Afghanistan - Did We Learn Anything ?

[kamui]

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."?)

 

I think it hasn't do to with Afghans being cowards. They seem to be extremely fierce fighters, who are able to keep the world's best army at bay with their low tech weapons.

 

As I understand it is still a tribal society and the loyalty of the people seems to be exclusively with their tribe/ethnic group. All alliances with other tribes, parties, overlords, foreigners (Western or Eastern) seem to be completely fluent and seem to change frequently, depending on the interest of tribe leader, payments, drug deals, whatever.

Also for most of the Afghans life hasn't become much better since of the NATO invasion. It seems that billions of USD aimed at local infrastructure projects, education, health care have vanished. Only Kabul got a better infrastructure in parts, but still it isn't save.

 

Moreover the Taliban are first of all supported by Pakistan. As long as Pakistan is supporting them and provides them places to retreat inside of Pakistan it seems to be impossible to defeat them completely. And Pakistan's major imperative is to keep control in Afghanistan as much as possible. They played the NATO perfectly, taking money from the USA while supporting the Taliban.

 

In regard to the Afghan government, it seems to be as corrupt as it can be. Also the government seems only to control the capital and surrounding areas.

[YimSiam]

Pretty much on target, Kamui. An Afghan told me the other day there's an Afghan saying, something along the lines of: Afghans are the hardest fighters in the world, until you add money - then they go soft. So your government troops who just needed a job and your ten-dollar-Taliban will not put up much resistance and will go whichever way the wind blows, but the ones fighting for ideology/jihad and the ones whose choice is fight or die, they will go the distance. The fact that they are not only surviving but succeeding against the ISAF/international forces with all the modern technology and equipment just goes to underscore that you can't win wars simply by superior strength or arms - at least not on someone else's territory.

 

The Pakistan angle is interesting and vital - although now it looks as if they don't want the Taliban, despite initial sponsorship and so on, but they don't really want any of the alternatives either. They'd just prefer to ensure that Afghans don't get a strong and independent government - rather, they like to keep them off balance, constantly fighting, so that Pakistan can keep meddling and prevent India from getting a good hold in the region. Fucking Pakistan - leaders about as useful as a bad outbreak of genital herpes... I recall that in India, when they want to say go to hell, instead they substitute Pakistan: "Fuck you, go to Pakistan, you sister-fucker!" Not bad.

 

The amount of money that has been dumped in the general direction of Afghanistan is staggering -- many of the government ministries have all the money that they could possibly want, but can't even find ways to spend it, their capacity for implementation is about zero. Something like 10 or more Ministries could not even spend half of their budgets last year, the guys are just fucking hopeless. You can't really blame them, to some degree, but it is frustrating. They see the writing on the wall, they know they only have a minimal timeframe to grab what they can and prepare their families a soft landing abroad - they just need to survive and know when to leave, to avoid winding up dead and rich. The Vice-President, Massoud's brother, was stopped in the Dubai Airport with $52 million in US cash - that's a little more than 1,000 pounds of cash, well over the excess baggage limit! But they just stopped him, asked about the money - and then let him go, no law broken... Crazy - to have the balls to ship out half a ton of 100 dollar bills and pretend you didn't steal it or make it through drug dealing... Balls of steel.

 

YimSiam

[gobbledonk]

I think its one thing to 'take ground' from the Taliban - its something else to be able to maintain that position for decades while the 'miracle of democracy' somehow takes root. Hard to believe that there wasnt at least one General in the US trying to talk the hawks out of Afghanistan in the weeks after 9/11 - if there was, one can only assume that the remainder of their short-and-less-than-sweet career was spent planning what they would do in retirement.

[kamui]

I think its one thing to 'take ground' from the Taliban - its something else to be able to maintain that position for decades while the 'miracle of democracy' somehow takes root. Hard to believe that there wasnt at least one General in the US trying to talk the hawks out of Afghanistan in the weeks after 9/11 - if there was, one can only assume that the remainder of their short-and-less-than-sweet career was spent planning what they would do in retirement.

 

The US Neocon think tanks had already prepared intellectually for aggressive war(s) when 9/11 happened. Also Bush's star was going down at that time and 9/11 suited him very well - BUT I am not saying 9/11 was as Western plot.

[gobbledonk]

I postulated that it was engineered by the CIA and received a hammering here, so I wont do that again.

 

Just ask yourself who 'won' the biggest slice of the budget wars after 9/11 - the security apparatus or the diplomatic establishment ?

[kamui]

I postulated that it was engineered by the CIA and received a hammering here, so I wont do that again.

 

Just ask yourself who 'won' the biggest slice of the budget wars after 9/11 - the security apparatus or the diplomatic establishment ?

 

Sometimes enemy just play into each others hands. It must not all be a conspiracy.