So if the Taliban won't tolerate the sound of a woman's voice on TV or the radio (from some dubious report I read), then there are a lot of women who agree with that? — frank

For the Taliban to have this kind of military success there must be substantial popular support. But here is an interesting perspective on the situation:

When comparing the Taliban with the United States and its Western allies, the vast majority of Afghans have always viewed the Taliban as the lesser of two evils.

I was a combat interpreter in Afghanistan, where cultural illiteracy led to U.S. failure – Washington Post

When comparing the Taliban with the United States and its Western allies, the vast majority of Afghans have always viewed the Taliban as the lesser of two evils. — Apollodorus

That article is behind a paywall, but I can't imagine the basic idea.

Sometimes the bigger political beast takes precedence over treating humans like humans. I wonder if that's true everywhere.

I paid nothing to read it. Just click the "FREE" option on the left and close the ad window.

paid nothing to read it. Just click the "FREE" option on the left and close the ad window. — Apollodorus

I think I read my allotment of free ones this month. They want cash. I have a subscription to the NY Times and the WS Journal, or I'd get the subscription.

Why would China step in? Isn't the example of the a) British Empire, b) Soviet Empire and c) US Empire that Afghanistan is not the place to go, if you don't want to kill your empire? — ssu

Because Afghanistan falls within their presumed geographical "sphere of influence". Every superpower eventually feels compelled to define it's sphere of influence, over which it asserts a paternalizing authority. The U.S. did way back in 1823, with the so-called "Monroe Doctrine". China might view this as it's chance to better define it's sphere of influence. The question is, what might India, itself a burgeoning regional power, have to say about this, especially with Bharatiya Janata in control? Remember, that Proto-Hinduism (Vedic religion) originally entered the subcontinent with those Indo-Aryan tribes, proceeding from the region of Afghanistan, which in a sense makes that region a homeland, a kind of urheimat, for Hindus just as much as is the Swat valley. Besides that, many ancient Indian empires, I think including the Nanda and Maurya Empires, controlled the region of Afghanistan. For such reasons, India might feel some right to defend that region against any Chinese presumption of authority. A China-India conflict would have interesting ramafications, to say the least. If nothing else, such a possibility might give China pause.

Basically, it is saying that the West not only failed to bring any positive changes to Afghan culture but completely failed to understand the locals and turned them against the West:

To many Americans, that may seem an outlandish claim. The coalition, after all, poured billions of dollars into Afghanistan. It built highways. It emancipated Afghan women. It gave millions of people the right to vote for the first time ever.
All true. But the Americans also went straight to building roads, schools and governing institutions — in an effort to “win hearts and minds” — without first figuring out what values animate those hearts and what ideas fill those minds. We thus wound up acting in ways that would ultimately alienate everyday Afghans ....
U.S. forces turned villages into battlegrounds, pulverizing mud homes and destroying livelihoods. One could almost hear the Taliban laughing as any sympathy for the West evaporated in bursts of gunfire.
Sometimes, yes, we built good things — clinics, schools, wells. But when the building was done, we would simply leave. The Taliban would not only destroy those facilities, but also look upon the local community with greater suspicion for having received “gifts” from America ...

This, of course, is not surprising as the military is not an institution designed for nation building.

Anyway, after 20 years out of government, it is doubtful the Taliban are able to run the country. With the banks closed, and the state unable to pay its employees, public services can collapse and civil unrest can start any time ....

How is changing culture "nuking" them? — Apollodorus

Well, they'd be dead, mostly -- a major change.

Because Afghanistan falls within their geographical sphere of influence — Michael Zwingli

Not only that, but China is aiming to build an economic corridor through Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey to Iraq and other Mid East countries where it can get its hands on oil fields.

China's "debt-trap diplomacy" entails making large loans to small countries in exchange for influence over their economy and politics.

See for example the case of Montenegro (Southeast Europe) where the government has bought into a Chinese-financed road construction project:

Two sleek new roads vanish into mountain tunnels high above a sleepy Montenegrin village, the unlikely endpoint of a billion-dollar project bankrolled by China that is threatening to derail the tiny country's economy.
The government has already burnt through $944 million in Chinese loans to complete the first stretch of road, just 41 kilometres (25 miles), making it among the world's most expensive pieces of tarmac.
Chinese workers have spent six years carving tunnels through solid rock and raising concrete pillars above gorges and canyons, but the road in effect goes nowhere.
Almost 130 kilometres still needs to be built at a likely cost of at least one billion euros ($1.2 billion).
Critics question how the rest of the road will be paid for and highlight environmental damage caused by the construction along with corruption allegations over the awarding of work contacts.
The road is meant to connect the Adriatic port of Bar in the south with the Serbian border in the north, with the intention that the Serbians will then extend it to their capital, Belgrade.
It is unclear where the money will come from or how Montenegro -- a country with a GDP of 4.9 billion euros -- will repay its existing debt to China.
If Montenegro cannot pay, it faces arbitration in Beijing and could be forced to give up control of key infrastructure, according to a copy of the contract seen by AFP.

Montenegro learns true cost of China-backed $1 bn road to nowhere - France 24

Basically, a form of economic banditry ...

Two Rules:

1. Never treat non-state actors like a state;
2. Never treat a non-state actor like a soldier.

Because Afghanistan falls within their presumed geographical "sphere of influence". Every superpower eventually feels compelled to define it's sphere of influence, over which it asserts a paternalizing authority. The U.S. did way back in 1823, with the so-called "Monroe Doctrine". China might view this as it's chance to better define it's sphere of influence. — Michael Zwingli

China can use their proxy Pakistan to try to calm things down in Afghanistan. Then if there is peace or let's say enough stability, then the Chinese can make those investments to mine for raw materials. They don't have to worry about Western competition, that's for sure.

(And Chinese military bases? Very few of them. Basically they have one in Djibouti.)

China's "debt-trap diplomacy" entails making large loans to small countries in exchange for influence over their economy and politics. — Apollodorus

The US did a lot of that. I wonder if China picked up the technique from the US or if it was convergent evolution.

The US did a lot of that. I wonder if China picked up the technique from the US or if it was convergent evolution. — frank

Of course they did. This is what they founded the World Bank, the IMF, and other financial institutions for.

But you are right, the Chinese are quick learners and they have carefully studied the modus operandi of the British and Americans. They are highly intelligent, disciplined, and focused. They know what they want and they'll get it. They are like a larger and more lethal version of Nazi Germany. And because their main method of warfare (at least for now) is economic, it is very difficult if not impossible to stop them.

They are like a larger and more lethal version of Nazi Germany. — Apollodorus

In a way, yes. At least they don't outlaw music.

US withdrawal from Afghanistan will lead to EU army, says top diplomat

Better late than never.

“They need to wake up and take then their own responsibilities,” said Borrell of the EU’s capitals. “This is nothing against Nato or the US alliance. It is a way of getting stronger and facing our responsibility and mobilising our resources to face the challenges that we will have to face.”

"The eight generals who commanded American forces in Afghanistan between 2008 and 2018 have gone on to serve on more than 20 corporate boards, according to a review of company disclosures and other releases.

Last year, retired Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who commanded American forces in Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014, joined the board of Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s biggest defense contractor. Retired Gen. John R. Allen, who preceded him in Afghanistan, is president of the Brookings Institution, which has received as much as $1.5 million over the last three years from Northrop Grumman, another defense giant. David H. Petraeus, who preceded Allen and later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for providing classified materials to a former mistress and biographer, is a partner at KKR, a private equity firm, and director of its Global Institute.

The generals who led the mission [in Afganistan] — including McChrystal, who sought and supervised the 2009 American troop surge — have thrived in the private sector since leaving the war. They have amassed influence within businesses, at universities and in think tanks, in some cases selling their experience in a conflict that killed an estimated 176,000 people, cost the United States more than $2 trillion and concluded with the restoration of Taliban rule."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/04/mcchrystal-afghanistan-navistar-consulting-generals/

WoMeN aNd ChIlDrEN.

:100:

One Trump would have been passed as a peculiarity. But the unilateralism that Biden made it two in row and really put it out there.

I think Europe is the last place to understand this. Already Middle Eastern "allies" of the US are totally doing their own policies.

Next question: What will happen in Iraq?

Again there the situation is quite mad with parts of the Iraqi Army, the Shia militias, being hostile towards the US. Again the result of the actions of Trump (btw).

* * *

Here is in my view one of the best documentaries about the war in Afghanistan done in 2013, "This is what winning looks like". The meltdown of the Afghan Army is quite understandable after seeing documentaries like this. It really shows how badly the war was going even then. One of the excellent Vice-documentaries, when the news media was young and independent.

Even if an Indian news channel might be biased against Pakistan, still it looks quite clear that Pakistan is at least assisting if not supervising the Taliban.



Pakistan's objectives are clear, if not perhaps obtainable. Yet as usual, the US wasn't interested in them (who cares to think about what other nations intend) and hence the defeat in Afghanistan.

Analysts and officials in Pakistan believe the Taliban’s victory serves dual purposes. It helps Pakistan to secure its interests in Afghanistan both by having a friendly group in charge of the government and by limiting the space for Indian engagement in Kabul. Pakistan has long accused regional rival India of working to destabilize its western border region via Afghanistan. With the Taliban in power, the sense in Islamabad is that alleged foreign support for terror groups like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and for Pashtun and Baloch nationalist groups will diminish. In addition, Pakistan hopes that a Taliban-led government will provide it with opportunities to expand its geoeconomic footprint as it seeks to connect Central Asia with access to the Arabian Sea at Gwadar. This strategy expects that the Taliban will both be able to effectively stabilize Afghanistan and prevent anti-Pakistan groups from launching attacks, both of which are questionable assumptions.

The Other Afghan Women

Entire branches of Shakira’s family tree, from the uncles who used to tell her stories to the cousins who played with her in the caves, vanished. In all, she lost sixteen family members. I wondered if it was the same for other families in Pan Killay. I sampled a dozen households at random in the village, and made similar inquiries in other villages, to insure that Pan Killay was no outlier. For each family, I documented the names of the dead, cross-checking cases with death certificates and eyewitness testimony. On average, I found, each family lost ten to twelve civilians in what locals call the American War.

Anand Gopal's (author of "The Other Afghan Women" piece posted above) interview here is useful too:

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/biden-s-afghanistan-withdrawal-could-ve-gone-so-differently-n1278163

"Zeeshan Aleem: Was there a significantly better way to withdraw from Afghanistan?

Anand Gopal: Well, there was and there wasn't.

There was a better way to do it if Washington faced certain hard ground truths. What would have been the better way was if the U.S. government had secured a deal with the Taliban that began a process of transfer of power to them, while the U.S. was still in the country. But that would have meant completely undermining the Afghan government to do that; it would've meant recognizing the Afghan government, basically, is a creation of the U.S. entirely, and has no real legitimacy on the ground. So that would've been a pretty major paradigm shift, almost a greater paradigm shift than just simply cutting and running, I think.

What the U.S. did is kind of buy into its own fiction that the Afghan government was somehow a sovereign actor.

Because the way the Afghan government is structured is that almost all of the funding, something like 80 percent of its revenue, comes from international sources. This is what political scientists call a rentier state. It's a state that owes its very existence to foreign aid, so it's not a really sustainable state whatsoever. It's a creation of Washington and elsewhere.

What the U.S. did is kind of buy into its own fiction that the Afghan government was somehow a sovereign actor and try to treat it as such. So how they sequenced the withdrawal was, "We're going to have a deal with the Taliban, and one of the conditions of that is that the Taliban are going to have to talk to the Afghan government to come to a peace deal."

But why would the Taliban talk to a government that's not a sovereign entity, that has no real stake on the ground? The U.S. should've recognized that and used that leverage over the Afghan government to force the Afghan government and the Taliban to come to a deal before they withdrew. And I think, if they had done that — or, at least, if not come to a deal, come to some sort of mechanism that would've been better than what we see now — that could've also bought time for more orderly withdrawal, especially for all the Afghans who helped the U.S. and want to leave and things like amnesty measures [for people who worked with the U.S. or served in the Afghan government]."

They'd likely have preferred US (and whatever) presence staying in Afghanistan:

Female Afghan students stopped by Taliban on way to Dubai
^{— Camilla Alcini, Somayeh Malekian · ABC · Aug 24, 2023}

:/

A bit of mass hysteria, too:

Taliban Suspend Swedish Activities in Afghanistan Over Quran
^{— Ayaz Gul · VOA · Jul 11, 2023}

They'd likely have preferred US (and whatever) presence staying in Afghanistan: — jorndoe

Afghanistan was a real tragedy.

First, perhaps it would have been too much to ask from any US administration (Dem or GOP) simply not to attack Afghanistan, but simply use the FBI (as it had done in the first Twin Tower bombings). So there is the FIRST horrible tragedy: the American voters wanted revenge, and a police matter would be a weak-dick move from a Superpower with the largest armed forces that was capable of invading a land locked country on a different continent.

Secondly, once when the country had been occupied (on reasoning far less sound or logical than the domino theory), the objective would have been then to win the war. But it wasn't. US Presidents declaring that they are going to withdraw was the clearest sign of winning the war simply by waiting time. And since the Taliban were terrorists, the US couldn't win as the UK won the Boer war or Russia won the Chechen war by simply installing a turncoat Taliban leader as the president of Afghanistan and dividing the movement. Nope, the leader had to be American-Afghan with stellar career inside Washington.

The last tragedy was of course to totally leave the state that had been poured so much aid and training totally alone to face the Taliban with the Doha peacy (surrender treaty). As the Taliban werem't actually responsible for the 9/11 attacks, they could easily agree to the terms of the US not to attack the US. And of course, they have kept that word to this day, which just clearly shows how insane the whole idea of being in Afghanistan for it not to become a terrorist safe haven was.

And because in the US only partisan issues are talked in the media, the silence about the whole train wreck is nearly total as an Republican President started this and a Democrat President followed this to the total collapse. With both of the two ruling parties being at fault here, there is no real discussion of just why it went so wrong.

Obviously people would prefer something else than a totalitarian dictatorship. You first had for a over an decade girls going to school and then that was stopped. That urban people in Afghanistan would have like to have a more prosperous Afghanistan that would be part of the World is obvious too.

But the Emirate is limping along (a documentary from Al Jazeera):

Well, madness is still rolling over Afghanistan. Both the Western media and governments no longer care about the current situation in this country. Since we all left - spontaneously - it seems that this country doesn't exist any more.

Three large earthquakes have destroyed Herat province. Between 1,000 and 1,294 people died. Fortunately, some countries pledged to help and give money. For example: Australia pledged AU $1 million in aid to the Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund. The European Union approved a €3.5 million aid package too. Better than nothing, and I appreciate how some governments act with 'solidarity' in a country where most of them were there for twenty years. 2023 Afghanistan earthquakes

Do you know how much money the U.S. spent on helping Afghanistan in the recovery after the earthquakes? Zero. After being there for nearly 20 years, they value Afghanistan as zero. Nothingness. Emptiness.
Antony Blinken said: 'The United States is carefully tracking the impact of yesterday’s earthquake in northwestern Afghanistan. Our humanitarian partners are responding with urgent aid in support of the people of Afghanistan.'

Can't believe that they are ready to dry out the Federal Reserve for a country they have never been there - Ukraine - and they don't care about Afghanistan when it has been a key factor in their war against Al-Qaeda in the last decades...

Can't believe that they are ready to dry out the Federal Reserve for a country they have never been there - Ukraine - and they don't care about Afghanistan when it has been a key factor in their war against Al-Qaeda in the last decades... — javi2541997

It's almost like these actions are governed by convenient utilities rather than any kind of value commitment.

It's almost like these actions are governed by convenient utilities rather than any kind of value commitment. — Pantagruel

I agree, and I can't really know to what extent Zelensky is aware that, sooner or later, the U.S. and European Union will leave them there, not caring any more. A supposed admission to the EU is just a cherry-picking act.

Since we all left - spontaneously - it seems that this country doesn't exist any more. — javi2541997

"We" meaning NATO and the West left once the US decided to leave. Not that the issue was discussed with us, actually.

Yet, Afghanistan hasn't provided a safe haven for terrorists to plan and make attacks on the US.

Remember:

That was the reason given for the longest war in US history. Because if the US wouldn't be there, it would become a safe haven for terrorists.

All we can say, that the Taliban, sorry, now the Islamic Caliphate of Afghanistan has kept it's part of the peace deal with the US.

Well, it is true that the US is used to taking decisions unilaterally. 'We' the members of NATO, and some of the EU supported them in Afghanistan to make peace and maintain control on Al-Qaeda. But this nation ended up being a plot for opium and the heroine.

I am not angry about the indifference by the US to the new Caliphate - or whatever it is Afghanistan nowadays - but on the citizens and collaborators who helped us once. The fact that they are abandoned in the randomness of destiny is mithering me. They could be killed by the Taliban or by a natural disaster. An Afghan person is forced to live in continuous uncertainty.

I am not angry about the indifference by the US to the new Caliphate - or whatever it is Afghanistan nowadays - but on the citizens and collaborators who helped us once. The fact that they are abandoned in the randomness of destiny is mithering me. They could be killed by the Taliban or by a natural disaster. An Afghan person is forced to live in continuous uncertainty. — javi2541997

Well, ask how the South Vietnamese feel.

The US isn't yet ready to have a discussion of how it basically lost the War in Afghanistan in the similar fashion as it lost South Vietnam.

After all, both reasons for the war were utterly bogus: After the fall of South Vietnam there was no "Domino Effect". Actually united Vietnam ended up being attacked by China! And with Afghanistan, where are those safe havens for terrorists planning to attack the US?

The US isn't yet ready to have a discussion of how it basically lost the War in Afghanistan in the similar fashion as it lost South Vietnam. — ssu

I agree.

And with Afghanistan, where are those safe havens for terrorists planning to attack the US? — ssu

Good question. It reminds me of the conspiracy theory of the hidden nuclear weapons in Bagdad. Bush said back then: "The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030319-17.html

The presumption that it always rings a bell...

. It reminds me of the conspiracy theory of the hidden nuclear weapons in Bagdad. Bush said back then: "The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030319-17.html

The presumption that it always rings a bell... — javi2541997

That has been surprisingly not only debunked, acknowledged to have been wrong, but also accepted to have been a part of a campaign to have the war with Iraq. And actually the change in the discourse happened thanks to Trump, actually. Before there where even here in PF people that saw as their duty to defend President Bush with the half-truth "the intelligence given was faulty".

But the "we-are-in-Afghanistan-because-otherwise-it-will-become-a-terrorist-safe-have" absurdity was the official mantra given. In my view it is far more absurd and illogical than the domino theory during the Cold War.

It really, really made no sense. Even when they interviewed the very rare and few foreign fighters that actually had gone into Afghanistan and made it to fight alongside the Taleban, their answer to the question of what would they do if the Americans left was "We then would go home".