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You realize that the Afghan people by and large do not want Taliban rule, right? Very few want to be ruled by a violent, oppressive theocracy. Personally I woul

You realize that the Afghan people by and large do not want Taliban rule, right? Very few want to be ruled by a violent, oppressive theocracy. Personally I would like the US to leave Afghanistan as well, but I have sympathy for the people who may have to suffer Taliban rule. Ideally the international or at least regional community would step in.

Causality1 5y ago
Step in and do what? Occupy the country indefinitely? How many decades will it take for Afghanistan to stop being Afghanistan?
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Why not? Americans haven't been engaged in ground combat operations for years now outside of special forces. They were just providing the weapons, logistics, training, and air power to contain the Taliban. That seems reasonably sustainable. Make it into South Korea with airstrikes.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    Afghanistan is about the same size as Texas, permanent occupation is technically manageable. However, it would bring hate upon the US. It’s also a proxy-war with Russia, who might be funding the opposite side, so the costs to colonization are not just occupation, but hedging the spendings of all other countries who don’t want USA to occupy the zone. So, impossible if we don’t get others on board, among Arab countries in general, perhaps China or Russia too.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      Many already (and will always) hate the US, and the US has the GDP to outlast declining Russia. If anything, this is a test bed for remote force projection. If Afghans want US protection that doesn’t require boots on the ground, that seems reasonable considering capabilities already available. “Peace through superior firepower.”
      - kook_throwaway 5y ago
        Peace and allies through collateral damage.
        toomuchtodo 5y ago
        Do nothing, do something, we lose in a way regardless.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        > the US has the GDP to outlast declining Russia I particularly look forward to Russia’s declining influence as the world transitions away from oil. As much as people like to criticize US leadership and government, the Kremlin is on a whole different level (and I’m glad that this isn’t such a controversial sentiment among liberals since 2016).
        laurent92 5y ago
        Counterpoint: Global warming can make most of Russian inhabitable, enable farming on vast regions, and the Northern Route of merchandise through the poles can make them a central actor in international commerce. Meanwhile “every country has a reason to hate US”, hating the US is often the easy game to play in local politics, and maybe all of them are joining the tipping jar to pay those who can make us decline. Loss of trust towards media and institutions, judges ruling that monopolies can keep rolling or judges “not acting” when clearly facing criminal activity, loss of trust towards police, activism groups which I’d wonder how they remain out of prison, that requires funding and bribes; if I were the Talibans, China, Russia, or any country of the middle east really, I would fund them until the US collapses or loses its dominant position. It’s all hypothesis but it’s easy to implement. It’s not a given that USA doesn’t decline in front of other, less hated superpowers.
    - rascul 5y ago
      > It’s also a proxy-war with Russia If that's the case, it's a recent development in the last several years. Possibly since the Ukraine incident. Russia and the Taliban have been enemies for decades before.
  - avsteele 5y ago
    Take a look at the territory controlled by the Taliban vs time while we were at this level. They were not contained. We just were keeping them out of a few urban areas. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57933979 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57933979
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      > We just were keeping them out of a few urban areas. How is that not containment if they can’t take major areas?
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      I skimming your link, it seems the Taliban didn’t take significant territory until the US pulled out altogether. In the time during which the US was not actively fighting on the ground but was providing logistic support and air strikes and so on, the Taliban were effectively kept at bay.
      - avsteele 5y ago
        You need to look a bit more carefully, and ideally at more than just at the one link. The US and gov controlled the country entirely at one point. By 2017 The large swaths of the country are contested. 61% by 2018. The writing was on the wall. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/08/world/asia/us-misleads-on-afghanistan.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/08/world/asia/us...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I’m an American, so my taxes have footed the bill for Afghanistan’s security and liberty for the last twenty years. I don’t like that this is the cost (and I’m sympathetic to people who are frustrated at the expense), but seeing how quickly the Taliban have swept in, I would rather maintain a minimal force for another two decades, especially if the burden could be shared by the International community and perhaps specifically the regional community who have the most to gain from a free Afghanistan. It’s probably not reasonable to expect a country to effectively adopt democracy in just a few years’ time, so maybe we should anticipate longer time horizons.
  - Causality1 5y ago
    Occupying Afghanistan is just throwing money and blood down a hole for what exactly? For people who don't want us there? Because we're too embarrassed to admit there are problems we can't solve with M16s and Coca-Cola? It's the graveyard of empires for a reason. Even if you snapped your fingers and right now political violence was forever ended in Afghanistan it still wouldn't have been worth the cost. A foreign occupying force isn't "fixing" Afghanistan any more than an orderly is fixing a violent mental patient by sitting on his chest.
roenxi 5y ago
I agree, my brother! The idea that these Muslims could govern themselves leaves me in tears of laughter and what they really need to sort them out is an American colonial presence. This failed 20 year US strategy can only work out great in the long term for the people of Afghanistan! ... and without the dripping sarcasm, in all seriousness, the US has been destabilising the Middle East for decades and will happily overthrow any government, people's choice or otherwise. The only justice in this situation is eventually it might bankrupt the American taxpayer as payback for their inability to get the militant lunatics out of government.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  85% of Afghans have “no sympathy for the Taliban”, never mind support them. Not really a strong mandate, democratic or otherwise: https://asiafoundation.org/publication/afghanistan-in-2019-a-survey-of-the-afghan-people-executive-summary/ https://asiafoundation.org/publication/afghanistan-in-2019-a...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - thinktankie 5y ago
