Afghanistan, or keep your head down.

Taken from Covid, we are not thinking enough about the American defeat suffered in IRAQ and Afghanistan, from which the US is withdrawing with conspicuous losses. Let me be clear, it is a clear and clear defeat: if you are active in a place to overthrow the Taliban regime, you fight for 20 years, and when you go to power there are still the Talibn, it means that you have not been able to remove from the power the Taliban. So you lost.

The causes of this defeat could be analyzed for years, but since the time of Vietnam, Americans have refused to analyze the reasons for their defeats in a dysfunctional military apparatus because it is corrupt and elephantine, and therefore fall back on appeasing the population with a shower of films. Hollywood right after the war.

But the point is not the why (a problem faced by philosophers while preparing hamburgers at Mc Donald's), but the what .

Let's put it this way: if you are trying to build a strategy and you know you have an enemy, one of the first things you will ask yourself is “WHERE” should the fight take place? This is not just about your chances of victory, but the costs of the war. If the Second World War had been fought ENTIRELY in France, for example, the costs would have been minimal compared to the actual costs of WWII (moreover, France is no longer of any use). The problem is that practically two continents have been devastated, creating immense damage.

Understanding the concept, we have to ask ourselves one thing: imagine you have 10 soldiers and 10 terrorists. They intend to fight each other. Question: is it better that the fighting (and the bombings, the massacres and everything) take place in Kabul, or in Madrid? From the point of view of Madrid, obviously it better happen in kabul. But from the Afghan point of view, obviously it's better if they happen in Madrid.

In this sense, the war in Afghanistan was not in vain. When the fight between the US and the Taliban-AlQaeda took place in New York, the damage to the US was staggering (albeit minimal in economic terms). Conversely, when the war moved to Afghanistan, the country was virtually devastated, the number of Afghan civilian casualties is huge, but the US was safe enough.

The same is said of the so-called "ISIS". When under the bombs and fighting the Syrian Republican Guard, ISIS did little in Europe. As soon as the Islamic nation was born and consolidated, and the front cooled, it hit repeatedly in Europe (Paris, London, Berlin, etc). Moral: war is better if it happens somewhere else, preferably away from here.

The moral? The moral is that, although it was a useless and lost war, it had a rational reason for its existence : to be sure that the fighting took place in Afghanistan and not here. In fact, from the moment the mission began, both Al Qaeda and the Taliban were too busy "at home", and their place was taken by fundamentalist groups that were less "busy surviving" in their own homes.

Here, the problem with this withdrawal is not so much that the US forces have lost, even on the military level (they have never managed to control the territory, but only a certain area around Kabul) but that the clash is still in place. The Taliban are a politically and religiously ENEMY force of the US and its allies, so the confrontation is not over.

The clash is destined to move elsewhere.

And if the US and allies do not fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Taliban will fight the US and allies at home. As easy as that.

Starting a war like the one in Afghanistan has a BIG advantage: that of deciding WHERE the war will be fought. Advantage that now passes to the Taliban.

Where will the Taliban decide to fight the war? New York? Paris? Rome? London? Berlin? It is not possible, at present, to predict it: the only thing we know is that THEY WILL DECIDE. And that we won't like it.

The first thing the Taliban will do is find someone to trade with. They have to choose between China (that corridor at the top right), IRAN, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Usbekistan, Tazikistan. Interesting, because one wonders who has an interest in using Afghanistan as a trade corridor.

I see China-Iran well, to circumvent the Western embargo, I see Pakistan well, I see the Chinese well (if only because they do not have the Uighurs in great sympathy and would prefer that the Afghan government not finance them and not them. filled with weapons and training, but among the countries surrounding Afghanistan there is practically no country that can be said to be an ally for the US or the European countries.

Whatever trading ally the Afghans find to trade (even heroin, which is one of the largest cash flows to date) is not good news for the US.

But let's move on. Now the Afghans will have to equip themselves militarily. Because if it is true that they are decent guerrillas, it is also true that they do not go beyond rocket launchers and rifles. Which can be extremely effective if you stay behind, but if you find an army that is strong on the ground and in the meantime exterminates the population (China / Tibet is an example), things get complicated.

If they want to rearm at least they will have to have military allies nearby. They do not have suitable military logistics or a system of industries capable of producing licensed weapons. But anyone willing to arm them, be it Russia, China or other minor players like Pakistan, is not a pro-Western nation.

Any arms supplier, however limited in scope, however limited to simple military supplies, any supplier country the Afghans find is not good news for the US.

Barring surprises, within a few months we will have, in the area, an entire country whose government rivals IS in terrorist attacks, What remains of AlQaeda, and all the other terrorist groups that compete for the money of Islamic "charity". Billions and billions of euros.

In order to receive funds, the Taliban will have to show themselves capable of attacking the US on their territory as well as driving them out of their own territory.

It is not actually possible to understand where they will hit, but we can list the force multipliers they have and the vulnerabilities they face.

Let's start with the USA.

