Taliban Special Forces. Illustrative image On December 8, the Taliban announced that its fighters had killed 14 soldiers of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and captured 23 others during a hit and run attack on a military base in the district of Shindand in the northwestern province of Herat. “12 PKM machine guns, 3 RPG launchers with 80 rounds, 17 rifles, 55000 rounds of rifle, 10000 rounds of PKM, 3 communication radios and a sizable amount of other ammunition were seized during the operation,” the Afghan group’s news agency, Voice of Jihad, said in a press release. Herat provincial council member, Najibullah Mohebi, confirmed to the Associated Press (AP) that Taliban fighters had carried out a coordinated attack on a base of the ANA in Shindand on December 6. According to local officials, the army repelled the attack after six hours of clashes. However, the Afghan group had already killed and captured many soldiers. This was the biggest Taliban attack in Herat since the

Written by  The Saker ; Originally appeared at  The Unz Review The AngloZionist propaganda machine is constantly warning us that Russia is about to invade some country.  The list of candidates for invasion is long and ranges from Norway to the Ukraine and includes the Baltic statelets, Poland and even countries further West.  Of course, we are also told that NATO and the US are here to prevent that.  Well, thank God for them, right? But what is conspicuously missing from this narrative is a discussion of the possible Russian motives for such a military move. Typically, we are merely told that Russia has broken the European post-Cold War order and borders by “annexing” Crimea and by sending military forces into the Donbass. Anybody with an IQ at room temperature or above by now realizes that both of these claims are total bunk. The ones who indeed broke the post-Cold War international order and borders were the NATO member states when they used military force, in complete illegal