Fate of Afghanistan, Taliban resurgence

[Easo]

That doesn't challenge my point though, modern nations used to have no issues with these as well, and as you have noticed they a bit behind the curve and are fresh out of tribal stage, so give them some time to evolve

They have never made it out of the tribal stage, that has to be pointed out. They might be on edge to turn into nationalism, but imho that is very far away. Even the current dealings show just how much tribal Afghanistan still is.

The Afghani people are choosing between two possible governing groups. They are choosing the Taliban over the US supported Kabul government. As in overwhelmingly supporting it.

Although republicans are trying to make this into "Biden's Fault - Biden's Disaster", the US really needs to analyze the bipartisan failure that our stay in Afghanistan was. We really did spend multiple trillions of dollars there over 20 years, and what we have to show for it is a country that absolutely hates us. They are choosing the Taliban over the US.

Naive to think of it as onesided. Especially with the last generation which grew up in the cities and could actually get some basic stuff, like education for everyone. Talibs are popular without a doubt. But they are also far from having an overwhelming support, otherwise you wouldn't see those masses of refugees going towards Kabul.

[Omega10]

Naive to think of it as onesided. Especially with the last generation which grew up in the cities and could actually get some basic stuff, like education for everyone. Talibs are popular without a doubt. But they are also far from having an overwhelming support, otherwise you wouldn't see those masses of refugees going towards Kabul.

That makes it worse. Right now everyone is uniting to overthrow their current government. I don't think it will be a pretty sight once the overthrow process is complete. But that is in their hands.

Moving forward, this will possibly be a big problem for Iran and Pakistan, the countries that share the largest borders with Afghanistan. The Central Asian countries north of Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent China with a very tiny border with Afghanistan, will also be affected.

[CostinR]

Yeah goes to show trying to create a functioning democracy in a land of tribes and warlords doesn't work. Kabul is done for.

[ItsRainingMetal]

When I was in the army I was deployed to Helmand province. I remember how we often talked about the fate of Afghanistan, and would would happen once NATO decides to leave. In a way it's kind of funny, because every single one of us believed that the Taliban would quickly rise up and stomp the ANA and everything would go back to what it was before the invasion.

I have been on countless patrols with the ANA, and time and again, those guys demonstrated just how little they care and how incompetent they really are. We had incidents where ANA soldiers had accidental shootings. We had incidents where some of the ANA in our camp were, openly, taking heroin. We had incidents where ANA soldiers would just pick up their weapons and GTFO out of the camp and the ANA, like, they just walked out like it was some summer camp that they could leave if they wished. We had an incident where an ANA soldier decided to steal a camera from someone in my squad, and when he was confronted he threatened to fire an RPG into the TOC (operation control room). Those guys are so hopeless. It doesn't matter how much you try to help them, and how much money we spend on them. They are a bunch of fucking idiots and they are going to get fucked into the ground.

The strategy was bullshit too. "Hearts and minds" - my ass. When we try to help them with infrastructure, for example solar cells and lighting, locals would come out and steal those solar cells during the night. Also, whatever "good will" we managed to build up, was quickly destroyed by their own soldiers abusing the locals. I recall an episode where a little kid is filming our patrol, and what happens is some ANA "special forces" dude sprints up to the kid, drop kicks him in the chest and hits him in the face with the buttstock for good measure. To underline how fucked the country is. The kids father came out to hear wtf is going on, and he is told that his son was filming us and because of that the father decides to beat up his son aswell. We are not allowed to do anything about this, before anyone asks.. ANA's were doing it and it has to be their own people who handle it..

Tl;dr They are hopeless

[Raizz]

Does not take a genius to figure out that Taliban will take over Kabul in a matter of weeks.

United States should have never went there to begin with. $90 billions down the drain for nothing and a black eye.

The "government" there was never viable, made of fair weather opportunists who lined up their own pockets and security forces made of ghost soldiers that received $$ for existing on paper.

[alkyd]

That makes it worse. Right now everyone is uniting to overthrow their current government. I don't think it will be a pretty sight once the overthrow process is complete. But that is in their hands.

