My impressions are that the before/after photos you see depict the lives of the educated elite back then, but I think for the most part the vast majority of the region has been undeveloped for centuries.
Can China win a land war in Afghanistan?
Yes I saw your reference but I do not recall any deals they made that they broke. Yes they are religious ultra conservative. Anytime an ultra conservative religious group gains political hold of a country the people suffer.
As I recall they wanted to export their version of Islam everywhere. If they go that way again beyond their borders they will get smacked down again.
I donāt think they are foolish enough to try. Chinaās pattern has been to export workers not soldiers.
It would be kind of interesting if the Taliban are the one group of people who can stand up to China. It seems like everywhere else in the belt and road initiative, China has screwed over or at least has overwhelmingly favorable terms with their projects.
Interesting. I am not in a position to research this right now but I wonder if the Chinese āinvestmentā method avoids the problem with the western style. America uses corporations to āinvestā where they own the assets in country. When the country makes moves to nationalize those assets the US regime change machine steps in.
Iām calling bullshit on this. The United States would never interfere in the affairs of other countries for its own selfish political and business interests - and it would certainly never do so at the expense of the citizens of that other country.
Respectfully yours,
Iran (1952) and Chile (1973), et. al.
Whelp, Ghani resigned, the country is now fallen to the Taliban
Iām surprised there isnāt more discussion on this topic given that a battle has been underway for several hours now. It sounds like the Taliban leadership gave orders to stop short of entering Kabul and let those that needed to be evacuated get evacuated; theyād won the war, they didnāt need to create another battle.
Instead, lower-level ranks went ahead and entered anyways, and weāve now had gunfire at the airport for a few hours.
Itās also relevant that the Afghan government hadnāt paid soldiers in a few months, nor sent them needed supplies. This was partly because they apparently depended on American air power for supplies. But the lack of pay seems to be due to corruption.
My radio tells me that the fallen government of Afghanistan didnāt believe that Biden would stick to the deal Trump cut until way too late. But also, wasnāt in very good shape to adapt even if they had.
I wonder what would have happened if instead of invading Afghanistan, we just gave the Taliban a trillion dollars under the condition that they hand over Bin Laden and treat women a little better.
I mean, we spent $2T over there, only to pack up and leave weapons and materiel for them. Itās like buying $100B worth of guns for the Taliban but with extra steps.
I never thought Iād live in a world where both sides of a conflict were making play-by-play tweets on Twitter while shit was going down.
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This happened super fast. I guess whoever made the decision was going to eat this consequence. Glad we now have near zero troop presence in Islamic countries. Maybe the 30 year war against Islam is finally over.
Looks like the Taliban bought most of the territory
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/15/afghanistan-military-collapse-taliban/
Afghan troops hadnāt been paid in months, the Taliban paid them to surrender.
WaPo has a lot of articles about this.
Crazy scenes to see in the news. A shame the Afghan forces werenāt more willing to put up a fight, or maybe it would have just prolonged the inevitable. Either way glad the US will be out.
Biden will take the blame for what happens to Afghanistan, but leaving was the right decision. The only real question is if it could have been done more smoothly. People clinging to planes is not a good picture, but where in the spectrum of outcomes does this really fall?
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I do think itāll become a question of Afghan leadership failing the US more than the other way around. ~350k Afghan military trained and equipped by the US basically doesnāt put up a fight against 200k Taliban. Either we stayed there forever or weād get something like this eventually.
I think the one question that I have is around sending troops back to Afghanistan. I am not clear on why this is needed - is it just to complete the withdrawal of non-military? If that is the case, I think there are some clear criticisms of the Biden administration in how this happened as it seems like a situation that could have been prevented had they moved out those resources first.
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