Who said I was referring to US soldiers?
Afghanistan
- Thread starter Sherzad
- Start date
From another forum i post on, found it interesting.
"
That's a myth.
Reliable records of what was happening there go back to the Persian empire in the early 600s BCE. Their Median and Achamenid dynasties held it until Alexander in the late 300s. He was at the farthest fringes of his reach, which is always the weakest part of any empire, but he didn't lose it; he died its ruler, and, despite his lack of interest in planning for what to do with it afterward, his successors held it as a Greek kingdom (Seleucid & Bactrian) for well over 400 years. They finally got knocked loose not by the local natives but by other invaders, the Yuezhi, who ruled it for about 250 years until the Persians took it back for over another 400 years until the Arabian caliphates took over and ruled for at least a couple of centuries before it starts getting slightly more complicated over the following few centuries.
Starting in 819 CE, after almost 1500 years of recorded history without a single day of independence from foreign empires (or a single empire holding it for less than about 250 years before another empire takes it), we finally start seeing the dominant foreign empire of the time, the Abbasid caliphate, getting pushed back from at least part of Afghanistan, both by locals and by other invaders. Afghanistan's own homemade Samanid and Saffarid dynasties (cousins of the Persians but this time at least not from Persia) managed to keep Kabul and neighboring eastern parts of the land until 1003 while occasionally gaining & losing other chunks of land back & forth against the Arabs and a couple of Turkic tribes (the Ghaznavid and Khwarazmian dynasties). Once the local upstarts were put back down out of the picture again, the Arabs and Turkic tribes kept going back & forth until the mid-1200s, when they both got driven out, not by the people of Afghanistan, but by, once again, yet another successful invading empire, the Mongols.
Khan's successors weren't his own descendants for long because the Mongolian power structure was prone to internal turnover, but his military and political successors kept the military & political entity going under other names like "Timurid empire" without losing Afghanistan or most other nearby territory until well into the 1500s. And who was it that finally chipped enough away at them to get down to the last chip in Afghanistan... oh, look, it's the Persians again, this time under the name "Safavid"... another foreign rulership over Afghanistan that lasted well over another 250 years. (The Safavid dynasty ended in 1736 but that was an internal succession with no gain or loss of territory; the usurping Afsharid dynasty of Persia would rule another 60 years after that.) Toward the end of Safavid rule, some territory in Afghanistan was won from them by Pashtuns of the Hotak dynasty, but they only held on for 29 years before Afsharid Persia took it back.
Independence from foreign empires doesn't really begin until the military career of an Afghan named Ahmad Shah Durrani (1722-1772). Afghanistan & Pakistan were on the edges of a few different empires in different directions (Afsharid Iran in the west, a couple of Indian ones in the east & south, and a Mongol-Turkic one in the north), which happened to be weakening and ready to shrink back at about the same time, instead of one weakening & shrinking while another strengthens & expands. This created an opportunity for the border provinces, and Durrani took that opportunity, taking over Afshanistan, Pakistan, and parts of some neighboring countries, especially eastern Iran. The government has changed forms since then and lost some territory (most notably Pakistan and an almost Afghanistan-sized chunk of Iran), but has been the first and only relatively stable continuous entity to rule Afghanistan from the inside instead of the outside since then.
Prior to Durrani, there's not one single instance of Afghanistan ever keeping an invader out, completely throwing a conqueror out, or even managing to temporarily take back bits & pieces from a conqueror in less than about 200 years, nevermind putting an invader in a "grave". It's simply spent almost its whole history as a perpetual province of one outside empire after another, typically for hundreds of years at a time, with each one's time ending not when the people of Afghanistan did something to end it, but when the next one came through. The pattern didn't end until those outside empires happened to fade at about the same time anyway without another new one developing to be the next in line.
