The Taliban’s terrifying triumph in Afghanistan

https://www.economist.com/asia/2021/08/15/the-talibans-terrifying-triumph-in-afghanistan

by bongoman37 • 5 years ago

38 62 5 years ago

truffdog• 5 years ago

There is no mention of any failures of the occupation, atrocities committed by NATO forces or the old Afghan government, just an axiomatic belief that imperialism is good. Very on brand for the Economist.

1cvmask• 5 years ago

Same sentiments Mark Twain said during the genocides in the Philippines during the Spanish-American wars.

https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/features/mark-twain-phi...

dcolkitt3• 5 years ago

Whatever valid criticisms exist, they’re simply incomparable to the insanely evil human rights abomination that is the Taliban.

It’d be like asking after the Nazi invasion of France “why is nobody talking about the human rights abuses in Algeria?”

EDIT: Downvotes for the very controversial opinion of... checks notes... saying the Taliban has less respect for human rights abuses than the United States.

cududa• 5 years ago

…you’re aware the Nazis occupied Algeria, yes?

toomuchtodo• 5 years ago

You’re not wrong about the Taliban, but it is also untenable for American forces to remain in a country after trillions of dollars, two decades, and so many lives were lost when Afghans were never going to fight for themselves. Evacuate everyone who wants out, leave behind those who choose to exist under Taliban rule. Treat it like Cuba but with more support for those who intend to flee (arranged safe passage through diplomatic and military supply chains, for example).

trasz2• 5 years ago

How many people have been killed by Taliban, compared to the number of victims of US invasion?

bsder• 5 years ago

It is easy to naysay and complain.

The problem is ... what does a positive outcome for Afghanistan look like and how do you get there?

And, if we couldn't get there in 20 years, should we be there at all?

Apparently, there is not enough fight in any group in Afghanistan to oppose the Taliban. So, now what?

credit_guy• 5 years ago

just an axiomatic belief

So you prefer a data-driven belief, don't you? Let's see, this ICC probe [1] (ICC = International Criminal Court, a court that the US does not recognize, and also a court that it not known to be US-friendly) alleges:

  >> Taliban actions are believed to have resulted in tens of thousands of civilian casualties [...] The Afghan security forces are being investigated for several war crimes against hundreds of civilians [...] The U.S. armed forces and CIA are now under investigation for war crimes against around eighty victims

So, the Taliban made tens of thousands of victims, the Afghan security forces hundreds, and the US armed forces "around 80".

Your turn, please.

[1] https://www.cfr.org/article/iccs-probe-atrocities-afghanista...

AtlasBarfed2• 5 years ago

Paywall, but the economist is basically written like a fantasy what-if-the-british-empire-never-fell.

Yeah, they're going to think it's disaster.

But from what I've read on the couple times I've looked into Afghanistan:

- The Taliban always ruled rural Afghanistan.

- The Afghan government was so corrupt it make other corrupt regimes embarrassed.

- The Afghan government was basically an opium/poppy narco-state supported by our troops.

- The western desire is to have centralized control over a country to economically exploit it. Thus the ECONOMIST is going to view that as terrifying.

- We did not "bring civilization to the savages", the old big lie of building schools for the conquered so that we don't feel like Ghenghis Khan.

So is this article basically the predictable neolib hangwringing about not being able to extract resources from the third world?

oezi• 5 years ago

Even if you don't care, there are enough stories/videos/message of Afghans in tears at losing the little bits of freedoms that western military and billions could grant.

About the economic exploitation argument: I fail to see any scenario in which any of coalition countries could have hoped to gain even a tenth of a percent back of the money the war in Afghanistan has cost them.

AtlasBarfed2• 5 years ago

It's right next to China and Iran. So it represented a geopolitical pincer attack on Iran to get to their oil. Which, you know, mattered about twenty years ago.

Afghanistan has a ton of natural resources that the West wanted to exploit.