    Ah, The Asia Foundation, a very reliable source of authentic Afghan opinions. "The Asia Foundation (TAF), a Central Intelligence Agency proprietary, was established in 1954 to undertake cultural and educational activities on behalf of the United States Government in ways not open to official U.S. agencies."[17] The Asia Foundation is an outgrowth of the Committee for a Free Asia, which was founded by the U.S. government in 1951.[18] CIA funding and support of the Committee for a Free Asia and the Asia Foundation were assigned the CIA code name "Project DTPILLAR".[19] In 1954, the Committee for a Free Asia was renamed the Asia Foundation (TAF) and incorporated in California[20] as a private, nominally non-governmental organization devoted to promoting democracy, rule of law, and market-based development in post-war Asia. In the 1950s, the Asia Foundation “clandestinely supported anti-Communist motion picture industry personnel, ranging from producers, directors, and technicians to critics, writers, and general intellectuals in many parts of Asia.”[21] Among the original founding officers of the board, there were several presidents/chairmen of large companies including T.S. Peterson, CEO of Standard Oil of California (now Chevron), Brayton Wilbur, president of Wilbur-Ellis Co., and J.D. Zellerbach, chairman of the Crown Zellerbach Corporation; four university presidents including Grayson Kirk from Columbia, J.E. Wallace Sterling of Stanford, and Raymond Allen from UCLA; prominent attorneys including Turner McBaine and A. Crawford Greene; Pulitzer Prize-winning writer James Michener; Paul Hoffman, the first administrator of the Marshall Plan in Europe; and several major figures in foreign affairs. In 1966, Ramparts revealed that the CIA was covertly funding a number of organizations, including the Asia Foundation.[17] A commission authorized by President Johnson and led by Secretary of State Rusk determined that the Asia Foundation should be preserved and overtly funded by the US government. Following this change, The Asia Foundation was classified as a private, nonprofit, nongovernmental organization under the section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.[22] The Foundation began to restructure its programming, shifting away from its earlier goals of "building democratic institutions and encouraging the development of democratic leadership" toward an emphasis on Asian development as a whole (CRS 1983).” Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asia_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asia_Foundation
fnord77 5y ago
where do new taliban come from? It's been 20 years since the original invasion and the Taliban from back then are probably either all dead or too old to fight. So it must be a popular ideology for some.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  If wikipedia is to be believed, there are something like 60K Taliban. Out of a country of over 30 million. It's pretty easy to recruit that small of a force from that large of a population. What seems more noteworthy is that the Afghan military can't seem to defend effectively against them even with 3x the personnel.
- neartheplain 5y ago
  Or it could be that the Taliban just pays fighters better [0] compared to the central government in Kabul. Their annual revenue from drug trafficking, extortion, and donations exceeds $1.5B USD [1]. Private citizens from Pakistan and Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar give hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban each year [2]. Taliban fighters are also funded and trained directly by the Pakistani government [3]. Little wonder that they're able to take whole towns and cities without fighting, especially when the central government's fighters are underpaid when they're paid at all [4]. [0] https://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/09/taliban-pay-vs-afghan-forces-pay/ https://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/09/taliban-pay-vs-... [1] https://theconversation.com/the-taliban-are-megarich-heres-where-they-get-the-money-they-use-to-wage-war-in-afghanistan-147411 https://theconversation.com/the-taliban-are-megarich-heres-w... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46554097 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46554097 [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/10302946 https://www.bbc.com/news/10302946 [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-security-idUSKCN1LX0FK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-security-idUS...
  - pseudo0 5y ago
    Going off 2009 numbers, the US spent $5.8 billion in foreign aid on the Afghan Security Forces Fund, and about a billion more on various counternarcotics programs [0]. This funding went up to around $10 billion in 2011, and slowly declined to around $3.6 billion in 2019. This also doesn't include the air support, troop advisors, special forces, etc. that we provided to supplement Afghanistan's government, or the international aid provided by other coalition partners. So they clearly have a massive financial advantage over the Taliban, as this doesn't even include tax revenue and other standard military funding sources. Also, your [4] link is specifically talking about the police being underpaid and undertrained, not the army. My guess is that it primarily comes down to a huge motivation gap. The Afghani soldiers and police are in it for a paycheck, not to get shot, while the Taliban are fighting for an ideological cause they perceive to be just. [0] - https://foreignassistance.gov/cd/AFG?measure=Obligations&fiscal_year=2009 https://foreignassistance.gov/cd/AFG?measure=Obligations&fis...
hereforphone 5y ago
No, he doesn't realize that. And no, the international community should not step in. They already did. This administration gave up on that friendship. Many will die because of that.
notsureaboutpg 5y ago
This isn't true. There are many many stories of rural Afghans supporting the Taliban because they, unlike the corrupt US-backed government, actually fight and punish crime and thus make life a bit more bearable for people who have been without a stable government for decades. When you live in the West your view of oppression is "They make you dress some way. They kill you for adultery, etc." But the vast majority of people have problems like "These are my cattle and he is saying they are his and no one will accept my proof that they are mine" or "People brazenly steal from us because no one will stop them and we can't feed our families". Bodily autonomy is not on the list of things 90% of the world cares about. Only elites who live in big cities care about these things.
bobcostas55 5y ago
Maybe they should try putting up a fight, then.
- pm90 5y ago
  Who should?
  - bobcostas55 5y ago
    The Afghan people who by and large do not want Taliban rule.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Motivation alone is insufficient for ordinary citizens to assemble into an effective fighting force. You need competent leadership, training, and experience. The Taliban has those qualities and by all appearances the Afghan military does not.

Causality1 5y ago

Step in and do what? Occupy the country indefinitely? How many decades will it take for Afghanistan to stop being Afghanistan?

MattGaiser 5y ago
Why not? Americans haven't been engaged in ground combat operations for years now outside of special forces. They were just providing the weapons, logistics, training, and air power to contain the Taliban. That seems reasonably sustainable. Make it into South Korea with airstrikes.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Afghanistan is about the same size as Texas, permanent occupation is technically manageable. However, it would bring hate upon the US. It’s also a proxy-war with Russia, who might be funding the opposite side, so the costs to colonization are not just occupation, but hedging the spendings of all other countries who don’t want USA to occupy the zone. So, impossible if we don’t get others on board, among Arab countries in general, perhaps China or Russia too.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Many already (and will always) hate the US, and the US has the GDP to outlast declining Russia. If anything, this is a test bed for remote force projection. If Afghans want US protection that doesn’t require boots on the ground, that seems reasonable considering capabilities already available. “Peace through superior firepower.”
    - kook_throwaway 5y ago
      Peace and allies through collateral damage.
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
        Do nothing, do something, we lose in a way regardless.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      > the US has the GDP to outlast declining Russia I particularly look forward to Russia’s declining influence as the world transitions away from oil. As much as people like to criticize US leadership and government, the Kremlin is on a whole different level (and I’m glad that this isn’t such a controversial sentiment among liberals since 2016).
      - laurent92 5y ago
        Counterpoint: Global warming can make most of Russian inhabitable, enable farming on vast regions, and the Northern Route of merchandise through the poles can make them a central actor in international commerce. Meanwhile “every country has a reason to hate US”, hating the US is often the easy game to play in local politics, and maybe all of them are joining the tipping jar to pay those who can make us decline. Loss of trust towards media and institutions, judges ruling that monopolies can keep rolling or judges “not acting” when clearly facing criminal activity, loss of trust towards police, activism groups which I’d wonder how they remain out of prison, that requires funding and bribes; if I were the Talibans, China, Russia, or any country of the middle east really, I would fund them until the US collapses or loses its dominant position. It’s all hypothesis but it’s easy to implement. It’s not a given that USA doesn’t decline in front of other, less hated superpowers.
  - rascul 5y ago
    > It’s also a proxy-war with Russia If that's the case, it's a recent development in the last several years. Possibly since the Ukraine incident. Russia and the Taliban have been enemies for decades before.
- avsteele 5y ago
  Take a look at the territory controlled by the Taliban vs time while we were at this level. They were not contained. We just were keeping them out of a few urban areas. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57933979 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57933979
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    > We just were keeping them out of a few urban areas. How is that not containment if they can’t take major areas?
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I skimming your link, it seems the Taliban didn’t take significant territory until the US pulled out altogether. In the time during which the US was not actively fighting on the ground but was providing logistic support and air strikes and so on, the Taliban were effectively kept at bay.
    - avsteele 5y ago
      You need to look a bit more carefully, and ideally at more than just at the one link. The US and gov controlled the country entirely at one point. By 2017 The large swaths of the country are contested. 61% by 2018. The writing was on the wall. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/08/world/asia/us-misleads-on-afghanistan.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/08/world/asia/us...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway894345 5y ago
I’m an American, so my taxes have footed the bill for Afghanistan’s security and liberty for the last twenty years. I don’t like that this is the cost (and I’m sympathetic to people who are frustrated at the expense), but seeing how quickly the Taliban have swept in, I would rather maintain a minimal force for another two decades, especially if the burden could be shared by the International community and perhaps specifically the regional community who have the most to gain from a free Afghanistan. It’s probably not reasonable to expect a country to effectively adopt democracy in just a few years’ time, so maybe we should anticipate longer time horizons.
- Causality1 5y ago
  Occupying Afghanistan is just throwing money and blood down a hole for what exactly? For people who don't want us there? Because we're too embarrassed to admit there are problems we can't solve with M16s and Coca-Cola? It's the graveyard of empires for a reason. Even if you snapped your fingers and right now political violence was forever ended in Afghanistan it still wouldn't have been worth the cost. A foreign occupying force isn't "fixing" Afghanistan any more than an orderly is fixing a violent mental patient by sitting on his chest.

roenxi 5y ago

I agree, my brother! The idea that these Muslims could govern themselves leaves me in tears of laughter and what they really need to sort them out is an American colonial presence. This failed 20 year US strategy can only work out great in the long term for the people of Afghanistan! ... and without the dripping sarcasm, in all seriousness, the US has been destabilising the Middle East for decades and will happily overthrow any government, people's choice or otherwise. The only justice in this situation is eventually it might bankrupt the American taxpayer as payback for their inability to get the militant lunatics out of government.

rich_sasha 5y ago
85% of Afghans have “no sympathy for the Taliban”, never mind support them. Not really a strong mandate, democratic or otherwise: https://asiafoundation.org/publication/afghanistan-in-2019-a-survey-of-the-afghan-people-executive-summary/ https://asiafoundation.org/publication/afghanistan-in-2019-a...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- thinktankie 5y ago
  Ah, The Asia Foundation, a very reliable source of authentic Afghan opinions. "The Asia Foundation (TAF), a Central Intelligence Agency proprietary, was established in 1954 to undertake cultural and educational activities on behalf of the United States Government in ways not open to official U.S. agencies."[17] The Asia Foundation is an outgrowth of the Committee for a Free Asia, which was founded by the U.S. government in 1951.[18] CIA funding and support of the Committee for a Free Asia and the Asia Foundation were assigned the CIA code name "Project DTPILLAR".[19] In 1954, the Committee for a Free Asia was renamed the Asia Foundation (TAF) and incorporated in California[20] as a private, nominally non-governmental organization devoted to promoting democracy, rule of law, and market-based development in post-war Asia. In the 1950s, the Asia Foundation “clandestinely supported anti-Communist motion picture industry personnel, ranging from producers, directors, and technicians to critics, writers, and general intellectuals in many parts of Asia.”[21] Among the original founding officers of the board, there were several presidents/chairmen of large companies including T.S. Peterson, CEO of Standard Oil of California (now Chevron), Brayton Wilbur, president of Wilbur-Ellis Co., and J.D. Zellerbach, chairman of the Crown Zellerbach Corporation; four university presidents including Grayson Kirk from Columbia, J.E. Wallace Sterling of Stanford, and Raymond Allen from UCLA; prominent attorneys including Turner McBaine and A. Crawford Greene; Pulitzer Prize-winning writer James Michener; Paul Hoffman, the first administrator of the Marshall Plan in Europe; and several major figures in foreign affairs. In 1966, Ramparts revealed that the CIA was covertly funding a number of organizations, including the Asia Foundation.[17] A commission authorized by President Johnson and led by Secretary of State Rusk determined that the Asia Foundation should be preserved and overtly funded by the US government. Following this change, The Asia Foundation was classified as a private, nonprofit, nongovernmental organization under the section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.[22] The Foundation began to restructure its programming, shifting away from its earlier goals of "building democratic institutions and encouraging the development of democratic leadership" toward an emphasis on Asian development as a whole (CRS 1983).” Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asia_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asia_Foundation

