International Events VI: Glorious Anarchy and Chaos!

[Fez]

36 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

That does make sense. However, hundreds of Afghan soldiers crossed in Uzbekistan with planes and helicopters, so the Uzbeks don't seem to have that big of a problem, or maybe it's just that all that materiel is going to end up in their hands now.

My understanding is that those soldiers were almost all from Uzbek clans that are in Afghanistan. And were under the command of Abdul Dostum, who is also an Uzbek Afghan with many ties to Uzbekistan. It would not be at all surprising for them to get a very different reception than a random collection of refugees from Kabul.

[IheartIheartTesla]

The first Taliban 'press conference' is ongoing now (or may have finished). At least they are making some of the 'right noises' but only time will tell how this all plays out.

[teej6]

The Taliban visited Texas in 1997 to discuss an oil pipeline through Afghanistan with an US oil company. I suspect the Taliban will try harder this time to get international recognition and legitimacy. The next republican president for all you know will call the Taliban an ally against evul Iran.

The butcher MBS (Saudi crown prince), perhaps will not allow Saudi money to fund the Taliban anymore. If so, the Taliban will have to solely rely on Pakistan if they continue their hardline wahhabi/ salafi ideology. The Russians and Chinese may find the Taliban strategically convenient now but we’ll see how long that will last. 

[Werthead]

22 hours ago, L'oiseau français said:

For crying out loud, Wert, break up those bloody long posts!

I'll break the next one in two, separated by a five-year gap, in honour of the board we operate on

Quote

Anyway, my point rather was: rural Afghanistan is extremely conservative, bordering on the archaic, no matter what. To be a women in those areas always meant to be subjugated by men under the patriarchy. 20 years of US and NATO didn’t change much in the countryside. The big cities are a different topic obviously. 

Absolutely, and I've seen some suggestions that a rural-urban gulf was opening in Afghanistan, especially as younger people were moving to the cities in greater number because that's where the work was, and basically becoming more tolerant as a result, and some of the rural communities and areas that had previously been anti-Taliban were growing concerned over the erosion of traditional values and were much more open to listen to the Taliban, especially the Taliban promising to be more moderate and caring this time around. To what degree that's true is unclear, but the lesson from just about every other country on Earth is that rural communities are more conservative and reactionary, and start fearing the greater tolerance, diversity and change that comes from the city-dwelling population when they become the majority (and the rural-urban shift can happen quite dramatically fast).

Quote

What do they want if this is mere postering?

It's the Chinese media (and yes, although the media has a bit more leeway than is sometimes presented in the West, absolutely anything they say about Taiwan in public will have probably passed through government vetting) basically laying down the idea that China will one day take back Taiwan. Even if they don't plan on that happening in the near future, they also don't want people to think that China is accepting the status quo as a convenient solution (China pretends Taiwan is part of it but doesn't do anything about it, and lets Taiwan get on with whatever) forever.

Quote

Biden's approach towards non-Taliban Afghans seems to be "They're cowards, so f*ck them."

Yeah, Biden seems intent on losing the "thank fuck he's not Trump" bump he's been on internationally. I suspect the sheer unlikeliness of him running for office again is privately being seen as a good thing in many capitals right now.

Quote

Not can’t — we gave them the tools and the support to be able to fight — but literally won’t, because the risks involved in fighting were worse than just accepting the Taliban according to their own calculus.

It's worth reiterating again that the US had trained the Afghans to fight like a western army, including being able to call on significant air power at a moment's notice, and then removed all the air power (the "Afghan Air Force" that Biden has been crowing about recently was so low-tech as to be effectively non-existent), leaving them with military training that was pretty much useless. The US had also refused to give/sell them much in the way of decent equipment because they felt it would likely fall into Taliban hands.

If you train and prepare for failure, and tell everyone publicly you have no faith your partner will stand and fight for over a decade straight, don't be surprised if they don't even show up.

Quote

Some Taliban guy allowed himself to be interviewed by a female newscaster, so thats some sort of progress, I guess. They have also made some statements about women being in government (in a limited role, no doubt). Small stuff we have to take at this point, I guess.