The security apparatus is clearly dysfunctional. Completely. The attack on the American parliament was so obvious and easy to thwart that even the Tsar's Ochrana would have succeeded. On the other hand, if there had been about fifty Taliban guerrillas among the attackers, instead of the guy with the buffalo loincloth, it would have been a carnage. It is a fact: the catastrophic failure of the FBI, CIA and NSA is there for all to see. That a crowd was building up under the parliament was clear, the internet was bombarded with photographs taken on the spot. Catastrophic failure.

The FBI, NSA and CIA, as well as the rest of the mammoth (and corrupt) American apparatus, are completely dysfunctional. In the USA 3,000 students die every year in armed assaults on schools. Perhaps we have not understood the point: it would be as if in Italy, in proportion to the facts, 600 students died at school every year. So far these things are organized by loose dogs or the so-called "Incel" (those with red dyed hair) but how long will it be before he is an Afghan? The difficulty with which the FBI, NSA and CIA handle this problem is obvious. They don't pull spider out of the hole.

The US police are almost dysfunctional themselves. It is so militarized that it only succeeds in the task of reacting to violent but unorganized threats (they lack the part of C4I that is needed to handle those weapons). He shows very little intelligence (see under attacked schools or parliament), he exhibits a complete immobility of the chain of command: the police work in shifts. Even if there were problems calling up the civil guard, there are always 30% of policemen who are at home sleeping at any time. They can be called back urgently. He hasn't seen anything like this done. The agents are terribly trained, and you only need to watch a video to see how bad they are. I'm sorry, but in a country where people can buy an AR-15, seeing a “testudo” made with plastic shields is pitiful. It is the recipe for a massacre.

If a dozen armed guerrillas join one of these events, it would be a massacre. And so far under the heading "armed" there are entire bands of fascists, with a more or less rational ideology, around the USA. And they don't seem to encounter resistance.

It is not surprising that they are not bringing Afghan translators with them to the USA, that is, the Afghan staff they have supported so far: too risky. In fact, they no longer control the territory. The American one, I mean.

It is very difficult to think that by using completely dysfunctional secret services and "non / sense" police, the US is impervious to a terrorist attack.

If you are not an American this does not seem relevant, but we have forgotten that terrorist organizations compete with each other for funds. So if a major attack occurs in the US (and it will almost certainly happen) then someone, see the Islamic state entry, will look for the same visibility, and we know that at this moment Europe has several weaknesses.

The first is the British front. The largest Islamic communities from those areas (Pakistan, Afghanistan & co) are in London. But London is in a great hurry to send a lot of illegal immigrants back to Europe. He has to prove that Brexit has helped. Even assuming that there are no attacks in the UK (the services have equipped themselves) this attitude does not bode well.

The second is the Mediterranean front. The situation across North Africa is going to shit. France paralyzes Europe because it wants any kind of intervention as long as it is in favor of the French business but damages Spain and Italy. In Libya there is already chaos while in Tunisia chaos is coming.

The larger countries have evolved their services and their police quite well. For years now ISIS has been limited to minor incidents (eg: like with a knife at the station), and it is not clear whether it is appropriate to report it. But the problem is that there are countries like Belgium and Holland that have police which is a joke . You say "Belgian Police" and in the Al Qaeda canteen everyone starts laughing. You say "Dutch secret services" and in Syria they send you on TV to do Crozza. On the Irish secret services and on the Garda I would prefer not to pronounce myself, but they tell me that I do hidden advertising for beer. Swedish services are decent, but I wouldn't bet on Finland and Denmark.

To top it off, just go to Malta, pay, and you are a European citizen and you can travel anywhere with a European passport. What could possibly go wrong?

We must therefore get over it: it is not an "if" problem. After the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the problem is "when". We can take events like the Bataclan, or 9/11, for granted within a couple of years.

My personal opinion is that it is necessary to continue to decide the place of the confrontation. He occupies an area in chaos (better if a defendible one, not like Mali, eh Macron?) With a Western / European army, and at that point all the hotheads will come to make their show and earn money from the "charity" Islamic "to their leaders.

At this point you will ask me how the situation improves, since human lives are lost even in a military operation. The answer is simple.

• killing 150 people in a concert is relatively simple for two or three people armed with an assault rifle. Killing 150 soldiers is on average a MUCH longer, riskier and more expensive operation. It took 20 years to kill 31 Italians in Afghanistan, and the Taliban deaths in clashes with the Italian armed forces were of an order of magnitude higher. If the clash took place in Italy, one night would be enough to transform a concert into a massacre five times worse (I'm referring to the bataclan).
• In a confrontation with terrorists, collateral losses must be taken into account. If a guy lets himself be blown up in an airport, like what happened in Belgium, it's a disaster. If he blows himself up on the field, the matter is manageable . You can't do this in a European city without making a mess.

Ultimately, therefore, I think we still need to open a front in their home. Otherwise, "they" will open one in our house.

The choice is up to us. For a few more months.

Then they will move.