Next you might think "OK, but what about since then?" After all, of the main three examples the purveyors of this myth most often use, two were pretty recent on that scale. (The third is rather bizarrely Alexander, who can only be said to have been defeated by Afghanistan if you count the country's germs as defenders of the country, but we'll just ignore that for now.) There were some other conflicts for Afghanistan, such as against the Sikhs, but nobody ever called them a major world power. That leaves us with the British Empire and the USSR.
The Brits meddled in Afghanistan three times: 1839-1842, 1878-1880, and 1919. Even by the earliest of these dates, they were already stretched thin around the world and deciding which places were and weren't worth the trouble. It was 56 years since they'd quit the American war for independence, which is widely regarded as not a defeat so much as an "Eh, why bother", because, although they were significantly more powerful, they had significantly more other lands to deal with too. Their only way to Afghanistan was through India/Pakistan, where they did have a military presence, but just enough to keep them in line and paying taxes, while leaving most of the administrative/ruling work to the locals. Their biggest military priority was to keep the home islands safe during Europe's era of back-&-forth wars that kept happening at the time. And their two 19th-century excursions into Afghanistan lasted less than 3 years apiece and the last one didn't even last a year. Considering all of this together, this does not look like defeat; it looks like another "Eh, why bother".
That leaves the USSR. Even granting this one, 1 isn't much of a historical pattern; it's the lone exception at most, if it's even that. And that's without considering the help Afghanistan got from the USA at the time, or how much effort the USSR really put into it, or the fact that the more we've learned about Russia & the USSR since then the more of a paper tiger they look like for other reasons. "
So what's going to happen....
Presumably the taliban are going to retake power in pretty much the whole country if the last couple of weeks are anything to go by.
Is there then likley to be any pro democracy insurgency/ fightback and would that get assistance (direct or indirect) from western governments ... or would the taliban just purge so deep and so quickly that an effective resistance isn't possible.... and again are governments in the west just going to be ok with women being kicked out of school and mass killings of anybody who worked with the occupying forces?
Or is this a new fluffy taliban 2.0 who will allow more democratic and social freedoms.... or are they more like the old taliban rule ... or are they going to go full on isis style califate
Presumably the taliban are going to retake power in pretty much the whole country if the last couple of weeks are anything to go by.
Is there then likley to be any pro democracy insurgency/ fightback and would that get assistance (direct or indirect) from western governments ... or would the taliban just purge so deep and so quickly that an effective resistance isn't possible.... and again are governments in the west just going to be ok with women being kicked out of school and mass killings of anybody who worked with the occupying forces?
Or is this a new fluffy taliban 2.0 who will allow more democratic and social freedoms.... or are they more like the old taliban rule ... or are they going to go full on isis style califate
If they aren't ok with that they should be doing something now.
Since when does goverment in the west really cares about anything? The war in afghanistan just like any other war is just some pretext to siphon tax payer money, destabilizing middle east is just a bonus.
My guess is afghanitas will rule themselves ala iran. It'll be ugly. Retribution would come in swift and brutal
Thank you for this reply, very interesting, you or whoever researched it have obviously gone to a lot of trouble.
My original interest was really in the relatively recent incursions into Afghanistan by Britain, Russia and America. Accepting that in previous centuries the Afghanistan situation was, or just seemed to be about 'one conqueror after another,' the reasons relating to why Britain, Russia and America went into this part of the world is still intriguing. There are no natural resources to plunder or so I am led to believe, hence the importance is surely the strategic position/location of the country; however the people are devilishly independent and will fight back, even avoiding fighting one another, so as to face up to invaders...so 'why bother'?
Even if we accept that in the latter part of the nineteenth century Britain was 'watching its back door' and not overly concerned about further Empire building; that in the 1980's the Russians were supposedly supporting a fellow communist government, and 'not really trying', and the US was only really interested in 'being there' after 9/11 and wiping out terrorists and their bases; it still doesn't stack up to any sort of success in any of these endeavors. Surely for the major countries at least, there is something to be learned from history... for those who would entangle themselves in Afghanistan?
Anyway thanks once again, enjoyed the read.
