8 ms·

Armed Afghan women take to streets in show of defiance against Taliban

75 points by DocFeind 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Interesting outcome of imperialism…
- sriram_malhar 5y ago
  Can you explain why you'd attribute this to imperialism? Seems to me that women are finally fighting back, after taking shit from the extreme Islamists for too long. Similar scenes were seen when Kurdish women took up arms against ISIS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrxbyrnGo-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrxbyrnGo-o
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    US presence scared off people who stop women from being educated: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1266478 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna12... This may have occurred on some timeline of decades to centuries without imperialism (militarily or culturally).
  - sien 5y ago
    The US backed Islamist rebels against the Soviet Union, thus destabilizing Afghanistan and leading to the ~40 years of war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
    - SkyMarshal 5y ago
      The US and USSR didn't start ~40yrs of war in Afghanistan. Afghans have been at war with either invaders or themselves for thousands of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  Not really. Most of the women are observant Muslims (but not Taliban-level) in that society, even though the Koran doesn't directly speak to women, but they disagree with 2 practises: home imprisonment (extreme mate-guarding) and one-sided divorce court (women can't initiate a divorce, even if the husband is mentally ill or can't afford a family.) It sounds like the Taliban are also doing forced marriages for widows and girls, which for the women affected means some will pick up a rifle to defend themselves. Traditional Muslim life is that virgin women marry a provider for life, so divorce or being widowed is a catastrophe and the woman's normal life is basically over. So the option of getting killed while a widow is not seen as a bad thing. In addition, getting killed while waging jihad is the only certain path to heaven in Islam, so that has a strong draw too (well, for men. It's not clear how women go to heaven in Islam, if at all. Raw deal, ya?) (The Muslim women who left England for this region found out the hard way what life in the 7th century was like for them. The ones interviewed said all their children died, and they were serially married off to soldiers. In some cases their British citizenship was revoked because the authorities don't know what they're dealing with or what ideology they follow after leaving the West.)
steve76 5y ago
The most critical battlefield maneuver is the return to civil life. If you look at wars, they do not end because one side is defeated. They really end because people learn there's nothing there but death and focus their lives somewhere else. The USA has the vaccine. There you go. Just give it to the people we like. It's the US Civil War ending transcontinental railroad of today. Don't worry. It's a very low threshold seeing our tolerance for mass murderers and looters. Namely, you don't want to burn the world because you're not bossing everyone else around from far far away. Perfect. Seeing how bin Laden is in the Indian Ocean because of vaccines, and now the entire world is spooked by them. Develop more vaccines, things like cancer and diabetes, and once again, only give it to the people we like while the diseases ravage the germ filled fools and liars who start horrible fights and run away. War horses retire to the field. Swords and shields are forged to plow shares, spears to pruning hooks. If there's anything that's natural law, that's it. Whoever does that the best wins.
redis_mlc 5y ago
For those who don't anything about the Taliban or Islam: - Afghanistan is in a strategic location bordering Russia and Pakistan. It has trillions in natural resources, mainly minerals - Taliban means student of the Koran - during the various wars in Afghanistan, many orphans were created. They were "adopted" by religious schools that taught them the Koran, and only the Koran. Often this means chanting scripture in ancient Arabic, which they may not actually understand. So you have indoctrinated young men with AK-47s and only a rote religious understanding of the world - the Taliban. - Islam started in the 7th century CE. The Koran commands converting, killing or taxing non-Muslims, plus other brutality. Most of the medieval horror stories you've read in the Western press are normal, accepted and practised under Islam, including beheading and slavery. - the Taliban took over the country. The citizens on the one hand support Sharia and law and order, but on the other hand it's too relentless to enjoy daily in the 21st century. - Pakistan is wary of occupying Afghanistan because the Pakistani's lower-ranked army members are easily influenced by the Taliban's Islamic fervor - military leaders are afraid of a resulting coup, essentially - Russia wanted to maintain order along their border with Afghanistan, which is their doctrine (to maintain vassal buffer states). But Muslims in that region have waged war since the 7th century (see above.) Russia started to engage in genocide to clear the population, but ran out of money and motivation, along with the US arming the opposition. - the US should not have gone into the country without clear and realistic goals, if at all. It has been reported that the White House doesn't listen to mid-level civil servants with regional expertise, and those are few. So here we are. Corollary: When Rep. Ilhan Omar ("a frequent critic of Israel") says something, understand that the words she says must follow the Koran or she faces execution for blasphemy. For that reason, she should not be a US House member, and certainly not on House committees. Islam and the US constitution are opposing ideologies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilhan_Omar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilhan_Omar
