Taliban: THE COMEBACK

GinAg (39)

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This is all rather depressing. They appear to have almost entirely retaken Afghanistan.
 
Apparently they’re already painting over the windows of beauty parlours in Kabul despite an ‘official spokesperson’ stating that women will have more rights than they used to :(
 
Parliament recalled next Wednesday.
 
Without the fog of 9/11 it's quite a different dynamic this time round.
 
I don’t understand why Joe Biden has done this? I’m seeing all those images of people at Kabul airport, the only way now out, desperately trying to get out. It’s so awful I can’t cope
 
I don’t understand why Joe Biden has done this? I’m seeing all those images of people at Kabul airport, the only way now out, desperately trying to get out. It’s so awful I can’t cope


The airport is still functioning though, just checked on flight radar, there are passenger flights leaving Kabul to Doha and Delhi.
 


The airport is still functioning though, just checked on flight radar, there are passenger flights leaving Kabul to Doha and Delhi.

I saw that foreigners are being allowed to leave or to register their presence to the Taliban.

Are Afghan citizens being allowed to leave?

It's so grim to see.
 
Apparently, when Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban, he agreed to withdraw troops by May. But Biden, who has always wanted to pull out since Obama days, decided to go ahead and go ahead earlier than agreed. He thinks he can get away with it cos the American public don't care, and maybe they don't, but it's an absolutely terrible decision.
 
I saw that foreigners are being allowed to leave or to register their presence to the Taliban.

Are Afghan citizens being allowed to leave?

It's so grim to see.
I saw that foreigners are being allowed to leave or to register their presence to the Taliban.

Are Afghan citizens being allowed to leave?

It's so grim to see.
Officially the Taliban have said there will be safe passage for anyone who wants to leave. Whether that pans out or not is another matter.

 
Apparently, when Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban, he agreed to withdraw troops by May. But Biden, who has always wanted to pull out since Obama days, decided to go ahead and go ahead earlier than agreed. He thinks he can get away with it cos the American public don't care, and maybe they don't, but it's an absolutely terrible decision.
When do they leave though? I mean yes it's disastrous, but can they really stay until the Taliban becomes a theoretical memory? I ask, only because I don't know. It's terrible.

Afghanistan has long been at the crossroads of crisis.
 
Are Afghan citizens being allowed to leave?
The twitter criticism and commentary about the people at the airport is currently around them being rich and having the means to fly away, so am assuming that anyone who can afford the plane ticket can leave, but I can't be sure.
 
And the US and British military planes are getting prioritised over civilian aircraft..
 
Apparently, when Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban, he agreed to withdraw troops by May. But Biden, who has always wanted to pull out since Obama days, decided to go ahead and go ahead earlier than agreed. He thinks he can get away with it cos the American public don't care, and maybe they don't, but it's an absolutely terrible decision.

Pretty much this. Unilateral US withdrawal from Afghanistan was a Trump policy, which in typical Trump administration fashion was carved out with a completely insane lack of responsibility or even medium-term thinking. They cobbled together a Trumped up (no pun intended) 'peace deal' with The Taliban without even involving the sitting Afghan government in the discussions!

This leaves Biden in a bind because getting US troops out of Afghanistan actually has broad support on both sides of the political spectrum and massive popular support. It'd be really tricky for him to backtrack on that. Added to this, as Bev points out, Biden wanted out years ago but Obama was a committed interventionist and seemed to genuinely believe they could carve out something resembling a stable democracy over time.

The sheer speed with which all of this has collapsed sadly demonstrates how illusory that turned out to be. The entire thing was rife with corruption at pretty much every level, and it cost the USA an absolute fortune, with very little to show for it.

It's utterly heartbreaking, and of course the citizens of Afghanistan will be the ones who suffer the most.
 
When do they leave though? I mean yes it's disastrous, but can they really stay until the Taliban becomes a theoretical memory? I ask, only because I don't know. It's terrible.

Afghanistan has long been at the crossroads of crisis.

Something useful I read yesterday was a reminder that the US still has forces in South Korea. 20 years after the war, South Korea was a military dictatorship, but the Americans didn't leave. So by all intents and purposes, this is an abdication of responsibility that the US placed on their own shoulders.
 
Apparently, when Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban, he agreed to withdraw troops by May. But Biden, who has always wanted to pull out since Obama days, decided to go ahead and go ahead earlier than agreed. He thinks he can get away with it cos the American public don't care, and maybe they don't, but it's an absolutely terrible decision.
Trump also abandoned the Kurds during his presidency, despite all their effort against ISIS.
 