I'd take this with some salt. An interesting subject that is very well-understood by PR-savvy individuals, even Islamic extremist ones, is the Western media news cycle, and that political decisions will be driven by media stories generating coverage, profile and outrage. By behaving very reasonably at the outset, they can get people thinking, "oh, this might be okay," and then the cycle will move back to COVID, the latest Democrat budget plan, Boris's next fuck-up gaffe, wildfires etc, and in six or eighteen months no-one will be talking about Afghanistan. And then they can quietly start changing things to what they really want (though given the penetration of information technology into Afghanistan, on a scale unimaginable in 2001, that might be far harder than they think).

Another possibility is that some of the tribal groupings, militias and even Afghan army forces which swapped sides might have done so on the basis of the Taliban sticking by their Doha commitments (essentially to a pluralistic government within Islamic law, possibly modelled on Iran but with a level of religious strictness maybe more like Saudi Arabia), and the Taliban being aware that the coalition they've forged with some decidedly unnatural allies might fracture into civil war if they did go full nutzoid Stone Age like they did in the late 1990s.

Quote

My understanding is that those soldiers were almost all from Uzbek clans that are in Afghanistan. And were under the command of Abdul Dostum, who is also an Uzbek Afghan with many ties to Uzbekistan. It would not be at all surprising for them to get a very different reception than a random collection of refugees from Kabul.

Dostum is a canny old player and someone who understands the value of playing the long game and making a strategic withdrawal in preparation for a renewed campaign later on. He's not one for heroic last stands against overwhelming odds, which is why he's alive when just about every single contemporary of his is dead (he's also keen on the old backstab-switcheroo, and has been so brutal even in victory that he's been the subject of an ICC investigation). He probably fancies the idea of the Taliban fucking up within five years and him leading a renewed struggle in the north, where affections for the Taliban are not deeply ingrained. Although he's 67 now, so time is not on his side.

Amrullah Saleh, Vice-President of Afghanistan, has declared himself the President in accordance with Afghan law (since Ghani has resigned and fled) and has announced the formation of an "anti-Taliban front" in the Panjshir Valley. Bold, but potentially futile; he might have been better linking up with Dostum and forming a broader-based approach, but Saleh seems to have decided that staying in Afghanistan is important for his claim to legitimacy.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Well, the other interesting thing is the last time the Taliban were in power (mid to late 90s), Kabul itself was pretty much run down. By all accounts, post 2001 it has become a somewhat thriving metropolis. Who knows how modern life will affect their philosophy in the future, presuming they continue to operate with Kabul as their center? From what I've read on this thread they were pretty much stuck in the hinterlands for the longest time.

Then again, Tehran is probably a counterexample to the civilizing influence of big cities.

[SeanF]

6 hours ago, Ran said:

You literally cannot do anything to protect people who won’t lift a finger to protect themselves. Not can’t — we gave them the tools and the support to be able to fight — but literally won’t, because the risks involved in fighting were worse than just accepting the Taliban according to their own calculus., And maybe the situation in Afghanistan will be better now than it was in 1999. Loath though I am to read anything by him, someone linked to a piece where Thomas C. Friedman notes that the Taliban originally operated in a country with practically no means of internal communication besides word-of-mouth and partisan radio, and so abuses and atrocities they committed in one place were unknown in another place. But now 70% of Afghanis have cell phones and many of them have Internet connections through them.

 

Maybe a higher-information Afghani society will be able to force the Taliban to be a bit less brutal, a bit more focused on providing infrastructure and order, and maybe just a wee bit more open to cultural progress.

It’s a hope, anyways.

Well, about 60,000 Afghan soldiers died, over the past 20 years.  They did fight, and they fought hard..  As @Wertheadhas pointed out, Biden cut the legs from under their military strategy, by cutting off air support, for ......reasons.   Even the best army (and granted, the Afghan army was not the best army, but it was not a terrible army) won't keep fighting once they think they've just been thrown to the wolves. 

[HoodedCrow]

Didn’t Alexander the Great suffer in Afghanistan? I notice that it is not Hellenistic, though. He failed in Afghanistan and India. He still conquered much of the Mediterranean and promoted himself as the son of Zeus( because his generals and army did nothing?) 

I imagine that Afghanistan would be as easy as invading and holding Switzerland, if the Swiss spoke many incompatible languages and had incompatible religious beliefs…and most of them wanted to hurt you. 
 

