New attacks against the Taliban.

August 15^th marked the 5-year anniversary of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. A bleak day that marked the end of hope for the Afghan people. In the past five years Afghanistan has developed into an apartheid like regime specifically targeting women, who have lost all basic freedoms in a toxic religious and male dominated society.

Recently, former Afghan Army General Sami Sadat has reemerged on social media announcing offensive operations against the Taliban. He is no random operator. One of the last major combat operations by the Afghan Army against the Taliban, was the defense of the city Lashkar Gah, the capital of the Helmand Province. The Afghan Special Forces under the command of general Sami Sadat fought the Taliban until they realized that the battle was lost. Sami Sadat was evacuated from Afghanistan and found refuge in the US where he has now assumed control over the organization Afghanistan United Front (AUF). They have launched several guerilla style attacks against the Taliban across the southern provinces, coinciding with attacks by other anti-Taliban groups, such as the Afghan Freedom Front and the National Resistance Front in other parts of the country. These groups are present in the Northern parts of Afghanistan and are also led by former Afghan Army soldiers.

What makes AUF and Sami Sadat stand out is an attack on August 1^st on a police station in Kandahar killing two members of the Taliban. Kandahar is the Taliban heartland and city of origin. The Taliban administrative government might be in Kabul, but the senior leadership of the Taliban reside in Kandahar, and this is where the shots are called. The symbolism of the attack is strong: hitting the Taliban where they feel safe.

It is still too early to say if this will lead to any significant weakening for the Taliban, but it is a small shimmer of hope for the Afghan people. Personally, I had lost all hope that anyone could oppose the Taliban. Now I am not so sure.

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Recommendation.

The documentary film Retrograde follows the final months of the war in Afghanistan and general Sami Sadat’s last stand against the Taliban. In the opening scenes US Special Forces are ordered to withdraw and leave behind their Afghan brothers in arms. Sami Sadat stays with his troops as the tragedy unfolds.

The film was released in 2022 by National Geographic and is directed by Matthew Heineman.

AI notification.

In this article, AI has been used for research purposes and editing. The words are my own.

Next up.

The next edition of WARCORE will give an update on the situation in Mali, where the capital Bamako is surrounded by Islamic rebels.

/MT

In this edition I will look at something that has gone noticed. Over the holidays an interesting intelligence operation took place in Ukraine. For more than a year I have been tracking a militia called Russian Volunteer Corps. It is made up of extreme right-wing Russians in opposition to Putin’s regime and fighting for Ukraine in the war.

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THE DEATH OF WHITE REX

On the 27^th of December 2025 it was announced that the leader and founder of Russian Volunteer Corps Denis Kasputin aka Whit Rex had died. It was reported that he was killed by an FPV drone on the frontline during a combat mission near Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine. A worthy warrior’s death for the semi famous militia leader.

Below is a translated except from my book “Like Dew Before the Sun”, which was released in October 2025, about Denis Kasputin, whom another character in the book was contracted to kill back in 2022. Read until the end for a plot twist you did not see coming:

Expert from chapter 9 “Cowboy”:

In 2008 the twenty-four-year-old Denis Nikitin starts the clothing brand White Rex—Aggressive Clothing Company. The brand makes T-shirts, polo shirts, and martial arts clothing with strong neo-Nazi undertones. One of the vendors that sell the clothes is the website ansgararyan.com.

The 188-centimeter-tall and 106-kilogram dark-haired man is an active and extremely violent football hooligan. Over the years he becomes a central figure in Germany’s neo-Nazi environment and promotes seminars and martial arts events for the extreme right across the country and often travels to Eastern Europe. The White Rex brand develops into an umbrella of clothing, events, and training centers. Denis Nikitin’s mission is that the brand should be able to offer everything a modern person in his target group needs.

