Stephan Jensen @StephanAJensen Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

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-Country director 🇺🇦 Ukraine @InstituteGC -Former 🇳🇴 army and @EY_Parthenon 🇬🇧 -Upcoming book: History of the War in Afghanistan, 78-21 -All views my own.

Kyiv, Ukraine

https://t.co/j41AWHcb6p

Joined December 2015

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@StephanAJensen

Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

10 months

🇦🇫 THREAD: I keep hearing nonsense about the Afghan forces not being willing to fight. It's a disgusting lie. We took out almost all our troops in 2014 - since then the Afghans fought like hell. But in 2021, we left them without ammunition, food, water, and air support. 1/🧵

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@StephanAJensen

Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

11 months

It's always the butler. #Prigozhin #Russia #rostov #Moscow

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11 months

Once you scratch the surface of the Taliban's propaganda, there is nothing at all "traditional" or "national" about their movement. The Taliban is an utterly modern movement, mostly based on 20th-century political ideas and foreign religious teachings. 1/11

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8 months

Pakistan is like a man setting fire to his entire neighborhood and then expecting pity when his own house burns down too (and then blames India).

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10 months

Many in the West have become so pathologically pacifistic that they truly believe military means are always futile and counterproductive - even when fighting to defend against those who want to take away everything they believe in. They have short memories. 1/2

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11 months

- Afghanistan got a democratic constitution in *1964* - Afghan Women got the right to vote before women in Switzerland - The legends about the first Afghan King say that he was *elected* And yet I keep hearing democracy in Afghanistan was "imposed" by the West after 2001. 1/🧵

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1 year

The idea that Afghan Republican forces weren't willing to fight for their country might be the single most perfidious lie told about the war in Afghanistan. More than 60.000 Afghan soldiers died fighting the Taliban. Their sacrifice deserves honor, not gaslighting. 🇦🇫

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11 months

🇦🇫 THREAD: Every single Afghan frontline soldier or officer I have spoken to has told me they were desperately short of ammunition, fuel, water, food, and other supplies during the decisive fighting in 2021. Why? Was choking off the Afghan forces also part of the Doha deal? 1/🧵

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10 months

The last time the West thought it was time to 'set our differences aside' and do cool deals with the Taliban, it lead to: - The collapse of the Afghan Republic - The betrayal of the West's staunchest allies in the Muslim world - The reintroduction of gender apartheid for 20

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8 months

Without Pakistan, there would be no Taliban. Not now, Not after 2001, And not even in the 1990s.

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11 months

Liars and ignoramuses say Afghan Republican forces weren't willing to fight for their country. The truth is that nearly 70.000 Afghan soldiers gave their lives defending their homeland from the darkness of the Taliban. They are heroes and deserve to be remembered. 🇦🇫 1/5

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11 months

Eid Mubarak to all those who fought for the Afghan Republic - may you never be forgotten.

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2 years

THREAD: During the first 75 years of the 20th century, 🇦🇫 #Afghanistan experienced less war and political unrest than almost every country in the West, including eg. 🇳🇴Norway, 🇧🇪Belgium, and 🇫🇮Finland. 1/🧵

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11 months

Without massive and loyal support from Pakistan the Taliban would not have lasted past 1995 (let alone 2001) . 🇵🇰 🇦🇫

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10 months

The Western believers in pathological pacifism are also damn fortunate that their right to follow such insane delusions is (still) protected by the world's most powerful military alliance. Ukrainians, Afghans, and many others are not so lucky. 2/2

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1 year

England lost, but it's team can be proud of the game they played. Better to lose a game you deserved to win, than to win one you deserved to lose. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

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11 months

From 2001-2021, 70.000 Afghan soldiers and police died fighting for their country, defending it against the Taliban. Their sacrifice and courage should not be forgotten.