 

 

 

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Well, about 60,000 Afghan soldiers died, over the past 20 years.  They did fight, and they fought hard..

I think if you think about that a bit more, it will suggest that Biden was entirely right to leave. Why did Afghanis fight then, and why did they not fight now? If the mere fact that the U.S. was saying 20 years was enough meant they no longer had the will to fight, then the US was right to leave because the Afghani soldiers were only fighting because the US was there holding their hands and would never be able to stand up on their own. 

Nation-building does not mean making a nation entirely dependent on another for its security. The rapidity of the collapse of the Afghan government and military forces shows it was all illusory, because they had nothing they were willing to fight for badly enough that they were willing to risk the consequences of fighting the Taliban when they knew everyone else was planning to give up anyways. 

4 minutes ago, SeanF said:

 As @Wertheadhas pointed out, Biden cut the legs from under their military strategy, by cutting off air support, for ......reasons.

The Afghani Air Force was already doing 80-90% of air support in the last year or two, and was considered a bright spot in the armed forces. The claim that the aircraft are not bleeding edge is true enough, but against an enemy that has zero air capability, that hardly matters. But they folded as well. Some took off in stolen aircraft to leave the country rather than fight. Others recognized that the army was folding and they had no one to support so what was the point and just left their bases. 

The US has been trying to wean the Afghan military off of US air support for the last six years. The AAF stepped up to fill most of the gap, and was carrying out operations almost entirely on their own in the last year or two. Were they as effective as American air support? No, of course not, but they had been proving effective enough. They had equipment and supplies to last at least some months while contractor support was being sorted.

 

4 minutes ago, SeanF said:

  Even the best army (and granted, the Afghan army was not the best army, but it was not a terrible army) won't keep fighting once they think they've just been thrown to the wolves. 

They believed that the Afghan government was not capable of supporting them, and so why fight? Ultimately, a lack of belief that fighting against the Taliban was viable -- despite outnumbering then 4-to-1, being better-equipped and better-trained, having aircraft and trained air support -- is, again, proof that 20 years of occupation was a waste and that another twenty years of occupation was not going to change that. Afghan soldiers fought when they believed that they had overwhelming odds of winning thanks to the US. so no surprise that local leaders and military officials started to cut deals almost immediately on word that the US was finally going to leave.

The US shouldn't have been there for as long as it was, and trying to believe staying there longer would have changed anything is just folly. Staying past the agreed date would have launched another phase of fighting and more unnecessary deaths.

I think in later years history will see Joe Biden was 100% correct to leave when he did. Afghanistan had been afforded every opportunity to stand up against the Taliban, opportunities paid for by American and international money, technology, and lives, as well as the lives of Afghani soldiers. It collectively decided that the Taliban wasn't really all that bad. You can't blame them for it, but the fact that that's the choice they made says all we really need to know.

Hopefully, in thirty years, Afghanistan will be in a better state than it was in 2001, 2011, 2021. Perhaps the Taliban will moderate over time, or be replaced by something more benign. Or perhaps not. But 20 years, $1 trillion, and thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Afghani lives are enough to realize the American nation-building experiment was a mistake.

[Varysblackfyre321]

9 hours ago, Arakan said:

Now they are constantly banging on about „but what about the women and girls, what about human rights“. In itself valuable questions but please stop painting some rosy progressive Afghanistan picture which never existed. It’s utter bullshit. In the countryside where over 70% of Afghans live, girls and women were always living in a extremely conservative, patriarchal setting, with very limited freedoms if at all.

Reminds me of how often when presenting  Iran under a US backed dictator photos of Iranian women in standard western garb are contrasted with women in burqas

The implication is that was the former was the norm and there wasn’t a significant of cruelty perpetratorated by the western backed regime.

[Arakan]

1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Well, the other interesting thing is the last time the Taliban were in power (mid to late 90s), Kabul itself was pretty much run down. By all accounts, post 2001 it has become a somewhat thriving metropolis. Who knows how modern life will affect their philosophy in the future, presuming they continue to operate with Kabul as their center? From what I've read on this thread they were pretty much stuck in the hinterlands for the longest time.

Then again, Tehran is probably a counterexample to the civilizing influence of big cities.

