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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Tue Jul 25, 2017, 08:52 AM Jul 2017

Videos suggest Russian government may be arming Taliban

Source: CNN




By Nick Paton Walsh and Masoud Popalzai, CNN
Updated 4:40 AM ET, Tue July 25, 2017

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN)The Taliban have received improved weaponry in Afghanistan that appears to have been supplied by the Russian government, according to exclusive videos obtained by CNN, adding weight to accusations by Afghan and American officials that Moscow is arming their one-time foe in the war-torn country.

US generals first suggested they were concerned the Russian government was seeking to arm the Afghan insurgents back in April, but images from the battlefield here corroborating these claims have been hard to come by.

These two videos show sniper rifles, Kalashnikov variants and heavy machine guns that weapons experts say are stripped of any means of identifying their origin.

Two separate sets of Taliban, one in the north and another in the west, claim to be in possession of the weapons, which they say were originally supplied by Russian government sources. One splinter group of Taliban near Herat say they obtained the guns after defeating a mainstream rival group of Taliban. Another group say they got the weapons for free across the border with Tajikistan and that they were provided by "the Russians."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/asia/taliban-weapons-afghanistan/index.html

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Achilleaze

(15,543 posts)
2. and the republicans are all Lovey-Dovey these days with the russians
Tue Jul 25, 2017, 09:29 AM
Jul 2017

and with the republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief, Comrade Casino, who was illegitimately installed in America's White House by republican collusion with russia.

So are the republicans now supporting the Taliban, too? Sick shit.

Igel

(35,191 posts)
3. I wonder who/what "the Russians" are.
Tue Jul 25, 2017, 10:13 AM
Jul 2017

Context matters a lot.

In the '70s when I started learning Russian solo in high school "the Russians" was an amorphous term. It meant the Russian aversaries working on behalf of the Soviet government against the US. Which, in practice, for most people, given the level of suspicion verging on paranoia, any Russian that they didn't fully trust. Even if it was an immigrant Russian.

As an undergrad studying the country, people, language, and literature it lost it's paranoid, political meaning and just came to mean "ethnic Russians as a whole, typical Russians." You can't be paranoid *and* seek understanding.

When I was in grad school, "the Russians" were 8-9 native Russian speakers in the program. Most were Ukrainian.

In the Summer School for Slavic Studies, "the Russians" were, again, the Russian speakers. This time mostly from Russia. Not just russkie, but rossiiskie. (It's helpful having two words for "Russian," one mostly ethnicity and the other mostly country of origin.) Some were almost certainly government employees and even spies who needed their Czech refreshed and practiced.

When my wife was a post-doc, "the Russians" were the group of geriatric immigrants from Russia and Ukraine that we had in our ESL class learning English so they could survive and maybe take the naturalization exam. If spies, they'd retired 20 years before.

Now "the Russians" is a term I'd like to think means "those working for the Russian government against the US", but it's more like it was in the '70s for most people.

But for me, "the Russians" still usually refers to those on the Russian-side of the journal I do some freelance translation for, deciding what to farm out for translation and in charge of pay.

The point is that "the Russians" has ranged from all (typical) Russians, to just suspected adversarial Russians, to a group of grad students, to a group of retirees, to a group of 4-5 Russians in Piter. It can mean all these different things because it's not really specific.

When the Taliban refer to "the Russians," they may mean it as a group of Russian-speaking Islamic militants or even militants who are just Russian by citizenship or by where they live. Sort of like al-Baghdadi just means "from Baghdad" and al-Zarqawi meant "from Zarqaa". Did you know there are still Russian-speakers around Harbin, and China has a border with Afghanistan? They may mean a group of organized Russian criminals willing to smuggle arms for currency. They may mean the Russian government. Afghanistan doesn't touch the EAEU, but the Central Asian republics still have decent Russian-speaking minorities.

I think it highly likely that some bit of the Russian government is funding the Taliban. But this isn't proof. It's a suggestion, a hint. (Although some'll take issue with this because standards of evidence are absurdly low these days.)

"Look, John's fingerprints were on the bottle used to kill my cat!"
"Uh, that's a picture of the girl who said she saw a bottle with a smudge on it before she threw it away, somebody else saying they must have been fingerprints and a third person said that meant they must be John's because he has fingers."
"Like I said, absolute proof! I liked that cat, so I think drawing and quartering him is appropriate."
"Oh, good thinking. I'll just get the map pencils."

It's cute to say that Putin is all-knowing, but things escaped even Sauron's attention. In some cases, it's clear without good evidence because the options are limited. The little green men in Crimea? Big enough that if it wasn't Putin's guys on day one, by the end of the day they'd either be Putin's creatures or they'd have melted into the woodwork like good little Whovian wood lice. But arms smuggling in Central Asia? Crap. The rebels in Syria had Russian arms from Ukrainian stockpiles sold to them by Chechens ... Who, by the way, were called "Russians."

Crazy.

Wuddles440

(1,098 posts)
7. That shouldn't be all....
Tue Jul 25, 2017, 11:39 AM
Jul 2017

that difficult considering that they're already the American version of the Taliban.

Sunlei

(22,651 posts)
5. thousands of IS pour out of russian 'outback'. turkey airport bombers had russian passports,
Tue Jul 25, 2017, 10:32 AM
Jul 2017

Russia IMO, started IS from the first convoy of new pick-ups with 100 trained fighters that left from Russia's ally Iran.

He's out in the world stiring up shit against democracy. along with his buddy ally china.

Oneironaut

(5,461 posts)
10. Foolish. Russia has fallen into the "The enemy of my enemy is my friend!" trap.
Tue Jul 25, 2017, 01:43 PM
Jul 2017

The Talibsn is the enemy of the civilized world. Their own guns will be used against them.

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