Afghan women forced from banking jobs as Taliban take control
reuters.com
reuters.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahideen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban%27s_rise_to_power
"Although no documentation has officially surfaced that the CIA directly supported the Taliban or Al Qaeda, some basis for military support of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency) provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets.[11] Osama bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing training camps for the foreign Arab volunteers"
So, the US went to war for the pipeline, and now, in the past couple of years, the pipeline is being built under the Taliban.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakis...
While a tempting thought, no single pipeline is economically viable with $800B in expenses
Afghanistan Oil Pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan_Oil_Pipeline
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_Over_Me
Keystone XL Pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline#Issues #Issues, #Protest and opposition, Total Carbon, Aquifer valuation, Total Long Term Costs and Benefits
"This film is dedicated to the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan."
I remember it clearly because that was the first movie I saw exploding arrows. I don’t know if the explosive arrows were made famous in Rambo 3 or in Predator. In any case I watched quite a few reruns of Rambo 3 on TV, and they clearly had that dedicated to mujahideen fighters message in the end credits.
All that money wasted, all those dead civilians, all those broken soldiers. All of it for absolutely nothing.
What an abhorrent clown world we live in.
That's still 20 years of attempted infrastructure and education. I knew at least one person in graduate school that would not have been there. Just because this is a tragedy doesn't mean everything is dead.
Well we did send a strong message about choosing one's house guests wisely. But that message was delivered a decade ago.
Perhaps the US could have purchased land from Afghanistan, which isn't so much of a unified country anyway. They could have established permanent bases from which they could aid the Afghanistan government and project power against other regional adversaries (ie. China, Iran, and "ally" Pakistan). The monetary injection would have helped too.
There's no way this pull out doesn't look bad for the Biden administration. This is going to be a major election year topic and we're going to hear how Democrats "hate women" and freedom. What a quagmire.
Those "10,000 soldiers" are 18-year-old kids. With guns. In a place where they are scared, angry, bored and have no frame of reference understand the culture. What happens in that situation is about what you'd expect to happen, even when they are the "best trained in the world". The longer you keep them there, the more angry the locals are going to be.
Your Midwestern state government collapses and loses the ability to defend its territory and the Feds cannot help you for whatever reason.
Two rival factions move in
- a Canadian warlord and his men: They terrorize the locals but otherwise spend time drinking light beer, listening to Steppenwolf and driving around in Pontiac Trans Ams hooting and waving guns around. They promise guts and glory to young men kicking dust in town.
- a division of the Pakistani military: they are generally professional, minus friction with the occupied population. They think fast cars, beer and stadium rock are impediments to a moral society, so they suppress these things and try to impose their values on the local population.
Do you imagine the local population would be happy with having either faction around? Do you think that they would all gravitate towards the more professional legitimate faction vs the Canadian warband?
The Taliban are hardline, repressive and familiar. There is most definitely an overlap between the worldview of the Taliban and the local population, including how they view the role of women. They are just more extreme and militarily organized.
The US are foreign and have very little in common with (or knowledge of) how the Pashtuns live. Maybe they have a small amount in common with urban, secular Afghan society.
If the Taliban were grossly unpopular across the entire society, how are they able to make the gains they are?
Just compare the incentives. If the Taliban win, Taliban fighters get to plunder cities, forcibly take wives, and get power. If the ANA forces win, they keep a nation which they don't identify strongly with free. Now add in that the ANA is completely demoralized from loss of all US support and which do you think is more willing to fight and risk their lives? It's little surprise how things are turning out.
Is this sarcasm?
> There's no way this pull out doesn't look bad for the Biden administration. This is going to be a major election year topic and we're going to hear how Democrats "hate women" and freedom. What a quagmire.
I think it looks pretty good for him. A president that finally stopped wasting US taxpayer money for people US taxpayers do not prioritize.
With all the money and resources spent in that country promoting something most of the people there never wanted, we probably could have been carbon neutral 3 or 4 times over.
We gave up so many of our freedoms at home - went collectively insane for two decades out of some abstract fear of "terrorism". The number of Americans _alone_ who died (and probably will die in the future) as a result of this miscalculation is a huge scalar multiple of the life and property lost on 9/11.
The Pax Americana that the post-Cold-War era promised is shattered. Even the one "silver lining": That this one poor little country would be a place where women would be more free and have a little better life... And maybe something good would come out of that. Even that is gone now.
I agree, it's just hard to salvage any kind of positive outcome from this - especially considering the huge opportunity costs.
You know, it's hard for war to be a "tool of liberation" if you do literally nothing to foster the basics of a free/liberal society in the places you went to war for. WWII is not a proper comparison at all; pre-WWII Europe did of course have a robust civil society, very much unlike Afghanistan. The thing about places like Afghanistan is that politicized religion is the closest they get to something even loosely comparable to what we'd call free/civil society in the West!
To be fair, it wasn't abstract, though one could argue that particular attack was a one-off that could never be successfully repeated. But there were other concerns of dirty bombs, anthrax, etc. at the time.
That said, it's truly a shame that the US abandoned Afghanistan to invade Iraq. Afghanistan seemed to have potential for nation-building had we not diverted and diluted our efforts with Iraq.
Apparently the Bush era neo-cons we funneling money to Uighur militias with plans to activate them against the CCP at a later date. However they later joined up with the Taliban against NATO, and briefly with DAESH in Syria. While at the same time elements of the Taliban were fighting alongside US forces in Syria agains DAESH, Asad, and those same Uighurs.
The US war machine will truly do business with ANYBODY.
[EDIT] I'd be interested to hear why anyone takes exception to this. The remarks about US support of Uighur militants should be noted as a pre 9/11 policy. Post 9/11 the Bush administration designated them terrorists to gain Chinese support against the Taliban. And the funneling money claim is I think indirectly supported, but I'm open to counter claims.
[EDIT 2] It's a bit odd that people keep downvoting this but have nothing to say about it. It's unambiguously true that we (meaning our government in the US) fund militias for proxy wars then often fight against them and realign with them across time and geography. We aren't very discerning and we're more focused on the broader geopolitics of the proxy wars. It's dumb and bad.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-to...
I’ll never stop reminding people of this, because 1) it’s INSANE; 2) any sane person would say “yeah if you’re on the non-pedophile side I’d probably choose you over the other guys.”
You're assuming there's a non-pedophile side?
"The Taliban had a deep aversion towards bacha bazi, outlawing the practice when they instituted strict nationwide sharia law. According to some accounts, including the hallmark Times of London article “Kandahar Comes out of the Closet” in 2002, one of the original provocations for the Taliban’s rise to power in the early 1990s was their outrage over pedophilia. Once they came to power, bacha bazi became taboo, and the men who still engaged in the practice did so in secret."
The Taliban profess to be opposed to the institutionalized child sex abuse we know as Bacha Bazi, and that appeared to be a significant factor in their early rise to power. But you're right, there is no "non-pedophile side" in any meaningful moral sense.
As far as age: did you know the legal age of marriage was 13 in the United States (NH), up until 2019. Thirteen.
How is it America's fault that Afghan police officers are child molesters? I'm sure if Americans had punished them, the Taliban could have PR spun that too to win the hearts and minds of the Afghans. Sounds to me that Afghanistan has big problems with its own citizens they need to figure out for themselves, and no amount of hand-holding by a powerful nation will help them out of the quagmire they are in.
Afghanistan wasn't like South Korea. The Afghans were not super eager for our help, didn't ask for it, and didn't seem super eager to fight along side us to purge an oppressive regime (unlike the South Koreans).
Go try looking up a sex offender in your area and doing the same sort of stuff. You will be held accountable, trust me.
I read so much about it and I still have no clue.
It's not just some police officers. Sexual abuse of young boys is a deeply ingrained feature of Afghan cultures, and the Taliban's revulsion at it was and remains a major motivation to fight:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi
I'm not saying this justified the war, and I generally agree with your comment, but we ought to be realistic about the depth of depravity we're dealing with over there.
Afghanistan is an extremely fractured nation where the central government does not have absolute control or ability to govern many of the provinces. Pashtuns are tribal and a lot of conflicts stem from Pashtunwali, essentially a code of conduct, which one of its core pillars is revenge. This creates never ending conflicts between tribes that have wronged each other. They're simply not united. Even during the Taliban's reign, they did not have complete control over the country. The Northern Alliance still controlled the Northern part of the country (which is the vector from which we begun operations with Special Forces assisting the Northern Alliance in defeating the Taliban).
This, along with the racial tensions where the affluent in Afghanistan tend to be Tajiks and have wielded a lot of political power despite being a vast minority in the state are probably bigger contributors. All the Taliban need to do is convince the warlord of a given area and they will effective control that area.
> [Bacha Bazi] is not a determinant factor in "winning the hearts and minds" of the Afghan people.
This rather famous report written by the US military disagrees:
By some accounts, the first incident that brought Mullah Omar and the Taliban to prominence in the eyes of the Pashtun people actually involved a dispute between two warlords over a particularly attractive halekon. This dispute took the pedophilia of the warlords to such an extreme that the locals themselves were repulsed and happy to embrace a force of reform.
and:
Even where the halekon tradition is not "celebrated "per se, it appears to underlie a number of Pashtun social structures, most notably the recruitment of very young "soldiers" by commanders of paramilitary groups. (This is so much true even today, that current law prohibits "beardless boys" living in Afghan military and police stations.) This in turn fits under the traditional warrior ethos which defines the role of men within Pashtun culture. This dynamic played a major role in the functioning of the warlord culture that preceded the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
From https://info.publicintelligence.net/HTT-PashtunSexuality.pdf - "Pashtun Sexuality"
You're also right that the line I quoted pertains only to the early days of the Taliban's rise, and not necessarily to the rest of the conflict.
Its been a very long time since reading or watching something has made my blood boil like it is right now.
I don't know what to think for Afghanistan, a government without ability to maintain stability is not useful, and Taliban is a bit backward, and I don't know if we can expect them to change when they take full control of the country. With modern weapons, something like a revolution would be impossible to happen in any country, AND a government not through revolution really does not last.
Unfortunately, the mongols came and burnt everything to the ground/left the city a literal pool of blood.
Makes for good reading in the 21st century I guess.
Or if it had been an instant success, instead of the US pouring cash and arms in to keep the conflict going as long and destructively as possible. The Soviets didn't have a choice but to participate in a conflict on their border.
Imran Khan's response to the Pak money allegation is to ask where did the 1T$ of USA money go? He does have a point, but still not sure why they want to support Taliban.
If they don't support Taliban, the Afghan government will...
Whaaat? — I already hear it, but yes. This is this much fucked up.
Please google this.
These desire more for Taliban to attack Pakistan instead, and they indeed fund, and facilitate them to do so.
I was on a screen-line with 2nd LAR mere miles from the border with Pakistan but we were not allowed to go any closer. It was explained that we have to leave a buffer so that Pakistan can be certain that the US is respecting their territory. One morning some British commandos rolled up, said hello, and left in the direction of the border. I guess they don't have the same buffer rules that we did because I heard gunfire not long after they parted.
We would spend all day searching vehicles and find nothing. The Afghans who submitted to search were very friendly but every so often, for whatever reason, groups of vehicles would turn around rather than be searched. It was open desert down there so I assume they just go wide around the screen-line and on to their destination.
The immense security theater and waste of time created due to creation of the TSA following 9/11 and our increased interest in fixing the Middle East is just insult to injury.
All that and now we’re leaving with basically no results? SMH. If we’re leaving can we get rid of the TSA at least and restore some sanity to airplane travel?
I hope lessons are learned.
Woman children being raped and slaved? That's the dictator's fault, not US. We can't intervene another country!
You see? Win-win
Things have been bad in Afghanistan since the 70's, but there were bright moments during the occupation, or what you want to call this period that is now coming to an end.
I have some personal ties to the region, and I sincerely hope things clear up somehow. Afghanistan deserves none of this.
True, but the US could have made a dent in that by simply not supporting and financing the Taliban. When they help exterminate all of the secular opposition to administrations they are friendly with, the inevitable results are theocracies that are armed to the teeth.
Also, we could have gotten out 20 years ago if Dubya hadn't been so arrogant. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
Politically, invading Afghanistan to get Osama was impossible to avoid since something had to be done. But after Osama was killed, I do not understand what possible motivation the US had for staying there other than enriching players in the military industrial complex.
Yes, that is my point. The options were Taliban (or other tribal groups) take over, or the US spends the next 100 years rebuilding Afghan society and waiting out for all the old people to die.
> There's no good leader that was willing to abandon people to that fate until the public exhausted of the war as it has.
The US public has been exhausted of spending on other nations since the 2008 recession.
The young people are more militant than the old people because of the invasion; so that wouldn't work. The only thing that would work (whatever working means in this context) was a program of mass extermination and colonization.
We invaded a country that was ruled by the Taliban. We installed a puppet government by force. Now that we're leaving, it's going the way of Vichy.
I will be very glad to see even 1km of straight road in that country.
These billions in infrastructure, and development aid are nowhere to be seen in Afghanistan.
This is not true. Our only accusation was that they had allowed a group of Saudis to live there.
Could have invaded the actually bloody country responsible for 9/11 instead of a central Asian backwater.
Could have reigned in your massive military industrial complex which essentially demands wars for profits....
What am i kidding... 'MERICA!
It would take generations of investment and the US standing guard while Afghans attend school and prosper to slowly gain those elusive qualities.
Just my 2 cents.
The thing they lack is loyalty to an occupation government set up and propped up by a foreign invading army. Belonging to the Afghan military means you get a salary in a destroyed country. It doesn't mean that you support an occupation government over your local pious theocrats.
isn't this just masked indoctrination?
Maybe the Euro Countries (or even Canada?) could be nicer, but the USA (politicians making the decisions that go in affect) clearly don't give the slightest fuck and haven't for decades.
Most people who live here have never dealt with them and have no idea just how bad it really is. I think their interview process might include an IQ test with an upper limit for acceptable candidates.
I know several developer that immigrated to US, and then because of what they had to deal with regularly. No personal experience though
https://mobile.twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status/142632472646...
(Presuming it's actually followed through with)
That being said, it would just be a gesture. These women are not free to travel, or make any kind of life choices freely. And even if they were, social pressures are almost insurmountable.
If the dissenters leave and don’t put up a fight, who is going to do the right thing?
Imagine if the resistance fighters of France or Benelux said instead, it’s fucking bad here, we gotta get out of town and let’s go to Argentina (or Angola, pick a place).
That would have left the baddies without resistance. That’s what would happen if no one were to put up a fight. Yes it’s deaths, but the future might be worth it. If Americans can go die over there to protect civil society surely locals can organize a fight.
Look at the VC of Vietnam, they could have said, shit, let’s just go to China or whatever and forget our homeland, but they didn’t. They fought tooth and nail with every breath, men women and children. I disagree with their choice of government but I admire their will for self determination and willingness to fight for what they thought was righteous.
You have to be willing to fight for what you believe in.
https://theprint.in/diplomacy/afghan-govt-wants-iaf-support-...
https://theprint.in/defence/will-pull-india-into-a-vortex-wh...
Because US troop withdrawal is also a simultaneous porkbarrel withdrawal.
This is something very obvious I am surprised nobody talks about.
US "war funds" to the most Afghan establishment were basically loyalty bribes.
I'm not sure there's been a more wasteful government action in human history than the US government in the Middle East
[0] https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/10/25/how-a-former-cia-wo...
I wonder though if what has been posted in another thread here had happened: if we either hadn't have gone in at all, or retreated immediately after. Maybe the passage of time would have softened up the Taliban government structure by now and there would be meaningful change brewing from within. In that sense, fighting their own wars could have helped the country. I've seen good cases being made for the theory that the people of Afghanistan would almost certainly be better off by now. As it stands today, they are reset to the very beginning of any possible road to democracy and human rights. Then again, there is no guarantee they'll ever choose that. I sort of see the point of those who argue that "we" need to be fine with that, too.
However, this piece of news is more immediate and the suggestion made here relates to immediate relief for people in trouble. And in such cases, I can't ethically be in favor of letting anyone fight their own wars.
Russia is an example. After centuries Empire and communism, they were in no way ready for democracy. Democracy may still work out some day in Russia, but not now. Also not now in Afghanistan. They need to work that out themselves.
People following your line of logic are so arrogant, and coarse.
I can't speak for the others, but for me it's because I'm a humanist and I strongly believe governments must be, as well. I'm arguing from a perspective of minimizing human suffering and (ideally) optimizing progress and development towards a future that is pleasant, prosperous, and scientifically literate.
On the more contentious side I would also argue the implementation of a state in such a society must be entirely secular, even if there is a majority religion, because the humanist goals laid out above are fundamentally incompatible with a state religion. But as I said, that particular bias is mostly my personal opinion and could be considered outdated (maybe a side effect of my age).
That is not to say there is a single ideal country I can point at and declare that they're currently fulfilling this ambition completely. But it's easy to identify a government, power structure, or ideology where the core agendas actively move society further away from it. I understand why these kinds of value judgements don't sit right with you, but I'm not arguing for the superiority of Western culture per se.
Edit: About your point of "immediately" adopting democracy, there is no moderate time span. Fundamentalist regimes with popular support, especially when they're religion-based, are usually incredibly stable because of the way consent is continually built and dissent is harshly squashed. If a country slides politically over time, it's usually not towards a secular democracy. Chances are the Taliban will rule Afghanistan for many generations.
> It just seems like Afghanistanis are self-determining to support Taliban anywhere outside of Kabul.
There is no question that the Taliban gobbling up the country is an expression of public will. I do think it's regrettable, and I strongly believe "we" should offer assistance to the few people who actually make it out. But other than that, there is really little to do but watch. It's been a long time coming.
We know what happens when you have mass immigration from countries with low standards of living. We saw it with Gaddafi, it destabilizes regions and introduces problems with housing supply, welfare budgets and wage suppression.
https://asiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019_A...
In essence, a vast majority of afghans polled believe in women's rights to vote and to work. The Taliban is not popular at all with a vast majority believing they deserve no sympathy. However, many do think peace is possible.
One of the biggest issues the Afghans appear to have is a vast majority believe their own armed forces are badly corrupt.
Afghanistan is by no means a liberal place and is extremely religiously conservative in many ways, but the general public has no taste for Taliban style rule.
This is a truly sad disaster unfolding and I only hope a peace deal is brokered somehow. But with so little resistance, you almost have to wonder if the Taliban would want that now? The only hope I can see is that 65% of the population is under 18 and want educational and career opportunities and I wonder if they'd be willing to rise up if the Taliban does in fact revert to their policies pre-9/11.
By all accounts this is true: bribes, pedophilia, killings of citizens, using heroin, defecting to Taliban, selling arms at markets, etc.
Some people literally have no clue about the way reality unfolds. Sometimes its just the strong that create the new reality, and they eradicate the weak from existence. When you have strength and general justice on your side, you need to take the chance and destroy the evil.
But its not just about guns - the key difference is that south korea has recieved more financial aid than all of africa combined. Thats is probably thr key difference
I am in favor of helping countries that genuinely want freedom from an oppressive regime. South Korea is a great example, they fought tooth and nail alongside the Americans to secure their own freedom. But Afghanis were not like South Koreans. They didn't seem to care much that they were ruled by oppressive regimes. We had a lot of friendly fire problems where Afghani security forces would go rogue and start killing random personnel on base.
The First Republic [of Korea] was characterized by Rhee's authoritarianism and corruption, limited economic development, strong anti-communism, and by the late 1950s growing political instability
And the second and third republics were dictatorships too.
> The Bodo League massacre (Korean: 보도연맹 학살사건; Hanja: 保導聯盟虐殺事件) was a massacre and war crime against communists and suspected sympathizers (many of whom were civilians who had no connection with communism or communists) that occurred in the summer of 1950 during the Korean War. Estimates of the death toll vary. Historians and experts on the Korean War estimate that the full total ranges from at least 60,000–110,000 (Kim Dong-choon) to 200,000 (Park Myung-lim). The massacre was wrongly blamed on the communists. The South Korean government made efforts to conceal this massacre for four decades. Survivors were forbidden by the government from revealing it, under suspicion of being communist sympathizers; public revelation carried with it the threat of torture and death.
We have not been this embarrassed or humiliated since Saigon. It's pathetic foreign policy, and a stupid military withdrawal -- capping off a monumental waste of lives, time, and money.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/12/afghanistan-us-urges-citizen...
We need to realign all resources to point towards the CCP and probably Russia.
Wasting time to have the resources available if Afghan war operations need it is a colossal waste.
What benefit will the freedom of these people that mostly don't want it badly (or their 300k fully equipped soldiers would fight well) have for us in the future? Most likely we will have a global conflict with CCP, Russia, NK, Iran in about 5-10 years time. I highly doubt the Taliban will influence the outcome of that.
Probably more like the expectation that in response to any substantial Taliban coup and thus danger to NATO soldiers, (tens of) thousands more soldiers with vehicles, tanks, aircrafts could be there in a matter of days.
In WW3, the Taliban will be nobodies and one or two minimal terrorist attacks in Europe will be the least of our worries.
...
2021: "Omg the Taliban are terrible! They are killing innocents and taking away womens rights! Somebody needs to do something!"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/07/history-tr...
Wonder how Afghanistan would have been had Carter not armed those groups.
> Since invading Afghanistan in 2001, the United States has spent $2.26 trillion on the war, which includes operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Note that this total does not include funds that the United States government is obligated to spend on lifetime care for American veterans of this war, nor does it include future interest payments on money borrowed to fund the war.
And even if it is $50B per year, I do not see why the US should spend it unless it we should also be spending $50B per year in Somalia and Congo and wherever else is needed.
Either way, this is tangental to what I said, which is that we are spending $50B per year now, which is accurate: https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/09/12/the-an...
It really is a waste when you figure we are going to be in an all-out global conflict with the CCP, Russia, NK, Iran in about 5-10 years.