Moving forward, this will possibly be a big problem for Iran and Pakistan, the countries that share the largest borders with Afghanistan. The Central Asian countries north of Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent China with a very tiny border with Afghanistan, will also be affected.

I don't know about Iran, but I doubt Pakistan will have any problems. They have old ties with Taliban. Regarding Central Asian countries, we'll see how it turns out but Russia will do everything to help them as stability and security in Central Asia is part of Russia's national security interests.

[Omega10]

I don't know about Iran, but I doubt Pakistan will have any problems. They have old ties with Taliban. Regarding Central Asian countries, we'll see how it turns out but Russia will do everything to help them as stability and security in Central Asia is part of Russia's national security interests.

Both Russia and China have strong interests in a reasonably stable Afghanistan that plays nicely with its neighbors. They have their work cut out for them.

[Themius]

That doesn't challenge my point though, modern nations used to have no issues with these as well, and as you have noticed they a bit behind the curve and are fresh out of tribal stage, so give them some time to evolve

You can't be more wrong... because you see they were past this until heavy intervention.. the USA backing far-right fascist... and propping them up and putting them in power. Kind of how Chile went from far left installing computer systems to plan the economy... to far-right Christian fascist kill thousands upon thousands of indigenous people after USA intervention.

[alkyd]

Both Russia and China have strong interests in a reasonably stable Afghanistan that plays nicely with its neighbors. They have their work cut out for them.

The whole Western world has a strong interest in stable Afghanistan. Refugees will not go to Russia, they will try to break into Europe first. Russia's focus will be on securing borders with Afghanistan, so is China's. Stability inside Afghanistan is the second priority for them.

[jonnysensible]

the USA backing far-right fascist... and propping them up and putting them in power. .

huh?????????????????

[Themius]

When I was in the army I was deployed to Helmand province. I remember how we often talked about the fate of Afghanistan, and would would happen once NATO decides to leave. In a way it's kind of funny, because every single one of us believed that the Taliban would quickly rise up and stomp the ANA and everything would go back to what it was before the invasion.

I have been on countless patrols with the ANA, and time and again, those guys demonstrated just how little they care and how incompetent they really are. We had incidents where ANA soldiers had accidental shootings. We had incidents where some of the ANA in our camp were, openly, taking heroin. We had incidents where ANA soldiers would just pick up their weapons and GTFO out of the camp and the ANA, like, they just walked out like it was some summer camp that they could leave if they wished. We had an incident where an ANA soldier decided to steal a camera from someone in my squad, and when he was confronted he threatened to fire an RPG into the TOC (operation control room). Those guys are so hopeless. It doesn't matter how much you try to help them, and how much money we spend on them. They are a bunch of fucking idiots and they are going to get fucked into the ground.

The strategy was bullshit too. "Hearts and minds" - my ass. When we try to help them with infrastructure, for example solar cells and lighting, locals would come out and steal those solar cells during the night. Also, whatever "good will" we managed to build up, was quickly destroyed by their own soldiers abusing the locals. I recall an episode where a little kid is filming our patrol, and what happens is some ANA "special forces" dude sprints up to the kid, drop kicks him in the chest and hits him in the face with the buttstock for good measure. To underline how fucked the country is. The kids father came out to hear wtf is going on, and he is told that his son was filming us and because of that the father decides to beat up his son aswell. We are not allowed to do anything about this, before anyone asks.. ANA's were doing it and it has to be their own people who handle it..

Tl;dr They are hopeless

They probably beat their son for filming because the USA has been involved in having death squads killing people in the country...

You say they're hopeless and stealing infrastructure which wouldn't happen if there weren't some major destabilisation issues, to begin with. I also wonder how connected are the locals to the infrastructure? In Iraq for instance mostly foreign companies were contracted to build in Iraq, not the Iraqis... which is negative economically. How is it in Afghanistan?

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huh?????????????????

Are you unaware of the proxy war?

