If the Taliban are brazenly taking over districts while our coalition is there, what will happen if we ever leave? I think we asked the same question for a decade in Vietnam, but it proved impossible to stop the NVA’s takeover of South Vietnam. Does this remind you of stories related to the Viet Cong?
Rahman said the insurgents looted the government buildings and are now in control of the district.
Waygal residents are torn over whether to side with the Taliban or government forces, the police chief said.
“If the government has control of the district, people will support the government,” he said. “If the Taliban is in control, people will support the Taliban.”
It’s basically “who controls the night” controls the population. I think the NVA had a lot more legitimacy than the Taliban, but I’m not sure that Karzai is any better than the series of clowns that tried to run South Vietnam. At least he’s the right religion.
I just don’t think there is any hope for Afghanistan. If ever a country was doomed, it seems that Afghanistan is that country.
Nobody cares about Afghanistan. It’s just sad.
It was such an uncharacteristic, craven, corrupt, disastrous move by the Obama administration to keep throwing bodies into that maw, but there it is. It’s going to be the ugly blemish on his legacy that people will feel uncomfortable talking about, like FDR interning Japanese Americans.
Afghanistan will never become what you Americans want to force it to be. Left alone, to determine its own direction it would evolve into what it is supposed to be.
Ditto Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrayn, Yemen, etc., etc.
You mean a place that is orderly enough to control its own territory such that militants/terrorists/etc. can’t set up training camps without the government’s permission? If that is indeed the case then that would present us with an uncomfortable dilemma in terms of ultimately solving that problem…
So THAT’s what you’re trying to force Afghanistan to be. And how’s that going after ten years?
Poorly, which is the norm for nation-building and one of the primary reasons why many of us advise against it in virtually all circumstances.
Completely disagree. Don’t forget that the Taliban ran the Afghan government for five years, and was only displaced by, essentially, a foreign invasion (which used the Northern Alliance, a collection of discredited, despised warlords, as its fig leaf of legitimacy). Worse, the reason given for the foreign intervention and regime change – “harboring terrorists” – was a Bush invention with no basis in international law. The NVA never ran South Vietnam, and the South Vietnamese govt, ill-advised as it was, governed a country that was a product of an international process.
Yeah, how the Taliban governed Afghanistan was pretty problematic, but the international community didn’t much care or object before 9-11, and when the Taliban came into power they were widely supported (as a stark contrast to the collection of mass murderers and rapists they replaced). Karzai, a former CIA asset, was put in power by the Americans and kept there by massive infusions of foreign money, drug money, and electoral fraud. By comparison, the Taliban have a pretty good claim to running the country.
First, we’re using too different standards of legitimacy. The NVA had legitimacy with many in the south because of their defeat of the French and their basic anti-imperialist stance. The ARVN basically was in awe of them. What the international community thought of Ho Chi Minh is another matter.
Most people in Afghanistan hate the Taliban and don’t see them as the great defeaters of the Soviets or as having any real claim to power. In Pashtun country, obviously the Taliban has some hardcore support, but not overwhelming by any means.
I also disagree with your basic retelling of history. Only three countries recognized the Taliban. Saudi Arabia, because they were their “students,” Pakistan, because they were their proxies, and the UAE, because their leaders loved to take their falcons there.
I simply said the international community didn’t much care or object prior to 9-11 – not that they provided diplomatic recognition. But they looked the other way. Despite innumerous horrific stories coming out of Afghanistan during the Taliban’s reign, not much more than harsh words (and often far less) were ever offered.
The Taliban’s legitimacy didn’t come so much from fighting the Soviets as from displacing the thugs that ran the country after the Soviets, and from simply having held the reins of power for several years, before the US, essentially, deposed them. That, to me, is a different question from whether Afghans would prefer the Taliban – only whether they think the Taliban have a legitimate claim to power.
And all of this obscures the point that there’s been an enormous turnover in both the personnel and the makeup of the Taliban in the near-decade since their ouster. In a country where loyalty is freely bought and sold and where that commerce usually trumps ideology, I’m not sure anything’s too relevant other than that the Taliban are fighting foreign forces in Afghanistan. “Sure, they’re thugs, too, but at least they’re our thugs.” The relevant question isn’t whether the Taliban is perceived more legitimate than the NVA, it’s whether they’re perceived as more legitimate than Karzai, who has almost no legitimacy he hasn’t directly purchased or stolen.
In the end, though, Hurria is right, and your conclusion is, too. Afghanistan has been endlessly brutalized by successive waves of war criminals, foreign and homegrown alike, for nearly 40 years. I’m much more sympathetic to the movements of grass roots Afghans (especially women) who are rejecting both the Taliban and the US-led occupying forces (and Karzai, who will always be linked to them no matter how often he condemns our atrocities). A pox on both their houses.
What the Americans did was to replace one set of filthy, oppressive bastards with THEIR set of filthy, oppressive bastards.
Would it be possible to partition the country, essentially establish a truce with the Taliban and give them a portion of land to control? Would they be satisfied with that and would they allow another, presumably equal or larger, portion of Afghanistan to exist as a Western ally? Could we establish this zone and warn those within it that if they disagree with the Taliban jihad against America then they should move out of Taliban territory and into the “Safe Zone”? Then, monitor those people but not actively engage with them. And if we see terrorists training there bomb it unmercifully and not feel guilty about it because we gave advance warning and we’re only being consistent?
And if all of that were possible, would that be a good thing to do?
What on Earth do you think gives you the right to partition any country other than your own? Afghans and only Afghans have the right to make decisions about how their country is configured.
“Taliban jihad against America”? Seriously? Where did you get that? Do you even know the meaning of the word Jihad? There is not now nor has there ever been a “Taliban jihad against America”. The Taliban are fighting the United States in Afghanistan because the United States declared war on the Taliban, and has been bombing, shooting, and torturing the country and its people for the last ten years or so, not to mention that it has put into power its own filthy band of SOB’s in place of the Taliban SOB’s.
Oh, yeah, and bombing people unmercifully is ALWAYS a great idea, especially since you always get more women, children, and elderly people than anything else.