Article

2004-02-04 Afghanistan

Rockets Hit Kabul; No Casualties As Usual

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Steve White 2004-02-04 12:36:35 AM|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 AQ wants the WoT to still be fought in a sand pit.

Posted by Lucky 2004-2-4 12:41:32 AM|| 2004-2-4 12:41:32 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Hek's boyz once again demonstrate their unrivaled accuracy. How this band of maroons ever ended up terrorizing the country during the early 1990s boggles the mind.

Posted by Dan Darling 2004-2-4 1:13:50 AM|| [http://www.regnumcrucis.blogspot.com] 2004-2-4 1:13:50 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Amen, Dan. I seem to remember the voluminous press reports and armchair analysts declarations regards the incredibly tough "Afghan fighter" - superman, he was. In the face of real troops, we find he is, basically, a chump with a gun - for sale... and I guess just about everybody in the countryside plays this game, since it's pretty hard to scratch out a living in a rock garden.

Terrorizing the Kabulies seems to have been very simple: show up with a bunch of ragtag pseudo-gunnies armed with AK-47's and you rule. The fact that they can have 2 hour firefights at 20 paces with no casualties seems to have been lost somewhere along the way.

Pfeh on these imagined super-fighters and the press corp's gullibility.

Posted by .com 2004-2-4 9:41:05 AM|| 2004-2-4 9:41:05 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Dan-
Newsweek once called the Taliban 'a cross between the SS and the Marx Brothers.' I think they were pretty accurate there.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2004-2-4 10:10:06 AM|| 2004-2-4 10:10:06 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 The only explanation that I can think of for the Afghans ejecting the Red Army is that Afghanistanis must have received more outside aid than just some Stinger missiles. The UBL's camps must have turned out fighters that were capable of hitting something.

Maybe the Pakistanis were running camps at the time, or Pakistan redressed veterans from the glacier fighters as mujahadim. Maybe the CIA was in there.

Regardless, the guys with ability and backbone are dead or gone - possibly taking an evacuation flight back to Pakistan.

Posted by Super Hose 2004-2-4 11:13:07 AM|| 2004-2-4 11:13:07 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 Superhose, part o bthe explanation is that getting close enough to do damage on American troops is far harder than firing at Russian conscripts who in addition didn't have the electronics for locating sources of enemy fire.

The Taliban were mere bullies, madrassa students not real fighters. The resistance people and specially Massood's men were on another class. About the people of UBL's camps, my reports is that Afghans had a poor opinion of them as fighters: they told the only thing they were good at was at having themselves pictured over a background of Afghan mountains. That and torturing prisonners with a savagery who was far beyond Afghan practices.

Posted by JFM 2004-2-4 3:20:27 PM|| 2004-2-4 3:20:27 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 JFM, would ISI training have resulted in passable gunnies? I am impressed with the descriptions I have read of the training of the glacier fighters on both the Indian and Pakistani sides.

Posted by Super Hose 2004-2-4 7:48:33 PM|| 2004-2-4 7:48:33 PM|| Front Page Top

08:08 Raptor
01:42 Tony (UK)
00:18 Lucky
23:47 Anonymous2U
23:41 CobraCommander
23:37 Anonymous2U
23:33 Anonymous2U
23:23 Anonymous
23:20 badanov
23:19 Jack A Son
23:08 Jarhead
23:00 Jarhead
22:58 Nero
22:56 Dcreeper
22:51 Nero
22:46 4thInfVet
22:43 Jarhead
22:41 Super Hose
22:35 Dcreeper
22:34 CrazyFool
22:31 CrazyFool
22:28 CrazyFool
22:23 Lu Baihu
22:21 Rivrdog