[jonnysensible]

Are you unaware of the proxy war?

first of all which one?
the afgan muja's arent the taliban?

and cmon it was literally the bhuttos and the ISI

[Themius]

first of all which one?
the afgan muja's arent the taliban?

and cmon it was literally the bhuttos and the ISI

Mm no.. but the Taliban was born out of it and Saudi Arabia directly did aid the Taliban. Which by the way was our doing. We knew their stance and sold them military equipment which the Saudis then gave to the Taliban. I mean once the Taliban used the weapons to vigorously expand Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were like... hmmm maybe this isn't good but it was too late by then.

It's like if person A gives person B money knowing they need money to hire hit-man C... you can't just look at B and C and say A played no role. A knew what B was going to do and A financed it.

[Mihalik]

In Iraq for instance mostly foreign companies were contracted to build in Iraq, not the Iraqis... which is negative economically. How is it in Afghanistan?

A core issue with Afghanistan is that under the Taliban rule back in the 90s something akin to 90% of women and 60% of men haven't even received the equivalent of primary school education.

And the few people who have received something resembling a basic education was one mostly through Islamic religious schools where at best they learned how to read and write from the Quran with no meaningful training in any maths, physics or any technical skills.

With other words, you literally can't use the locals to build or run a power plant or install and maintain any infrastructure because they can't even read the manual.

Rampant illiteracy has fucked that country in a thousand and one ways.

That of course doesn't mean that corruption and graft lining the pockets of Haliburton and ilk wasn't rampant.

[Draco-Onis]

I mean have anyone seen the afgan army? rampant child abuse specially young boys and tons of drug abuse. Perhaps if they had payed attention when the us troops trained them instead things would look different.

Shouldn't the question be why did US troops try to train a bunch of child and drug abusers? well that isn't fair US armed forces were not really training them most of it came from mercenaries I mean contractors who happily overcharged the US government for their new Yachts.

[Themius]

A core issue with Afghanistan is that under the Taliban rule back in the 90s something akin to 90% of women and 60% of men haven't even received the equivalent of primary school education.

And the few people who have received something resembling a basic education was one mostly through Islamic religious schools where at best they learned how to read and write from the Quran with no meaningful training in any maths, physics or any technical skills.

With other words, you literally can't use the locals to build or run a power plant or install and maintain any infrastructure because they can't even read the manual.

Rampant illiteracy has fucked that country in a thousand and one ways.

That of course doesn't mean that corruption and graft lining the pockets of Haliburton and ilk wasn't rampant.

In such a case as that I would think the next best alternative is to use the skills they know and expand on them. Or build schools to try and educate them. Anything less just fucks them over since you can't just dump new things and ignore the economy.

Kind of like what Clinton did to Haiti.

Using tax payer money to buy crops from Arkansas to then dump in Haiti. Flooding a farming economy based country with food entirely destroy their economy sending them into economic turmoil. While then also bullying them to not raice minimumwages, which HRC did as secretary of state.

I imagine the construction issue could do something similar to the countries we're fucking.

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I mean have anyone seen the afgan army? rampant child abuse specially young boys and tons of drug abuse. Perhaps if they had payed attention when the us troops trained them instead things would look different.

You say this like the US troops don't have these issues... the military has a serious issue with rape among its ranks and doesn't nearly nothing about it...

[jonnysensible]

Mm no.. but the Taliban was born out of it and Saudi Arabia directly did aid the Taliban. Which by the way was our doing. We knew their stance and sold them military equipment which the Saudis then gave to the Taliban. I mean once the Taliban used the weapons to vigorously expand Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were like... hmmm maybe this isn't good but it was too late by then.

It's like if person A gives person B money knowing they need money to hire hit-man C... you can't just look at B and C and say A played no role. A knew what B was going to do and A financed it.

the taliban were born out of the war but not in the way you are describing. Islamists like Bin Laden (Qutb and Mawdudi) are completely different from the Deobandi ulemas. The chaos of Afganistan and its effect on pakistan is what formed them.

Benazir Bhutto and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam hooking up was the main birth of the taliban, a year after that General Babar set them loose on Afghanistan.