- tw04 5y ago
  > Corollary: When Rep. Ilhan Omar ("a frequent critic of Israel") says something, understand that the words she says must follow the Koran or she faces execution for blasphemy. For that reason, she should not be a US House member, and certainly not on House committees. Islam and the US constitution are opposing ideologies. You were making some… reasonable claims up until this point where you jumped the shark. We’ll ignore for a second she got a divorce which would also have her beheaded in the Koran, and I’ll immediately point out that literally every religion when taken verbatim is incompatible with our constitution. That’s why we have separation of church and state.
tehjoker 5y ago
This rocks. If the US never invaded, this is the kind of thing we'd hope for. Oppressed people fighting for their own liberation without the intervention of people like Pete Buttigieg hanging a map of Afghanistan's natural resources on his wall. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/07/pete-buttigieg-cia-afghanistan/ https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/07/pete-buttigieg-cia-afghan...
- AndrewKemendo 5y ago
  Wow that article has no clue what it's talking about. It's claiming a lot of extraneous nonsense based on his Annual Performance report (which are mostly nonsense anyway) bereft of any understanding of the units it's talking about.
  - berdario 5y ago
    There's no mention of an Annual Performance report in that article. Are you referring to something else?
    - AndrewKemendo 5y ago
      That's what those screenshots with text are of. It's possible that those actually they might be an interim performance report based on the deployment, that isn't a full cycle.
      - berdario 5y ago
        I see, as a non-US resident the article seems pretty benign/inconsequential: "US politician who worked in the military is part of the establishment and the unit he worked with might have had contacts with the intelligence (not necessarily CIA), DEA and US Treasury, news at 11."
        AndrewKemendo 5y ago
        Yes exactly, there's no story there
seibelj 5y ago
First Vietnam, now Afghanistan. The wealthiest nation with the most powerful military was bested twice by a passionate local force that played the long-game. Iraq is not exactly going well either. I'm glad that America can return to its isolationist roots and stop policing the world. Export culture, not troops. You simply can't force a country to act the way you want using a military invasion. If Afghani women want freedoms, I'm glad they are fighting for it themselves. It makes it significantly more authentic (perhaps the only way it can be treated authentically) and will give the Taliban far more pause than the US forcing them to respect women at gunpoint.
kaminar 5y ago
This comment above mine...why is it dead? Is the best comment yet
- ummonk 5y ago
  The one that advocates barring elected representatives from congress based on their religion?
boomboomsubban 5y ago
While good for them, basically any other protest march of hundreds of people would just be ignored. This article seems like propaganda trying to say our twenty years at war weren't a complete waste, as we empowered hundreds of women.
- xkcd-sucks 5y ago
  Few protests are ignored when the participants carry antitank missiles and AKs, and presumably a goal of the US occupation was to prevent "civilians" from bearing arms. Maybe a cultural victory...
  - nradov 5y ago
    The US occupation forces never tried to confiscate regular small arms from non-combatant civilians.
    - lumberingjack 5y ago
      Most of the afghanies and Iraqis that I saw that were farmers were armed to the teeth. I have photos of one farmer I talked to every day the guy protected his sheep with a full automatic AK.
- jeswin 5y ago
  > While good for them, basically any other protest march of hundreds of people would just be ignored. But this is clearly not any other protest march. This is women taking up arms (and braving extreme danger) so that they could step out of their houses, educate their kids etc.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    Protesting that you don't feel safe and free in your own community isn't rare, and those protestors often risk retribution for their actions. Again, these women are absolutely right to protest, I just think this coverage makes it seem far larger than it is.
joe_the_user 5y ago
The regime supported by the USSR lasted several years after losing all Soviet support and with the Taliban getting full Pakistani and US aid. And this ended in a horrific blood bath (not to claim the Soviet-supported regime by itself was anything to write home about). So there's some incentive for the urban population, especially women, to resist the rise of the Taliban. It should be noted the US has spent twenty years in the nation aligned with the drug lords of what was once the Northern Alliance, a group that could, among other things, could never develop the country. It's not surprising the US could get nowhere. It's a history of pain and tragedy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan#Taliban_and_the_United_Front_(1996%E2%80%932001) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan#Taliban...
