Afghanistan

[TheNewbie]

That idea has been floated for a long time. It was a flaw in our cultural blindness that all cultures want to be like us. They will welcome our intervention and installation of our form of government with people who seem to be our puppets. They might have understood a pure revenge motive as theirs is a revenge culture. Kill Osama and his crew (debate about screwing up that mission early on).

Gulf War II was a similar delusion that we would be welcomed as the Liberators of Paris (oh, Baghdad) and a new government would be a duplicate of ours and welcomed. Why we even designed a new flag for them (that looked like an Israeli flag).

Bush had touch of messianic mission in him. Others did too. Lots of them thought that trade with China would democratize them. They never conceived that they could run their Communist government (which looks like other dynastic autocracies in China from the past as well as Communist) and modern business techniques. They didn't understand that their goal would be to re-establish their place as the central Middle Kingdom of the area with vassals states and then look to the rest of the world.

Some cultures want to stay what we consider as religious and human rights primitives and don't want to modernize. Some want to take technology and become peers with their cultures. The Japanese did it and now the Chinese. We are always amazed when they pull it off.

The world really must be in trouble. Glenn and I mostly agree on a major issue.


Time to buy peanut butter, rice, and .22 ammo. The end is here.



I wonder how things would have went had we fought "WW2 style". Totally defeat the enemy, whatever the overall cost.

[Ed L]

If the vast majority don't believe, how come that vast majority can wrest control from the Taliban? You might debate that with the author who seems to have reasonable experience in the area.

My take is that they are not as dedicated or organized as the Taliban--or organized at all. Also, people who see the writing on the wall will join with the Taliban and support it as a means of survival and advancing their self interest/

[TGS]

There is vast data amassed that the vast majority of Afghans do not wish to remain primitives.

I'm unfamiliar with this data, but at the same time I'm suspicious to the legitimacy of the data you're referencing. I'm basing this on my experience living/working with Pashtuns for the last year (which happens to be the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan), in addition to my training/education on them in the form of full-time residential schooling. I work/live with not just modernized pathans, but I also supervise a unit of ~70 tribal pashtun fighters. I've broken bread with them, even when our covid rules prohibited it, as I was intent on creating necessary bonds when you're asking people to, if need be, fight and die beside you.

Thing is, pashtunwali (trans:way of life of the pashtun) predates and takes precedence over Islam. A superb example of demonstrating this a story (fable?). A pig was running loose in a village off the historic Grand Trunk Road between Jalalabad and Peshawar. Being that pigs are haram in Islam, the villagers were chasing the pig, trying to get it out of their village. JHC chased little piggie until it ran into TGS's house. TGS stops JHC, blocking JHC from entering his house.

"What are you doing!?" exclaims JHC. "That pig is haram, we must rid it from our village!"

"Remember the ways of our people, dear brother" says TGS. "One of the core tenets of our way of life is nanawatai, asylum. While the pig is haram, it ran into my house seeking help, shelter...protection. I am obligated to protect this pig, this is our way of life, from the beginning of time". And so the villagers left the pig alone in TGS's house, albeit the pig would be fair game as soon as he leaves.

So, just a little story telling that hopefully points out why Afghanistan will likely never advance. The people in that area are generally uninterested in advancing, as their way of life doesn't rely on it like ours does. They would never support a centralized government that doesn't prioritize pashtunwali and Islam, which is why they've never supported a central government besides the Durrani empire.....and why during the 1947 India/Pakistan partition, the Pashtuns in both Afghanistan and Pakistan wanted to join forces and secede, creating a 2nd Durrani empire. Lastly, if they had a central government that did prioritize pashtunwali, it would never last in the international arena as their way of life is at odds with modern international politics. On the latter, just look at the trouble Pakistan has with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the (former) Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Until 2018 they didn't even try applying law to FATA, and today it's still pretty much the wild west regardless....and even in KPK Province proper which has been under central government rule for the last hundred years, the central Pakistan government still has to make allowances in the law for the pashtuns to self-govern to an extent outside the law.

I'm not sure what data this is, but if it were accurate then we wouldn't see people living literally the same way they've been living for the last few thousand years, even before Islam made its way east. I'm suspicious that most of the people surveyed in such data understand what "primitive" versus "modern" even is, to be honest. We're talking about people who didn't know what 9/11 even was, what the twin towers looked like, or frankly.....what America is. They might be anti-Taliban, but keep in mind that the Taliban is an Islamofascist entity. They are the sturmabteilung translated into Pashtun. They do not represent the traditional Pashtun way of life, and actively repress traditional Pashtun societal structures, norms, and even pashtunwali in an effort to centralize their power. There's a totally different conversation here that is a complete rabbit hole, but basically the only way Afghanistan would ever advance is through continual rule by the Taliban and eventual rebellion against them. However it happens, it's something the people of Afghanistan have to find their own way forward on.