They have agency beyond paltry American arms you know?

[ItsRainingMetal]

They probably beat their son for filming because the USA has been involved in having death squads killing people in the country...

You say they're hopeless and stealing infrastructure which wouldn't happen if there weren't some major destabilisation issues, to begin with. I also wonder how connected are the locals to the infrastructure? In Iraq for instance mostly foreign companies were contracted to build in Iraq, not the Iraqis... which is negative economically. How is it in Afghanistan?

I've never heard of US "death squads" killing random people. Various NATO SOF's were operating all over the place, but these guys are highly trained and disciplined. They don't shoot if they don't have to. To add some spice to that; there actually was a set of rules that would give us permission to kill everything in a very specific area, the order was called a "429A". It is very rarely given, and always happens prior to a major operation, it could be given if we had to raid a specific compound suspected as "IED factory" for example. Other than that, the rules were that we are always allowed to shoot if we feel threatened or if a squad mate was threatened or if sensitive equipment was threatened. Sensitive equipment could be our ECM's or radios or weapons. I wouldn't be totally surprised if the ANA had units like that though.

They have power inside the cities, but outside the cities they are not really connected. Occasionally we would come across a couple compounds that are connected to the same generator, but no, they don't have power grids like we do. They don't have running water or sewers like we do. Actually, in some places the drinking water, farm field canal and the sewer is the same thing. We always paid locals to build infrastructure such as the street lights with solar cells and roads. There was a big project to repair a leftover dam from the soviet days, so it could generate power for a nearby "city", sadly I heard it failed because the water pressure wasn't high enough for it to work properly..

[jonnysensible]

There was a big project to repair a leftover dam from the soviet days, so it could generate power for a nearby "city", sadly I heard it failed because the water pressure wasn't high enough for it to work properly..

wasnt the Kajaki Dam was it?

[Themius]

the taliban were born out of the war but not in the way you are describing. Islamists like Bin Laden (Qutb and Mawdudi) are completely different from the Deobandi ulemas. The chaos of Afganistan and its effect on pakistan is what formed them.

Benazir Bhutto and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam hooking up was the main birth of the taliban, a year after that General Babar set them loose on Afghanistan.

They have agency beyond paltry American arms you know?

"paltry American arms"? Saudi Arabia and Pakistan both aided in their expansion and provided arms with the USA aided the Saudis in their efforts to arm the Taliban.

Huge increases in wahhabism, a 15x increases in schools. The Saudi King viewed by some as a spiritual leader thanks to their training in their schools. The giving of shit tons of arms and the rapid 90s expansion... many of which they gave them after getting them from US

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I've never heard of US "death squads" killing random people. Various NATO SOF's were operating all over the place, but these guys are highly trained and disciplined. They don't shoot if they don't have to. To add some spice to that; there actually was a set of rules that would give us permission to kill everything in a very specific area, the order was called a "429A". It is very rarely given, and always happens prior to a major operation, it could be given if we had to raid a specific compound suspected as "IED factory" for example. Other than that, the rules were that we are always allowed to shoot if we feel threatened or if a squad mate was threatened or if sensitive equipment was threatened. Sensitive equipment could be our ECM's or radios or weapons. I wouldn't be totally surprised if the ANA had units like that though.

They have power inside the cities, but outside the cities they are not really connected. Occasionally we would come across a couple compounds that are connected to the same generator, but no, they don't have power grids like we do. They don't have running water or sewers like we do. Actually, in some places the drinking water, farm field canal and the sewer is the same thing. We always paid locals to build infrastructure such as the street lights with solar cells and roads. There was a big project to repair a leftover dam from the soviet days, so it could generate power for a nearby "city", sadly I heard it failed because the water pressure wasn't high enough for it to work properly..

In regards to the death squads... mostly the reports were the attacks on schools and villages were carried out by private security contractors read mercenaries who worked through the CIA. Not the military itself... though there are enough atrocities there.

I think it's amazing there are orders to just kill things in an area giving what we know about Vietnam... given the sketchy intelligence and the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths...it seems probalametic.