Afghanistan - Did We Learn Anything ?

[Steve]

Learned a lot of new things about the whole situation thanks to you guys. One of the things I like about this forum is that because there is such a wide breadth of people that come to LOS, you also get the benefit of all points of views for any manner of discussion. I've changed my stance on a few things over the years because of things I've read on here.

 

Anyway, I think at the root of it all with regards to America is that until the military-industrial complex loses power in our federal legislature and the White House, there will always be situations like Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

Wasn't bin Laden's original beef that we had troops in Saudi Arabia, their holy lands and the only reason we had them there was because the Saudis feared Iraq would come after them as they did Kuwait?

 

Anyway, anyone think that the next country to take not only an economic but political and possibly military interest in the region is China due to their voracious apetite for oil (hmmm...sounds familiar)? They will seek any way to make sure the oil and natural gas keeps coming.

[ThaiHome]

Being from 2001, when certain developments had yet to occur, that article fails to note what is now an astounding fact - that one of the Taliban contacts for the bin Laden negotiation was an Afghan Pashtun leader who had been proposed by the Taliban as their unofficial envoy to the United Nations (unofficial because the Northern Alliance still technically held the Afghan seat). His name? Hamid Karzai. Soon after, he broke with the Taliban and settled in Pakistan -- and the rest, as they say, is history.

 

YimSiam

 

 

I'm sorry, but your timeline appears to be a bit skewed and I’m not even sure what your point is.

 

Karzai’s support for the Taliban was only for brief time in 1994 when they just emerged and like many others thought they could be a unifying force and stop the civil war. He refused the offer to be ambassador in 1995 saying that the Taliban were nothing more than pawns of the Pakistan secret service.

 

The Taliban assassinated his father in 1999 by which time Karazai was in full opposition to the Taliban. Certainly he had contacts in the Taliban (through his Pashtun tribal links) and the US might have used them to try and get Bin Laden, before and after 9/11, but your portrayal of him as a member of the Taliban that later turned against them after 2001 is not accurate.

 

Not defending Karzai in any fashion. He is the leader of a major Pashtun tribe and all the corruption/nepotism that goes with that. In my opinion, Afghanistan is just a f**ked up place, always has been and always will be. The culture just does not transfer into the 21st century well. It didn't even transfer into the 19th century very well.

 

TH

[gobbledonk]

Anyway, anyone think that the next country to take not only an economic but political and possibly military interest in the region is China due to their voracious apetite for oil (hmmm...sounds familiar)? They will seek any way to make sure the oil and natural gas keeps coming.

 

CS, I've crossed out the word 'possibly' because its no secret that the Chinese have invested heavily in their military capability. Given that some scientists have postulated that future wars may be fought over access to clean water, I dont think its difficult to imagine war being declared over access to energy. I do find it a little rich that an American would refer to another country's appetite for oil as 'voracious' - you guys wrote the book on oil consumption !

 

The US owned the 20th century, the Chinese will own the 21st and I'm guessing there will be no shortage of volunteers for that first colony on Mars in 2150.

[YimSiam]

I'm sorry, but your timeline appears to be a bit skewed and I’m not even sure what your point is.

 

Karzai’s support for the Taliban was only for brief time in 1994 when they just emerged and like many others thought they could be a unifying force and stop the civil war. He refused the offer to be ambassador in 1995 saying that the Taliban were nothing more than pawns of the Pakistan secret service.

 

The Taliban assassinated his father in 1999 by which time Karazai was in full opposition to the Taliban. Certainly he had contacts in the Taliban (through his Pashtun tribal links) and the US might have used them to try and get Bin Laden, before and after 9/11, but your portrayal of him as a member of the Taliban that later turned against them after 2001 is not accurate.

 

Not defending Karzai in any fashion. He is the leader of a major Pashtun tribe and all the corruption/nepotism that goes with that. In my opinion, Afghanistan is just a f**ked up place, always has been and always will be. The culture just does not transfer into the 21st century well. It didn't even transfer into the 19th century very well.

 

TH

Hey Thai Home,

 

Thanks for cleaning up my facts - I had thought to check first, but didn't have the source with me on the Karzai thing. My basic point is: we, the US, should not be surprised that we've found Afghanistan a more difficult place to 'help' than we initially assumed, the contradictions and ironies and factions and so on are just too complex for our little minds, and we shouldn't have tried to wade in. For example: back in the day - 1995, apparently, rather than the 98/99 I was thinking it was - Karzai was a figure that the Taliban considered a good choice for their representative to the world via the UN envoy thing (of course, a strategic consideration, given the tribal gains they'd get - but still, they're not really known for compromise, so it's something). A few short years later, look who decides that Karzai was the one to be appointed (right, right, 'elected', loya jirga, and so on - 'appointed' works as a shorthand...) as the golden boy of US-occupied Afghanistan. That's fucked - when a guy the enemy could just as well have chosen, is the guy that we chose to lead our supposedly-ideological fight against the Taliban! I guess back then we didn't think we'd actually have to fight the Taliban (or lose to them, of all things!), so we weren't thinking very deeply on the issue (or on anything else - after all, it was the Bush years.) Of course, with the Talibs Karzai wouldn't have gotten to wear all the fine threads and filled quite as many bank accounts... Karzai says he turned down the Taliban offer because he thought they were tools of the ISI and he opposes foreign intervention, then he becomes the biggest tool for USA since Ngo Dinh Diem...

 

(my reference to the 2001 date of the article was to say that in October 2001 not too many people gave a damn who Karzai was, so if he was involved in communication between the US and the Taliban no one really would have bothered to mention it at that point, his big emergence was yet to come...)

