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US withdrawal from Afghanistan - your thoughts?

mTk said:
"Hundreds" of (unarmed) protesters? Boy, now that's gotta scare the Taliban. :ROFLMAO:
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Good point. Even if they were armed the Taliban would probably shoot at them. Just like they shot some of the unarmed protesters. Maybe they are disarming the people so the protesters are always disarmed. No chance of ever being shot back at then.

IMO the disarming of a population is sometimes an indication of tyranny and might be a clue to where Afghanistan is headed.
 
I don't think anybody is having any illusions that the Taliban regime won't be a tyranny.. it's just a case of hoping that it might be a bit less cruel and oppressive than last time.
 
Sgt Joch said:
I don't believe the Taliban have changed at all. They will say all the right words now, while U.S. troops are still in country and the whole world is watching, but the real litmus test will be what they do 6 months from now when the media has moved on to another crisis.
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I think a difference between 2001 and 2021 is that the US will negotiate with the Taliban today when they would not do so in the past. I think the Taliban has grown pragmatic enough to find it worth their while to do so. I'm also interested to see whether their ties with Pakistan's ISI hold up or break down now that the Taliban are back in power and can forego ISI conditions of support.
Bulletpoint said:
If the Afghan Army, 300,000 strong, armed with modern weapons and trained by the US army for 20 years, couldn't keep Taliban from taking over, then what is some shopkeeper going to do, armed or not?
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I suspect the security of the Afghan Army servicemen's families played a large role in these defections. When the Taliban tell them that they know where their families live and will kill them if said servicemen don't defect, those army soldiers probably figured that a government incapable of defending the folks back home no longer merits their support, especially given the endemic corruption of senior commanders and governing officials.
 
Badger73 said:
I suspect the security of the Afghan Army servicemen's families played a large role in these defections. When the Taliban tell them that they know where their families live and will kill them if said servicemen don't defect, those army soldiers probably figured that a government incapable of defending the folks back home no longer merits their support, especially given the endemic corruption of senior commanders and governing officials.
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True. I think many commanders could simply have been bought, too, and/or given the choice between joining the Taliban now and retaining some kind of rank, or being killed for a hopeless cause.

But the same argument can be used about any civilian opposition to the Taliban, no matter if protesters are armed with a few weapons or not. It's one thing to go out and fight, yourself, but would you risk your family ending up in a Taliban dungeon if the rebelllion fails?

My take on it is that if you can mobilise and coordinate enough armed civilians to take down a tyrannical regime, then you don't even need to be armed.
 
Stafford said:
I very much doubt the Taliban have changed, if anything it may even be for the worse. Why do I think this?
Firstly, they have nobody to keep them in check, they'll laugh at anything the UN has to say, the USA is packing up, and it's obvious nobody else on the planet wants to touch Afghanistan now.
Secondly, while the old Taliban were hard-line religious fundamentalists and apparently ruled along those lines, the new fighters may simply be more 'modern' minded, ie, not so bound by their Islamic rules - the old guard may have been brutal but if you stuck to their enforced Sharia law you were probably fairly safe, if the new guys are more sectarian minded then there's really nothing stopping them from doing whatever they want.
To put it in a nutshell, when a man with unlimited power becomes his own God, things can get very scary, very quickly.
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Old Taliban - Lawful Evil
New Taliban - Chaotic Evil
 
I really don’t give a rats ass what happens in Afghanistan, how they treat their people or their women. It’s their country, do what ever you want! Just as I don’t care what happens in Russia, or China. I care about what happens in the USA. Now if those countries attack us, send us covid, then we have to care about US once again and take action, but really, do any of you give a fuck about what happens in Afghanistan?

Or Iraq,Yemen or North Korea, or anywhere else for that matter. I don’t mean to come across as not caring..but I simply don’t.
 
Buckykatt said:
I really don’t give a rats ass what happens in Afghanistan, how they treat their people or their women. It’s their country, do what ever you want! Just as I don’t care what happens in Russia, or China. I care about what happens in the USA. Now if those countries attack us, send us covid, then we have to care about US once again and take action, but really, do any of you give a fuck about what happens in Afghanistan?