German journalists begin to take an interest in Denis Nikitin. At his home address in an immigrant neighborhood in Cologne, it doesn’t read Nikitin on the door, but Kasputin. German intelligence services have also begun to take an interest in him and his connections to the hooligan environment in Germany as well as possible connections to Russia. In 2001 he came to Germany from Russia as a Jewish quota refugee with his family, under the name Kasputin. They are also interested in where he gets the money for his many trips and events from. The hooligan environment in Moscow is known for its connections to the Russian security service FSB. It is known that the Putin regime is interested in supporting extremist groups that can destabilize Europe. The authorities keep a close eye on him. But there is something that doesn’t add up with his many trips to Ukraine, where he is arrested in October 2018 under suspicion of wanting to buy weapons. His passport is confiscated, and in 2019 Germany issues a travel ban justified by his work against the liberal democracy’s constitution. The travel ban applies to all countries in the Schengen cooperation.

Denis Nikitin, or Kasputin, settles down in Ukraine and maintains his connections to neo-Nazi groups in the West. For a while he is a co-host on a podcast with the American white supremacist Robert Rundo, leader of the organization Rise Above Movement. The organization participates in the large neo-Nazi march in the American city of Charlottesville in 2017, which ends in violent clashes. A white supremacist drives his car into a group of counterdemonstrators, killing one, and injuring thirty-five.

In August 2022 Denis Kasputin aka Nikitin establishes the paramilitary militia Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC). It is made up of extreme right-wing and racist Russians in Ukraine. He gives himself the nom de guerre “White Rex.” RVC’s goal is to protect Ukraine and in time depose Putin. They use symbols from the Russian Liberation Army, a unit of defected Russian soldiers and Russian prisoners of war who fought under German command in World War II under the leadership of Russian general Andrey Vlasov.

In May 2023 RVC publishes the political manifesto “Homo Ethnicus,” which advocates for an ethnically pure and a geographically smaller Russia cleansed of non-white minorities. The manifesto also distances itself from both communism and liberalism as ideologies and describes a third way based on ethnicity.

There are believed to be approximately 200 Russians fighting in RVC. Under them they have a unit with Russian Cossacks from the Kuban region in southern Russia and the Karelian Group, which consists of Russian separatists from northwestern Russia at the border with Finland, an area known as Karelia.

There have been several sensational attacks on Russian territory during the war. In the spring of 2023 RVC claims to be behind attacks in the Bryansk and Belgorod areas together with another Russian militia Freedom of Russia Legion (FRL). FRL consists of Russians living in Ukraine and defected Russian soldiers. FRL is part of the Ukrainian military intelligence service GUR’s International Legion. Unlike RVC, which is not officially part of the Ukrainian armed forces. There is also a third Russian unit fighting on the Ukrainian side. Sibir Battalion is also against Putin and recruits Russian Yakuts from northern Siberia and Mongolian Buryats from southeastern Siberia. It can take up to a year to be approved for admission to the unit, which is led by Vladislav Ammosov, who claims to have worked for the Russian intelligence service GRU for fifteen years.

They all cooperate with National Republican Army (NRA), which is a Russian underground partisan army in Russia fighting to overthrow Putin. Together with RVC and FRL they have signed the Irpin Declaration stating that they will fight the Russian regime together.

NRA is behind sabotage attacks against Russian military installations and is suspected of being involved in an assassination attempt against the Russian political philosopher Alexander Dugin that killed his daughter. There is also another partisan unit fighting in both Belarus and Russia. It is called Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists, and it is also behind a long series of sabotage attacks.

In November 2016 Denis Kasputin is sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment in a labor camp by a court in Moscow. He is to this day in Ukraine, where he continues the fight. He claims RVC is part of GUR, but there is no one who will officially acknowledge that, despite GUR’s chief Kyrylo Budanov publicly praising the Russian militias’ attacks on Russian territory. In war your enemy’s enemy is your friend.

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The plot twist came on January 1^st. With the world hung over from New Year’s Eve, it was announced that Denis Kasputin was alive and well. His death was faked as an integral part of a month-long intelligence operation run by the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service “GUR”. The Russian Intelligence Service “FSB” has ordered the assassination of their country man Denis Kasputin and had allocated 500.000 US dollars to be paid to informants and participants in his liquidation. The murderous Russian operation was uncovered and involved agents were apprehended. The 500.000 US dollars was also obtained as the Russian Intelligence Service believed that the assassination mission had been a success.

