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When the US invaded Afghanistan in the Taliban was defeated within about 6 weeks. US deterrence very much remained in place until it began to withdraw. Winning

When the US invaded Afghanistan in the Taliban was defeated within about 6 weeks. US deterrence very much remained in place until it began to withdraw. Winning against a force like the Taliban requires you to be able to operate with much looser ROEs than the US as well as operate against their enabled in the region and outside of it which the US was unable and or unwilling to do. The Taliban was formed in Pakistan and it drew many of its fighters from there it was true in the late 80’s and it’s true today. Winning a war and sustaining occupation are also completely different things, and most importantly this is about a peer or near peer enemy. An occupation that is actually being opposed can only be won by extermination or expulsion whilst wars are won by making it too costly to continue fighting and allowing for or forcing a surrender.

crooked-v 5y ago
The results of the US withdrawal make it pretty obvious that the Taliban as an organization were in hiding rather than defeated, and probably had backchannel communications going with local leaders the entire time the US was there, given that at least some of the rapid takeover of the country again seems to have come from pre-negotiated surrender agreements.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  They suffered many losses and run back to Pakistan to regroup, sat there for over 15 years and when the US began to withdraw they pretty much took Afghanistan back without a fight. To finish them off the US had to invade Pakistan or make it so costly for them to support the Taliban that they would have to give them up and they weren’t willing to do that for obvious reasons.
  - themihai 5y ago
    So the U.S. couldn't defeat the Taliban because Pakistan didn't allow it. I must say that I didn't the U.S to be deterred by Pakistan.
- sailfast 5y ago
  Afghanistan has a long history of clans based on warlords working for whomever seemed to be winning. “The Taliban” in this regard seems to me to be the group under which the warlords decided to congeal, rather than somehow being the same people hiding for two decades. It’s a simple matter of the way the wind is blowing. The same people who were there ruling under US occupation are now ruling as Taliban - same game with a different name. Highly recommend Steve Coll’s work on this topic.
- Sebguer 5y ago
  Backchannel? We literally signed the peace agreement with them last year, with our withdrawal being one of the conditions: https://apnews.com/article/terrorist-attacks-donald-trump-ap-top-news-qatar-doha-491544713df4879f399d0ff5523d369e https://apnews.com/article/terrorist-attacks-donald-trump-ap...
stickfigure 5y ago
> An occupation that is actually being opposed can only be won by extermination or expulsion I wonder this. If you think of it as memetic warfare, what weapons were brought to bear? The US had 20 years to reprogram a whole generation of Afghans. Did they supervise school curriculums? Force kids to attend? Shut down religious schools hostile to the government? Create entertaining TV programs with empowered women? Sure, that sounds Orwellian, but this is an occupied country. Wiping out certain cultural practices sure beats wiping out the humans.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  The literacy rate in Afghanistan is below 50% there was always a stark contrast between Kabul and a few other large cities to the rest of the country this was going back centuries over multiple iterations of what we call Afghanistan today. The level of support that the Taliban has in places like Kabul is pretty darn low, the problem was always that none of their opposition was ever strong enough to effectively oppose them mainly because of just how much external support the Taliban gets from Pakistan and many other regional actors. The Northern Alliance successfully opposed the Taliban for nearly a decade, its quite likely that some new iteration of it would also successfully oppose them today. (Tho in the past and most likely present that opposition would more likely to be some mutually agreed on stalemate with some periodic skirmishes than a live opposition). But until you deal with Pakistan the Taliban will always be there to stay. No form of social engineering would solve this, the tribal areas didn’t had night clubs or girls robotic teams under the US occupation either. And other than in Pakistan that’s where Afghanistan was lost.
  - vkou 5y ago
    > The literacy rate in Afghanistan is below 50% The literacy rate in Tsarist Russia was ~50% in 1916. The Soviet Union managed to raise it to 75% in two decades, despite a largely rural population, near-zero infrastructure, going through a civil war, famine, gross government mismanagement, being flat-broke, and having incredibly incompetent, and ideologically-bound leadership, that was more concerned with waging a war against its people, than actually governing them. If you're telling me that the United States, with an unlimited budget couldn't accomplish the same in two decades of occupying Afghanistan, I'll tell you it's not because it couldn't do it. It's because it didn't try. > No form of social engineering would solve this No form of social engineering if you don't actually try to build a national identity is going to solve that. National identities don't arise by an act of God, they arise out of focused top-down propaganda and education and cultural efforts. Every country that has a national identity built one through such a manner. Afghanistan didn't develop one in the past twenty years, because the occupation couldn't be assed to.
rtyuttttt 5y ago
> a force like the Taliban so now that the us couldnt beat them we promoted them to the status of a … “force”? illiterate, barefoot, malnourished, lacking an economy, and education, the taliban are now a “force” op thinks. > formed in Pakistan yeah mighty Pakistan, the country with a thriving economy and the mightiest tech innovation machine > winning a war and sustaining occupation the caliban simply moved from place a to place b and waited it out it’d much more beneficial to admit defeat and learn from it. there is no amount of tech that can wash the shame away and hide the fact that the us has been loosing wars despite trillions and gazzilions of dollars invested in useless tech. as the would be dictator of the us would put it: sounds good, doesn't work. the us lost to illiterate barefoot folk hiding in caves. period.
etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
Yeah, I imagine the US would have no technical problem doing the same thing that's happening in Xinjiang, but, we really don't want to.
jltsiren 5y ago
You win a war by achieving your political goals. It's entirely possible to win every battle and completely defeat the enemy but still lose the war, if those battles don't bring you any closer to achieving the goals. Or because you're not even sure what your goals are. An occupying force can win the war by convincing people that resistance is no longer worth it. That tends to require clear goals, a clear vision of the future, and selling that vision to the people.
themihai 5y ago
>> When the US invaded Afghanistan in the Taliban was defeated within about 6 weeks. They certainly don't look defeated now. I would say the opposite is actually more likely.Hint: the loosing team was scrambling to evacuate. >> US deterrence very much remained in place until it began to withdraw. Or you could simply admit that the U.S. lost the endurance test...what does it matter if the U.S won the first rounds if it threw the towel in the 12th round? I wonder what kind of signal is this for a more advanced enemy (i.e. China, Russia or even Venezuela).