Or Iraq,Yemen or North Korea, or anywhere else for that matter. I don’t mean to come across as not caring..but I simply don’t.
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I actually care what happens in Afghanistan. I also care what happens in the US.

Do you care what happens in other states or just your own? Do you care what happens in other cities and towns other than the one you live in? Other neighbourhoods?

I'm not going to tell you that you should care, but I am just curious where you draw the line between what you care about and what you don't?
 
Bartimeus said:
My post was publish too fast and I can't change on from my mobile phone.
Back to Afghanistan, how are the first days of rule of the talibans so far? From what I heard the situation is calm in Kaboul and the International Red Cross even speak of "fluid situation"?
Is it possible that the talibans will be indeed more "open minded" as they say they will now that they are in charge?
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I think the country and its people have changed greatly over the last 20 years due to education and better communications so the Taliban will have to appeal to the people if they wish to rule for very long.
 
Bulletpoint said:
I actually care what happens in Afghanistan. I also care what happens in the US.

Do you care what happens in other states or just your own? Do you care what happens in other cities and towns other than the one you live in? Other neighbourhoods?

I'm not going to tell you that you should care, but I am just curious where you draw the line between what you care about and what you don't?
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I'll answer this. I actually care about what happens in other countries, but my "circle of caring" decreases the further away I get from the isocenter of my actual home. So, the further away from me you are, the less I care. Obviously, I care the most about my immediate family and friends. After that, I care about what happens in Tennessee, then the rest of the USA, then the world. There are exceptions, as in are you from an allied (NATO) country? If yes, then I care more about you than I would about a non NATO country, even if you are further away, geographically. Do you have similar values? If yes, then I care more about your well being than someone who doesn't share my values. And so on and so forth.

As for Afghanistan, I pretty much don't care what happens to the Taliban. They can all die and I would not lose a wink of sleep. There are, however, U.S. allies/translators/religious refugees, and others who's lives are in dire danger right now, and who need to be evacuated. The current U.S. govt dropped the ball, and now private organizations are trying to pick up the pieces and evacuate these people who are in dire need. I care about that.
 
burning_phoneix said:
The Taliban didn't exist during the 1980s War against the Soviet Union. The main problem isn't Trillions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of troops. Many nations changed completely with less investment. It's simply that the foreign backed government had absolutely no grounding in the society on which it was to rule over. It was completely inorganic and foreign to them with no real grassroots support or influence.
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To be complete It wasn't only that the foreign backed government had absolutely no grounding in society. Society in large parts of Afghanistan has been for a long while dysfunctional (at least in our modern views), with power in the hands of regional warlords who have plenty of money, guns and people who don't have nothing to lose and will muder, rape and pillage for a next dose of opium.

IIRC the north-west frontier province, or rather the tribes in the mountainous / barren region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, were already notorious a long while ago. I've read (but it's a long time ago) that after some attempts by the British to subdue and control the area, they actually were happy with that status quo as a nice buffer area between their crown colony India and forces that could threaten it, in their views.

So, it's a bit of an area of the world where the processes which have taken place in many other places, haven't really occurred and so in some regards the 'evolution' we have undergone didn't happen there. Probably for quite some people trying to stay alive there, the Taliban aren't worse than the local 'governor' aka warlord or perhaps even more humane.

Edit: I care about all people too, wish all the best but I try to limit my circle of concern. That's hard when you see desperate people falling of planes they were trying to cling on. Or children / girls that perhaps lose their recently acquired liberties to get some form of education, etc. Although I don't think anyone here is actually happy to see such things happen, just that they phrase it differently how they deal with things.
 
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chiquichops said:
I think the country and its people have changed greatly over the last 20 years due to education and better communications so the Taliban will have to appeal to the people if they wish to rule for very long.
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We hope they appeal to the people. However I don't think they have to appeal to the people. At least not in the same manner we in the West would envision appealing to the people. I suspect their rule will be characterized by their version of traditional tribal and religious norms regulated by sharia law.

Over the next several weeks or few months they may try to play nice with the West until the foreign troops and journalists are completely gone. After the Taliban have things locked down they will control education, communication etc. Most who have an education or prefer Western values and can leave, will have left. Those who stay will follow the rules or suffer the consequences.

These guys are serious believers who, values/culturally/religiously, just stepped out of a time portal circa 632AD. It might be unrealistic to expect them to compromise and play nice and not fully use their newly won power to implement their form of government and cultural / religious beliefs.

I hope you are correct @chiquichops. Time will tell. I'm afraid for Afghanistan it might be medieval time.........
 
MOS:96B2P said:
We hope they appeal to the people. However I don't think they have to appeal to the people. At least not in the same manner we in the West would envision appealing to the people. I suspect their rule will be characterized by their version of traditional tribal and religious norms regulated by sharia law.

Over the next several weeks or few months they may try to play nice with the West until the foreign troops and journalists are completely gone. After the Taliban have things locked down they will control education, communication etc. Most who have an education or prefer Western values and can leave, will have left. Those who stay will follow the rules or suffer the consequences.

These guys are serious believers who, values/culturally/religiously, just stepped out of a time portal circa 632AD. It might be unrealistic to expect them to compromise and play nice and not fully use their newly won power to implement their form of government and cultural / religious beliefs.

I hope you are correct @chiquichops. Time will tell. I'm afraid for Afghanistan it might be medieval time.........
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Well we were still burning witches and squaring people not that long ago ;-)
 
MOS:96B2P said:
Over the next several weeks or few months they may try to play nice with the West until the foreign troops and journalists are completely gone. After the Taliban have things locked down they will control education, communication etc. Most who have an education or prefer Western values and can leave, will have left. Those who stay will follow the rules or suffer the consequences.

These guys are serious believers who, values/culturally/religiously, just stepped out of a time portal circa 632AD. It might be unrealistic to expect them to compromise and play nice and not fully use their newly won power to implement their form of government and cultural / religious beliefs.

I hope you are correct @chiquichops. Time will tell. I'm afraid for Afghanistan it might be medieval time.........
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The time is *now* to evacuate those who value freedom.
 
Lethaface said:
Well we were still burning witches and squaring people not that long ago ;-)
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I think you mean "quartering" instead of "squaring". I'm not sure how Dutch translates into English for that.

To your point though, those practices ended three centuries ago in the Western world. European based societies experienced the Enlightenment, Industrial Age, Nuclear Age, and Information Age (as well as dozens of European and two world wars) since then. I think the Taliban mindset is close enough to 7th Century Jihadism that 632 AD is not too far a stretch given stoning and severing body parts still occur in judicial practice. Taliban modernization mostly consists of AK-47's and RPG's replacing scimitars and bowmen in long standing familial based tribal organizations.
 
I saw this thread a bit late and raced in thinking it was going to be some screaming political and religious match. I am pleasantly surprised. :D

Taylor can stay in the closet and doesn't need to lockdown the thread... (keep it civil)
anigif_sub-buzz-12089-1604948597-7_preview.gif


:D
 
Badger73 said:
I think you mean "quartering" instead of "squaring". I'm not sure how Dutch translates into English for that.
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Lol yes you're right. It was probably late lol :).

Badger73 said:
To your point though, those practices ended three centuries ago in the Western world. European based societies experienced the Enlightenment, Industrial Age, Nuclear Age, and Information Age (as well as dozens of European and two world wars) since then. I think the Taliban mindset is close enough to 7th Century Jihadism that 632 AD is not too far a stretch given stoning and severing body parts still occur in judicial practice. Taliban modernization mostly consists of AK-47's and RPG's replacing scimitars and bowmen in long standing familial based tribal organizations.
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In their mindset they probably indeed want to be close to what they think was happening back then. Anyway my point is/was that around 1500/1600 there were plenty of places in Europe where people would be publicly killed for being a heathen and or different (with 'innocent' people expected to be saved by god), etc. There was absolutely no freedom of religion in most countries, plenty of death penalty for the wrong religion. Etc

In concept not that different from Taliban.

Anyway I don't think we necessarily disagree. It's just that sometime we think we have changed our ways for so long, while in reality I think it's not that far away (both figuratively and literally).

Good day! :)
 
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