In intelligence circles this is considered to be an enormous failure and embarrassment, and heads have rolled in Russia for sure.

As an added twist the head of GUR Kyril Budanov, a highly acclaimed intelligence operative and leader has been picked as Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s new Chief of Staff. He will substitute the powerful but disgraced Andrey Jermak, who fell victim to an international corruption scandal.

NEXT UP

I am working on an English, and maybe a Ukrainian, translation of my book “Like Dew Before the Sun – Tales from the Shadow world of war”. Hopefully it will come out sometime in the spring. So far it is only available in Danish in a bookstore near you.

In the next edition of WARCORE I will provide my analysis of the American plan to take over Greenland. The worst is yet to come.

/MT

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Voodoo Nation.

Haiti is surely a place of contradiction like no other. I arrived in the capital Port-au-Prince by helicopter, landing at the private Petionville Club on a mountain high above the warzone of downtown.

Haiti and especially Port-au-Prince has been caught in a vicious downward spiral for years and the country is on the brink of collapse. Criminal gangs control 80-90% of the city and the government has been under extreme pressure since March 2024 when the gangs united and attacked, preventing Prime Minister Ariel Henry from returning to the country from a trip abroad and ultimately forcing him to resign. He has never returned and has not been seen or heard from publicly since. I witnessed this first hand and as airports shut down and the airspace closed, I was stuck for a month before I could be evacuated.

I have visited Haiti several times in the last couple of years and seen how the situation has gone from bad to worse. But one place that has gone unfazed is the Lebanese hotspot restaurant Magdoos in the neighbourhood of Petionville, not far from the club where I arrived.

I went there the first night of this trip. It was Wednesday, which I happy hour day, and the place was packed with young and wealthy locals and the few remaining internationals. The restaurant is a chick and wonderful place, and the food is amazing. The kind of place you hope to find in any city you visit. I am not a big connoisseur of Lebanese food, but I have never had it better.

Most people think of Haiti as a warzone and Magdoos is not a scene outsiders would expect to see in Haiti; People are dancing and drinking and the DJ mixes 90’s hits with voodoo music. During the evening someone pointed out to me that the DJ’s father was one of the country’s biggest drug traffickers and one of 22 children.

Most of Port-au-Prince is run down and worn but behind high walls and barbed wire small oasis exist if you knew where to find them and Magdoos is one of those places. It stands in stark contrast to the reality of the downtown area. Port-au-Prince is estimated to house around 4 million people, a third of the country’s population, in a vast area slung from the sea and up a mountain side. The higher up the mountain you get the safer, further down closer to the sea is where danger lurks. With a few exemptions, the entire downtown area is controlled by gangs and armed groups.

When I started travelling to Haiti the gangs were pitted against each other in endless gang wars, but last year they all banded together, calling themselves “Viv Ansam” meaning “All Together” and rose up. Since, everything has been chaos.

I have met several of the gangs and spent a great deal of time with the most famous gang leader and Viv Ansam spokesperson Jimmy Chérizier aka Barbecue. Last year pictures from his slum neighbourhood impromptu press conferences went around the world and I was present, but so far, he has been unsuccessful in taking over the country.

Not much has changed since then. The gangs still control most of the city and a Temporary Presidential Counsil has been stood up to run things. Their job has been to secure the country and plan an election and none of those things have been achieved.

Despite the crisis and chaos Haiti is still vibrant and full of life. I was lucky to meet a man who goes by the title “The King of Voodoo”, meaning that he is the highest authority in a religion without code or authorities. Unlike major religions with codified works and central authorities, Voodoo is a living and evolving religion.

Most people think of spells and black magic, but voodoo is like any other religion a balance of good and evil forces. Voodoo is a mix of all religious practices, and it encompasses both Christianity, Islam, African animism and Caribbean ingenious beliefs.

I only witnessed small parts of a voodoo ceremony as the more occult happenings are for the true believers, but my jaw dropped as people got possessed by spirits all around me.