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Kabul could be isolated in 30 days... and fall in 90
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/tal...n-90-days-says-us-intelligence-report-2508414
Ghazni fell to the taliban today
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58184202
I guess the rest of the world is just accepting its back to women banned from schools, full on opium farming and football stadiums being used for public executions / stoning women to death for adultery ...
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/tal...n-90-days-says-us-intelligence-report-2508414
Ghazni fell to the taliban today
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58184202
I guess the rest of the world is just accepting its back to women banned from schools, full on opium farming and football stadiums being used for public executions / stoning women to death for adultery ...
I'd say you guess right. If there's an alternative please tell us.
I don't think it would be as draconian as it was 20-25 years ago, mainly because the Taliban of today are largely a new generation of insurgents who came up with technology, smart phones, and the like. They would also know that they would have to deal with continued US strikes even after the US leaves.
The Taliban will have infiltrated the army with their own recruits. The recruiting procedure is simply presenting a birth certificate or a fake document that should be easily available. The commanders can easily be paid off or simply support the Taliban style of governance. The salary and conditions are not worth getting killed for and fight. Most importantly they are not fighting a foreign army and many in the army will not want to kill their fellow countrymen and brothers.
Kandahar is about to fall too.
It's time Western governments stopped with the arrogance and negociated security arrangements with the soon to be Afghan government. They're no more radical than Saudi Arabia and every western nation is busy sucking up to their murderous regime.
It's time Western governments stopped with the arrogance and negociated security arrangements with the soon to be Afghan government. They're no more radical than Saudi Arabia and every western nation is busy sucking up to their murderous regime.
I don't think this is going to happen. The Pakistani PM stated that he expects all American military action, including air strikes to conclude on the 31st August. So unless they plan to fly over Iran or over Central Asia, I suspect they're packing up for good.
I guess if you're against intervention there is nothing to do at this point. Considering the scale and length of the intervention so far i'm not sure how much longer you can drag this out.
Yeah short of finding some oil there im not sure what is going to get people to intervene ... sadly that's going to have some pretty dramatic and horrif outcomes for people over there... think of the people running charities focused on womens education etc they will be prime targets and they really don't have any opportunity to get out... the translators and businesses that worked with us forces... I hope I'm wrong but I expect a purge to be fast and brutal (there are already stories of surrendering troops being killed albeit currently unconfirmed stories)
Shocking though that 20 odd years of nation building and training / arming the nations army has seen them largely over run in 20 odd days...
Same thing happened with Iraq and ISIS fairly quickly. Just like Vietnam the whole thing is a abject pointless failure. And if it becomes a training ground for terrorism there might just be a repeat a again. A major asylum crisis is just around the corner as well and it's going to be ugly.
the taliban should invest in some upmarket horseracing operation in the home counties, then theyd be having regular teas with the Queen in no time, and puff pieces about their high society jinx in the broadsheets. whilst they are doing that, they should buy West Ham FC, spend a few quid on some social housing in straford, and the tabloids will be cheerleading for them too.
which would suggest that the tens of billions of our money set aside for nation building / training troops was perhaps diverted elsewhere?
Nationbuilding doesn't work out in the worlds most corrupt countries. There has to be a foundation for it and there isn't in places like Afghanistan.
Rumour is there are $3 trillion worth of rare earths that can be exploited there.
I think its more like a trillion?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-47391821
But certainly hundreds not tens
I guess when your $28 trillion in debt another trillion here or there isn't that important?
https://www.pgpf.org/national-debt-clock
As a minimum I hope the US and other allies make efforts to fly those who worked with them to safety if they wont intervene - given how rapidly things are deteriorating though I doubt that will happen
Did somebody say the western Chinese province of 3trillioni$tan needs tanks and troops...
Personally I doubt the USA would be leaving if that was true
I mean the Taliban were in charge for 5 years before 2001.. there's really little point of another invasion if in another 5 years time the Taliban will just regroup and take power again. It's not like Libya where there'll be a massive power vacuum after killing Ghadaffi, clearly the Taliban are a large and well equipped force, and strategicaly and politically well embedded into Afghanistan.