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11 months

Even a thousand years from now, when our descendants read about it in the history books, they will condemn us for how we have left behind our allies in Afghanistan. As they should. 🇦🇫

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10 months

🇦🇫 🇺🇸 THREAD: The most bizarre irony of Biden claiming that Afghanistan has "never been a unified country" is that Afghanistan was both unified and peaceful when Biden was still my age. In his thirties, he could have gone to Kandahar on holiday with Ariana Afghan Airlines. 1/3

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11 months

From 2014 to 2021, 127 US and coalition troops lost their lives in Afghanistan. During the same period, more than 50.000 Afghan soldiers died too, fighting the same enemy as us. And yet, feckless charlatans claim the Afghans weren't willing to fight for their country. 1/🧵

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1 year

The 🇺🇸United States' decades of deep and loyal support for 🇵🇰 Pakistan while Pakistan kept funding, arming, training, and hiding America's enemies and engineering the Taliban's comeback in 🇦🇫Afghanistan must be one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time. The mind boggles.

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11 months

🇦🇫The West was completely right -both morally and strategically- to intervene in Afghanistan in 2001, helping the Afghans take their country back from the Taliban What we deserve to be condemned for is abandoning the country again and betraying our allies when we left in 2021.

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11 months

🇦🇫 If the lies about Afghan forces not being willing to fight had been true, the Afghan Republic would have fallen in 2014. From then to 2021, they did 99% of the fighting, taking tens of thousands of casualties. But in 2020-21, we pulled the plug on them for political reasons.

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11 months

But even with everything stacked against them, many units kept fighting until the very end, when Ghani got in the helicopter and fled. They believed in a better Afghanistan, but were let down both by Afghanistan's allies and leaders. We should be ashamed of ourselves. Fin/🧵

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10 months

BREAKING NEWS: @Zabehulah_M33 denies allegations that he has been sacked after @Tobias_Ellwood accepted new job as chief spokesperson for the #Taliban .

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10 months

The Taliban have successfully made the world believe they are now a leader in counter-narcotics. Meanwhile, the Taliban 1. Has become a leading producer of Methamphetamine 2. Are making crazy money from selling heroin they've already stockpiled. Are we really this 🤯 stupid?

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10 months

Kabul University, Afghanistan - late 1970s 🇦🇫

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10 months

From 2014-2021, the War in Afghanistan was fought with Western money, supplies, and air support - but with Afghan blood, sweat, and tears. The Afghan sacrifices were staggering. During that period, 127 coalition troops lost their lives - compared to 50.000 Afghan troops. 3/🧵

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8 months

🇦🇫 THREAD: Afghanistan was not destroyed by post-9/11 war, or even (first and foremost) by civil war in the 1990s. Afghanistan was destroyed by the Soviet intervention of the 1980s. More Afghans died *every year* from 1979-89 than in all the 20 years after 2001 *combined.* 1/4

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10 months

Pictures of liberal Kabul from the 1960s-70s don't represent all of Afghanistan at the time. Far from it. But they show that liberal Afghanistan could live side by side with conservative Afghanistan, neither trying to violently impose its beliefs on others. Tolerance worked. 🇦🇫

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10 months

The Taliban will fall. 🇦🇫

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9 months

Volleyball game in front of one of the Bamiyan Buddhas - Afghanistan, 1992

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10 months

People keep forgetting that the West pulled out almost all of its troops in 2013-14. NOT in 2021. And after that, the Afghans did almost all the fighting. The remaining Western presence was mainly advisors, logistics, and air support. 2/🧵

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9 months

Bamiyan, before the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhas

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10 months

THREAD: #OTD Exactly 50 years ago, Mohammed Daoud ousted his cousin King Zahir Shah, took power in Afghanistan, and declared it a Republic - first opening the door to more than 40 years of violence and war in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, his legacy remains a complex one. 1/🧵

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1 year

In 2021 Afghanistan needed a president like Volodomyr Zelensky, but instead they got a president like Ashraf Ghani. So much could have gone so differently. 🇦🇫

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11 months

The tragic irony is that the Taliban - a movement as old as the Spice Girls, inspired by 19th century religious ideas from India and 20th century political ideas from Egypt - has been very successful at passing itself of as the standard bearers of "traditional Afghanistan". 9/11

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8 months

Afghanistan, 1968

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11 months

So the Doha deal -and, critically, the way it was executed- prevented the Afghans from keeping ground supply lines open, and then also took away the key enablers they needed for air supply. The mind boggles. Were we activity trying to make the Afghan forces collapse? 5/🧵

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9 months

Outdoor school class (with a brilliantly well-dressed teacher) - Afghanistan before the war

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10 months

🇦🇫 THREAD: One of the most baffling decisions of the whole War in Afghanistan is the 🇺🇸US refusal to provide air support to Afghan Forces during the Taliban offensive of 2021. Despite all the other mistakes made, this alone could have changed the outcome of the war. 1/🧵

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11 months

There were many reasons why logistics got difficult, but blaming it all on corruption is a cop-out. The major problems began as a result of the Doha deal, which massively restricted Afghan forces' offensive operations, making it easy for the Taliban to cut off supply lines. 3/🧵

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10 months

The Taliban are far weaker than they look - they always have been. They did not win because of their strength, but because we stupidly believed their propaganda and clumsily gave them opportunities to exploit. But even after 'winning', their shambolic government cannot last 🇦🇫

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1 year

When western air support and logistics were removed in 2021, Afghan forces were without effective resupply of ammunition, food, and water. Some units were left using their vehicles' radiator fluid as drinking water before considering surrender. Our betrayal, their sacrifice. 🇦🇫

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11 months

At the point when the Afghan Republican defence forces started collapse in July-Aug 2021, many units had been fighting for weeks or months without meaningful resupply. They were not just short of ammunition, but forces to eat expired field rations and drink unsanitary water. 2/🧵

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9 months

The Taliban no more represent "authentic Afghanistan" than the Nazis represented "authentic Germany." And extremist movements born of chaos whose only real claim to power comes from violence and terror are bound to be transient. 🇦🇫 🇩🇪

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11 months

With Afghan ground forces short on ammunition, literally starving, and facing the toughest battle of the war, Western air support was taken away too. This was critical, because the Afghan army had been designed (by us) to rely on it, rather than eg. ground artillery. 6/🧵

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2 years

The most disturbing thing about Biden and the situation in #Afghanistan is how he seems to treat it as an annoyance that's been unfairly imposed upon the US rather than a serious moral, strategic, and humanitarian problem in which they have had a major role in for 40 years. 1/14

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9 months

Art students in Kabul, Afghanistan - 2002

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7 months

@visegrad24 Absolutely horrifying. And this is the same country supposedly trying to "de-nazify" Ukraine.

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10 months

Afghanstan, Ukraine, and even Taiwan shouldn't be seen as separate issues. They're all battles in the bigger, global contest between freedom and tyranny, human dignity and human despair, reason and madness. And victory or defeat in one place is a victory or defeat everywhere.

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10 months

Thank you so much to @AFIntlBrk and @MassoudMalik for inviting me on to speak about the heroic sacrifices of the Afghan security forces, and how they were left high and dry in 2020-21.

@AFIntlBrk

افغانستان اینترنشنال

10 months

جنسن: سربازان افغان با شهامت علیه طالبان جنگیدند گفت‌وگو با استفان جنسن، افسر سابق ارتش ناروی در افغانستان، در مورد ایستادگی سربازان

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11 months

Perhaps most disturbing: even though triggered by the Doha deal, Western support for the Afghan forces was restricted much more aggressively than the Doha deal actually required. It was a choice, not a requirement, to pull the rug out from under the Afghan Republic. 10/🧵

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11 months

As restrictions on the Afghan forces allowed the Taliban to cut off ground supply lines, they needed supply via air. But we had made the too-small Afghan Air force totally reliant on western contractors for maintenance - which were also going away in the summer of 2021. 4/🧵

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8 months

🇦🇫 No one sacrificed more in the fight against the Taliban after 2001 than the Afghan Security and Defence Forces - about 70.000 of whom sacrificed their lives for their country. The notion that they gave up easily or didn't care is a bare-faced lie. They were betrayed.