- chriselles 5y ago
  Not entirely correct. The Soviet Union supported government of Afghanistan fell very quickly, and only after, Soviet aid was cut in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
vmception 5y ago
This is like escape from Saigon without the escape part
olivermarks 5y ago
Unfortunately the US left the Taliban a huge cache of weapons and equipment, and this Sky video discusses that no women were seen on the streets during their filming as the fundamentalists rapidly take over the country. https://youtu.be/f37xrmiqmnU https://youtu.be/f37xrmiqmnU I wish the Guardian had a more realistic approach in their choices of 'news' stories, they tend to promote tiny events they are interested in as though they are huge, distorting people's understanding of what is actually occurring
- shadilay 5y ago
  Afghanistan will return to the way it has always been for time immemorial.
  - colinb 5y ago
    which 'always'? The rotten kleptocracy it appears to be right now (from my cosy European point of view)? The warring tribal zealot-ridden hellhole it was after the Soviet invasion? Or the (apparently) fast-advancing more-or-less liberal democracy it was before the Soviet invasion? People and countries can change. And people and countries DO change. I think the lesson I've learned from my safe distance these last 20 years is that it is hard to influence the direction in which this change happens, even with the expenditure of blood and treasure. Oh, you can stir shit up, but there's no knowing how it will settle. [incidentally, it really isn't clear to me why this sort of thing seems to have worked well for the de-nazification of Germany and pacification of Japan]
    - shadilay 5y ago
      You say countries change but the only part of Afghanistan that's changed at all is the cities. Once you get out of the cities you're turning the clock back a thousand years. It was never anything like a "liberal democracy". The fundamental political unit is the tribe and any analysis that does not use the word tribe is misinformed. It's very difficult for someone from the west to understand that a society so different from their own can exist today. It's a pastoral society centuries removed. There is no print media, no radio, no cell phones. Travel is difficult, and only possible some times of year. Most people in Afghanistan have never heard of 9/11 and do not understand the war(s). https://www.pbs.org/video/pbs-newshour-what-does-911-mean-to-people-in-afghanistan/ https://www.pbs.org/video/pbs-newshour-what-does-911-mean-to... edit: The comparison to Germany and Japan shows just how out of context Afghanistan is to western eyes. In european terms Afghanistan is pre roman europe. No roads, no laws, no central government, no news, no standing army. By contrast germany was a western country and japan was westernizing very quickly post Meiji.
ssijak 5y ago
How large is this Taliban group? Where do they get the weapons ? Are they recruiting local populous where they take grounds (by force or they get many volunteers?)? I mean, after decades of screw ups in that country and war and destruction, I can't imagine for the majority to wan't to fight more, especially for a group who want sharia law, but maybe I am totally clouded by my European thinking.
- shadilay 5y ago
  The Taliban is a hybrid tribal confederacy and an offshoot of the Pakistani ISI run by the children of the madrassas funded by the gulf states. It's main purpose is preventing Iranian influence via Afghan Shia's. Afghanistan is best thought of as a separate planet and you cannot apply a European perspective. For example most in Afghanistan have never heard of 9/11. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904103404576556531604340742 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904103404576556... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPWjuswmNIE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPWjuswmNIE
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    It is surprising to me that the Taliban, seemingly a fringe and unpopular group even in Afghanistan itself, are so good at clinging to power. But what do I know.
    - shadilay 5y ago
      Not entirely surprising. The Taliban is mostly comprised of Afghan refugees who were raised in the madrassas of Pakistan. These were funded by the gulf states and the CIA and controlled by the ISI. With foreign money the Taliban bribes the tribal leaders. The tribe is the fundamental political unit in Afghanistan and always has been. In the early invasion US special forces found every foreign fighter was carrying something like 10k USD. The 'pitch' is as follows. The Taliban are Afghani's returning home to help their people. They have the legitimacy of islam and bring money to support the locals. They are neither fringe nor unpopular.
jandrese 5y ago
Having the Taliban retake the country was inevitable. The US went in there stating flat out that they were not going to stay in the country forever. The Taliban hears this and goes "Oh really? Because we are." So now all Afghans have to ask themselves. Am I going to back the people who are going to leave in a few years? Even if you hate the Taliban (and a lot of people do), they'll kill you if you oppose them and your allies aren't going to be around to help. The grand American plan of uniting a bunch of tribes that have been at war with each other of centuries was never going to work either, even if you could find some magical unicorn of a local leader that wasn't hopelessly corrupt.