It'll likely be a strict interpretation of Shariah, like other countries like Saudi, but it won't be as brutal as some think. Archaic yes, but in line with their religion. The BBC had a good article talking with some of the Taliban leaders in a fallen area that I thought was balanced https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58156772
At the end of the day the Taliban are a large part of the educated people in Afghanistan - Islamic Madrasshahs (schools) are big there and they're just doing what they've been taught to do and live the way theyve been taught to live. It's hard to change that over a decade or two.
I think this is the best hope for moderating the Taliban.
War and invasion didn't change anything because they literally have nothing to lose on the world stage. They're already hated, already seen as barbaric, already dirt poor, already have nothing to trade, already pariahs.
But if Afghanistan suddenly have important deals riding on improving their image or on human rights, the Taliban might actually be motivated to do something positive.
As you say, the gulf states are equally radical. But whenever they do anything too stupid, it often leads to news articles that make them change their minds about it. Not always. But often enough to add up. Saudi women being allowed to drive, for example. Or blasphemers occasionally being granted clemency.
Who exactly are the Taliban?
Hundreds of millions or even billions have been spent fighting them, thousands of people, in the indigenous population of Afghanistan ( including the Taliban) as well as foreign troops have died, been severely disabled, (physically and mentally), seen their lives torn apart either directly by the fighting, or by the loss of loved ones to the conflict as a whole. However I suspect relative few people, certainly in the Western world know who the Taliban are and why they fight like they do. Does the Taliban exist outside Afghanistan? Who are its allies? Who equips the Taliban with weapons?Are they an Islamic sect of some kind, or a mass movement of a religious and/or political nature? Do they perceive they are fighting for the liberation of their country, and/or to impose their will on their fellow countrymen/women?
I must confess other than the picture painted via the western press and media of a people (mainly from a tribal background) who come down hard on their women folk, cut-off the heads (and other parts of the anatomy) of their enemies and who have a tough and battle-hardened military wing, as well as an apparent legal political wing, already involved in the running of the country; I am uncertain as to who they are, and what they want?
I guess the answer to the question asked earlier, I think by @sun_tzu ..." I guess the rest of the world is just accepting..." is surely yes, just as the rest of the world already accepts things in various countries that cannot be changed by outside intervention. Despite sanctions and more threats of invasion (yes that will surely win the Taliban over), people in their own country, in this case Afghanistan, have to be left to sort things out for themselves.
Surely a role for the United Nations?
Hundreds of millions or even billions have been spent fighting them, thousands of people, in the indigenous population of Afghanistan ( including the Taliban) as well as foreign troops have died, been severely disabled, (physically and mentally), seen their lives torn apart either directly by the fighting, or by the loss of loved ones to the conflict as a whole. However I suspect relative few people, certainly in the Western world know who the Taliban are and why they fight like they do. Does the Taliban exist outside Afghanistan? Who are its allies? Who equips the Taliban with weapons?Are they an Islamic sect of some kind, or a mass movement of a religious and/or political nature? Do they perceive they are fighting for the liberation of their country, and/or to impose their will on their fellow countrymen/women?
I must confess other than the picture painted via the western press and media of a people (mainly from a tribal background) who come down hard on their women folk, cut-off the heads (and other parts of the anatomy) of their enemies and who have a tough and battle-hardened military wing, as well as an apparent legal political wing, already involved in the running of the country; I am uncertain as to who they are, and what they want?
I guess the answer to the question asked earlier, I think by @sun_tzu ..." I guess the rest of the world is just accepting..." is surely yes, just as the rest of the world already accepts things in various countries that cannot be changed by outside intervention. Despite sanctions and more threats of invasion (yes that will surely win the Taliban over), people in their own country, in this case Afghanistan, have to be left to sort things out for themselves.
Surely a role for the United Nations?
