It makes sense. They’re losing to US trained troops in Ukraine, clearly they need US trained troops to stand a chance.

ROFL, I love it.

Before this Russia was slumming it with North Korea, Iran, Belarus, India, and China, now they're recruiting troops that the United States spent twenty years training... only for them to forget all their training the moment the United States left Afghanistan.

Great call, Russia, this will definitely shore up your very special military operation. Afghan troops riding in Vietnam era tanks armed with World War I era rifles, what a frightening proposition.

Are those the same commandos that got steam rolled by the Taliban in a matter of a week?

They didn’t forget, they never learned. It was a total cultural and technological mismatch, and it would have taken a few generations to really work.

All Russia is going to get are possible US assets in their ranks and a bunch of guys with no loyalty and a lot of historical loathing for Russians.

Lmao. Do they think that'll matter? These guys didn't do too well against the taliban.

They didn’t really get steamrolled, they just dropped their uniforms and ran. Once the US was out, why would they still play the US’ game? The day the US left, everything just reverted to the tribal and family loyalties that always really mattered in Afghanistan.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 89%. (I'm a bot)

> Another general, Hibatullah Alizai, the last Afghan army chief before the Taliban took over, said the effort is also being helped by a former Afghan special forces commander who lived in Russia and speaks the language.

> A GOP congressional report in August specifically warned of the danger that the Afghan commandos - trained by U.S. Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets - could end up giving up information about U.S. tactics to the Islamic State group, Iran or Russia - or fight for them.

> ADVERTISEMENT. Former Afghan army chief Alizai said much of the Russian recruiting effort is focused on Tehran and Mashhad, a city near the Afghan border where many have fled.

Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: Afghan^#1 us^#2 Russian^#3 commando^#4 Taliban^#5

Russia is recruiting ghost soldiers.

These are Afghani Commandos, not Afghani Army. These guys actually fought really well

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What they should do is put them in charge of training new cadres.

What they will do is send them to the front lines to be chewed up with the convicts.

> These guys actually fought really well

Are there enough of those guys to turn the tide of war in Russia's favor? Because from my (admittedly uninformed) perspective, it really looks like Putin is flailing right now.

Adding a dozen well trained shipwrights to your crew isn't going to do much good if the boat is already underwater, y'know?

Article is about commandos, not the afghani army

Those guys know what it means to take up arms against the US and her allies . I don’t think there will be many of them.

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I don’t believe the fault lay with the troops on the ground there.

I was just going to say, "didn't the US train these soldiers* to combat the USSR and now they band together to create it all over again."

*not these soldiers but likely their parents

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The ‘winning the hearts and minds’ part of US foreign policy just does not seem to work. Instead it’s making Cartel soldiers for hire, Wagner should be stocked for the time being.

And yet theyre just lazy afgans

They wouldn't fight for their own land but they'll fight for Russia... their last invader. So weird.

> commandos

Mercenaries*

The same guys that dropped their weapons and ran when the taliban came back? Good luck with that.

The Commandos would get rolled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. If the commandos wanted to be on the receiving end of US supplied weapons and tactics then by all means make your way into the meat grinder.

Reminds me of a bit from ‘The Fires of Heaven’ by Robert Jordan.

> "I once saw a man hanging from a cliff. The brink was crumbling under his fingers, and the only thing near enough to grasp was a tuft of grass, a few long blades with roots barely clinging to the rock. The only chance he had of climbing back up on the cliff. So he grabbed it." His abrupt chuckle held no mirth. "He had to know it would pull free."

Shhhh. Ignore this guy. Great plan Russia.

How desperate Putin must be, puts a new perspective on how good their military is and it looks poor.

Why not go fight for Ukraine against Russian scumbags?

Putin: Afghans… I need more Afghans!

Christopher Walken: 🤦‍♂️

Putin: Guess what? I got a fever, and the only prescription is more Afghans.

Christopher Walken: 🤦‍♂️

Who knows? I'm not on the battlefield to tell you. But if RU is smart enough, they can use them as intelligence sources.

Test for admission: Can you do a jumping jack?

If the answer is "no"

CONGRATS you are hired!

Survived the Talibans only to get killed in Ukraine for a handful of roubles.

So if the russians are using afghan troops, why can't ukraine use US or UK troops?
The same goes for belarus, if they join the war, can't any other country help ukraine with soldiers?

I can’t wait for New Years. Happy 1993, everyone!

Crazy how reading comprehension and memory works on reddit.

Still wont be able to feed them or resupply them, they will die as easy as the rest, if they don’t follow their legacy and run away at the first sign of trouble.

Don't worry the spineless worms will surrender immediately just tell them you're with ISIS

Well they wouldn't fight the taliban so I guess they'll die in a different country. Fuck em

They surrendered because they were afraid to fight and now they side with further terrorists. What kind of world do they want their children to be born into. How disappointing

I mean Afghanistan is complicated. It’s more of a large set of tribes than a nation state like we think. What is “their land”, really?