 

At the moment I'm in Bamiyan province, and people are living a great life here, it's peaceful, the potatoes are comin' up good, it's been a year of heavy snows and good rain so the farmers are happy. Things are rebuilt or getting rebuilt, moving slowly but moving forward. There are so many new cars in town now, that there is sometimes traffic by the bazaar. In a way it's a vision of how sweet life can be in Afghanistan - peace, gorgeous countryside, agriculture doing well for people. And very little of the social backwardness we associate with Afghan culture, it's a bit different here.

 

But on the other it's the perfect example of how fucked it is here too - it's mostly Shia Hazaras here, and while things are good now, everyone knows that once a Pashtun force gets up a good enough momentum to sweep in here without getting bombed back to Kandahar/Pakistan, they'll be chopping off heads and getting rid of the Shia infidels in a grand massacre - just like the have time and again previously. And the Tajiks and Uzbeks aren't going to be jumping up to save too many of them, either. So, the vision is an illusion, it's just a temporary pause before things get back to "normal".

 

Quarter of US troops out by September this year -- and as they go, let the games begin. Then, we'll have Karzai's government and army on one side "holding ground" and ensuring security, while on the other we'll have the Pashtun Taliban trying to wrest as much as they can from Karzai's guys. I think another way to describe that situation is "civil war" ala mid-1990s...

 

cheers, I stand corrected!

 

YimSiam

[Steve]

So, what happens after American troops leave? The taliban will be back. That's a given. How much of Afghanistan they get back is open to debate. Will they have the country side while the government has the cities? Will they get total control again? Will the warlords side with the Taliban? I'm wondering if the people have lived long enough without the Taliban to value freedom enough to fight back. So many questions.

[Steve]

Related topic. What about Pakistan? Or specifically America's relationship with them and post Afghanistan. The American, nationalistic part of me says f*ck Pakistan. Don't give them any money. But that may be the worse thing to do. Any thoughts?

[YimSiam]

F*ck Pakistan. Just stop writing checks and let 'em crumble. Pakistani people are just like the rest of us, it's the US-backed slimy military stooges who need to lose their golden goose. We can still run drones if need be - the rest is just gravy on the generals' curry. F*ck 'em!

[YimSiam]

What happens when we leave Afghanistan is pretty much a flashback to 1989, when the Russians gave up and decided to send their rubles instead of their sons: the regime will hold on for a little way, putting up something of a fight against the Talibs thanks to our sense of guilt and responsibility (which will lead us to pour tons of money into the "strategic partnership" we claim to have). But even with a blank check they are no match for the Taliban, and the military will start to show cracks in its sense of national unity. The Taliban will solidify their hold on the provinces, more and more comfortable in the open and making gains in battle - while somehow the Afghan Army will split into ethnic- and region-based warlord groups (Karzai in Dubai by then... he's done his time!) Iran and Russia and India and Pakistan will increase their involvement and support of various players, until we have a checkerboard civil war in full swing, civilians pouring en masse into neighboring countries, and Kabul's pretty narco-palaces and new buildings at risk of going back to the dust from which they rose... In other words: the civil war of the early nineties, though this time the Taliban has a chance of taking complete control much earlier - which might be a good thing, suffering-wise at least. The degree to which Tajiks and regional warlords are able to put up a fight will depend on how much support they get from the neighbors and west - might be best just to let 'em fold early, but who knows what kind of bloodshed will follow. Has the Taliban tempered their ways? Did they learn anything from this 11-year 'time out' about survival and success strategies? Let's hope so.

 

There's a chance Karzai and co can weasel their way to some kind of agreement with the Taliban, but it still doesn't sound like the T are interested in any kind of power-sharing, except as a prelude to total control. It's the only hope for the country, though: hand over power while Karzai's head is still on his shoulders, and save the trauma of another full-on civil war! You'll notice his "taliban are our brothers' rhetoric every so often, he's got to keep that avenue open to some degree. Problem is that the absurd and absolutely counter-productive "High Peace Council" that has been cynically put forward as a peace-related body is just a bunch of the most immovable anti-Taliban guys, and this will be a real obstacle to any kind of legitimate negotiation. Rabbani II is a joke... but then, it's pretty unlikely he'll survive very long anyway... however, most of the rest of the dozens of supposed Peace guys are from some similar mode or have irremediably burned their Taliban bridges by now (although in Afghanistan, is anything ever really impossible? Switching sides is a national pasttime, lots of these guys have done it before, and if their careful, maybe they can do it again...)

 

That's what I say. But I'm not in charge.

 

YimSiam

[Redbaron]

You have it in one YS - some countries aren't interested in "our" (the west's) "freedom".

[Specialist]

So, what happens after American troops leave? The taliban will be back. That's a given. How much of Afghanistan they get back is open to debate. Will they have the country side while the government has the cities? Will they get total control again? Will the warlords side with the Taliban? I'm wondering if the people have lived long enough without the Taliban to value freedom enough to fight back. So many questions.

The Taliban will be back. How much control they seize remains to be seen. Part of the reason they did so well up until 2001-2002 is that Osama bin Laden was bankrolling them, so he'd have a safe back yard to play in.

 

A lot depends on how cowardly the Afghans are. One would expect them to figure out that people who would poison their wells and their daughters are NOT people you want to leave alive, much less running around free, much less running your government, but I may be asking too much. (Was it Moshe Dayan who said "It helps if you're fighting Arabs."?)