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You also shouldn't forget to hold the other powers to account that made it impossible to have peace in Afghanistan. Russia put out bounties on US soldiers, Ira

• zozbot234 5y ago
  Has there been any legitimate, benevolent government there in living memory? Perhaps they're simply better off with a king, much like the frogs in Aesop's tale.
  • baybal2 5y ago
    No, there weren't. The one king which ran off to Italy was somewhat moderately legitimate, and moderately popular, but not enough to survive having his key people assassinated, nor to gain meaningful foreign assistance (USA denied his plea to save his ass from communists.) It were Britishers who started this mess 140 years ago, and they must be the ones to fix this.
    • nradov 5y ago
      The British have no capability to fix this.
    • vxNsr 5y ago
      The way to fix this is to return the country to city states. No central ruler.
      • bayesian_horse 5y ago
        Then the city states go fight each other. Or somebody assembles a large enough militia to loot one city after another. Or multiple city states band together and lord it over others.
    • baybal2 5y ago
      * error above, it's been 180 years ago And since then, the country effectively had 180 years of slowly going civil war without much interruption sans for the few decades under king
  • bayesian_horse 5y ago
    I'm opinionated in the sense that the only "legitimate" government would be one that is chosen democratically and acts in a particular manner. And I'm particularly not saying that there is or must ever have been some particular "legitimate government" for every piece of land. I'm just saying that when the US went in and kicked out the Taliban, they definitely weren't making things worse from a lot of perspectives. They ultimately weren't able to solve all the problems, but that is a different question. The 20 years have largely been better than the years under Taliban rule.
  • ryneandal 5y ago
    IIRC, historically, the tribal settlements in the country never had a ton of interaction with each other due to the terrain. I think it's a great example of modern borders not making much sense given the interactions of the population.
    • bayesian_horse 5y ago
      There have often been buddhist, muslim and other kingdoms or larger military organizations in power in Afghanistan. It's not that the borders don't make sense, it's that the area as a whole is hard to rule and it's hard to pay for that ruling. Currently one could argue that the medieval kind of "political technology" used by the Taliban is superior to the democratic political technology, for this very reason.
      • ryneandal 5y ago
        Re-watched the video I was misremembering, and they're iterating exactly what you mentioned. I learned more about Afghanistan from this than anything in the news for the past two decades -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab9zK8yT4_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab9zK8yT4_Y
        • bayesian_horse 5y ago
          Also the win condition of the government and government forces was to keep order in all of Afghanistan, guarantee the rights of women, and generally promote economic progress. The Taliban's win condition was basically to inflict just enough damage the former condition would be impossible. Their troops are not far removed from criminals themselves: they loot, rape and torture.
          • ryneandal 5y ago
            I mean, we've seen conclusively with leaks like Collateral Murder -- there are no winners in war.
• youngtaff 5y ago
  Our allies in the Gulf States are also responsible too > Several Afghan and US officials have long accused several regional governments including Pakistan, Iran and Russia of giving financial aid to the Afghan Taliban, a practice they frequently deny. > Private citizens from Pakistan and several Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are considered the largest individual contributors. > Although impossible to measure, these sources of funding clearly provide a significant proportion of the Taliban's revenue, and according to experts and officials could be as much as $500m a year. > These links are long-standing. A classified CIA report estimated in 2008 that the Taliban had received $106m, from foreign sources, in particular from the Gulf states. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-46554097 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-46554097
• pepperonipizza 5y ago
  Russia bounty on US soldiers story was probably fake, medias were quiet when it was revealed. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2021/04/15/russia-afghanistan-bounties-psaki-481990 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2021/...
  • bayesian_horse 5y ago
    The article you are referring to actually says the story is probably true, but that the confidence of the intelligence community in this finding is only "weak to moderate". The much bigger problem was that Trump said outright this story is fake, instead of holding Putin's feet to the fire or getting behind the issue at all.
    • vxNsr 5y ago
      If every US president held Russia’s feet to the fire when the CIA had “weak to moderate” intel we’d be banging two rocks together for fire because WW3 would’ve happened already. Stop pretending to care.
      • bayesian_horse 5y ago
        Because there is no middle ground between sucking up to Putin and going to nuclear war with him.
        • vxNsr 5y ago
          Because while trump was increasingly trying to isolate Russia for its bad behavior comrade Biden rolled over in his first meeting and removed a bunch of restrictions. The story wasn’t that “Russia had a bounty on US soldiers” instead it was “Trump knew that Putin put out a bounty on US soldiers” neither story is true but you only really care about the second one because OMB. The point is your crocodile tears are a sad excuse for caring.