Plus the military that we established there was modeled after the US military - an advanced mechanized military that requires financial and logistical support that simply isn’t possible for a nation like Afghanistan. Are you going to stand and die when the air support suddenly stops?

Not to mention all the corruption, some of which was actively supported by the US, as well as a decent amount of anti-US sentiment that was empowered by civilian deaths and people being abducted to gitmo on suspicion of terrorist activity.

Yeah people who keep saying that don’t understand the deep flaws with the US mission in Afghanistan

Okay. lol

Afghanistan was going to be a nightmare to withdraw from regardless, but Trump’s surrender killed so many troops and allies that the legacy of Afghanistan will be devastating.

Wait what do you think we were doing in Afghanistan for the last 20 years?

I’m just saying, the situation is a lot more complicated than “they wouldn’t fight for their land,” which itself is an easy comment to make. Assuming that you’ve never had to fight for your own land, and risk death for an almost certain lost cause

That's fair.

That’s certainly part of it, but I don’t see a way out that was any less messy. It’s either we prolong the occupation with no real end goal or we cut out of there. Unfortunately the real losers in each situation were the people of Afghanistan who’ve now seen 30+ years of war and instability

Check out “no good men among the living”

It’s a really good book written in 2015 that’s part history going back to the invasion by the USSR, part contemporary story involving interviews with a US soldier, an afghan civilian, and a taliban leader. Great insight into the situation

Imagine if a country invaded your state, then offered to pay you a good salary to collaborate, which you took to pay your mother’s mortgage, despite the shame. Then they suddenly disappear leaving you with a target on your back, considered a traitor, the pay runs dry. Then the enemy of that country comes abcs offers you money and a chance at revenge.

Nah, but a much slower, controlled drawdown without an artificial and impossible timeline would have been much safer.

I know you're joking but it's much worse/sad/horrible/hilarious than that: those are probably some of the most highly qualified troops they can get their hands on at the moment.

Not that their good, but everyone else they can get sucks: they suicided their "elite" units on stupid things, their army even in normal times is mostly conscript and they've gone through a lot of them and their mobilisation is pretty much untrained unwilling randoms with no training.

Their experienced wagner troops are either already dead on stupid pride attacks or hidding in africa killing civilians in burkina faso/mali/..., they're starting to run out of "gun capable" people in prison and are now just getting random prisonners.

Every single one of their ally refused to send any troop help even belarus is staying the fuck out of that one in terms of soldiers, Syria cannot help even if it wanted to, Iran merely sent a few drones and already got more than it bargained for and then there is their own shitshow going on, all the -stan they asked for told them to fuck off even the kazaks, and even if they wanted to north korea is not sending waves of their guys in an european country that accepts surrender ...

So yeah those US trained afghan, acting are pure mercenary without at least the nationalism of wagner fodder, are probably the elite of the possible recruits they can get on the field at the moment. In fact I wouldn't be THAT surprised if they tried to get some african troops from those french-speaking countries where they sponsored coups the last year.

"suddenly disappear" lol

Why would afgan commandos want to die in Ukraine?

Sounds like BS to me.

I don’t like hardwood floors, the only solution is more Afghans.

The US trained commandos that buckled and folded before the Taliban speed run? Pretty sure Ukraine forces in the field are in a different league than the Taliban.

They don’t get to come back, do they?

Thread's full of morons who spout off without actually knowing anything about the Afghan commandos...

Anyone who has worked with the Afghan army must be laughing uncontrollably. The afgan troops are only good for fucking boys and taking bribes.

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>Why not go fight for Ukraine against Russian scumbags?

Because Ukraine isn't offering to pay for safe transport out of afghanistan or wherever these guys currently are, visas for them and their families, and like 100 times more then they currently make. Russia is

Money. Afghanistan is poor as shit and the Taliban fucked any chance of them having a functioning economy. Taliban also rounded up and killed these guys though, so I question where they're living currently

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Didn't Russia (CCCP Then) spend 1979 to 1989 trying to take over Afghanistan?
Are they not afriend they will remember and kill all the Russian soldiers?

Sounds like they're trying to make their own version of a 'foreign legion' and this is what they're reduced to after no one volunteered and Iran, China, North Korea and all the Central Asian Republics told them to buzz off. They might get at most 200-500? That wouldn't be enough to make a big difference, unless they were used to train conscripts over a long period, which Russia is unlikely to do.

Russia just keeps trying to do a crappy imitation of what Ukraine is doing successfully, except they have no understanding or experience in doing it right, the people they hire aren't motivated or competent and they end up screwing up.

That being said, sounds like the US really screwed the commandos over, why can't the US take them in when they put their necks out, stayed loyal and fought the Taliban right up to the last minute?

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