75 points by DocFeind 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Interesting outcome of imperialism…

sriram_malhar 5y ago
Can you explain why you'd attribute this to imperialism? Seems to me that women are finally fighting back, after taking shit from the extreme Islamists for too long. Similar scenes were seen when Kurdish women took up arms against ISIS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrxbyrnGo-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrxbyrnGo-o
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  US presence scared off people who stop women from being educated: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1266478 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna12... This may have occurred on some timeline of decades to centuries without imperialism (militarily or culturally).
- sien 5y ago
  The US backed Islamist rebels against the Soviet Union, thus destabilizing Afghanistan and leading to the ~40 years of war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
  - SkyMarshal 5y ago
    The US and USSR didn't start ~40yrs of war in Afghanistan. Afghans have been at war with either invaders or themselves for thousands of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan
redis_mlc 5y ago
Not really. Most of the women are observant Muslims (but not Taliban-level) in that society, even though the Koran doesn't directly speak to women, but they disagree with 2 practises: home imprisonment (extreme mate-guarding) and one-sided divorce court (women can't initiate a divorce, even if the husband is mentally ill or can't afford a family.) It sounds like the Taliban are also doing forced marriages for widows and girls, which for the women affected means some will pick up a rifle to defend themselves. Traditional Muslim life is that virgin women marry a provider for life, so divorce or being widowed is a catastrophe and the woman's normal life is basically over. So the option of getting killed while a widow is not seen as a bad thing. In addition, getting killed while waging jihad is the only certain path to heaven in Islam, so that has a strong draw too (well, for men. It's not clear how women go to heaven in Islam, if at all. Raw deal, ya?) (The Muslim women who left England for this region found out the hard way what life in the 7th century was like for them. The ones interviewed said all their children died, and they were serially married off to soldiers. In some cases their British citizenship was revoked because the authorities don't know what they're dealing with or what ideology they follow after leaving the West.)

steve76 5y ago

The most critical battlefield maneuver is the return to civil life. If you look at wars, they do not end because one side is defeated. They really end because people learn there's nothing there but death and focus their lives somewhere else. The USA has the vaccine. There you go. Just give it to the people we like. It's the US Civil War ending transcontinental railroad of today. Don't worry. It's a very low threshold seeing our tolerance for mass murderers and looters. Namely, you don't want to burn the world because you're not bossing everyone else around from far far away. Perfect. Seeing how bin Laden is in the Indian Ocean because of vaccines, and now the entire world is spooked by them. Develop more vaccines, things like cancer and diabetes, and once again, only give it to the people we like while the diseases ravage the germ filled fools and liars who start horrible fights and run away. War horses retire to the field. Swords and shields are forged to plow shares, spears to pruning hooks. If there's anything that's natural law, that's it. Whoever does that the best wins.

redis_mlc 5y ago

For those who don't anything about the Taliban or Islam: - Afghanistan is in a strategic location bordering Russia and Pakistan. It has trillions in natural resources, mainly minerals - Taliban means student of the Koran - during the various wars in Afghanistan, many orphans were created. They were "adopted" by religious schools that taught them the Koran, and only the Koran. Often this means chanting scripture in ancient Arabic, which they may not actually understand. So you have indoctrinated young men with AK-47s and only a rote religious understanding of the world - the Taliban. - Islam started in the 7th century CE. The Koran commands converting, killing or taxing non-Muslims, plus other brutality. Most of the medieval horror stories you've read in the Western press are normal, accepted and practised under Islam, including beheading and slavery. - the Taliban took over the country. The citizens on the one hand support Sharia and law and order, but on the other hand it's too relentless to enjoy daily in the 21st century. - Pakistan is wary of occupying Afghanistan because the Pakistani's lower-ranked army members are easily influenced by the Taliban's Islamic fervor - military leaders are afraid of a resulting coup, essentially - Russia wanted to maintain order along their border with Afghanistan, which is their doctrine (to maintain vassal buffer states). But Muslims in that region have waged war since the 7th century (see above.) Russia started to engage in genocide to clear the population, but ran out of money and motivation, along with the US arming the opposition. - the US should not have gone into the country without clear and realistic goals, if at all. It has been reported that the White House doesn't listen to mid-level civil servants with regional expertise, and those are few. So here we are. Corollary: When Rep. Ilhan Omar ("a frequent critic of Israel") says something, understand that the words she says must follow the Koran or she faces execution for blasphemy. For that reason, she should not be a US House member, and certainly not on House committees. Islam and the US constitution are opposing ideologies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilhan_Omar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilhan_Omar