They say voodoo spells can only harm you if you believe in it. I don’t know what to believe, but I do believe that voodoo showed me something true about the Haitian people. Haitians are decedents of mostly West African slaves, sent across the sea to a faraway place. In 1804 they rebelled against their French slave masters and claimed their own nation.

Voodoo has evolved with the first slaves and until today and seems to be engrained in the soul of Haitian people. To an outsider it seems as much belief as soul and culture.

Last year a Kenyan led multinational force arrived in Haiti to support the Haitian National Police in the fight against the gangs. Haiti has no military. Understaffed and under resourced the force has not been able to do much of a difference.

On October 2^nd their UN mandate to operate and even be in the country expired. In the days leading up to that date many things were happening in the corridors of the United Nations HQ in New York City. In the 11^th hour the UN Security Counsil approved a new force to take over from the Kenyans – enter The Gang Suppression Force. This seems perhaps to be the most positive news for Haiti in a long time even though no one knows exactly when it’s purposed 5.500 strong military contingent will arrive.

On February 7^th 2026 the mandate of the Haitian Temporary Presidential Counsel expires and there is no chance that an election will take place before that. Supposedly, a timeline for an election will be released in the coming weeks, but regardless WARCORE will be there to see how it goes and report.

Over the past 3 years I have been working in a documentary film in Haiti. The film is expected to be released in late 2026.

Announcement.

I am very proud to announce that my first book ““Like Dew Before the Sun – Accounts from the Shadow World of War” will be published on October 21st.

Since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 I have researched and travelled to Ukraine several times, to speak with foreign fighters, militiamen, oligarchs, and arms dealers to try and understand the war. To really understand the war, I also dived into more than a thousand years of history that most don’t know much about.

After three years of work, the book is finally here. So far it can only be found in Danish.

Danish readers can pre-order the book here:

https://www.bog-ide.dk/produkt/5267503/martin-tamm-andersen-som-dug-for-solen-haeftet/3262018?gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20846262862&gbraid=0AAAAADkSqoeeoJ6riUqdXtjLuBju31TBT&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjL3HBhCgARIsAPUg7a61YrI1nNu2ZMw-rsIUAuQ4_gC1Vk9VPStiMXxP9XwHHlxthiZFuJMaAjvHEALw_wcB

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Next up:

A conflict is rising between Taliban controlled Afghanistan and Pakistan. WARCORE will look at what is going on.

For a while I have been into Russian Pro-Ukraine black metal performed by Russian dissidents who are actually fighting against Russia in Ukraine. More on that next time in WARCORE.

/MT

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Thailand and Cambodia Conflict in under a minute.

In May 2025 a Cambodian soldier was killed in a clash with Thai soldiers and later in July a Thai soldier stepped on a landmine and lost a leg in the disputed border area between the two countries. From there things escalated quickly. Thailand launched airstrikes and ground assaults on Cambodian military installations and Cambodia fired multiple rockets into Thailand.

The conflict between the two countries goes all the way back to the border drawing in 1907 which left the area around the Preah Vihear Hindu Temple on the Cambodian side of the border. This is the root of a century long conflict.

Apparently, both American President Trump and Chinse President Xi stepped in and calmed things down, but the main issues remain unsolved. The UN International Court of Justice awarded the disputed area to Cambodia in 1962, and after a prolonged crisis with several military clashes from 2008 until 2011, the court upheld its ruling despite it being challenged by Thailand. The fighting may have stopped for now but the conflict might last another century.

On the ground in South Sudan.

A few weeks ago, I travelled to South Sudan – an oil rich and lush green country worn down by internal strife and civil war.

One thing that everyone in South Sudan is proudly aware of, is the fact that the country is the world’s youngest. South Sudan officially gained its independence in 2011, six years after a peace deal with Sudan was agreed and hopes were high. In 2006 Salvar Kiir Mayadrit was appointed President of the not yet official country, and he travelled to Washington DC to meet US President George Bush who gave him a black cowboy hat that he hasn’t been seen without since.

In 2013 a brutal civil war broke out mainly between President Salvar Kiir’s Dinka Tribe and Vice President Riek Marchar’s Nuer Tribe. The Dinka and Nuer tribes are the country’s largest out or more than 60 ethnic tribes and languages.

