Afghans are racing to erase their online lives
wired.co.uk
wired.co.uk
That is a pretty deep penetration of the former regime which is also evidenced by the speed of the power transfer. Not that it is a surprise in general for anybody who paid attention, and the end game was clear, yet the actual forest-fire like speed is still very impressive - for example the pro-Soviet puppet regime back then fought for 3 years after the Soviet forces had left before finally falling.
No idea how this plays out. The Taliban leadership may just let people leave for a while to eliminate opposition the easy way.
Not really. There is a reason Afghanistan is called "Graveyard of Empires".
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2001-11-...
Judging by the history that i'm naturally close to and know well, i.e. Russia history, the drive to free your Motherland from foreign occupants is like 10-100x multiplier of force.
1. The Taliban took over police stations and freed prisoners in virtually every town they captured. Many released were people jailed for terrorist activities or other crimes associated with fundamentalism, while others will simply welcome their liberators and join their ranks.
2. Taliban fighters went door to door confiscating weapons from private citizens, claiming they “don’t need them anymore”. Disarming the public ensures they will not face unexpected resistance.
3. A female journalist noted that overnight the town she was in changed, such that women were nowhere to be seen in the streets. There was also a clip of a female CNN journalist being asked to leave the immediate area because of her gender.
4. In Kabul, Taliban forcefully entered hotel rooms of foreigners, interrogated them, assaulted them if they resisted, examined/confiscated documentation, examined/confiscated electronics, and so on.
5. Taliban have begun questioning people to report on neighbors’ activities to identify US collaborators and members of the Ghani government. One woman tearfully spoke about how she’s afraid she and people she knows will be taken away from their family if people snitch.
6. Taliban have set up checkpoints controlling traffic within, into, and out of all significant towns and on all significant infrastructure.
7. The Taliban are testing out captured military equipment such as humvees, helicopters, and surveillance drones that the US left behind, to incorporate them into their military practice as soon as possible.
8. The Taliban have already begun forcing young girls to be married to their fighters in smaller towns.
https://twitter.com/AmandaMilius/status/1427338941074710533
>Guest on msnbc just said the taliban have “our biometric database” of everyone who worked for US and are using it at checkpoints. When / how did that happen? Was that a massive story at the time or wtf? They used AF as a testing ground for biometrics and this is how it ends up?
Of course, in North Korea, that awareness probably exists, and it doesn’t help. But maybe it’s not the same.
Or is this a classical case of rural vs urban (only that in this case the rural people have a ton of firepower and the will to create laws that affect the urban people as well)?
As someone who grew up in Austria and Germany I think we can fight ideologies. In fact we have to. Having strong (intolerant) ideals is not a problem until you force it on people who don't in inhumane ways.
Which ideologies? And which ideology do you want to replace those ideologies with? Do you see the issue?
Also not as new of a paradox as you might think: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Most platforms do not even let you edit or delete messages at all.
Just log press, delete and select "Delete for me and <other(s)>".
In Telegram, as an admin you can also select auto delete for a group.
I haven't used this myself, but maybe this?
https://gist.github.com/victornpb/135f5b346dea4decfc8f63ad7d...
Also, Discord might be a "nice" company right now, but maybe it gets bought by facebook in 5 years.
Discord will ban you for that, even if you delete your messages with the app on a stock Android without any macros or other tools that reduce the required effort over the naive way (e.g. `from: namibj` search; repeat for each "server").
(Btw; you have a pending email. I lost my old domain, but keybase has other accounts and an encryption key linked. You have 24h before I'll have to reach out harder, due to acute urgency.)
Did the USA build any Universities in Afghanistan or Iraq?
It is important to keep in mind that China is a startup empire. They are still trying to dominate their immediate neighborhood, whereas the US is an established empire, mostly concerned with global matters. Interestingly, Russia is a declined empire and had to turn back to affairs closer to its borders again.
Hong Kong was supposed to be a separate administrative region according to the treaty with the UK, which has been violated by China, but it was never a country.
Chinese land -> colony -> autonomous Chinese region -> China
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, is the party that lost the Chinese Civil war and ran away to an island which is considered a part of China ( Taiwan, Formosa before that) even if it was occupied by the Japanese after the first Sino-Japanese war. To this day, both PRC and ROC claim they are the sole China. Everyone agrees the PRC is the sole China.
Recently there has been a shift in Taiwan, with a new party in power, and generally people there seem to be more in favour of abandoning the ROC and China claims, and just being an independent country called Taiwan. Sadly that won't be accepted by the PRC, since, you know, they claim Taiwan is theirs ( and it legally still is considered to be).
For Americans, an analogy for Taiwan - the Confederacy lost the Civil war, but ran away to Hawai, assimilated the locals, calls itself the CSA and claims the whole of the US in its constitution.
This is not even close to true.
> For Americans, an analogy for Taiwan - the Confederacy lost the Civil war, but ran away to Hawai, assimilated the locals, calls itself the CSA and claims the whole of the US in its constitution.
A decent anology. If that happened, then many people on both sides would still being willing to fight and die for it today.
That sounds a lot like "two countries" to me.
There are 15 states, the vast majority of which are microstates, which recognise Taiwan as "the China". Some countries have unofficial representation within, but don't officially recognise it. No country officially recognises Taiwan and China as separate countries. Should have said "almost everyone", not everyone, indeed.
> That sounds a lot like "two countries" to me
And absolutely is, in practice. However, from a legal/UN/international law standpoint, Taiwan isn't a country, it's a Chinese island. Due to the power and influence of the PRC, few countries, even the US, would dare to recognise an independent Taiwan replacing the ROC claim to the whole of China. And even then, China would still claim it's their land and they might even invade.
Yet those definitions of domestic issues were made by ROC, and acknowledged to some degree by most security council members post ww2, which PRC inherited, and have been largely consistent in enforcing. PRC isn't making up domestic interests for geopolitics, it's protecting domestic interests despite geopolitics, i.e. PRC maritime disputes predates UNCLOS which opponents are retroactively wielding to constrain PRC interests that predates it. It's not PRC changing definitions or rules or interests.
>China is a startup empire
And it's important to see how PRC is trying to build the new empire. Apart from brief phase where Mao was exporting revolution, in aggregate it has been predominantly peaceful. Unprecedentedly so, even more so as PRC grows, contrary to expectations. PRC military today is more powerful than it's ever been, yet PRC employment of force is near historical level of restraint, i.e. instead of thousand casualty boarder skirmishes with India when PRC was barely industrialized, recent sino-indian skirmishes ended with 10s of casualities. That's ridiculously reserved all things consider. There's quite literally not another ascending power who has reached pacing strength with the existing hegemon as fast and as peacefully as PRC in recent history. Current indictors show if PRC assumes role of global police, she would actually just focus on policing (with customary bias), versus current US trigger happy global policing that's a reflection on her domestic model. Which is probably a better example for future hegemons all things considered.
Finally they are free from their foreign oppressor, and they can go back to having their country ruled as they please. Anyone who believes in democracy will agree to this
[0] https://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-relig...
Edit: the Taliban also outlaws the Afghani and Pakistani tradition of Bacha Bazi - the widespread custom of raping young boys, and with this in mind I am not surprised they are overjoyed to yet again be free to punish those who partake in it [1]. Truly a win for democracy and for protecting children from predators.
It is interesting that you assume 10 extra years of foreign occupation makes the average person more sympathetic to the occupying force.