tw04 5y ago
> Corollary: When Rep. Ilhan Omar ("a frequent critic of Israel") says something, understand that the words she says must follow the Koran or she faces execution for blasphemy. For that reason, she should not be a US House member, and certainly not on House committees. Islam and the US constitution are opposing ideologies. You were making some… reasonable claims up until this point where you jumped the shark. We’ll ignore for a second she got a divorce which would also have her beheaded in the Koran, and I’ll immediately point out that literally every religion when taken verbatim is incompatible with our constitution. That’s why we have separation of church and state.

tehjoker 5y ago

This rocks. If the US never invaded, this is the kind of thing we'd hope for. Oppressed people fighting for their own liberation without the intervention of people like Pete Buttigieg hanging a map of Afghanistan's natural resources on his wall. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/07/pete-buttigieg-cia-afghanistan/ https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/07/pete-buttigieg-cia-afghan...

AndrewKemendo 5y ago
Wow that article has no clue what it's talking about. It's claiming a lot of extraneous nonsense based on his Annual Performance report (which are mostly nonsense anyway) bereft of any understanding of the units it's talking about.
- berdario 5y ago
  There's no mention of an Annual Performance report in that article. Are you referring to something else?
  - AndrewKemendo 5y ago
    That's what those screenshots with text are of. It's possible that those actually they might be an interim performance report based on the deployment, that isn't a full cycle.
    - berdario 5y ago
      I see, as a non-US resident the article seems pretty benign/inconsequential: "US politician who worked in the military is part of the establishment and the unit he worked with might have had contacts with the intelligence (not necessarily CIA), DEA and US Treasury, news at 11."
      - AndrewKemendo 5y ago
        Yes exactly, there's no story there

seibelj 5y ago

First Vietnam, now Afghanistan. The wealthiest nation with the most powerful military was bested twice by a passionate local force that played the long-game. Iraq is not exactly going well either. I'm glad that America can return to its isolationist roots and stop policing the world. Export culture, not troops. You simply can't force a country to act the way you want using a military invasion. If Afghani women want freedoms, I'm glad they are fighting for it themselves. It makes it significantly more authentic (perhaps the only way it can be treated authentically) and will give the Taliban far more pause than the US forcing them to respect women at gunpoint.

kaminar 5y ago

This comment above mine...why is it dead? Is the best comment yet

ummonk 5y ago
The one that advocates barring elected representatives from congress based on their religion?

boomboomsubban 5y ago

While good for them, basically any other protest march of hundreds of people would just be ignored. This article seems like propaganda trying to say our twenty years at war weren't a complete waste, as we empowered hundreds of women.

xkcd-sucks 5y ago
Few protests are ignored when the participants carry antitank missiles and AKs, and presumably a goal of the US occupation was to prevent "civilians" from bearing arms. Maybe a cultural victory...
- nradov 5y ago
  The US occupation forces never tried to confiscate regular small arms from non-combatant civilians.
  - lumberingjack 5y ago
    Most of the afghanies and Iraqis that I saw that were farmers were armed to the teeth. I have photos of one farmer I talked to every day the guy protected his sheep with a full automatic AK.
jeswin 5y ago
> While good for them, basically any other protest march of hundreds of people would just be ignored. But this is clearly not any other protest march. This is women taking up arms (and braving extreme danger) so that they could step out of their houses, educate their kids etc.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Protesting that you don't feel safe and free in your own community isn't rare, and those protestors often risk retribution for their actions. Again, these women are absolutely right to protest, I just think this coverage makes it seem far larger than it is.

joe_the_user 5y ago

The regime supported by the USSR lasted several years after losing all Soviet support and with the Taliban getting full Pakistani and US aid. And this ended in a horrific blood bath (not to claim the Soviet-supported regime by itself was anything to write home about). So there's some incentive for the urban population, especially women, to resist the rise of the Taliban. It should be noted the US has spent twenty years in the nation aligned with the drug lords of what was once the Northern Alliance, a group that could, among other things, could never develop the country. It's not surprising the US could get nowhere. It's a history of pain and tragedy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan#Taliban_and_the_United_Front_(1996%E2%80%932001) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan#Taliban...