The first time I visited South Sudan was in 2017. The civil war was still raging and Vice President Riek Marchar was exiled in South Africa. I travelled illegally into the northeast part of the country through Ethiopia, to meet the Nuer tribe’s notorious rebel forces called The White Army. South Sudan is landlocked and borders with Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, The Democratic Republic of Congo, The Central African Republic and Sudan. In the town of Nasir, I meet the rebels. Several hundred armed fighters cheered and danced, but their commander excused that they were so few. Had we only arrived a week earlier they would have been thousands to meet us, but now they had gone to fight the government, he explained. The Nuer tribesmen of The White Army seemed like a motivated fighting force, all with traditional tribal scars on their foreheads, but only armed with handguns against the governments much better equipped soldiers and fighter jets.

The civil war left more than 400.000 dead before a peace agreement was reached in 2020 and Riek Marchar was reinstated as Vice President in the capital of Juba. I travelled to Juba in 2022 and experienced a relative quite situation. But that was only on the surface. Political violence and civil war had been replaced by local tribal wars, cattle raiding, kidnappings and an explosion in crime. Home invasions, violent muggings and organized crime was razing the country with law enforcement being part of the problem rather than the solution.

South Sudan is rich in oil and more than 90% of the governments revenues comes from it. But being landlocked much of the oil money is lost to transport through Sudan to the sea and government oil concessions have been sold until at least 2027 to service state debts. With no money coming in, political tensions are on the rise and President Salvar Kiir and Vice President Riek Marchar are at odds again.

I arrived in late August to a country that is now again on the brink of civil war. In March of this year an armed convoy made its way to Vice President Rieck Marchars house in Juba and government soldiers arrested him and his wife who is the Minister of Interior. In the area around the town of Nasir clashes between The White Army and government soldiers had erupted, resulting in The White Army overrunning the local government military base and killing more than 250 soldiers. Vice President Rieck Marachar was arrested on suspicion of supporting the rebel forces and on September 11th he was officially charged with murder and treason for ordering the attack, allegedly.

South Sudan is not only the world’s youngest country, but also the world’s most corrupt, according to Transparency International’s Corruptions Perception Index. South Sudan ranks 180 out of 180 countries with Somalia next on the list at 179 and topped by Denmark as the least corrupt country in the world. But South Sudan’s challenges do not end here. Recently, international media has reported that the South Sudanese government has engaged in talks with Isreal regarding a forceful relocation of Palestinians from Gaza to South Sudan. Several people I talked to said they had seen Israeli officials in the country but shook their heads of the prospect of receiving traumatized foreigners to a country that can offer them nothing. More than 2,4 million people have fled South Sudan and approximately 2 million people are internally displaced. The South Sudanese government has no money which makes both Palestinians and cash welcome, but how realistic and far the plans are, is difficult to say.

The population of South Sudan is resilient to an unfathomable degree, but problems and tensions are building up to a worrying degree and escalations rather than solutions seem to be on the horizon.

Book recommendation.

While recovering from injuries sustained on the frontlines in Ukraine Pavel Filatjev wrote most of “Zov” on his Ipad. Filatjev was a Russian soldier, and the book describes his experiences in the first three months of the chaotic Russian invasion of Ukraine. If you were wondering, why the Russian invasion was far from successful you will understand after reading “Zov”.

Pavel Filatjev quit his job working with horses to rejoin a disorganized Russian Army. As in any army the soldiers fought for the guys next to them while having no faith in the higher command level’s ability to understand the reality in the line of fire.

“Zov” gives a rare and honest insight into the closed world of the Russian military and that comes with repercussions. Paval Filatjev have long since fled Russia and lives under a secret identity in an undisclosed country with a bounty in his head.

Next up.

I will be travelling to Haiti in the near future where I am working on a feature documentary film. The third edition of WARCORE will report from the collapsing Caribbean nation where the capital of Port-au-Prince has been almost completely taken over by criminal gangs revolting against the government.

Thank you for reading WARCORE. I you like what to read please help share WARCORE with people you know.

