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Can someone please explain to me how just 75 thousand warfighters are able to take over a country with a population larger than Canada? Is it a question of arms

Can someone please explain to me how just 75 thousand warfighters are able to take over a country with a population larger than Canada? Is it a question of arms? If so, why didn't we arm them before leaving? Because the only conclusion I have with this whole mess is that Afgans do not want to resist the Taliban. I abhor war, but if this were happening in Canada people, men and women, would fight with whatever they could their hands on.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Because the population is letting them. These people DGAF about "Afghanistan" the nation in the western sense. The nation is not a nation. It's a series of tribes, ethnicity and clans that happen to share an area that is all shaded one color on a map. Those groups are where their allegiances lie. They don't have a multi hundred year history of nationalism like European nations do. Furthermore lots of them don't really want a national government because national governments tend to try to steal power and control by these other institutions and homogenize things which they see as a negative.
shadowtree 5y ago
The Afghan population is on their side. The size of the "army" does not matter. The ANA (Afghan Army) has no willpower to fight, just bail when confronted. The US overthrew the Taliban, but never "liberated" Afghanistan as most of the population was on the Talib side. The alternative was warlords and constant civil war. ...and Pakistan helped quite a bit too :)
engineer_22 5y ago
The Afghan "Army" was a bunch of young men who just wanted to draw a steady pay check. There's nothing in it for them without an American Power Structure in the country.
- nradov 5y ago
  ANA soldiers often didn't even receive steady pay. Their corrupt officers stole it.
hourislate 5y ago
>Because the only conclusion I have with this whole mess is that Afgans do not want to resist the Taliban. This...
rafale 5y ago
Less than 1000 poorly trained and armed guerrillero lead by Fidelo Castro managed to take Cuba when the Cuban army had over 35 thousands soldiers. The disparity is even more crazy during the battle for Mosul that saw a few hundred ISIS fighters defeat 60k armed forces. It depends on what are you fighting for. An ideal/belief or money.
hasperdi 5y ago
Here's a very good explanation of why... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab9zK8yT4_Y https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab9zK8yT4_Y Basically Afghanistan is very mountainous and Taliban can just cross the border easily into Pakistan
Ennis 5y ago
The answers about the population not having the will to fight miss the point completely and are irrelevant and propagate racist views. Afghanistan has a pre-existing system of tribal relationships that are constantly dynamic. The Taliban are effective because they negotiated a path with the pre-existing power structures. The central government is only one player of many. CBC wrote a brief article on this recently: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/taliban-revival-aug13-1.6139643 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/taliban-revival-aug13-1.613...
tut-urut-utut 5y ago
Because the Taliban are an actual liberating army, fighting a bunch of traitors and foreign financed government [1] / army. Now that the main occupying forces are gone, Afghanistan is coming back to the state they always wanted to be. [1] from the Afghan population point of view.
yyyk 5y ago
A) The US built the Afghan army and state so that it would be utterly dependent on US support, and later withdrew in such a way as to maximize Taliban advantages (e.g. by demanding the release of Taliban prisoners, withdrawing from bases at night without informing the ANA etc.). On the other side, Taliban has full state support from Pakistan which never wavered and was smart enough to know how to manage them politically (something the US is really really bad at and is at the root of US failure, not just in AfPak). B) Smart warlords knew where the wind was blowing when the US decided to withdraw, and defected to the other side. Oh, and previously, the Afghan president was encouraged to alienate the warlords. Though on this, guilt is only shared, since both Ghani and the US wanted to act so stupidly. C) It's not 75 thousand, that estimate has no legs to stand on, but that's much less important.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

Because the population is letting them. These people DGAF about "Afghanistan" the nation in the western sense. The nation is not a nation. It's a series of tribes, ethnicity and clans that happen to share an area that is all shaded one color on a map. Those groups are where their allegiances lie. They don't have a multi hundred year history of nationalism like European nations do. Furthermore lots of them don't really want a national government because national governments tend to try to steal power and control by these other institutions and homogenize things which they see as a negative.

shadowtree 5y ago

The Afghan population is on their side. The size of the "army" does not matter. The ANA (Afghan Army) has no willpower to fight, just bail when confronted. The US overthrew the Taliban, but never "liberated" Afghanistan as most of the population was on the Talib side. The alternative was warlords and constant civil war. ...and Pakistan helped quite a bit too :)

engineer_22 5y ago

The Afghan "Army" was a bunch of young men who just wanted to draw a steady pay check. There's nothing in it for them without an American Power Structure in the country.

nradov 5y ago
ANA soldiers often didn't even receive steady pay. Their corrupt officers stole it.

hourislate 5y ago

>Because the only conclusion I have with this whole mess is that Afgans do not want to resist the Taliban. This...

rafale 5y ago

Less than 1000 poorly trained and armed guerrillero lead by Fidelo Castro managed to take Cuba when the Cuban army had over 35 thousands soldiers. The disparity is even more crazy during the battle for Mosul that saw a few hundred ISIS fighters defeat 60k armed forces. It depends on what are you fighting for. An ideal/belief or money.

hasperdi 5y ago

Here's a very good explanation of why... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab9zK8yT4_Y https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab9zK8yT4_Y Basically Afghanistan is very mountainous and Taliban can just cross the border easily into Pakistan

Ennis 5y ago

The answers about the population not having the will to fight miss the point completely and are irrelevant and propagate racist views. Afghanistan has a pre-existing system of tribal relationships that are constantly dynamic. The Taliban are effective because they negotiated a path with the pre-existing power structures. The central government is only one player of many. CBC wrote a brief article on this recently: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/taliban-revival-aug13-1.6139643 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/taliban-revival-aug13-1.613...

tut-urut-utut 5y ago

Because the Taliban are an actual liberating army, fighting a bunch of traitors and foreign financed government [1] / army. Now that the main occupying forces are gone, Afghanistan is coming back to the state they always wanted to be. [1] from the Afghan population point of view.

yyyk 5y ago

A) The US built the Afghan army and state so that it would be utterly dependent on US support, and later withdrew in such a way as to maximize Taliban advantages (e.g. by demanding the release of Taliban prisoners, withdrawing from bases at night without informing the ANA etc.). On the other side, Taliban has full state support from Pakistan which never wavered and was smart enough to know how to manage them politically (something the US is really really bad at and is at the root of US failure, not just in AfPak). B) Smart warlords knew where the wind was blowing when the US decided to withdraw, and defected to the other side. Oh, and previously, the Afghan president was encouraged to alienate the warlords. Though on this, guilt is only shared, since both Ghani and the US wanted to act so stupidly. C) It's not 75 thousand, that estimate has no legs to stand on, but that's much less important.