And of course, China was right next door, so yet another geopolitical game of ta thorn in their side.

mensetmanusman3• 5 years ago

America doesn’t have the patience to oversee Afghanistan like was done with Germany, South Korea, Japan, etc.

It takes many decades…

warning26• 5 years ago

To use one of your examples, the occupation of Japan was from 1945 to 1952, less than 10 years. Allied occupation of Germany was even shorter, at less than 5 years.

So, in short, no, it does not take decades.

mensetmanusman3• 5 years ago

America still has military bases in Japan and Germany.

anonAndOn• 5 years ago

The Okinawans might disagree with you.

PradeetPatel• 5 years ago

It has been established that the German and Japanese cultures are a lot more compatible with "western" ideologies, compared to the more culturally diverse system in Afghanistan.

At the risk of coming off rather callous, it is believed that the sustained conflicted has created a significant amount of value for the stakeholders at varies millitary contractors, as well as provided invaluable experience for the US millitary to trial out their latest weapons and doctrines.

Is it really a loss in the grand scheme of things though?

blacktriangle2• 5 years ago

There's also a fundamental difference in the population between these places that might have somethingn to do with it.

aksss7• 5 years ago

Something we shouldn't overlook is that Afghanistan is land-locked, Germany and Japan are not. The lack of coastline is a serious impediment to economic and civil development. Without any opportunity to build serious industry in Afghanistan, the effort would at least take far longer than Japan and Germany, both of which also had an existing culture of manufacturing and industry to build upon.

One may say that Afghanistan is also doomed to forever be a "developing" nation given this constraint. How many first-world landlocked nations can you name? Great, now how many outside the EU trade and border alliances? Right.

Edit: here's some source data with interesting stats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landlocked_country

Interesting to me is that the only landlocked countries with higher populations are Ethiopia and Uganda. Also, their only escape from this state of affairs would be a trade/border alliance with a neighboring country that does have coastline. Prospects look pretty dismal in that candidate list.

xrd2• 5 years ago

I would really love to have someone summarize how we "oversaw" Japan and Germany as opposed to Afghanistan. I wonder if we built more or less schools (or any at all) and invested in different ways in the past or now.

I always lament the trillions spent on war machines and (bad assumption?) very little spent on improving society through education.

People in the US lament the high cost of education here, but I really wonder what would have happened if we had just taken all that money and handed it to the Afghan government with an expectation it needed to be spent on infrastructure or education instead of our military bases. Am I totally wrong to think that's how it went down?

SpicyLemonZest• 5 years ago

I might say "you've been lied to" rather than "you're totally wrong", but basically yeah. The US followed precisely the strategy you're suggesting for most of the occupation, the Afghani government could not or would not reliably channel the funding towards real schools, and the US found it expedient to avoid pushing too hard for accountability. (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/azmatkhan/the-big-lie-t...)

andyv• 5 years ago

I would really love to have someone summarize how we "oversaw" Japan and Germany as opposed to Afghanistan.

Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, bad as they were, still had traditions associated with modern civilization. After the war, the infrastructure was devastated, but they had what economists refer to as "human capital"-- experienced engineers, miners, farmers, architects, people in all construction trades, etc. They had the knowledge and the desire to rebuild, and with the Marshall Plan, the money to do it.

The Taliban doesn't want to build/rebuild Afganistan. They want it to remain firmly in the 7th century, albeit with modern weapons. There is certainly human capital in Afganistan, but they face a real uphill battle.

forz877• 5 years ago

Seeing these comparisons is frustrating and makes it easy to understand why Afghanistan continues to be an enigma to westerners who think they know and understand the realities there on the ground.

mensetmanusman3• 5 years ago

It's a post hoc comparison of attempts at nation building, sorry for the confusion if it seemed like I was implying.

Analemma_• 5 years ago

Decades? We let Japan run itself after seven years.

