Fate of Afghanistan, Taliban resurgence

[PC2]

Thats a lot of words to say nothing....

In short your trust is based on nothing but naivety and optimism.

Okay... The Taliban might get more power over the coming months but I just don't see them being able to sustain it. Ultimately they are barbarian idiots so it's inevitable that they'll piss off the local civilians. We can promote education and empower local civilians to undermine the insane violence and authoritarianism of the Taliban, so that they can choose more tolerant leadership that promotes freedom.

I'm not a "Pollyanna" though, you just think everything is intractable.

[Edge-]

Uh?? There were a lot of improvements wrt afghanistan. 1998 afghanistan was mostly taliban territory

And 2021 is seeming to return to that state, unless the Taliban feels they want to be a part of the power sharing agreement instead of continuing to take over territory in the country. It's the Afghan government offering to share power, they have the far weaker bargaining position as their forces crumple.

So I'm seeing more that we spent two decades, trillions of dollars, and tens of thousands of lives to accomplish very little of anything at the end of the day.

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We can promote education and empower local civilians to undermine the insane violence and authoritarianism of the Taliban, so that they can choose more tolerant leadership that promotes freedom.

How do you empower people to undermine the dudes with the guns, without arming them? I mean, we shouldn't be arming anywhere there given our disasters track record, but this is pure fantasy nonsense.

[Orange Joe]

Okay... The Taliban might get more power over the coming months but I just don't see them being able to sustain it. Ultimately they are barbarian idiots so it's inevitable that they'll piss off the local civilians. We can promote education and empower local civilians to undermine the insane violence and authoritarianism of the Taliban, so that they can choose more tolerant leadership that promotes freedom.

I'm not a "Pollyanna" though, you just think everything is intractable.

What does this have to do with trusting the US Government/Military to not step in unless it's needed?

[PC2]

What does this have to do with trusting the US Government/Military to not step in unless it's needed?

I guess it didn't, we should talk about all potential solution to geo-political issues and not just military solutions. The military is just one part of the equation. If you think you have good ideas for the solution then you should share them too. Seems like people just want to poo-poo anything positive atm.

[Corvus]

That happened faster than expected.

The Taliban started taking over low populated, poorly defended regions to start with but now they are moving into the cities with barely a fight. Reports are that the government is pulling back their forces to Kabul to defend it and I expect that the fighting there will be a lot fiercer than seen elsewhere as the troops that haven't given up/deserted/etc will be the ones that really don't want the Taliban around. But we'll see.

Also it isn't just the Taliban - alongside them are a large number of warlords with their tribal militias who are seeking payback for forces on the other side in good old tribal tradition. They aren't loyal to the Taliban so who knows what will happen when things settle down.

And even if the Taliban do take control, it won't stop. This is Afghanistan. Internal disputes never stop.

Of course the big thing is what the other 'stans and Russia to the north and China to the east does. None of the 'stans are particularly interested in religious extremists creeping across the border. And China, well, that is another matter. They hope to do business with the Taliban, as evidenced by the high level meetings they recently had, as not only does Afghanistan have a lot of valuable minerals that can be mined but also it is handy to the belt and road and it being peaceful means less problems with their own muslim minority. But China being China will want to build everything with Chinese loans using Chinese workers. And Afghanistan being Afghanistan will see just yet another foreign power coming along. So when Chinese workers start to die, what does Xi plan? Maybe it is China's turn to get caught up in the Afghanistan quagmire.

[CostinR]

Considering we spent two decades mired in a pointless war making no improvements or progress, this is a pretty fantastical notion. The US military isn't built for war like this, it's not good at war like this, and asymmetry of stakes comes into play in a big way when we go on these pointless wars where there are no actual direct stakes for the US. Just like in Vietnam.

Actually the United States could wipe the floor with the Taliban in a couple of weeks IF American political leadership wanted to. They don't want to, they never wanted to do what was necessary. Part of it was the cost: Pouring twenty divisions of troops to wipe the floor with Taliban would work, if the US was willing to go after the Taliban where they are based in, but it would set the US military back another decade after they lost two decades of significant military advantages due to the wars the US has gotten involved in.

