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Which alters the equation there in a way that disfavors the Taliban. I don't think this is true at all. The Taliban have significantly more military skill than

Which alters the equation there in a way that disfavors the Taliban. I don't think this is true at all. The Taliban have significantly more military skill than the Afghan warlords they've been fighting for the last decade. Consider: if the warlords, after having gotten billions of dollars of aid from the US and tens of thousands of western soldiers helping them, still haven't been able to defeat the Taliban, how large must the disparity be. Plus, the Taliban have a reputation for being less corrupt than the warlords that currently comprise the government. There's a reason Afghanis turn to Taliban-run courts instead of going to the government ones: the justice might be crazy, but it will be impartial. Before this find, the future of Afghanistan was pretty clear: sooner or later, there was going to be a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, culminating in some sort of power sharing agreement. Given the find, that will still probably happen, but my guess is that the Taliban get more power in the end. From a western/Chinese companies perspective, who would you rather deal with? Religious fanatics that are honest and maintain order with horrific brutal efficiency? Or obscenely corrupt bumblers who couldn't administer their way out of a paper bag? Extraction industries have plenty of experience dealing with the former in Saudi Arabia. Given the choice, I can't imagine why they'd prefer the later.

edge17 16y ago
i agree, except that a commodity trader will find a way to get the parties to the table and make everyone money. religious fanaticism and money aren't mutually exclusive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eilat_Ashkelon_Pipeline_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eilat_Ashkelon_Pipeline_Company
swombat 16y ago
if the warlords, after having gotten billions of dollars of aid from the US and tens of thousands of western soldiers helping them, still haven't been able to defeat the Taliban, how large must the disparity be I don't think that's a fair statement. "Defeating" the Taliban, which are basically an insurgency, in a country twice the size of Germany and filled with mountains and deserts, takes a lot more than military skill or firepower. I think that the military skill is in fact secondary in that battle. The political skill is far more important. As long as the Taliban are effective in convincing local farmers to support them, they'll be there, no matter how skilled the handful of soldiers on the other side.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  In a country twice the size of Germany plus another bit of countryside in Pakistan the same size. If the Taliban were able to be 100% contained within the borders of Afghanistan they would have been utterly smashed and destroyed as a movement of any consequence years ago.
  - gjm11 16y ago
    How do you know?
  - jessriedel 16y ago
    Like gjm, I'd also like to know what makes you think this.
    - ilconsigliere 16y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtunistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtunistan + http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Major_ethnic_groups_of_Pakistan_in_1980.jpg/620px-Major_ethnic_groups_of_Pakistan_in_1980.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Maj...
      - jessriedel 16y ago
        I understand that regions in Pakistan have offered refuge for the Taliban. What I don't understand is how one could be confident that this has been essential to the survival of the Taliban.
        gwern 16y ago
        When the Taliban was smashed in the post-9/11 invasion, where do you think Osama bin Laden and the Taliban hierarchy escaped to, to rest & recuperate & reinfiltrate into Afghanistan?
        16y ago
ElliotH 16y ago
Fighting the Taliban is very different to fighting the types of armies that modern tactics are designed for, I can't speak for the US, but from what I have heard from serving UK soldiers the british easily win almost all firefights simply because they are so much better equipped and better trained. The problem comes when we have to start fighting against unpredictable IED blasts and a sizeable portion of the populous who are willing to give up their own lives to kill relatively small numbers of people.
- gaius 16y ago
  It's reported in The Times that the problem isn't taking territory, but holding it.
  - caffeine 16y ago
    If you can't hold the territory, then surely it wasn't really "taken" to begin with? More like "visited"? It is probably a symptom of our ill-calibrated tactics that even the lexicon we use to talk about this is illogical.
- MichaelSalib 16y ago
  I disagree. I think the problem is that in some parts of Afghanistan, the Taliban represent authentic Afghani nationalism whereas the warlord government in Kabul is seen as incompetent quislings. If the populace thinks you're a joke controlled from DC, then it doesn't matter how many American soldiers you have helping you; firefights are irrelevant. Look, the US has spent upwards of $250 billion in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has a GDP of maybe $21 billion. If we can't bring about a government that the population sees as legitimate after blowing a decade and ten times GDP, maybe we should just accept the fact that our military is not capable of transforming alien societies in the way that we wish it could.
tokenadult 16y ago
The Taliban have significantly more military skill than the Afghan warlords they've been fighting for the last decade. A contrary view was posted to HN just yesterday, as I recall. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1427866 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1427866 When the national population is largely in the thralls of tribal superstition, it's easy for people who share that fanaticism (the Taliban) to gain a kind of superficial control over much of the population, but it's not clear that "religious fanatics" (your term) of the Taliban kind will retain the support of the population over the long term.
- MichaelSalib 16y ago
  Note the distinction between competence of terrorist attacks (especially attacks against targets in the US/Europe) and basic government functions. The fact that the Taliban can't run a suicide bombing operation in NYC to save its life matters a lot less than the fact that lots of people in some parts of Afghanistan prefer taking their disputes to the shadow court system run by the Taliban. The skills you need to be a good jurist have little to do with the skills you need to be a good tactician, and may very well be more significant. Americans focus on terrorism because everything is always always always about us, no matter what, but the Taliban can and does do many things besides terrorist attacks against western targets. Incompetence in one area does not mean that the institution is incompetent in all areas.
rbanffy 16y ago
> if the warlords, after having gotten billions of dollars of aid from the US I think you made the point. If they completely defeat the Taliban, the aid will cease and they will have to deal with all their problems at the same time they will have no enemy to blame for them. The only winning solution for them is to keep the Taliban around.
bd_at_rivenhill 16y ago
From a western/Chinese companies perspective, who would you rather deal with? Companies and governemnts would prefer efficient fanatics until they play host to violent extremists who act to destabilize neighboring regimes and export violence on a large scale in pursuit of political/religious goals. You may view the war in Afghanistan as an exercise in corruption by the military-industrial complex, but it is also a valid application of the theory of forward defense to directly engage these extremists on their own territory and force them to consume their limited resources on self defense instead of using them aggressively. If a deal could be reached with the Taliban that would, with certainty, end their alliance with extremists and the export of violence to the tribal regions of Pakistan and the rest of the world, then that deal would be enthusiastically embraced just as it has been with the Saudis, but such a deal seems unlikely given the current state of the Taliban's ideology and certain ingrained Afghan cultural traits.
joe_the_user 16y ago
The Taliban have significantly more military skill than the Afghan warlords they've been fighting for the last decade. Documentation? Plus what does "war lord" mean in this context? As I understand it, the Taliban would simply represent one faction of rural lords and clerics within Afghanistan. The former-northern alliance was simply another with the groups distinguished a bit by ideology but mostly by the Taliban being comprised of the dominant peshtoon ethnicity. I mean, both the Northern Alliance (war lords presently making up the Afghan state) and the Taliban were groups origianly brought into existence by CIA interventions in the 1980s. Each faction becomes more or less corrupt, makes one or another alliance depending on the shift tides of war. The Taliban would have the same difficulty controlling the entire country that the US and its allies currently have

edge17 16y ago

i agree, except that a commodity trader will find a way to get the parties to the table and make everyone money. religious fanaticism and money aren't mutually exclusive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eilat_Ashkelon_Pipeline_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eilat_Ashkelon_Pipeline_Company

swombat 16y ago

if the warlords, after having gotten billions of dollars of aid from the US and tens of thousands of western soldiers helping them, still haven't been able to defeat the Taliban, how large must the disparity be I don't think that's a fair statement. "Defeating" the Taliban, which are basically an insurgency, in a country twice the size of Germany and filled with mountains and deserts, takes a lot more than military skill or firepower. I think that the military skill is in fact secondary in that battle. The political skill is far more important. As long as the Taliban are effective in convincing local farmers to support them, they'll be there, no matter how skilled the handful of soldiers on the other side.

InclinedPlane 16y ago
In a country twice the size of Germany plus another bit of countryside in Pakistan the same size. If the Taliban were able to be 100% contained within the borders of Afghanistan they would have been utterly smashed and destroyed as a movement of any consequence years ago.
- gjm11 16y ago
  How do you know?
- jessriedel 16y ago
  Like gjm, I'd also like to know what makes you think this.
  - ilconsigliere 16y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtunistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtunistan + http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Major_ethnic_groups_of_Pakistan_in_1980.jpg/620px-Major_ethnic_groups_of_Pakistan_in_1980.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Maj...
    - jessriedel 16y ago
      I understand that regions in Pakistan have offered refuge for the Taliban. What I don't understand is how one could be confident that this has been essential to the survival of the Taliban.
      - gwern 16y ago
        When the Taliban was smashed in the post-9/11 invasion, where do you think Osama bin Laden and the Taliban hierarchy escaped to, to rest & recuperate & reinfiltrate into Afghanistan?
        16y ago

ElliotH 16y ago

Fighting the Taliban is very different to fighting the types of armies that modern tactics are designed for, I can't speak for the US, but from what I have heard from serving UK soldiers the british easily win almost all firefights simply because they are so much better equipped and better trained. The problem comes when we have to start fighting against unpredictable IED blasts and a sizeable portion of the populous who are willing to give up their own lives to kill relatively small numbers of people.

gaius 16y ago
It's reported in The Times that the problem isn't taking territory, but holding it.
- caffeine 16y ago
  If you can't hold the territory, then surely it wasn't really "taken" to begin with? More like "visited"? It is probably a symptom of our ill-calibrated tactics that even the lexicon we use to talk about this is illogical.
MichaelSalib 16y ago
I disagree. I think the problem is that in some parts of Afghanistan, the Taliban represent authentic Afghani nationalism whereas the warlord government in Kabul is seen as incompetent quislings. If the populace thinks you're a joke controlled from DC, then it doesn't matter how many American soldiers you have helping you; firefights are irrelevant. Look, the US has spent upwards of $250 billion in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has a GDP of maybe $21 billion. If we can't bring about a government that the population sees as legitimate after blowing a decade and ten times GDP, maybe we should just accept the fact that our military is not capable of transforming alien societies in the way that we wish it could.

tokenadult 16y ago

The Taliban have significantly more military skill than the Afghan warlords they've been fighting for the last decade. A contrary view was posted to HN just yesterday, as I recall. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1427866 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1427866 When the national population is largely in the thralls of tribal superstition, it's easy for people who share that fanaticism (the Taliban) to gain a kind of superficial control over much of the population, but it's not clear that "religious fanatics" (your term) of the Taliban kind will retain the support of the population over the long term.

MichaelSalib 16y ago
Note the distinction between competence of terrorist attacks (especially attacks against targets in the US/Europe) and basic government functions. The fact that the Taliban can't run a suicide bombing operation in NYC to save its life matters a lot less than the fact that lots of people in some parts of Afghanistan prefer taking their disputes to the shadow court system run by the Taliban. The skills you need to be a good jurist have little to do with the skills you need to be a good tactician, and may very well be more significant. Americans focus on terrorism because everything is always always always about us, no matter what, but the Taliban can and does do many things besides terrorist attacks against western targets. Incompetence in one area does not mean that the institution is incompetent in all areas.

rbanffy 16y ago

> if the warlords, after having gotten billions of dollars of aid from the US I think you made the point. If they completely defeat the Taliban, the aid will cease and they will have to deal with all their problems at the same time they will have no enemy to blame for them. The only winning solution for them is to keep the Taliban around.

bd_at_rivenhill 16y ago

From a western/Chinese companies perspective, who would you rather deal with? Companies and governemnts would prefer efficient fanatics until they play host to violent extremists who act to destabilize neighboring regimes and export violence on a large scale in pursuit of political/religious goals. You may view the war in Afghanistan as an exercise in corruption by the military-industrial complex, but it is also a valid application of the theory of forward defense to directly engage these extremists on their own territory and force them to consume their limited resources on self defense instead of using them aggressively. If a deal could be reached with the Taliban that would, with certainty, end their alliance with extremists and the export of violence to the tribal regions of Pakistan and the rest of the world, then that deal would be enthusiastically embraced just as it has been with the Saudis, but such a deal seems unlikely given the current state of the Taliban's ideology and certain ingrained Afghan cultural traits.

joe_the_user 16y ago

The Taliban have significantly more military skill than the Afghan warlords they've been fighting for the last decade. Documentation? Plus what does "war lord" mean in this context? As I understand it, the Taliban would simply represent one faction of rural lords and clerics within Afghanistan. The former-northern alliance was simply another with the groups distinguished a bit by ideology but mostly by the Taliban being comprised of the dominant peshtoon ethnicity. I mean, both the Northern Alliance (war lords presently making up the Afghan state) and the Taliban were groups origianly brought into existence by CIA interventions in the 1980s. Each faction becomes more or less corrupt, makes one or another alliance depending on the shift tides of war. The Taliban would have the same difficulty controlling the entire country that the US and its allies currently have