Good points all around. Let’s remember that by 1995 Kabul was the most destroyed city in the world, thanks to the Mujaheedin. Especially 1991/92 the major mujaheedin leaders Massoud and Hekmatjar bombed the shit out of the city to oust Najibullah, and when they succeeded in April 1992, they almost immediately started to fight each other, committing countless atrocities and war crimes. We shouldn’t forget that the OG Taliban were initially seen as saviors and harbingers of justice by many Afghans. That’s the main reason why they could so easily overrun most of the country in just two years (94-96). By all accounts the people of Kabul were happy when they took the city in 96. It tells a lot about the standing of the now ex-government when the Taliban 2.0 could even trump their first success. 

And then, the 90s. There might be only 25 years between both Kabul conquests but the world changed completely. The globe is interconnected thanks to mobile internet. There was no information flow in 90s Afghanistan. It maybe was the most isolated country in the world, even more so than North Korea nowadays. By 1995/96 Afghanistan truly was the forgotten country.
The new Taliban seem much more media savvy than the OG ones (who couldn’t give two shits about their outside image). And it’s necessary. They learned their lesson that you simply cannot isolate yourself from the rest of the world anymore and get away with it (well this didn’t even work last time). You need allies, you need somewhat good PR at least for your core audience (Muslim world). 

Its childish and useless to just reduce them to evil plotting terrorists, as one Republican politician (forgot name) did on CNN. What do you achieve with this? Nothing. You don’t help not one single human being in Afghanistan with that stance. And you push them to your rivals, which automatically become their allies. You achieve nothing. Monitor them, take them serious and hold them accountable. Demonizing is for comic movies. 

[Tijgy]

According the Russian media there is still fighting against the Taliban. Amrullah Saleh might have retaken a district in the province north of Kabul. 

https://ria.ru/20210817/boi-1746127613.html

I think a large part of the Afghans might want finally have some peace and order. They hope accepting the Taliban will give them peace. However they will be still also a number who have been fighting against them for years and who lost friends and families because of them.

 

[DMC]

On 8/15/2021 at 7:15 AM, Werthead said:

And yet no sources. No links. Not one single molecule of evidence to support this, quite self-evidently false statement. Just another retreat and redrawing of lines ("there definitely 100% more attacks" to "well, we don't know, could have been, whatever, who knows? Nobody, apparently").

I know I'm way way behind on this, and it doesn't matter after...60 hours, but I'm sorry fuck off with this statement.  I DID give a source and you gave nothing but your own obviously catered list.  That's why it's called selection bias.  And the reason I can't give you sources is precisely because no one in the academic community supports your assertion.  And if they do, they can't get it published, which should tell you something.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Interesting that people are up in arms about what awaits women in Afghanistan thanks to western withdrawal (and justly so) while makin no mention that this is pretty much Saudi Arabia, our allies whom we’ve been selling weapons to for decades.

[Hereward]

8 hours ago, Loge said:

Well, they probably did the right thing. That American C17 went to Qatar, where the US has an air base. But the German planes go to Tashkent, and you can't bring hundreds of strangers without documents into another country without that country's permission.

Of course you can. It’s Uzbekistan. Say sorry and promise to build them a new dam or some shit. It’s not like you’d be asking them to give them asylum. Jesus, talk about holding a country to a low standard: Sorry, we left our allies to die ‘cause there was (avoidable) paperwork.

[Arakan]

17 minutes ago, Hereward said:

Of course you can. It’s Uzbekistan. Say sorry and promise to build them a new dam or some shit. It’s not like you’d be asking them to give them asylum. Jesus, talk about holding a country to a low standard: Sorry, we left our allies to die ‘cause there was (avoidable) paperwork.

This is Germany, we take our paperwork dead seriously and to do or not to do something must always be done or not done out of principle, under full legal compliance to all formalities. 

[HoodedCrow]

I heard from German friends that they were aghast that the U.S. wanted them to invade Iraq as allies. They said something like “ but these little outings( wars)of ours don’t always go well!!! And they are quite horrified by the rise of fascism in many countries. They were very upset by Trumps election.

[TheLastWolf]

Al Jazeera English is what I'm following

and...