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/MT

Since US President Donald Trump took office earlier this year, it has been evident that Greenland is within an American defined sphere of interest and influence. This is not new. In Donald Trumps’s term as president, he purposed to buy Greenland which is at self-governing territory within the Realm and Kingdom of Denmark. But Trump was not positioning for a real-estate deal, he was conducting reconnaissance for at Hybrid Warfare operation, which now seems to have entered a new phase.

A few days ago, it was reported by Danish media that at least three American citizens with links to the American President are suspected of operating across Greenland in order to, what in military terms would be called, prepare the battlespace for an insurrection through influence operations. Supposedly, the Americans have been working on identifying and infiltrating Greenlandic citizens who support a separation from Denmark and a submission of Greenland to American authority and control.

How did it come to this? Well, when America won WWII, one of the reasons, was the successful adaption of the Nazi German way of fighting revolving around two key concepts – auftragstaktik and Blietszkrieg. The first was translated to mission command and means that the tactical commander closest to the fighting is authorized to make the necessary tactical decisions, he or she sees fit. This might not sound groundbreaking, but it was as it broke with an organizational legacy of decision-making at the very top. To this day, this is something the Russian army has never managed. Blietzkrig was a complex ground force strategy where Airbourne troops would be dropped behind enemy lines to prepare the battle space and be ready to support the heavy tank units that would create a center of gravity and brake though the enemy lines.

That was then. Now the US leadership is inspired by someone else. You guessed it – the Russians. In modern time the Russians have developed a Hybrid Warfare doctrine that has proved extremely effective.

"Hybrid Warfare" is a strategy in which all means — both military and non-military — are used. Broadly speaking, a campaign begins by influencing the opinion-makers in a country. Existing divisions within the population are inflamed, and over time massive media campaigns based on “fake news” are launched. Next, the civilian population is engaged, potentially with the help of locally embedded agents, in order to make their dissatisfaction visible. The mobilization of the opposition is unofficially supported by all possible means — financially, with advisors, agents, and weapons if necessary.

Everything is conducted at arm’s length, but politically it is legitimized in international forums by invoking historical, ethnic, geographic, or political justifications. At the same time, military preparations are made — units are moved to the borders, making it clear to all that action can be taken — of course as a “peacekeeping” force should a conflict erupt. When the time is right, the decisive move is made. In 2014, Russia conducted and extensive Hybrid Warfare campaign in Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, and Crimea fell almost without a shot being fired — while the world was watching and did nothing.

In Greenland and Denmark people are horrified, but the US government has officially replied: “Calm down”. The Danish and Greenland governments should most defiantly not calm down. What we are witnessing are the first phases of a Hybrid Warfare operation and this needs to be countered with firm action and with the understanding that this is only the vanguard. This battle is far from over.

/MT

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The second edition of WARCORE will be out in a few weeks as planned.

The latest from Syria in under a minute:

The new Sunni Muslim Syrian leadership is currently clashing with Druze militias. The Druze are a religious minority that combines elements of Islam, Christianity and other religions, and its followers are spread out over Syria, Israel, Lebanon and Jordan. Allegedly, the clashes started after a Druze merchant was attacked by Sunni highway robbers.

There are two narratives at play: The new Sunni leadership is being accused of attacking those who supported the former president Bashar al-Assad regime (from the Alawite religious minority), conducting revenge killings and other atrocities. This has been well documented. The other side of the story; In Syria the Druze are divided into three main groups – one group the “Suweyda Military Counsil” is a more a crime syndicate than a militia and they are allegedly, supported directly by Israel, who seems to oppose a stable and multicultural Syria. The conflict is now evolving.

Important date coming up:

August 15th marks the fall of Kabul in 2021. In the following WARCORE will provide a short analysis of what went wrong:

A common perception is that it was US President Donald Trump’s fault that the war in Afghanistan was lost because he made a deal with the Taliban to fully withdraw all US and thereby all NATO troops. But the war was long lost before then.