fnord77 5y ago

where do new taliban come from? It's been 20 years since the original invasion and the Taliban from back then are probably either all dead or too old to fight. So it must be a popular ideology for some.

rootusrootus 5y ago
If wikipedia is to be believed, there are something like 60K Taliban. Out of a country of over 30 million. It's pretty easy to recruit that small of a force from that large of a population. What seems more noteworthy is that the Afghan military can't seem to defend effectively against them even with 3x the personnel.
neartheplain 5y ago
Or it could be that the Taliban just pays fighters better [0] compared to the central government in Kabul. Their annual revenue from drug trafficking, extortion, and donations exceeds $1.5B USD [1]. Private citizens from Pakistan and Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar give hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban each year [2]. Taliban fighters are also funded and trained directly by the Pakistani government [3]. Little wonder that they're able to take whole towns and cities without fighting, especially when the central government's fighters are underpaid when they're paid at all [4]. [0] https://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/09/taliban-pay-vs-afghan-forces-pay/ https://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/09/taliban-pay-vs-... [1] https://theconversation.com/the-taliban-are-megarich-heres-where-they-get-the-money-they-use-to-wage-war-in-afghanistan-147411 https://theconversation.com/the-taliban-are-megarich-heres-w... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46554097 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46554097 [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/10302946 https://www.bbc.com/news/10302946 [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-security-idUSKCN1LX0FK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-security-idUS...
- pseudo0 5y ago
  Going off 2009 numbers, the US spent $5.8 billion in foreign aid on the Afghan Security Forces Fund, and about a billion more on various counternarcotics programs [0]. This funding went up to around $10 billion in 2011, and slowly declined to around $3.6 billion in 2019. This also doesn't include the air support, troop advisors, special forces, etc. that we provided to supplement Afghanistan's government, or the international aid provided by other coalition partners. So they clearly have a massive financial advantage over the Taliban, as this doesn't even include tax revenue and other standard military funding sources. Also, your [4] link is specifically talking about the police being underpaid and undertrained, not the army. My guess is that it primarily comes down to a huge motivation gap. The Afghani soldiers and police are in it for a paycheck, not to get shot, while the Taliban are fighting for an ideological cause they perceive to be just. [0] - https://foreignassistance.gov/cd/AFG?measure=Obligations&fiscal_year=2009 https://foreignassistance.gov/cd/AFG?measure=Obligations&fis...

hereforphone 5y ago

No, he doesn't realize that. And no, the international community should not step in. They already did. This administration gave up on that friendship. Many will die because of that.

notsureaboutpg 5y ago

This isn't true. There are many many stories of rural Afghans supporting the Taliban because they, unlike the corrupt US-backed government, actually fight and punish crime and thus make life a bit more bearable for people who have been without a stable government for decades. When you live in the West your view of oppression is "They make you dress some way. They kill you for adultery, etc." But the vast majority of people have problems like "These are my cattle and he is saying they are his and no one will accept my proof that they are mine" or "People brazenly steal from us because no one will stop them and we can't feed our families". Bodily autonomy is not on the list of things 90% of the world cares about. Only elites who live in big cities care about these things.

bobcostas55 5y ago

Maybe they should try putting up a fight, then.

pm90 5y ago
Who should?
- bobcostas55 5y ago
  The Afghan people who by and large do not want Taliban rule.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Motivation alone is insufficient for ordinary citizens to assemble into an effective fighting force. You need competent leadership, training, and experience. The Taliban has those qualities and by all appearances the Afghan military does not.