The US lost Afghanistan for the exact same reason they lost Vietnam: They weren't willing to deal with the base of operations of the enemy with a full blown ground invasion. In Vietnam that was North Vietnam where the US didn't want a repeat of the Korean War with a Chinese intervention and in Afghanistan it was Pakistan, because the Taliban are based there and supported by Pakistani intelligence.

The military capability however is there: The US wiped ISIS off the face of the Earth butchering their armies, and ISIS was for more advanced, better trained and equipped then the Taliban have ever been.

It was well known this would happen, virtually every expert on the matter predicted it, maybe not so fast but everyone predicted Afghanistan to fall when the US left.

It's the still the right decision: Spending tens of billions of dollars every year on a war you cannot win is lunacy.

[PACOX]

Summer break is over.

https://edition.cnn.com/politics/liv...9a0fe6d7e00f7a

We're going back in.
We ended the picnic because there were too many ants outside but we just left the all the food there for the ants to eat. Not we have to go clean up all the food covered in ants.

[XDurionX]

But the US and its military can improve very quickly so you shouldn't project that into the future forever.

Ah, that magical baseless future improvements you talk about all the time.

[jonnysensible]

i reckon its all the ghost soldiers who are causing it to fold so fast. If you have 600 soldiers on paper but only 20 actually exist you are gonna have a bad time. This is the price of corruption.

[Fugus]

Actually the United States could wipe the floor with the Taliban in a couple of weeks IF American political leadership wanted to. They don't want to, they never wanted to do what was necessary. Part of it was the cost: Pouring twenty divisions of troops to wipe the floor with Taliban would work, if the US was willing to go after the Taliban where they are based in, but it would set the US military back another decade after they lost two decades of significant military advantages due to the wars the US has gotten involved in.

The US lost Afghanistan for the exact same reason they lost Vietnam: They weren't willing to deal with the base of operations of the enemy with a full blown ground invasion. In Vietnam that was North Vietnam where the US didn't want a repeat of the Korean War with a Chinese intervention and in Afghanistan it was Pakistan, because the Taliban are based there and supported by Pakistani intelligence.

The military capability however is there: The US wiped ISIS off the face of the Earth butchering their armies, and ISIS was for more advanced, better trained and equipped then the Taliban have ever been.

It was well known this would happen, virtually every expert on the matter predicted it, maybe not so fast but everyone predicted Afghanistan to fall when the US left.

It's the still the right decision: Spending tens of billions of dollars every year on a war you cannot win is lunacy.

Not really.

The US doesn't have what we need to wipe out the Taliban without wiping out the entire regions general population. A side effect of letting the group fester and have power for decades, they have violently indoctrinated the survivors into their ideology and in order to actually remove it, it would take a decades long occupation probably another 70 years longer than we have now to not only remove the violent fighters now mostly, but also wait for those left with those views to mostly age out of the population or reveal themselves and them themselves killed trying to raise up.

And that doesn't even begin to touch the other outside forces that are influencing the areas.

[ParanoiD84]

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.

[tehdang]

Big ISIS vibes with the seizure of so many humvees.

[Yadryonych]

Big ISIS vibes with the seizure of so many humvees.

Nope, ISIS brand is Toyota

[Easo]

So Kandahar, the 2nd biggest city, has fallen, so have other ones. The count should be around 18 from 34 provincial capitals. Should be, because it's a full mess over there and news flew very fast today. One thing repeats again and againd and has to be noted - it is far from fighting only, in fact it looks like talks are used in half of cases, 50/50 if you will. Sure you can take a city in one day - if the army just leaves because tribal leaders made an agreement.

And we can draw couple of possible conclusions from this. One, that people really dislike Kabul's goverment, so much that they are ready to lie with talibs instead. Two - that there might be some big agreement made behind closed doors.

I just assumed that since taliban are sort of afghani nationalists they might be interested in building an actual nation. They never had a full control over the entire land neither were they this close to the full control, but their advancement is far from over, so maybe this is the time

It is debatable what they actually are. I mean, bunch of them are from Pakistan. They all are mostly tribals, so the nationalism is going a bit different way over there. It would look similar to what ISIS had, just a tad less insane, talibs had no issues with public executions, mutilation, torture, etc. etc.

The US doesn’t have the political will for an indefinite deployment to Afghanistan.

Basically... yes. I have nothing to add. It was known for years that Afghani army fucking sucks, aside from special forces and individuals/individual units. Rest are useless and... Heh, likely to be either next talibs OR being those who will actually start fighting them in case the former decide to start strangling dissent too hard/go overboard with their rules. Which would be ironic because they also will be incapable of asking themselves why they didn't fight before (now)...

As for translators and other locals who assisted, does not matter with what - yep, truly shitty. I wish some leaders would just shut up and do something useful regarding that.

Considering that the war in Afghanistan was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish, I'm not sure why anyone would actually believe this.

The actual war part? No, it went quite OK. Talibs got fucked and lost control quickly, because, unsurpringly, they actually never have been good at fighting, and it doesn't help when at least 1/3 of the country wanted to kill them, Americans did not even have to do all of the heavy lifting.

The rest? Ups and downs. With huge distances between them.

Big ISIS vibes with the seizure of so many humvees.

Public executions did not do it for you? But yeah, I absolutely expect revenge spree if/when they win, in the likes of Iraq.

[Kreuger]

According to this swedish newspaper theres a deal between the talibans and government to share power

https://www.svd.se/svd-erfar-taliban...-har-gjort-upp

google translated a bit:

"The United States and the Afghan government are said to have reached an unofficial agreement with the Taliban on power-sharing. According to the agreement, the government will hand over 17 of the country's 34 provinces to the Taliban movement, SvD learns."

[Yadryonych]

It is debatable what they actually are. I mean, bunch of them are from Pakistan. They all are mostly tribals, so the nationalism is going a bit different way over there. It would look similar to what ISIS had, just a tad less insane, talibs had no issues with public executions, mutilation, torture, etc. etc.

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

[Mihalik]

I just assumed that since taliban are sort of afghani nationalists they might be interested in building an actual nation. They never had a full control over the entire land neither were they this close to the full control, but their advancement is far from over, so maybe this is the time

The Taliban are not nationalists. They are Pashtun tribesmen.

They make up about 60% of the country's population. Ethnic cleansing was a trademark of their previous rule. Much of the Afghan urban population is of other nationalities and tribes.

On ongoing issue of during their previous rule was the fact that they couldn't even communicate with much of the population they ruled over, who are Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks and speak mostly Dari while the Taliban spoke Pashto.

[Omega10]

So Kandahar, the 2nd biggest city, has fallen, so have other ones. The count should be around 18 from 34 provincial capitals. Should be, because it's a full mess over there and news flew very fast today. One thing repeats again and againd and has to be noted - it is far from fighting only, in fact it looks like talks are used in half of cases, 50/50 if you will. Sure you can take a city in one day - if the army just leaves because tribal leaders made an agreement.

And we can draw couple of possible conclusions from this. One, that people really dislike Kabul's goverment, so much that they are ready to lie with talibs instead. Two - that there might be some big agreement made behind closed doors.

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.

[Mihalik]

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.

That's not quite true.

The choice as of right now isn't between the US and the Taliban, but between the Taliban and the Afghan national government.

The issue is that while the Taliban aren't really representative of the tribal/ethnic make up of Afghanistan nor is the Afghan government.

The Afghan government is dominated by a handful of "reformed" warlords who mostly draw back to the old Northern Coalition and represent very little beyond their old bandit buddies.

[Omega10]

That's not quite true.

The choice as of right now isn't between the US and the Taliban, but between the Taliban and the Afghan national government.

The issue is that while the Taliban aren't really representative of the tribal/ethnic make up of Afghanistan nor is the Afghan government.

The Afghan government is dominated by a handful of "reformed" warlords who mostly draw back to the old Northern Coalition and represent very little beyond their old bandit buddies.

Well US supported Afghan government, which is what I stated in the first paragraph, but focused on the US involvement in the second.

For what the US needs to change going forward, well we invested a LOT in that government, and we got a fairly large negative return on our investment. We can criticize the Afghan government and army all we want, but this is very similar to what happened in Iraq, when ISIS took over quite a few major cities against an Iraq army that seemed to basically surrender and either gave their arms to ISIS or flat out joined ISIS. Now this has happened twice. I am hoping we don't repeat this a third time. And the bad behavior of both the Afghan government and the Afghan army has been well known for 20 years. It's not like there is a surprise here.