chriselles 5y ago
Not entirely correct. The Soviet Union supported government of Afghanistan fell very quickly, and only after, Soviet aid was cut in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

vmception 5y ago

This is like escape from Saigon without the escape part

olivermarks 5y ago

Unfortunately the US left the Taliban a huge cache of weapons and equipment, and this Sky video discusses that no women were seen on the streets during their filming as the fundamentalists rapidly take over the country. https://youtu.be/f37xrmiqmnU https://youtu.be/f37xrmiqmnU I wish the Guardian had a more realistic approach in their choices of 'news' stories, they tend to promote tiny events they are interested in as though they are huge, distorting people's understanding of what is actually occurring

shadilay 5y ago
Afghanistan will return to the way it has always been for time immemorial.
- colinb 5y ago
  which 'always'? The rotten kleptocracy it appears to be right now (from my cosy European point of view)? The warring tribal zealot-ridden hellhole it was after the Soviet invasion? Or the (apparently) fast-advancing more-or-less liberal democracy it was before the Soviet invasion? People and countries can change. And people and countries DO change. I think the lesson I've learned from my safe distance these last 20 years is that it is hard to influence the direction in which this change happens, even with the expenditure of blood and treasure. Oh, you can stir shit up, but there's no knowing how it will settle. [incidentally, it really isn't clear to me why this sort of thing seems to have worked well for the de-nazification of Germany and pacification of Japan]
  - shadilay 5y ago
    You say countries change but the only part of Afghanistan that's changed at all is the cities. Once you get out of the cities you're turning the clock back a thousand years. It was never anything like a "liberal democracy". The fundamental political unit is the tribe and any analysis that does not use the word tribe is misinformed. It's very difficult for someone from the west to understand that a society so different from their own can exist today. It's a pastoral society centuries removed. There is no print media, no radio, no cell phones. Travel is difficult, and only possible some times of year. Most people in Afghanistan have never heard of 9/11 and do not understand the war(s). https://www.pbs.org/video/pbs-newshour-what-does-911-mean-to-people-in-afghanistan/ https://www.pbs.org/video/pbs-newshour-what-does-911-mean-to... edit: The comparison to Germany and Japan shows just how out of context Afghanistan is to western eyes. In european terms Afghanistan is pre roman europe. No roads, no laws, no central government, no news, no standing army. By contrast germany was a western country and japan was westernizing very quickly post Meiji.

ssijak 5y ago

How large is this Taliban group? Where do they get the weapons ? Are they recruiting local populous where they take grounds (by force or they get many volunteers?)? I mean, after decades of screw ups in that country and war and destruction, I can't imagine for the majority to wan't to fight more, especially for a group who want sharia law, but maybe I am totally clouded by my European thinking.

shadilay 5y ago
The Taliban is a hybrid tribal confederacy and an offshoot of the Pakistani ISI run by the children of the madrassas funded by the gulf states. It's main purpose is preventing Iranian influence via Afghan Shia's. Afghanistan is best thought of as a separate planet and you cannot apply a European perspective. For example most in Afghanistan have never heard of 9/11. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904103404576556531604340742 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904103404576556... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPWjuswmNIE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPWjuswmNIE
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  It is surprising to me that the Taliban, seemingly a fringe and unpopular group even in Afghanistan itself, are so good at clinging to power. But what do I know.
  - shadilay 5y ago
    Not entirely surprising. The Taliban is mostly comprised of Afghan refugees who were raised in the madrassas of Pakistan. These were funded by the gulf states and the CIA and controlled by the ISI. With foreign money the Taliban bribes the tribal leaders. The tribe is the fundamental political unit in Afghanistan and always has been. In the early invasion US special forces found every foreign fighter was carrying something like 10k USD. The 'pitch' is as follows. The Taliban are Afghani's returning home to help their people. They have the legitimacy of islam and bring money to support the locals. They are neither fringe nor unpopular.

jandrese 5y ago

Having the Taliban retake the country was inevitable. The US went in there stating flat out that they were not going to stay in the country forever. The Taliban hears this and goes "Oh really? Because we are." So now all Afghans have to ask themselves. Am I going to back the people who are going to leave in a few years? Even if you hate the Taliban (and a lot of people do), they'll kill you if you oppose them and your allies aren't going to be around to help. The grand American plan of uniting a bunch of tribes that have been at war with each other of centuries was never going to work either, even if you could find some magical unicorn of a local leader that wasn't hopelessly corrupt.