Long winded, but hopefully at least interesting. I submit this with relative humility; no intent to speak down to you or anyone else, and nothing more than an observation based on my life experiences.

[Caballoflaco]

@TGS thanks for writing that. There is something I’ve been wondering that maybe you could share your thoughts on. WTF is it that’s allowed the Taliban to take control of the country after the Russian left and now after us. Doe you think their extremist beliefs allow them “embrace the horror” as Kurtz would say and just use violence more effectively or be more comfortable with doing horrible things than your average Pashtun dude.

[Wake27]

@TGS thanks for writing that. There is something I’ve been wondering that maybe you could share your thoughts on. WTF is it that’s allowed the Taliban to take control of the country after the Russian left and now after us. Doe you think their extremist beliefs allow them “embrace the horror” as Kurtz would say and just use violence more effectively or be more comfortable with doing horrible things than your average Pashtun dude.

Unity. Maybe not in our sense but much moreso than the average Pashtun dude.


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[Shotgun]

Slightly out of my lane because I missed GWOT, but Bill Rapier, who has experience in Afghanistan, has an interesting proposal. Instead of trying to nation-build or install democracy, he suggests we should have smashed the taliban, installed a friendly government, and left with the warning "if you get out out of line, we'll be back shortly to smash you again". Repeat as necessary. This makes as much sense as anything else. He discusses it here, although I can't recall the timestamp.

That is about as good a solution as any with regard to a guerilla force like the Taliban. Smash and leave mighty be preferable to smash and stay where our fine servicemen and women are constantly in harm's way.

[TGS]

@TGS thanks for writing that. There is something I’ve been wondering that maybe you could share your thoughts on. WTF is it that’s allowed the Taliban to take control of the country after the Russian left and now after us. Doe you think their extremist beliefs allow them “embrace the horror” as Kurtz would say and just use violence more effectively or be more comfortable with doing horrible things than your average Pashtun dude.

What Wake27 said.

The Taliban uses centralized control. They can throw a lot of weight around compared to a village which is only beholden to itself, and to a lesser extent the villages around it within their own tribe. Refer back to the Taliban being Islamofascist in nature compared to the traditional Pashtuns, and discarding some of pashtunwali. For instance, bringing no harm to women; the Taliban capitalizes on punishing women and children to make their point, whereas such would be prohibited, bring you shame, get you killed or ostracized, etc for regular pashtuns. See the 2014 Peshawar school massacre; it was a bridge too far for Tehrik-e-Taliban (Pakistani Taliban, seperate entity from "the Taliban" in Afghanistan). Ended up being a straw that broke the camels back, as they didn't have the control they needed to pull off that stunt since Pakistan has a strong functioning central government (note, pashtuns are also not the biggest ethnic group), and it backfired in their faces with virtually all support dropping out from underneath them. People previously sympathetic to TTP (what social justice warriors might call "allies" instead of "activists") said no way, no more. Even some of the "advocates" or "activists" in social justice warrior terms, what an intelligence officer might call a facilitator, suddenly stopped returning phone calls. Killing 132 school kids was beyond the pale, and did more to curtail terrorism in Pakistan probably as much as anything we/the government of Pakistan did. It really galvanized society against terrorists, something most Afghans didn't have the luxury of when similar shenanigans hit their locale given the complete lack of an effective functioning government that could push back.

Anyway, back to unity, take note that the Northern Alliance [to overthrow the Taliban] in the 90s was mostly composed of Tajiks, a minority in Afghanistan...pashtuns didn't really join in (to any meaningful degree) until the late stages, mostly with American assistance/recruitment.

The unit I'm in charge of does a lot of team-building during their academy to create unity and adherence to a greater, non-tribal identity; something completely foreign to many pashtuns that don't grow up in a major city. The team building begins in a similar way to schools in western nations; sports and stuff included. In addition, they eat, live, sleep, fight, and die as a family. When they enlist, they stay with that platoon until they're KIA or make it to retirement. Thus, the effort to create and embrace unity among them is a constant throughout their service to a degree that isn't really present in western nations. It also helps that some of them joined the organization because the terries murdered their families/villages.

[HCM]

https://twitter.com/warcrimex/status...927113732?s=20

[Yung]

Tam linked and commented on a couple news articles about the remnants of the Afghani Air Force over the weekend.
https://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspo...l-warfare.html

Tangent, but about a year ago Chris Cypert had an episode on Ballistic Radio.
http://ballisticradio.com/2020/08/15...8-episode-325/

[TGS]

So how's Afghanistan fairing?

Isobel Yeung from VICE News did an outstanding documentary that was aired in mid-February. So, it's been a few months, but I think it's worth checking out.

To sum it up in one picture for those that don't have the time right now: