Is Afghanistan a Dual Society?

[DrZoidberg]

Is that a serious question? They surrendered when they stopped being US-backed, because they knew without US backing the war was unwinnable. Duh.

Why was it unwinnable? Here's your theory...



Here's General Sadat's theory...

I Commanded Afghan Troops This Year. We Were Betrayed.

For the past three and a half months, I fought day and night, nonstop, in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province against an escalating and bloody Taliban offensive. Coming under frequent attack, we held the Taliban back and inflicted heavy casualties. Then I was called to Kabul to command Afghanistan’s special forces. But the Taliban already were entering the city; it was too late.

I am exhausted. I am frustrated. And I am angry.

President Biden said last week that “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”

It’s true that the Afghan Army lost its will to fight. But that’s because of the growing sense of abandonment by our American partners and the disrespect and disloyalty reflected in Mr. Biden’s tone and words over the past few months.
...
So why did the Afghan military collapse? The answer is threefold.

First, former President Donald Trump’s February 2020 peace deal with the Taliban in Doha doomed us. It put an expiration date on American interest in the region. Second, we lost contractor logistics and maintenance support critical to our combat operations. Third, the corruption endemic in Mr. Ghani’s government that flowed to senior military leadership and long crippled our forces on the ground irreparably hobbled us.
...
The Afghan forces were trained by the Americans using the U.S. military model based on highly technical special reconnaissance units, helicopters and airstrikes. We lost our superiority to the Taliban when our air support dried up and our ammunition ran out.

Contractors maintained our bombers and our attack and transport aircraft throughout the war. By July, most of the 17,000 support contractors had left. A technical issue now meant that aircraft — a Black Hawk helicopter, a C-130 transport, a surveillance drone — would be grounded.

The contractors also took proprietary software and weapons systems with them. They physically removed our helicopter missile-defense system. Access to the software that we relied on to track our vehicles, weapons and personnel also disappeared. Real-time intelligence on targets went out the window, too.

The Taliban fought with snipers and improvised explosive devices while we lost aerial and laser-guided weapon capacity.
...

To sum up, America is an Evil Overlord who conquered Afghanistan from the plucky Taliban heroes, but America lost Afghanistan back to the Taliban because America deliberately chose not to follow Rule 23 from the Evil Overlord Rule List.

"23: I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks."​

The Taliban's where in power from 1996 to 2001 yet failed to go away. They've been out of power longer than they were in power, yet managed to, overwhelmingly, be the major power player in Afghanistan. Hunted relentlessly by the US backed regime for 20 years!!!

It reminds me of Fidel Castro's plucky little band of adventurers who toppled general Batista. Where they popular in Cuba? Not really. What they were was not a corrupt government backed by USA. That made them, by comparison extremely popular.

I think USA dropped the ball. Pretty fundamentally and almost immediately after taking power. They never understood how Afghanistan works and what they needed to do to help build a sustainable government.

 

[DrZoidberg]

This is interesting. From the Wikipedia on Hamid Karzai. While his successor fled Afghanistan, this guy is still in the country. He's consistently called the Taliban "his brothers". Looking back at his previous statements, it's pretty clear that his guy entire legacy is about getting a great job in the inevitable future Taliban government. Ashraf Ghani taking off with all the money at the first little push, and Karzai making the statements he did. It's pretty clear that not even the leaders of Afghanistan didn't believe the western backed government could last past being propped up by USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamid_Karzai

Taliban connection
In October 2013, Karzai's administration and the Afghanistan Intelligence agency were found to be communicating with the Pakistani Taliban about the shifting of power that was expected to occur if the U.S. Forces withdrew in 2014.[150] Karzai himself was in London at the time of the discovery, to participate in talks with Pakistan and the U.S. on the possible location of Taliban leader Mullah Baradar. At the time, it was unknown if Karzai was directly involved or even knew of such communications.

In May 2021, Karzai spoke with German newspaper Der Spiegel, where he expressed his sympathy with the Taliban, criticized the role of the United States in Afghanistan and praised the role of the European Union, at the same time, saying that the future of Afghanistan relies heavily on neighbor Pakistan.[151] He also considered the Taliban "victims of foreign forces" and said that Afghans were being used to be "each against the other."[152]

So to sum up, USA learned nothing form Vietnam.