Many things went wrong in the effort to build a democratic state after Al-Queda and the Taliban were defeated; Many of NATO’s Afghan allies turned out to be criminal warlords and corruption ran wild as money poured into the country. Some estimates claim that by 2009 approximately 25 million USD poured out of Afghanistan in cash every single day. The money came from the West but ended up as warlord real estate in places like the Dubai. Part of the Afghan security forces was also run by these warlords, and they extorted, raped and murdered the civilian population while posing as legitimate patterners to the foreign soldiers and were never held accountable. This is just the tip of the iceberg. For a century modern and traditional values has been at odds in Afghanistan and the West never managed to understand the complications and internal conflicts of rural Afghanistan which led to many problems. Too many to cover here.

But, the war was not decisively lost until the summer of 2011 when US President Barrack Obama announced that the US would gradually begin drawing down the number of troops in Afghanistan and end NATO led combat operations in 2014. The Taliban had a saying: “They have the watches; we have the time”. From then on, all the Taiban had to do was wait. In February 2020 Trump made a deal with the Taliban to completely leave the country by May 2021, something that the later US President Joe Biden had also advocated for and then saw through in the most shameful way possible.

Hindsight is always easy but so is answering what we should have done instead; Either we should have been cynical and left Afghanistan right after Al-Queda and the Taliban was defeated, and a new government had been installed. Both happened in less than a year after the war began in October 2001. That ship sailed. Or, we should have believed in what we tried to do and have stayed. Understanding that we could not beat the Taliban in the long run, we should have stayed until a peace deal could have been made, incorporating the Taliban into the government and leaving a not perfect, but stable Afghanistan. This would also have ensured the progress that was made for woman, kids, and freedom could have been sustained. Now it is all lost.

What was also lost was US world dominance and Putin saw that. Thinking that NATO was weak and weary after 20 years of war in Afghanistan he saw his window of opportunity to attack Ukraine. That is a story for another time.

Many things went wrong but the main reason we lost the war in Afghanistan was because three US presidents gave up on Afghanistan. I fought there, lost friends there and the Afghans who believed in us ended up a lot worse. August 15^th stands as a monumental defeat in our belief in freedom as a human right.

Book recommendation:

“Nuclear War: A Scenario”, by Annie Jacobsen.

This might be non-fiction, but it reads like a thriller. Minute by minute the book explains how the world will end in 72 minutes after a nuclear warhead is launched at the Unites States of America. It sounds bleak, and it is, but it is also captivating and demonically entertaining. Annie Jacobson is an acclaimed scriptwriter, and she has spent 10 years researching the book and unconfirmed rumour has it that film director Dennis Villenaeuve has picked up the filming rights.

Next up:

This is just the beginning – WARCORE is headed to South Sudan and the next edition of WARCORE will focus on an on the ground report from the world’s youngest country, which is also considered one of the most dangerous places on earth. In the latest turn of events, it has been reported that Israel and South Sudan are engaged in talks about resettling the population of Gaza in the country.

If you like what you find please share, forward and voice your opinion and feel to reach out.

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/MT

WARCORE will cover different angels and offer short situational updates and analysis, on the ground reports, personal opinions, interviews, longer articles, and much more on different conflicts and stories as seen fit.

WARCORE is a one-man operation by me Martin Tamm Andersen. I am a former Danish soldier now working as a documentarian. I started my career as a private in the infantry. 18 years later I retired at the rank of Captain, with deployments to Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. Since I have worked as a security advisor and hostage negotiator and now as a documentary filmmaker, writer and podcast host. In all my adult life, my work has revolved around war. I have had the privilege to make films from the places I fought as a soldier and to go where most don’t. My work still takes me to conflict areas around the world and parts of this newsletter will be about what I encounter on some of my work trips.

With WARCORE I will try to pass information and cut to the point of what is happening out here. Some editions might be short and clear while others might be about more obscure things that I have taken an interest in. First and foremost, I will try and give you something you won’t get anywhere else.

Hit “SUBSCRIBE” to receive WARCORE for free and feel free to reach out. The first newsletter will be out in a few days.

/MT

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WARCORE

WARCORE is a newsletter that cuts through the BS and keeps you informed about the current wars and conflicts around the world.

By Martin Tamm Andersen

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