• Clubber 5y ago
  >Russia put out bounties on US soldiers That was BS. It's amazing what you find out when people are actually under oath. It was likely an intelligence "leak" to keep us in Afghanistan. These are the same organizations that tried successfully to convince us of "WMDs." I'm not sure why people continue take what they say at face value anymore, especially the news. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_bounty_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_bounty_program The Department of Defense (DOD), in testimony in July 2020 to the House Armed Services Committee by General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, said that U.S. defense intelligence agencies had no information to corroborate reports of a Russian bounty program in Afghanistan[37] and lacked evidence of "cause and effect linkages to a Russian bounty program causing U.S. Military casualties."[5][38] Citing credible unnamed sources, on June 26, 2020, The New York Times reported on a Russian military program to pay bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan.[17] Two days later, The Washington Post reported that the bounty program had resulted in the death of at least one U.S. soldier.[16]
• endisneigh 5y ago
  Why are you sure China had their fingers in there just as well? Why not Japan? Germany? Italy?
  • enumjorge 5y ago
    Saying China is as impartial as Japan, German, and Italy when it comes to foreign affairs involving the US is either incredibly naive or disingenuous. It doesn’t itself prove Chinese involvement, but there’s a clear history of tension between the American and Chinese governments.
  • tg180 5y ago
    At this point it's history: because China borders with Afghanistan and has a primary interest in the stability of the region. Wang Yi (the Chinese Foreign Minister) last July met in Tianjin a delegation of nine members of the Taliban. He promised support in the reconstruction of Afghanistan and asked them to interrupt links with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, accused to have perpetrated attacks in the Xinjiang. For Beijing, some Jihadist Uiguri would be affiliated with the organization. Wang promised to make the country part of the new Silk Road, contributing with infrastructure investments (motorways, hydroelectric energy, ...). This would prevent social, political and terrorist instability, while saving an unpleasant military action.
  • bayesian_horse 5y ago
    Germany and Italy did have troops in Afghanistan, but they worked to keep the peace. And China has not only a border with Afghanistan, it also has a history of shady dealings with neighbor countries in trouble.
• VictorPath 5y ago
  > The Taliban have never been the legitimate, much less the benevolent government of the Afghan people. If you've seen "The Handmaid's Tale" you have a general idea of what happened in the 90's That is because the USA armed and bankrolled the jihadists who overthrew the secular, left-leaning PDPA in the 1980s. Here is Ronald Reagan with the jihadists in the White House https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c9RWtx8myQc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c9RWtx8myQc It's inane for Americans to arm a jihadist insurgency against a left-leaning secular government, and then tear their vestments in some feigned moral superiority that the jihadists would take over the country thirty years later.
  • tablespoon 5y ago
    > That is because the USA armed and bankrolled the jihadists who overthrew the secular, left-leaning PDPA in the 1980s. Here is Ronald Reagan with the jihadists in the White House > https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c9RWtx8myQc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c9RWtx8myQc > It's inane for Americans to arm a jihadist insurgency against a left-leaning secular government, and then tear their vestments in some feigned moral superiority that the jihadists would take over the country thirty years later. It's weird that you wouldn't mention this important context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War > The foundations of the conflict were laid by the Saur Revolution, a 1978 coup wherein Afghanistan's communist party took power, initiating a series of radical modernization and land reforms throughout the country. These reforms were deeply unpopular among the more traditional rural population and established power structures.[56] The repressive nature of the "Democratic Republic",[57] which vigorously suppressed opposition and executed thousands of political prisoners, led to the rise of anti-government armed groups; by April 1979, large parts of the country were in open rebellion.[58] > The communist party itself experienced deep internal rivalries between the Khalqists and Parchamites; in September 1979, People's Democratic Party General Secretary Nur Mohammad Taraki was assassinated under orders of the second-in-command, Hafizullah Amin, which soured relations with the Soviet Union. With fears rising that Amin was planning to switch sides to the United States,[59] the Soviet government, under leader Leonid Brezhnev, decided to deploy the 40th Army across the border on 24 December 1979.[60] Arriving in the capital Kabul, they staged a coup (Operation Storm-333),[61] killing General Secretary Amin and installing Soviet loyalist Babrak Karmal from the rival faction Parcham.[58] The Soviet invasion[nb 1] was based on the Brezhnev Doctrine. Also, the Taliban started in 1994, and it's hard not to feel morally superior to people who do stuff like this: https://twitter.com/NasrinNawaBBC/status/1425139216443482112 https://twitter.com/NasrinNawaBBC/status/1425139216443482112.