Yes the UN. lets send in the Chinese and Russian delegates to advise on establishing a modern liberal democracy, they could meet in that bastion of free speech and free-doms Qatar.
in fact lets just send in THE DOM.
I'm sure it will require billions in infrastructure development which the US has wasted on warring in the region.
some stats/history:
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/adam-toozes-chartbook-29-afghanistans
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/adam-toozes-chartbook-29-afghanistans
It's futile to try and win "independence" for another nation of people, most of whom who don't understand what it is or in most cases even want it. We in the West don't even have independence as we believe it to be. We have no place in the Middle East, and even less understanding of it. As with most things there is no solution, if the Taliban regain control a lot of people will suffer and their draconian rules will take over. Its just a very sad state of affairs.
Were there not posts in this thread from just a few days ago talking about how the Taliban had merely taken a few small towns and some countryside, and such? I'm sure I remember some, but I can't find them now.
Didn't age very well in any case.
Didn't age very well in any case.
They never went away since the war "ended" if anything their numbers grew stronger, what we are seeing now is the "children" of the initial conflict coming of age.
Take 1 ultra Conservative tribal society.
Add 43 years of non stop War.
You get modern Afghanistan and the Taliban.
It's horrible.
Afghanistan has always been a tribal society and one where the vast majority live in rural areas. Its never known industrialisation or modernity other than in a few few cities for a few decades post ww2.
This society is one where honour is a big deal, weapons are more important to them than NRA loons. Disputes are settled though Jirgas (community based settlement) not through courts. An eye for an eye is considered a practical approach and vengeance is had across generations if needs be.
In terms of govt its only known emperors and Kings until the Soviets invaded and since then its been warlords.
Since the Soviets invaded in 1979 all semblance of normality has been lost. They fought the Soviets until 1989, they fought each other until 1996. Then the Taliban came into control. They they were invaded and fought the Americans until now.
So for 4 decades nobody in Afghanistan has known peace or any of the normal things like schooling, Healthcare etc that you expect in a society. They're mostly illiterate. The literacy rate was 18% in 1979 and apparently has grown to 43% now through some miracle I assume.
Afghanistan society is made of multiple ethnic groups, the pushtun are the majority and tbh they're all pretty xenophobic (Afghans).
The Taliban are a militant movement originally made of students from religious seminaries. They are predominantly pushtun which is the main ethnic group in Afghanistan. They were supported in the 90s by the Pakistani govt who wanted to back a dog to put an end to the civil war. They also received a lot of middle Eastern donations and made money from opium production and people and weapons smuggling (as does everyone in power in Afghanistan including the current regime).
Post 911 Pakistan was forced to cut ties with them or face being bombed by Nato.
When the new govt in Afghanistan was created it had a lot of faces Pakistan was not friendly with (people we had helped the Taliban defeat). This new govt has been anti Pakistan and pro India, so Pakistan has covertly started supporting the Taliban whilst helping the US too.
Iran had previously seen the Taliban as an enemy (because the Taliban killed people of the hazara ethnicity who are also of the Shia sect). However seeing the US camped on its borders Iran has also covertly supported the Taliban.
Top this all up with the Afghan govt being made or drug smugglers and Narcos as well as inhumane war Lords who have looted Afghanistan and built nothing. Even the army is a dud, they've got 30 year old Generals.
As soon as NATO left - the Taliban took back over again.
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I'm pleased to see that... though I suspect pritti Patel will ensure we don't do anything like actually offer them asylum or extend the help to their family's... though I hope I'm wrong and we do the decent thing by those who worked with us
Give it a few. Months and Patel will be deporting them.
Is there a strong likelihood that the Taliban will look to engage in terrorist attacks in the west once they've taken control of Afghanistan or not?
The Taliban never engaged in any attacks outside of Afghanistan, neither do I think they have any intention of attacking in the west in the future. They're goal was always to take back control of Afghanistan from the US. It was Al-Qaeda that was engaging in terrorism in the West, the question though is whether the Taliban will provide harbour to any future terrorists like they did with Al-Qaeda.