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11 months

Religiously, too, the Taliban's claims to represent "tradition" are weak at best. Their extreme puritanism draws on "Deobandi" Islam, which appeared in India the late 19th century, inspired by 18th century Saudi Wahabism. It's neither traditional, nor from Afghanistan. 5/11

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10 months

The fact that the Afghans relied on the West for critical support (much of it provided by private contractors) was a choice made *for* Afghanistan by their (former) allies, primarily the US. The Afghan military was *set up* to be integrated with and supported by the West. 4/🧵

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10 months

Bamiyan, Afghanistan - 1974 🇦🇫

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11 months

Conversely, the Taliban broke many of the promises they made in the Doha deal, but the US showed little interest in imposing costs on them for doing so. It seems Biden really didnt give a s**t what happened to Afghanistan. 11/🧵

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10 months

International School of Kabul, Afghanistan - late 1960s 🇦🇫

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11 months

On top of this, the Doha deal provided a huge amount of political legitimacy to the Taliban, and strongly signaled to Afghan forces that their allies did not really believe in them any longer. It's almost as if we intentionally were trying to undermine their morale. 7/🧵

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11 months

The Taliban meanwhile, were getting 5000 of their most hardened fighters released from prison - many of whom immediately started fighting again. And as western support for the Afghan government forces was drastically reduced, Pakistan continued to loyally back the Taliban. 8/🧵

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11 months

The biggest driver of change was the huge influx of Afghan refugees into Pakistan during the 1980s, where thousands of Saudi-funded Deobandi madrassas were set up around the refugee camps. The roots of the Taliban's religion are not Afghan villages but foreign madrassas. 7/11

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11 months

Nevertheless, it remains a lie. Despite its many flaws, the Afghan Republic was far more true to Afghanistan's political and religious traditions than the utterly modern Taliban movement can ever be in its current form. 11/11

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9 months

🇦🇫 As Kabul fell two years ago, we were told lie after shameful lie about Afghan forces giving up and not being willing to fight. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is, at least 70.000 Afghan soldiers and officers died fighting for their country - 20 times

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11 months

🇦🇫 THREAD: Every single Afghan frontline soldier or officer I have spoken to has told me they were desperately short of ammunition, fuel, water, food, and other supplies during the decisive fighting in 2021. Why? Was choking off the Afghan forces also part of the Doha deal? 1/🧵

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11 months

No human culture, anywhere, ever has condoned betraying and abandoning one's allies. Yet that is what the West has done to the Afghans who fought alongside us for years, risking their lives in a common fight against common enemies. Our shame will not soon be washed away.

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9 months

🇦🇫 On this dark anniversary, we do well to remember the sacrifices of the soldiers and officers of the Afghan Republic that fell on this day, two years ago. At least 70.000 of them gave their lives for a free Afghanistan, and they kept doing so after everyone else had given up

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9 months

Road trip in Afghanistan, 1970s

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11 months

Despite being hamstrung (or sabotaged?) tactically, logistically, and politically, the Afghan security forces kept fighting and dying for their country through the summer of 2021, until the loss of a few key cities -often through bribery - caused a cascading collapse. 9/🧵

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11 months

The political idea that a group of mullahs should control government has no traditional precedent in Afghanistan - or anywhere in the Islamic world. It is a riff on radical Islamism. a 20th-century *political* ideology brought to Afghanistan by academics in the 1960s. 2/11

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10 months

Paghman Gardens outside Kabul, Afghanistan; late 1960s. 🇦🇫

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11 months

Democracy, even in its modern form, has far deeper roots in Afghanistan than the Taliban's theocratic system: a form of government introduced for the first time ever in the 1990s. The political "traditions" the Taliban claim to represent are barely two decades old. 3/11

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9 months

Queen Soroya of Afghanistan, 1920s 🇦🇫

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9 months

Record store in Kabul - long before the War.

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10 months

This is really important to understand, and contrary to both Trump and Biden's speeches: The withdrawal in 2020-21 was not really about bringing home Western troops... ...it was about removing Western support for Afghan troops, who had already been fighting for 7 years. 15/🧵

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Graduation at Kabul University, Afghanistan - 1960s 🇦🇫

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11 months

The fact that so many in the West believed the Taliban's propaganda, and idiotically accepted them as a "traditional" and "nationalist" resistance against a supposedly foreign-imposed attempt to "modernise" Afghanistan against its will is a big part of why they won. 10/11

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10 months

Classroom in Afghanistan, 1980s 🇦🇫 (Communist banner in the background)

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6 months

The Taliban will fall.