Funnily enough, Noah Smith at Bloomberg had a great take just today about how trying to use Japan as an example of how nation-building in Afghanistan could’ve been successful is a farce: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-afghanistan-occupation...

geoalchimista• 5 years ago

America doesn’t have the patience to oversee Afghanistan like was done with Germany, South Korea, Japan, etc.

In what way are a loose collection of tribesmen dwelling in the hill country in Afghanistan comparable to Germany, among whose exports to the US are the most brilliant minds of humankind?

You didn't mention that before the post-war occupation, there were functioning institutions in Germany, South Korea, and Japan. This is different from building a state from scratch. Can't do "nation-building" when a nation is not there to begin with.

yongjik• 5 years ago

Germany/Korea/Japan had a sense of shared identity dating back centuries (or more). Also two of them just lost a total war they started themselves, so arguably not in a position to complain too much. So, very different situations.

TheBobinator• 5 years ago

US has energy independance due to Fracking so it's pulling out and leaving behind all sorts of toys while handing the Taliban a political victory. China is dependant on ME energy imports and Russia due to its collapsing demographics only cares about taking the Carpathanian mountains and a chunk of Turkey to have a defensible border.

The Chinese need to take Taiwan to break out of the first island chain to secure energy Imports, but even if they take Taiwan this year or next, they now have to deal with a Taliban 3-5 years down the road that have American training and arms and all of whom have experience fighting Americans for the last 20 years. So if they take Taiwan they'll end in a direct conflict with Japan, Indonesia and India while the world shifts it supply chain to India whom has healthier demographics than China, and even if China manages to maintain its energy supply chain, it has to deal with disruption in the middle east and has to ship troops over to fight an arguably better equipped and more experienced adversary.

Should be interesting to see how this one plays out.

randomopining5• 5 years ago

The Russia take makes no sense. They already have physical defense. They’re just trying to re-carve their sphere that they had.

China has no need for invading Afghanistan. They’re just gonna make clever minimalistic deals with the Taliban to extract rare metals and such. That’s all they need there.

China’s Achilles heel is their burning desire for Taiwan and to always save face, as well as their imports of oil. Other than that they’re a tough enemy.

I’m glad Biden recalibrated towards taking on the CCP since they’re clearly our largest threat and also the free worlds.

aksss7• 5 years ago

archive site is getting hammered today capturing the myriad hot-takes out there on Afghanistan, but for posterity this article is archived at: https://archive.is/l5IPA

horns4lyfe• 5 years ago

I think since the beginning the Taliban taking over was inevitable, as Afghanistan is not really a cohesive nation and any army assembled will behave as such. That said, the way this retreat has been executed is horrifically bad. It’s mind-boggling that this is the best the pentagon and Biden admin could come up with.

aazaa• 5 years ago

How did a government with 350,000 soldiers, trained and equipped by the best armies in the world, collapse so quickly?

A better question: how did the (arguably at this point) most powerful country on earth fail to understand even the most basic principles of life in Afghanistan and why any counterinsurgency effort, no matter how well-funded and armed, must ultimately end where it has? And even worse, why did this country not learn exactly the same lesson 50 years ago?

ohmysoks• 5 years ago

Having soldiers deployed to a country for 20 years, yet barely any interest in learning the local language and customs just shows arrogance. The kind that leads to hate i presume since day one they left all tribes turned against the us.

Sending illiterate midwest boys to fight illiterate mideast boys doesn't win wars it would appear, nor do pompous speeches about democracy and equal rights when at home the wrong race can get you killed.

Instead, sending hordes of goats, agriculture tools, building irrigation systems, and generally speaking showing them what the alternative to their current lifestyle is may have won the war.

But you know, deluding one selves with statements such as “the most powerful country on earth” show an utter lack of understanding of one’s position. Richest? Yes, for now. Most powerful? Well, recent events in ag, a failed coup in the us, a barely winning fight against a pandemic and the many examples of rampant corruption puts some serious questions over that tag.