crooked-v 5y ago

The results of the US withdrawal make it pretty obvious that the Taliban as an organization were in hiding rather than defeated, and probably had backchannel communications going with local leaders the entire time the US was there, given that at least some of the rapid takeover of the country again seems to have come from pre-negotiated surrender agreements.

dogma1138 5y ago
They suffered many losses and run back to Pakistan to regroup, sat there for over 15 years and when the US began to withdraw they pretty much took Afghanistan back without a fight. To finish them off the US had to invade Pakistan or make it so costly for them to support the Taliban that they would have to give them up and they weren’t willing to do that for obvious reasons.
- themihai 5y ago
  So the U.S. couldn't defeat the Taliban because Pakistan didn't allow it. I must say that I didn't the U.S to be deterred by Pakistan.
sailfast 5y ago
Afghanistan has a long history of clans based on warlords working for whomever seemed to be winning. “The Taliban” in this regard seems to me to be the group under which the warlords decided to congeal, rather than somehow being the same people hiding for two decades. It’s a simple matter of the way the wind is blowing. The same people who were there ruling under US occupation are now ruling as Taliban - same game with a different name. Highly recommend Steve Coll’s work on this topic.
Sebguer 5y ago
Backchannel? We literally signed the peace agreement with them last year, with our withdrawal being one of the conditions: https://apnews.com/article/terrorist-attacks-donald-trump-ap-top-news-qatar-doha-491544713df4879f399d0ff5523d369e https://apnews.com/article/terrorist-attacks-donald-trump-ap...

stickfigure 5y ago

> An occupation that is actually being opposed can only be won by extermination or expulsion I wonder this. If you think of it as memetic warfare, what weapons were brought to bear? The US had 20 years to reprogram a whole generation of Afghans. Did they supervise school curriculums? Force kids to attend? Shut down religious schools hostile to the government? Create entertaining TV programs with empowered women? Sure, that sounds Orwellian, but this is an occupied country. Wiping out certain cultural practices sure beats wiping out the humans.

dogma1138 5y ago
The literacy rate in Afghanistan is below 50% there was always a stark contrast between Kabul and a few other large cities to the rest of the country this was going back centuries over multiple iterations of what we call Afghanistan today. The level of support that the Taliban has in places like Kabul is pretty darn low, the problem was always that none of their opposition was ever strong enough to effectively oppose them mainly because of just how much external support the Taliban gets from Pakistan and many other regional actors. The Northern Alliance successfully opposed the Taliban for nearly a decade, its quite likely that some new iteration of it would also successfully oppose them today. (Tho in the past and most likely present that opposition would more likely to be some mutually agreed on stalemate with some periodic skirmishes than a live opposition). But until you deal with Pakistan the Taliban will always be there to stay. No form of social engineering would solve this, the tribal areas didn’t had night clubs or girls robotic teams under the US occupation either. And other than in Pakistan that’s where Afghanistan was lost.
- vkou 5y ago
  > The literacy rate in Afghanistan is below 50% The literacy rate in Tsarist Russia was ~50% in 1916. The Soviet Union managed to raise it to 75% in two decades, despite a largely rural population, near-zero infrastructure, going through a civil war, famine, gross government mismanagement, being flat-broke, and having incredibly incompetent, and ideologically-bound leadership, that was more concerned with waging a war against its people, than actually governing them. If you're telling me that the United States, with an unlimited budget couldn't accomplish the same in two decades of occupying Afghanistan, I'll tell you it's not because it couldn't do it. It's because it didn't try. > No form of social engineering would solve this No form of social engineering if you don't actually try to build a national identity is going to solve that. National identities don't arise by an act of God, they arise out of focused top-down propaganda and education and cultural efforts. Every country that has a national identity built one through such a manner. Afghanistan didn't develop one in the past twenty years, because the occupation couldn't be assed to.

rtyuttttt 5y ago

> a force like the Taliban so now that the us couldnt beat them we promoted them to the status of a … “force”? illiterate, barefoot, malnourished, lacking an economy, and education, the taliban are now a “force” op thinks. > formed in Pakistan yeah mighty Pakistan, the country with a thriving economy and the mightiest tech innovation machine > winning a war and sustaining occupation the caliban simply moved from place a to place b and waited it out it’d much more beneficial to admit defeat and learn from it. there is no amount of tech that can wash the shame away and hide the fact that the us has been loosing wars despite trillions and gazzilions of dollars invested in useless tech. as the would be dictator of the us would put it: sounds good, doesn't work. the us lost to illiterate barefoot folk hiding in caves. period.

etaioinshrdlu 5y ago

Yeah, I imagine the US would have no technical problem doing the same thing that's happening in Xinjiang, but, we really don't want to.

jltsiren 5y ago

You win a war by achieving your political goals. It's entirely possible to win every battle and completely defeat the enemy but still lose the war, if those battles don't bring you any closer to achieving the goals. Or because you're not even sure what your goals are. An occupying force can win the war by convincing people that resistance is no longer worth it. That tends to require clear goals, a clear vision of the future, and selling that vision to the people.

themihai 5y ago

>> When the US invaded Afghanistan in the Taliban was defeated within about 6 weeks. They certainly don't look defeated now. I would say the opposite is actually more likely.Hint: the loosing team was scrambling to evacuate. >> US deterrence very much remained in place until it began to withdraw. Or you could simply admit that the U.S. lost the endurance test...what does it matter if the U.S won the first rounds if it threw the towel in the 12th round? I wonder what kind of signal is this for a more advanced enemy (i.e. China, Russia or even Venezuela).