 

[starwater]

Well I think you are preposterously over complicating it. I am talking about a high level view not down to the granular level.

Women are now starting to protest albeit small, and so the direction is changing.

Please provide evidence of women "welcoming" the Taliban.

The speed with which the Taliban won is my evidence. Its 50% of the population. In the secular west we have bad habit of treating patriarchal societies as one where women are pure victims of some sort of a conspiracy. No matter how bizarre we may find it, lots of women are super conservative and anti-feminist.

Men are dependent on women for making families. Women always have power.

The Western image as saviours if Afghanistan and liberators of women was obviously a fantasy.

All the government troops who handed over their weapons without a fight, do you really think all of them would do it so fast if they thought it might hurt their wives and daughters? Of course not.

That is no evidence. You have no idea other than sitting in armchair conjecturing why. Give me real evidence.

 

[steve_bank]

Collusion between Pakistan and Taliban is not exactly a secret, it has been widely documented in the news. Pakistan has funded Taliban.

Pakistan s another example of a divided non-state. The govt is not really in control. It is ridiculous to think Pakistan intelligence in a police state did not know Bin Laden was living in Pakistan near a military base.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Well I think you are preposterously over complicating it. I am talking about a high level view not down to the granular level.

Women are now starting to protest albeit small, and so the direction is changing.

Please provide evidence of women "welcoming" the Taliban.

The speed with which the Taliban won is my evidence. Its 50% of the population. In the secular west we have bad habit of treating patriarchal societies as one where women are pure victims of some sort of a conspiracy. No matter how bizarre we may find it, lots of women are super conservative and anti-feminist.

Men are dependent on women for making families. Women always have power.

The Western image as saviours if Afghanistan and liberators of women was obviously a fantasy.

All the government troops who handed over their weapons without a fight, do you really think all of them would do it so fast if they thought it might hurt their wives and daughters? Of course not.

That is no evidence. You have no idea other than sitting in armchair conjecturing why. Give me real evidence.

Sure. I agree with that. Which puts us on equal footing.

 

[steve_bank]

The military evaporated because they saw nothing to fight for. It was a paycheck.

 

[starwater]

That is no evidence. You have no idea other than sitting in armchair conjecturing why. Give me real evidence.

Sure. I agree with that. Which puts us on equal footing.

I never said we were not.

 

[skepticalbip]

Well I think you are preposterously over complicating it. I am talking about a high level view not down to the granular level.

Women are now starting to protest albeit small, and so the direction is changing.

Please provide evidence of women "welcoming" the Taliban.

The speed with which the Taliban won is my evidence. Its 50% of the population. In the secular west we have bad habit of treating patriarchal societies as one where women are pure victims of some sort of a conspiracy. No matter how bizarre we may find it, lots of women are super conservative and anti-feminist.

Men are dependent on women for making families. Women always have power.

The Western image as saviours if Afghanistan and liberators of women was obviously a fantasy.

All the government troops who handed over their weapons without a fight, do you really think all of them would do it so fast if they thought it might hurt their wives and daughters? Of course not.

That is no evidence. You have no idea other than sitting in armchair conjecturing why. Give me real evidence.

There is some evidence to the contrary. A large group of women were brave enough to resist Taliban rule by demonstrating in Kabul for their rights until they were forcibly beat down with flails. Also so many people tried to escape by fleeing the country into neighboring countries (mostly into Pakistan) that Pakistani officials barred further migrants.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

The definition of a dual society from Britannica

The term dualism implies presence of both desirable and undesirable situations or phenomena that are mutually exclusive to different groups of the society. The term dual society refers to a society where two different sectors co-exist

There are the Predator's - Taliban and the Victims the civilians and women in general. The opposites that exist as dual groups and very little in between. The US came in and showed a third way and are now leaving and a vacuum is created. The pressure on the vacuum is what we are observing now. Will there be something different that fills this in or will the dual society return?