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10 months

Afghanistan's King Zahir Shah and US President John F. Kennedy, in Washington, D.C. - 1963 🇦🇫 🇺🇸

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8 months

One of the most tragic aspects of the West's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is how "well-meaning" Western progressives thought our disengagement would be the solution to all of Afghanistan's problems. Instead, it handed Afghanistan to the Taliban. 1/8

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10 months

Different leaders in Kabul might still have saved the situation. We don't know. But pulling the plug on their allies was a US decision - one they did not need to make. And it's a decision that will come back to bite us. But most of all, it is the Afghans that suffer. 🧵Fin

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11 months

-> In 2019, when the Afghans were beating the Taliban, US+ flew 613 sorties of direct air support. - > In July 2021, when Afghan forces were fighting the most difficult and decisive battles of the war, they got just 18 sorties of air support. -- What the hell happened? 🇦🇫🇺🇸

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2 years

🇦🇫THREAD: Afghanistan implemented its first democratic constitution in 1964 - without any outside pressure or interference. I still keep hearing nonsense about how democracy in Afghanistan was a "Western" project that began after 2001. This is utter nonsense. 1/🧵

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11 months

"Deobandi" Islam had never had a strong foothold in Afghanistan. Albeit highly conservative, traditionally Afghan Islam tended to be far more tolerant, mystical, and oriented towards Sufism. This only changed during the 1980s, after the War in Afghanistan had begun. 6/11

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

10 months

It worked. With Western support, the Afghan forces took over after 2014. That doesn't mean it was perfect, far from it. But it enabled the West to withdraw the vast majority of its forces and mostly leave the War to the Afghans. And the Taliban gains were negligible 6/🧵

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

11 months

🇦🇫THREAD: There was no reason why the Taliban should have won in 2021. Much has been said about the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021, and how it might have been done differently. The far more important point is how we could have avoided an evacuation at all. 1/🧵

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

9 months

Girl scouts in Afghanistan - likely 1960s or 70s 🇦🇫

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

10 months

But why? In the early 2010s, the main US priority was to get its forces out of Afghanistan as soon as possible - especially out of combat. The quickest way to do that was to build the Afghan fighting units ASAP, but leave the support capabilities for later. 5/🧵

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

10 months

Medical Faculty at Kabul University, Afghanistan, in 1962 🇦🇫

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

11 months

🇦🇫 For the last 122 years, every single Afghan government except the Taliban has been committed to expanding education for girls and women. And yet, bizarrely, the Taliban claim to represent tradition and continuity. Even if they believe their own lies, we shouldn't.

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@StephanAJensen

Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

9 months

Afghanistan, 1970s

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

10 months

Critically, it's the removal of Western support -not the removal of Western combat troops- that caused the Afghan Republic to collapse and the Taliban to return to power Western combat troops had already left *seven years earlier*. 16/🧵

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

10 months

Beyond the critical material support for the Afghan forces, *political* support for the Afghan government also remained important. The sense, psychologically, that the West was backing the Afghan Republic was an important source of reassurance - also for its military. 7/🧵

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@StephanAJensen

Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

11 months

The Afghan Republic's democratic system of government was a continuation of the country's constitutional monarchy in the 1960s. Further back, it built on long-standing, traditional, ideas about popular sovereignty. Democracy was the "traditional" choice, not theocracy. 4/11

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

10 months

🇦🇫 Our defeat in Afghanistan and the fall of the Republic was first and foremost a self-fulfilling prophecy. The real turning point was defatist narratives taking hold in the West and in Afghanistan. And the real enemy was not the Taliban, but our own impatience and fatalism.

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

11 months

The hundreds of thousands of young boys attending these madrassas became steeped in the extremist religious thinking that came to define the Taliban, and became the core of its soldiers in the 1990s. They craved "tradition" precisely because they didn't have any. 8/11

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

10 months

In blatant defiance of reality, both Trump and Biden promised to "end the war" - a war no longer fought by the US and NATO but by the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. But the Afghans still relied on the support they had been promised by the US to continue doing so. 12/🧵

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Stephan Jensen

@StephanAJensen

11 months

The US-Taliban Doha deal promised peace through a negotiated end to the war in Afghanistan. Instead, it set the stage for a Taliban military victory, by undermining the Afghan Republic in almost every way possible. That was both a moral and a strategic catastrophe. 🇦🇫🇺🇸

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