Something useful I read yesterday was a reminder that the US still has forces in South Korea. 20 years after the war, South Korea was a military dictatorship, but the Americans didn't leave. So by all intents and purposes, this is an abdication of responsibility that the US placed on their own shoulders.
That's a helpful way to look at it. I guess America is still in Germany.
 
I think this is horrible and so depressing for the people who live in a constant state of hope that maybe, one day, things will resemble something close to normal, and now they’ve just taken a hundred steps back in the space of a fortnight

I don’t agree with Biden’s decision but it is important to point out, even though everyone knows but nobody has said it yet, that it’s impossible for any foreign power to run or even help run Afghanistan. It’s not Germany, or Korea, or Israel, it’s Vietnam in the Middle East. The US have been stuck in the status quo of holding the bandaid in place for decades now and whether they pull out now or in another 20 years will make very little difference. The inability to create a stabilised regional government and legitimate armed forces in the time that they’ve had is a huge failure and the biggest illustration of how impossible Afghanistan is as a self run state. Even if they had annexed the Taliban in their own region and split the country, they still would have invaded eventually, and succeeded.

Of course as difficult it is to manage it wouldn’t be anywhere near as difficult had it not been for a century of western interference, but that’s all sad forgotten history now.
 
The geography of the country and the inability to create strategic military regions that stabilise the country. Well documented, no?
 
As opposed to America consistently making terrible strategic and military decisions over the last 20 years and now choosing to collaborate with the Taliban to enable its takeover?
 
As opposed to America consistently making terrible strategic and military decisions over the last 20 years and now choosing to collaborate with the Taliban to enable its takeover?

well your argument is with America, not me. I was commenting on the geography. As I already said I don’t agree with the decision. Stop trying to create arguments with the wrong people.
 
Who are the RIGHT people? :disco:

I'm just trying to figure out why you think Afghanistan couldn't be helped, unlike Germany, Korea, Israel. You say its about geography and alliance. I say its about political will - that Afghanistan could have been left in a better position if America wanted to.
 
Bev, you’re luring me into a conversation I can’t possibly win. I could explain, but I just don’t think moopy is the place for these heated debates. None of us, including you and me, are experts on Afghanistan. My generalised comment was about the sadness and about how messed up Afghanistan is. I even referenced that western interference was part of the reason. Your argument isn’t with me, let it go.
 
Ok but what I wanna know it's what's Pakistan's role in all this? I keep seeing #SanctionPakistan. Or is that not related? Lol
 
Welcome to the "Oh, I give up" era of western politics. Can't get the exact thing you want out of a situation? Just walk away and bugger the consequences. Who would have thought Johnson would have turned out to be an actual pioneer?

(NB - I know this is an oversimplification)
 
Bev, you’re luring me into a conversation I can’t possibly win. I could explain, but I just don’t think moopy is the place for these heated debates. None of us, including you and me, are experts on Afghanistan. My generalised comment was about the sadness and about how messed up Afghanistan is. I even referenced that western interference was part of the reason. Your argument isn’t with me, let it go.

Do I look heated? :zsazsa:
 
I can understand that certain geographies can be difficult, but seeing that as an obstacle than cannot be surpassed is ultimately a defeat in terms of international politics diplomacy and law. The same has been said at times for the balkans and the Yugoslavian wars. To get back on topic my understanding is that afghani people could live normal lives in the 50s and the 60s, weren't they?
 
20 years for almost nothing. The way the US continually leaves the countries they’ve occupied in such a horrible manner… :evil:

What @funky is saying is however right regarding the geography of the country. It’s hard to rule all parts of it, no modern state has been able to, there will always be fractions that will be more or less self governing or result in some kind of never ending civil war.
 
I can understand that certain geographies can be difficult, but seeing that as an obstacle than cannot be surpassed is ultimately a defeat in terms of international politics diplomacy and law. The same has been said at times for the balkans and the Yugoslavian wars. To get back on topic my understanding is that afghani people could live normal lives in the 50s and the 60s, weren't they?

Maybe the ethnic diversity of Yugoslavia is complicated, it’s geography isn’t.
 
America is still under the rubbish illusion that you can just artificially PLOP democracy whatever you want. They don't understand that in a lot of places the complex cultural and religious landscape doesn't allow for it.

Better yet, fix your own democracy before you preach it to others. I'm so done with investing any amount of care into politics.
 
20 years for almost nothing. The way the US continually leaves the countries they’ve occupied in such a horrible manner… :evil:

What @funky is saying is however right regarding the geography of the country. It’s hard to rule all parts of it, no modern state has been able to, there will always be fractions that will be more or less self governing or result in some kind of never ending civil war.
Thanks, i get it now.
 

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