Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Good for them!
Armed Afghan women take to streets in show of defiance against Taliban
Women in north and central regions of country stage demonstrations as militants make sweeping gains nationwidewww.theguardian.com
Rolling Afghanistan Thread
- Thread starter padraig (u.s.)
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- #squadgoals allahu ackbarz barry chateau battle rhymes bit of a pickle come mr taliban tally me banana designer fundamentalism do not face allah alone when astral projecting every possible contingency is biden's fault follow the white high-tops islamic magic jihaute just do it lord miles moon demon popping down to afghanistan roadman mask servis cheetahs that spring we lived on bowls of risotto the hexing of an oppressive regime the taliban's secretive one-eyed spiritual leader the whitest most out of touch witchcraft tl;dr
version
Well-known member
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Special Report: Afghan pilots assassinated by Taliban as U.S. withdraws
Afghan Air Force Major Dastagir Zamaray had grown so fearful of Taliban assassinations of off-duty forces in Kabul that he decided to sell his home to move to a safer pocket of Afghanistan's sprawling capital.
www.reuters.com
sufi
lala
Rather different perspective
www.scmp.com
China a ‘welcome friend’ in Afghanistan: Taliban spokesman
With the US withdrawal emboldening the Taliban, the group’s spokesman says it welcomes Chinese investments in reconstruction and would guarantee the safety of investors and workers.
www.scmp.com
shakahislop
Well-known member
i guess i think he's pretty powerless, to be honest. within the panjshiri milieu, which is itself one of the most powerful forces in the country, i don't think he's a big player. or even much of a player. i think what we understand as a charismatic figure is not the same as what afghanis think of as a charismatic figure. actually it's hard to think of anyone who has that kind of respect in afghanistan who wasn't the leader of, or high up in, an ethnic militia.
for europeans, especially french people for some reason, the massoud myth runs deep and i guess the only reason massoud jr (i also forget his name) has any visibility is because of that. i know he's involved in trying to do formal politics in afghanistan and i think he might have stood in in 2014 presidential election, but that is just not where power lies.
one interesting thing is that the children of the big players have never really become big players themselves themselves - i think they quite often end up going overseas for education and after eg moving to london or nyc as a big rich young person, who the hell is going to devote their life to amassing military power in afghanistan? better to become a brooklyn fort greene artist, like ghani's daughter did.
massoud jr came into a restaurant i was in once. my friend recognized him and said it was a good idea to leave. someone like that is always going to be a target i guess.
shakahislop
Well-known member
the switzerland thing is interesting though. very decentralized governance is something that people have been suggesting as a potentially better form of government for afghanistan since the NATO invasion. there's a certain logic to it, and the way that formal politics was set up in 2002 is ludicrously centralised. but the reality throughout the last 20 years has been that governance is very local anyway in practice. powerful people such as Raziq, Ishmael Khan, Atta Noor, Dostum, Sherzai, and so on, have always managed to ignore the President and just do their own thing to quite a large extent.
its hard to know how a formally decentralized state would play out though. and also it's not like it's just a case of the government deciding that that's how it's going to work. there's isn't actually anyone powerful enough to control the country, so its just a speculative game to think about what kind of constitutional arrangement Afghanistan should have. at some point (probably not at all soon unfortunately) the fighting will end and power will lie wherever it lies, and that will most likely determine how the country functions.
its hard to know how a formally decentralized state would play out though. and also it's not like it's just a case of the government deciding that that's how it's going to work. there's isn't actually anyone powerful enough to control the country, so its just a speculative game to think about what kind of constitutional arrangement Afghanistan should have. at some point (probably not at all soon unfortunately) the fighting will end and power will lie wherever it lies, and that will most likely determine how the country functions.
sufi
lala
Thanks, that's kind of what I expected,
having followed afg politics from afar for many years, the western media gaze is reliably skewed on afghanistan, but it's hard to get a clear picture of what's really happening,
and possibly hard for us to accept that our info rich existence doesnt really extend to some parts of the world and that actually noone may know what's going on, apart from the people directly involved, who have no interest at all in what we think of them
shakahislop
Well-known member
here is an enjoyable recent video of the taliban playing on some swings, at a (very big) guess, somewhere in the new areas of Herat that were taken in the last couple of days
what they really need is some tins and then they'd fit right in on here
what they really need is some tins and then they'd fit right in on here
sufi
lala
It would be interesting and probably depressing to know how things are for women after 20 years of American occupation - women's conditions were always cited as one of the reasons for the invasion, but it never seemed genuine.
Obviously the Taliban actually promote themselves as misogynists, so there's no comparison, but rescuing the women was never a realistic goal, looking at how things are in PK, India, etc
Obviously the Taliban actually promote themselves as misogynists, so there's no comparison, but rescuing the women was never a realistic goal, looking at how things are in PK, India, etc
shakahislop
Well-known member
its actually one of the biggest intellectual revelations i've had from spending so much time on afghanistan. that basically there are crucial things that you need to understand that you have no way of understanding because they are so well hidden, because there's no investigative journalism, and because there are powerful (afghan) people who understand extremely well that the narrative about what is going on is an important form of power. so trying to understand what the northern commanders are playing at at the moment - there just isn't a way. trying to understand what is going on in the government at the moment - there's not a way. trying to understand what the taliban are trying to do at the moment - there's not a way. it's not a question of resources or not having read everything, and even if you were actually able to hang out one on one with some of the main players, you'd still probably not be able to piece it all together. it's just a hard limit to what can be known, and some of those things are really important for understanding the big picture.
sufi
lala
yeah that's exactly what i was getting at
shakahislop
Well-known member
the most plausible theories to me are : 1. that the governement of pakistan wanted to get rid of anyone who might be able to reunify the country, ie it was something strategic or 2. some individual in al qaeda thought for some reason that it was a good idea to kill him, ie it was some random contingent chance, or 3. it was a favour by al qaeda to the taliban, to shore up their shaky relationship. i think number 3 is the most likely myself, but there's not much evidence really, it's all circumstantial. i mean the facts of what happened and how they did it are very clear, the motivations not at all.
sufi
lala
yeah, the way he had a profile was what attracted (basically westernised) al-Q to do him - as often seems to be the case a convergence of different interests and one way or another his fate was sealed
sufi
lala
i guess it's interesting too and also depressing whether afghanistan gained anything from being invaded and occupied by the richest nation on the planet - it's still a closed book to outsiders, but maybe there are some KPIs that show some improvements, if we even accept that the KPIs would be relevant in that space
i suppose that if all the relationships were bound into military (or aid) paternalism, now that daddy has taken away the toys, it feels like back to square 1, but maybe the taliban don't see it that way
i suppose that if all the relationships were bound into military (or aid) paternalism, now that daddy has taken away the toys, it feels like back to square 1, but maybe the taliban don't see it that way
sufi
lala
this appears to be written by an afghan woman and not entirely negative about the taliban or the future, it's quite vague though, and a couple of years old
Conceptualizing love for peace from below: humane security in Afghanistan
An alternative concept of security is needed based on values of humanity and empathy, a security that is not only ‘human’ but also ‘humane’.www.opendemocracy.net
version
Well-known member
Some people are adamant the whole thing was about taking control of the global heroin trade after the Taliban banned poppy farming in 2000. Apparently opium production shot up once the US got involved and the same thing's alleged to have happened in Indochina when they got involved in Vietnam,
shakahislop
Well-known member
it's obviously really hard to describe everything that's happened to 30 million people over a period of 20 years and come to a judgement on it. it's certainly beyond me. there have been some improvements in some things, some of those improvements (eg school enrollment) have fallen back quite a lot in recent years, and after the 92-96 civil war and then the Taliban vs northern alliance war from 96-01, the country was pretty destroyed, and so many of the improvements were from a low base. it's also been patchy, has played out differently in different parts of the country. in a lot of rural areas most women for example probably saw more or less no change in their status throughout. overall though, whatever gains there were do seem to be overshadowed by the fact that the NATO and US invasion gave fresh impetus to the conflict, and that has created another 20 years of an increasingly violent war that has touched every part of the country.
one thing of interest is that there was a concerted effort in all periods of the war by the US and the UK (and probably Germany, the Netherlands, France and everyone else who was fighting there, but I don't know much about them) to big up the development successes. including the usual things of exaggerating numbers, flattening out nuance, and so on. this came out of a range of different needs, but included in the US different factions of the various administrations and the foreign policy world needing to make the case to whichever president was on the throne for a continued military presence rather than pulling out, which is the cause which has just lost for the first time in 20 years in the Biden administration. both Obama and Trump faced more or less the same decision, and they both did more or less the same thing.
shakahislop
Well-known member
Some people are adamant the whole thing was about taking control of the global heroin trade after the Taliban banned poppy farming in 2000. Apparently opium production shot up once the US got involved and the same thing's alleged to have happened in Indochina when they got involved in Vietnam,
i know that you're saying that this is something other people are saying, rather than something that you're saying yourself, but the only way to believe this idea that the war was about taking control of the heroin trade would be to know more or less nothing about the subject. there's no evidence at all that this is what drove the decisions of Bush et al and NATO to get involved, and plenty of evidence for other motivations.
you're right that they never managed to do anything much about the opium production though. that was actually a UK government responsibility. this stuff was divvied up in about 2003, and for some reason the UK thought that drug suppression was the one that it wanted to do. seems mad in retrospect but they must have thought they had it in them. the taliban did manage to suppress opium production for a season or two when they ran the country. people kind of say that this was so unpopular that they wouldn't have been able to keep it up without having another rebellion on their hands, but there's no way to know really.
craner
Beast of Burden
From a British perspective, they went into Helmand with a totally cavalier attitude and almost no preparation (or appetite) for what they actually faced. This certainly reignited and extended the war there and the Americans basically had to bail them out, from what I understand.
shakahislop
Well-known member
yeah, that's basically how i understand that story too, and i don't think it's really disputed. it's an interesting example of decision-making by the british government, where they obviously had totally misunderstood what the consequences would be. aside from that, there's a backstory that you might be aware of, about the decision by whoever was defence minister and I guess Blair to specifically take on Helmand (as opposed to more or less any other province, which would have been easier), and the way that it was related to the embarrassing pullout from Basra just before. one thing that i don't see commented on much is how chastened the UK's idea of how strong its armed forces are is now. that belief seems to have died off, due to I guess the experience in Helmand.
there's an impenetrable and quite amazing book called 'An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict' which is.....maybe.....worth it. but there's also an LRB article by James Meek which i think leans heavily on that book, which is definitely worth it.