Certainly the us cant protect those working for them, such as translators and local allies, let alone defend the status of “mOsT pOwErFuL” country. The us needs to spend some time reflecting over its past decades because other than debt and wall street shares not much is going up - not its reputation nor its ability to actually win wars.

Edit: imbeciles censoring harsh truths.

LatteLazy• 5 years ago

They did understand.

The agreement with the Taliban includes the assumption they'll be running the country. It requires them to do the sorts of things governments do like issuing visas and being responsible for the whole place.

Now, after the agreement made months ago, and unanimously supported by the UN security council, everyone wants to pretend this wasn't part of the plan.

dandotway2• 5 years ago

+1, this is the text of the February 2020 deal signed between the USA and Taliban which stipulates full removal of all USA troops:

https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-F...

Reading between the lines, the USA is shifting focus to 'containing China', and now the USA and China are competing over who the Taliban will have better relations with given that Afghanistan shares a 47-mile border with China that leads into Uygur Xinjiang where the Communist Chinese are putting Uygur Muslims in "Re-education through labor"[1] camps. Thus China has already been courting the Taliban[2] in hopes of preventing, say, the CIA from supporting the Taliban in a proxy-insurgency along the Xinjiang border, just as the CIA supported the pre-Taliban Mujahedeen against the Soviets in the 1980s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/world/asia/china-taliban-...

randomopining5• 5 years ago

Biden is recalibrating towards taking on the CCP. Afghanistan was a waste. Never was gonna work and besides the rare earth metals they don’t have anything we need. Waste of soldiers and logistical support and air power.

We need to take on CCP head on. Give nukes to SK and Japan and then declare that if any sovereignty of them or Taiwan is violated, we will instantly nuke all known military bases in CCP-land.

No more games with these autocratic devils.

onepointsixC2• 5 years ago

Fine, let's leave. But wild idea, maybe we should have evacuated Afghans who helped us and American citizens first, before having our soldiers leave. Instead Biden just blamed Afghans for not getting out sooner before going back to his vacation. Especially considering there's a 18,000 backlog on visa's for translators and other at risk Afghans, plus 54,000 for their families.

randomopining5• 5 years ago

Actually that's not what he did. He blamed the Afghan government and army for literally dissolving in 1 week to 10 days. Within 10 days they gave up like 17 of the largest cities, eventually Kabul, a city of 4.5 million people literally in a couple of hours.

It was absurd. Who would've predicted that? And what would Trump have done differently, since I'm sure that's your guy. He wanted to pull out by May.

Obviously from your vacation comment (he was at Camp David which is like 30 mins by heli from the White House)... you're just being partisan and a troll.

dandotway2• 5 years ago

Perhaps Kabul fell so fast because the CIA is actually helping the Taliban to ultimately harass China across the 47-mile long China Afghanistan border[1], which leads right into Xinjian province where Chinese communists are putting Uygur Muslims in concentration re-education camps.

The CIA aided the proto-Taliban insurgency against Russia in the 1980s in what made Afghanistan become Russia's own "Vietnam." During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s the USA aided Saddam Hussein's Iraq against Islamist Iran while at the same time the CIA was secretly selling weapons to Iran to get money to fund anti-socialist rebels in Nicaragua, in what became called the Iran-Contra Affair[2].

So the USA has a history of playing both sides, and it's not tinfoil-hat conspiracy-theory crankery to conjecture that the CIA told the Taliban how to crush the Afghan government troops in exchange for an understanding that the Taliban would soon be orchestrating a rebel insurgency across the Chinese border to liberate their oppressed Muslim brothers, because the Taliban is now more valuable as a proxy-war partner against rising China than the corrupt incompetent Afghan government was.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan%E2%80%93China_bord...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair

TheCuriousGuy• 5 years ago

China will get access to the natural resources at a fraction of what US spent in Afghanistan all these years. More discussion in this podcast episode: https://jingle.fm/p/tabadlabs-dragon-road-1570336991/s01-e08...

The Taliban’s terrifying triumph in Afghanistan

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