 

[teej6]

9 hours ago, Arakan said:

Especially 1991/92 the major mujaheedin leaders Massoud and Hekmatjar bombed the shit out of the city to oust Najibullah, and when they succeeded in April 1992, they almost immediately started to fight each other, committing countless atrocities and war crimes. 

I wouldn’t equate Massoud with Hekmatyar. Yes, Massoud was a warlord but he had principles. The man did not kill his enemies who surrendered… I read somewhere that he even punished his soldiers who killed fleeing or surrendering enemy fighters. He was not a mindless murderer like Hekmatyar who is the one who bombed Kabul with artillery provided by the Pakistanis. Massoud did not enter Kabul after the Najibullah government fell even though he had the largest army and was the dominant player. He waited on the outskirts of Kabul for all warring parties to reach a peaceful and power sharing agreement and even extended and olive branch to Hekmatyar who had tried to assassinate him previously. 

Although Tajik, even the Pashtuns admired Massoud, enough to observe a national holiday on the day he died. Even now, in Kabul, posters of him pop up during every election. I was reading about the man a few years ago… he was educated (an engineer), well read, and a poet. And although an Islamist, he practiced and propagated a tolerant form of Islam. Somehow I think he was strategically killed by the Taliban and Al Qaeda with the help of the ISI two days before 9/11 knowing full well if he was alive, the West may have had a leader who just may have been able to unite Afghanistan against the Taliban.

[teej6]

8 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Interesting that people are up in arms about what awaits women in Afghanistan thanks to western withdrawal (and justly so) while makin no mention that this is pretty much Saudi Arabia, our allies whom we’ve been selling weapons to for decades.

And the Saudis funded the Taliban and all the fundamentalist madrassas around the world for decades. But this was a non-issue for Western powers till 9/11. 

[Arakan]

40 minutes ago, teej6 said:

I wouldn’t equate Massoud with Hekmatyar. Yes, Massoud was a warlord but he had principles. The man did not kill his enemies who surrendered… I read somewhere that he even punished his soldiers who killed fleeing or surrendering enemy fighters. He was not a mindless murderer like Hekmatyar who is the one who bombed Kabul with artillery provided by the Pakistanis. Massoud did not enter Kabul after the Najibullah government fell even though he had the largest army and was the dominant player. He waited on the outskirts of Kabul for all warring parties to reach a peaceful and power sharing agreement and even extended and olive branch to Hekmatyar who had tried to assassinate him previously. 

Although Tajik, even the Pashtuns admired Massoud, enough to observe a national holiday on the day he died. Even now, in Kabul, posters of him pop up during every election. I was reading about the man a few years ago… he was educated (an engineer), well read, and a poet. And although an Islamist, he practiced and propagated a tolerant form of Islam. Somehow I think he was strategically killed by the Taliban and Al Qaeda with the help of the ISI two days before 9/11 knowing full well if he was alive, the West may have had a leader who just may have been able to unite Afghanistan against the Taliban.

Oh no I don’t equate them. Hekmatyar was, and still is, on a personal level a fanatic, narrow-minded, unapologetic, sick psychopath. But let’s not mystify no one. Massoud was a fascinating character and by all accounts had an almost mesmerizing personality. But he was as stubborn, as unyielding when it came to his „justified“ claims to power as Hekmatyar. The war could have stopped in 1992, hell even better in 1989. But in the end no one wanted to give in. And he and his army and allies did bomb and did fuck up Kabul and the countryside. Not alone but as well.

What you describe is a mystified Disney movie version of the man. There are no clean hands and heroes in such a war. Due to his personality, educated background and, let’s be honest, good looks he was predestined to become the western media darling in the 80s. He was a very capable and effective commander, for sure, but so was Hekmatyar. 

Yes, Massoud was a hell of a character, I respect and admire him, but no reason to hero-worship him. I will choose Najibullah and his social-democratic approach to reform the country any day of the week over all Mujaheedin. He offered them peace, reforms, participation, integration of Islam into a democratic frameset. They all rejected. 

The women of Kabul in the 70s and 80s were free, the mujaheedin, all of them, no matter how cultured or educated or marketable, wanted to take this away from them. 

Due to the Cold War the historiography of Afghanistan is messed up and full of ulterior motives. Of course it’s difficult to expect old hardliners in East and West to admit mistakes and wrongdoings but thankfully this is changing the more Cold War era actors die off.