...so your question is that you want others to provide you classified data so that YOU can make an assessment as to the capabilities of the Afghan National Army? Failing complete data you will be happy with cobbled together unclassified data from unreliable sources and media reports and from that data you wish to determine the effectiveness of the ANA. That must be off topic. The fact that the ANA have crumbled is not evidence enough, you are hoping for something else? | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:17 | comment | added | JJJ♦ | @Venture2099 for the reasons Fizz indicated, I'm not really interested in 'objective assessments' by those who trained the forces. Feel free to ask that question yourself, I think it would be on-topic. :) | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:16 | review | Close votes | |||
| Aug 21, 2021 at 12:37 | |||||
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:15 | comment | added | Venture2099 | That is not the question you asked. If you are asking for an assessment of the Afghan National Army that can be provided objectively. A list of their TiC events is not a question that can be answered. | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:12 | comment | added | JJJ♦ | @Venture2099 the way I see it, there's been a 5 year NATO mission to train Afghan troops and now that NATO is pulling out we see the Afghans getting a lot of flack for withdrawing so soon, with repatriation efforts still ongoing. Given the Afghan forces seem to have been the primary force on the ground for 5 years now, I don't think it's an unreasonable question ask about their battlefield capabilities during those years. | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:08 | comment | added | JJJ♦ | @Venture2099 I've currently phrased it to focus on the Taliban. Nevertheless, I asked the question to get an understanding of how capable the ANA was during the RSM. So even if the enemy is not specified or one of those other groups then it would help get an understanding of their battlefield capabilities (depending on how specific the description of the engagement is). | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:04 | comment | added | Venture2099 | For which Provinces? Those that were supported purely by the USA? The record you are talking about is gargantuan. Do you count contact against warlords, private militias, Al Qaeda or drug dealers? For instance - some of the primary resistance in Nimruz was from heavily armed and organised criminals far removed from the Taliban. AQ fighters would often fight separate to the Taliban, sometimes even against them. | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 20:01 | comment | added | JJJ♦ | @Venture2099 perhaps not a complete record but even a partial record (based on journalism on the ground, press releases, etc.) would answer the question. Let's look at it this way: if the allied forces have not taken the lead on the ground and the ANA has, then there must be some public record of that (even if it's just eye-witness accounts). | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 19:57 | comment | added | Venture2099 | This is unanswerable. Whilst there is data for every logged TIC event (Troops in Contact) it will certainly not be available to any civilian wishing to answer this question. | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 1:24 | comment | added | 264 champagne bottles on ice | Afghan security forces losses have also been classified militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/05/01/… So I guess we won't know much until such stuff is declassified... | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 0:54 | comment | added | 264 champagne bottles on ice | However "monthly attacks" by the Taliban were apparently still tracked post 2019 so this might be a measure to look at. (As Ho Chi Minh said: an insurgency that is not attacking is losing.) | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 0:49 | comment | added | 264 champagne bottles on ice | And in something reminiscent of Vietnam, the US apparently did its best to obfuscate that its ally was losing: the published metrics kept changing to make comparisons over time difficult or impossible... Likewise was strength of the enemy/Taliban not publicly tracked since 2019 npr.org/2019/05/01/719018027/… | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 0:48 | comment | added | JJJ♦ | @Fizz yea, I'm not sure if it's a reasonable request. I figure there must be some record keeping, maybe the coalition forces have a (public) record of the air strikes where they helped ANA on the ground (with some additional situation reports). Perhaps there's some academic effort to collect news reports. | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 0:41 | comment | added | 264 champagne bottles on ice | I upvoted, but an "overview of battles" in an insurgency is probably better measured in ground control gained/lost, because there were probably not huge set-piece battles that mattered (until this past month or so). There's an AP article from April that the war was apparently/already not going in the Kabul government's favor apnews.com/article/… | |
| Aug 20, 2021 at 0:38 | history | edited | 264 champagne bottles on ice | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Added year range to title since the NATO jargon is seldom used, even in journalistic reporting. Wikipedia is more military-geeky than the average newspaper.
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| Aug 19, 2021 at 20:01 | history | asked | JJJ♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |