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Has there been any signs of support coming from neighboring countries who are more familiar with the culture of the region? Any possibility they could exert pressure or influence to limit Taliban activities below what they did when they previously ruled Afghanistan?
Pakistan, China, and Russia are loving it. Pakistan more so than everyone else (the latter two because it makes the US look bad). They see the Taliban as an important tool for exerting influence over Afghanistan, as the democratic Afghan gov't was friendly with India. The Pakistani PM was almost ecstatic when the Taliban retook Afghanistan. Someone should ask him if he supports Afghan women being forced to wear outfits fit for beekeepers or when the Taliban wouldn't allow female education. Pakistan doesn't really care about Afghans, only their interests. Pakistan doesn't even care about Pakistanis; thousands of Pakistanis died in terrorist attacks when Pakistan was hosting the Taliban.
Let's hope that Afghanistan doesn't become another jihadi factory like Pakistan, there aren't/isn't executions/imprisonment of former government officials and soldiers, and that women have a reasonable amount of rights within the framework of the 7th century lifestyle that the Taliban espouse.
I don't know why but seeing images of the Taliban rolling into Kabul in their jeeps and piling up the equipment of the surrendered Afghan security forces on the streets makes me think of similar scenes from Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took over. I foresee in the immediate future, a brutal seizure of power, re-implementation of extremely strict laws, and mass executions of Afghans who either helped the US or who refuse to conform. Neighboring countries would do nothing to help the Afghan people. Iran and Pakistan have been known to exploit ethnic Afghans, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are too poor and weak to help besides having their own troubles, and no one else is going to want to invade Afghanistan anytime soon after this recent debacle. The only way the Taliban gets overthrown is if they get too aggressive and ambitious, destabilize the security of a neighbor, upon which either Pakistan or Iran would invade, knock out the Taliban, and set up their own puppet government, similar to what Vietnam did to Pol Pot and Cambodia in 1979. Even then, Afghanistan might not return to the level of free society it had seen during these past two decades.
I don't know why but seeing images of the Taliban rolling into Kabul in their jeeps and piling up the equipment of the surrendered Afghan security forces on the streets makes me think of similar scenes from Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took over. I foresee in the immediate future, a brutal seizure of power, re-implementation of extremely strict laws, and mass executions of Afghans who either helped the US or who refuse to conform. Neighboring countries would do nothing to help the Afghan people. Iran and Pakistan have been known to exploit ethnic Afghans, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are too poor and weak to help besides having their own troubles, and no one else is going to want to invade Afghanistan anytime soon after this recent debacle. The only way the Taliban gets overthrown is if they get too aggressive and ambitious, destabilize the security of a neighbor, upon which either Pakistan or Iran would invade, knock out the Taliban, and set up their own puppet government, similar to what Vietnam did to Pol Pot and Cambodia in 1979. Even then, Afghanistan might not return to the level of free society it had seen during these past two decades.
Level of free society?
You are being sarcastic, right?
Why would neighboring countries interfere?
Guess, in the US the doctrine of “non-interference into internal affairs of other countries” is not very popular- but it should be adhered to as other basic human rights we promote overseas.
The ideology of Taliban is the same as the ideology of Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.
We are friends with them. We just don’t parade their abuses in our media and don’t discuss it.
We shall fix our house first and foremost - let other nations decide what they want.
I grieve for young lives we lost and scores of our citizens living with the physical and mental trauma as a result of our unsustainable often immoral politics overseas
Last edited by L00k4ward; 08-21-2021 at 05:25 AM..
I'm just disgusted by the whole thing. We went in and essentially wiped the Taliban off the map. Handed over a country to the Afghans and they lay down and hand over the entire country WITHIN A WEEK???? Just shows that they deserve whatever the Taliban decides to dish out as they clearly either lack the ballz to fight for their own country, or more likely, secretly preferred the Taliban the whole time.
The only comfort to me here in the US is that whatever the Taliban decide to do, I'm guessing they will take a hard pass on any more Al Qaida dalliances, especially any group that wants to target the United States, after what happened the last time they went down that path. I think their patrons Pakistan will also work hard to prevent a sequel seeing as they almost got taken down too. I suppose they will now stick to enforcing their beloved Sharia law and returning the women to third class status. I dont want to hear any more bleating about the poor Afghans. If they couldnt make this work after all the billions of dollars poured in plus American lives lost, then they are a lost cause and destined for the crappy life that is now about to begin. Best of luck to them.
I'm just disgusted by the whole thing. We went in and essentially wiped the Taliban off the map. Handed over a country to the Afghans and they lay down and hand over the entire country WITHIN A WEEK???? Just shows that they deserve whatever the Taliban decides to dish out as they clearly either lack the ballz to fight for their own country, or more likely, secretly preferred the Taliban the whole time.
The only comfort to me here in the US is that whatever the Taliban decide to do, I'm guessing they will take a hard pass on any more Al Qaida dalliances, especially any group that wants to target the United States, after what happened the last time they went down that path. I think their patrons Pakistan will also work hard to prevent a sequel seeing as they almost got taken down too. I suppose they will now stick to enforcing their beloved Sharia law and returning the women to third class status. I dont want to hear any more bleating about the poor Afghans. If they couldnt make this work after all the billions of dollars poured in plus American lives lost, then they are a lost cause and destined for the crappy life that is now about to begin. Best of luck to them.
I tend to agree with you. This became 'about the US' instead of being 'about the Afghans'. They've had 20 years to cobble (excuse the pun) together a workable government, and it was just a house of cards. There is such a thing as 'deserving' a country, and I'm not sure they do.
This is a tragic and complicated situation that has been decades in the making... I've gone back and forth over this since before 9/11, when I learned about the Taliban and the situation Afghanistan was in. The US messed up bad under Reagan when our government funded the insurgents, and messed up the time between when the Russians pulled out and 9/11 happened. They messed up the war in Afghanistan, and they messed up the withdrawal. In a nutshell... It's a big mess.
I feel awful for the average Afghani who doesn't want anything more than to live a safe and stable life. That they suffered through so much only to end up apparently back at square 1 with an emboldened and now better-equipped Taliban at the helm is terrible. But, this is always how it was going to end up.
The US was, imho, justified in attacking the Taliban. However, the powers-that-be managed to sell a large number of Americans on the idea of nation building, evoked misplaced equivalencies to Germany and Japan post WW2, and sold a lot of people on the idea that the US had not just a right, but a mandate to rebuild Afghanistan into a democratic, free society which would embrace us and our way of life, all the while helping us to feel pride in our collective moral conviction.
Those powers that be knew it was a complete load, but they knew they'd make obscene amounts of money off it. The same people who early on took it as our right and duty spent the next decade complaining that we were wasting money there and that we should just get the hell out and leave them to their own vices - not our problem. They cheered when Trump announced the withdrawal and hailed his agreements with the Taliban - evidently, our mortal enemies - as another example of his Art of the Deal. Besides, we were down to 2500 troops... What did it really matter anymore?
With a deadline in sight, a new air of legitimacy, and an interpretation that they had now outlasted two global powers in combat, the Taliban set up to take charge of the country once again and wasted no time in preparing to attack the Afghani government, which they were well aware was weak, and would cave without the US' support and presence. The notion that the same people notorious for 9/11, blowing up statues of Buddha, murdering civilians, torturing women, etc would suddenly find the agreeability to abide by a timeline convenient for us was stupid.
So, here we are. We were never going to stay there forever. We were never going to build Afghanistan into a functional, progressive nation. We got our revenge, then stayed there long enough for some very rich people to make even more money, and finally the nation as a whole lost its appetite and finally when the PR of pulling out outweighed the value of continued occupation, we hit the bricks. The rest of the world wanted us out, too - any goodwill the world may have felt post-9/11, any sense of shared duty towards the operation, evaporated between the Iraq War, Syria, and the Trump presidency. The US was on its own here, and by the way, they'd rather us to go back home and mind our own business and leave the rest of the world alone. Whether we stayed another 20 years or we left with nary a single thought given, it would just be another reason to scornfully grumble at American hubris.
Somehow, the world is terrified at the results. The same people who had championed the war, and then said that we needed to pull out and that the Afghanis deserved whatever came next, are now saying that the withdrawal is the worst military debacle in American history, which is contemptuously stupid. The honest, ugly truth is that this doesn't really matter to the US; our lives will go on, our foreign partners will keep trading with us, our greatest threat will remain domestic infighting. This isn't a haughty, dismissive gloat; this is a frustrated observation of the reality that just as was the case in Vietnam, the "losers" get to go home to their houses and two car garages and pop culture, and the "winners" get to bury their vast dead, try to repair their infrastructure, and scrape by on the lowest rung of economic outlook.
China and Russia will make a lot of noise about American weakness - just like American conservatives, this week - but won't dare to engage a now-untethered US military. China will pour money into Afghanistan, believing sincerely in its own form of exceptionalism, and then be shocked when the religious zealots it supported despite their long record of opposing godless communism and pushing for the goal of a united East Turkestan caliphate, turn around and bite them after getting some mines and roads out of it. Perhaps the CIA will sell them some more bullets and help them with logistics, as a nostalgic return to the "my enemy's enemy is my friend" doctrine that created this mess in the first place.
I actually sincerely do wish that we could get more of those Afghanis trying to get out, on planes and into the US. In a heartbreaking twist of irony, they may be the ones with the best view of the US right now.
This is a tragic and complicated situation that has been decades in the making... I've gone back and forth over this since before 9/11, when I learned about the Taliban and the situation Afghanistan was in. The US messed up bad under Reagan when our government funded the insurgents, and messed up the time between when the Russians pulled out and 9/11 happened. They messed up the war in Afghanistan, and they messed up the withdrawal. In a nutshell... It's a big mess.
I feel awful for the average Afghani who doesn't want anything more than to live a safe and stable life. That they suffered through so much only to end up apparently back at square 1 with an emboldened and now better-equipped Taliban at the helm is terrible. But, this is always how it was going to end up.
The US was, imho, justified in attacking the Taliban. However, the powers-that-be managed to sell a large number of Americans on the idea of nation building, evoked misplaced equivalencies to Germany and Japan post WW2, and sold a lot of people on the idea that the US had not just a right, but a mandate to rebuild Afghanistan into a democratic, free society which would embrace us and our way of life, all the while helping us to feel pride in our collective moral conviction.
Those powers that be knew it was a complete load, but they knew they'd make obscene amounts of money off it. The same people who early on took it as our right and duty spent the next decade complaining that we were wasting money there and that we should just get the hell out and leave them to their own vices - not our problem. They cheered when Trump announced the withdrawal and hailed his agreements with the Taliban - evidently, our mortal enemies - as another example of his Art of the Deal. Besides, we were down to 2500 troops... What did it really matter anymore?
With a deadline in sight, a new air of legitimacy, and an interpretation that they had now outlasted two global powers in combat, the Taliban set up to take charge of the country once again and wasted no time in preparing to attack the Afghani government, which they were well aware was weak, and would cave without the US' support and presence. The notion that the same people notorious for 9/11, blowing up statues of Buddha, murdering civilians, torturing women, etc would suddenly find the agreeability to abide by a timeline convenient for us was stupid.
So, here we are. We were never going to stay there forever. We were never going to build Afghanistan into a functional, progressive nation. We got our revenge, then stayed there long enough for some very rich people to make even more money, and finally the nation as a whole lost its appetite and finally when the PR of pulling out outweighed the value of continued occupation, we hit the bricks. The rest of the world wanted us out, too - any goodwill the world may have felt post-9/11, any sense of shared duty towards the operation, evaporated between the Iraq War, Syria, and the Trump presidency. The US was on its own here, and by the way, they'd rather us to go back home and mind our own business and leave the rest of the world alone. Whether we stayed another 20 years or we left with nary a single thought given, it would just be another reason to scornfully grumble at American hubris.
Somehow, the world is terrified at the results. The same people who had championed the war, and then said that we needed to pull out and that the Afghanis deserved whatever came next, are now saying that the withdrawal is the worst military debacle in American history, which is contemptuously stupid. The honest, ugly truth is that this doesn't really matter to the US; our lives will go on, our foreign partners will keep trading with us, our greatest threat will remain domestic infighting. This isn't a haughty, dismissive gloat; this is a frustrated observation of the reality that just as was the case in Vietnam, the "losers" get to go home to their houses and two car garages and pop culture, and the "winners" get to bury their vast dead, try to repair their infrastructure, and scrape by on the lowest rung of economic outlook.
China and Russia will make a lot of noise about American weakness - just like American conservatives, this week - but won't dare to engage a now-untethered US military. China will pour money into Afghanistan, believing sincerely in its own form of exceptionalism, and then be shocked when the religious zealots it supported despite their long record of opposing godless communism and pushing for the goal of a united East Turkestan caliphate, turn around and bite them after getting some mines and roads out of it. Perhaps the CIA will sell them some more bullets and help them with logistics, as a nostalgic return to the "my enemy's enemy is my friend" doctrine that created this mess in the first place.
I actually sincerely do wish that we could get more of those Afghanis trying to get out, on planes and into the US. In a heartbreaking twist of irony, they may be the ones with the best view of the US right now.
The nation building was a good theory. The premise was having a stable and functioning national government along with a security force should make it more difficult for outside agitators like the Taliban to move in. Problem was the people in Washington DC didn’t understand the tribal cultures of the Afghani people and their execution of nation building was faulty because of this lack of knowledge. The other mistake was to stop attacking the Taliban as soon as they crossed back into Pakistan. If Pakistan was serious about eliminating the Taliban they would have done so on their own or allowed allied forces the opportunity to attack the Taliban just inside Pakistan borders. I suspect members of the Pakistani government support the Taliban. US and other nations should stop all money to help the Pakistan government until they put a stop to the Taliban and their supporters. Eliminate the Taliban and the Afghans can either form their own government or fight among themselves over who is the new government. But the Taliban are a result of a power vacuum.
In light of current events, my husband and I watched a movie we’ve seen before, Charlie Wilson’s War. It’s a bit campy, but certainly relevant Afghanistan. We should have gotten out after we killed Bin Laden. That was the main mission. Turns out he had escaped to Pakistan (with help from the two-timing warlords) and once he was killed, mission accomplished.
But Obama couldn’t do it. He knew the optics would be terrible.
So here we are. Trying to do what should have been done years ago.
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