I think this is preposterously simplistic view. Why would the US backed Afghan army surrender so fast to anyone they consider a predator. It's pretty clear that the vast majority of Afghans support the Taliban. Civilians and women aren't the victim of the Taleban. They're supporting and welcome the Taleban. Not all of them of course. But most of them. A vast majority.

That strikes me as an odd analysis. Would you use the same reasoning to explain the rapid takeover of territory by Genghis Kahn or even the NAZIs? While there were, almost certainly, some NAZI sympathizers in the Netherlands, I wouldn't suggest that the vast majority of Dutch were just because the country only resisted for five days.

Is it possible that people stop resisting when they realize that further resistance means certain death?

I tend to agree with your skepticism, particularly the question of "vast majority." When one considers the detail that Nazis have informants on the ground who then report upward, you can pretty much terrorize a big population into subservience with threats of death by a minority. It's still possible Zoidberg could be right, but it's an empirical question with probably only a theoretical but unreliable poll that could answer it. There is some polling here and though it is from over a decade ago, it does show there are regional differences and Taliban support at one time was low in some regions. So I suspect Zoidberg was right in some regions and completely wrong in others.

 

[DrZoidberg]

That strikes me as an odd analysis. Would you use the same reasoning to explain the rapid takeover of territory by Genghis Kahn or even the NAZIs? While there were, almost certainly, some NAZI sympathizers in the Netherlands, I wouldn't suggest that the vast majority of Dutch were just because the country only resisted for five days.

Is it possible that people stop resisting when they realize that further resistance means certain death?

I tend to agree with your skepticism, particularly the question of "vast majority." When one considers the detail that Nazis have informants on the ground who then report upward, you can pretty much terrorize a big population into subservience with threats of death by a minority. It's still possible Zoidberg could be right, but it's an empirical question with probably only a theoretical but unreliable poll that could answer it. There is some polling here and though it is from over a decade ago, it does show there are regional differences and Taliban support at one time was low in some regions. So I suspect Zoidberg was right in some regions and completely wrong in others.

That comparison would be valid if the Netherlands had a bigger and vastly more advanced army than the Germans. The US backed Afghan army outgunned the Taliban in every imaginable way.

In hindsight it's pretty clear that the Afghani people, overwhelmingly, treated the US backed government as a complete joke. An unsustainable mess and nothing but something they could opportunistically milk for foreign aid money. But nobody in the country seemed to have any illusions about that the second USA was out the whole thing would come crashing down.

That doesn't mean they support the Taliban. All it means is that the US government was an utter joke. A sham, played on the US voters to validate the national narrative Americans tell themselves. But which, in no way, was for the Afghan people. It was all a fake façade to help George Bush jr's reelection campaign, and which then just dragged on. US money kept the illusion going and whatever president would pull the plug would create a massive embarrassment for USA. So nobody wanted to do it. Vietnam all over again.

The success of the Taliban can simply be a question of staying power. It could be that every other serious contender to sort out Afghanistan was effectively blocked by the US backed government. Perhaps it needed a bunch of fanatical religious loons just to survive the harassments of a dysfunctional kleptocracy. Evolution sorted out the more balanced and level headed political contenders. Those leaders are of course well educated enough to get jobs elsewhere in the world. They're not going to live in a cave and living off goatmilk for decades. In this scenario USA effectively created the current Taliban government. I'm not saying this is the way it is. But I find this scenario more believable than that the Taliban are some sort of malevolent masterminds. That's too much Bond villain.

The old Taleban government in the 90'ies, that USA toppled, was also an utter complete joke. A confusing mess of disparate groups that barely could agree on much. What they had going for them was a mandate from a majority of the tribes, and an ability to network and cobble together alliances in a tribal society. Bottom up. My point is that last time around they were pretty fucking far from evil geniuses. They did all kinds of dumb shit. Sure they have a different supreme leader now. But I do not get the impression that the new guy is much smarter than the old. And by the looks of their early policies, they seem to have learned nothing.

So I don't buy the Taliban terror takeover story. I think it's more likely that the US backed government surrendered to the Taliban because it wasn't really a thing. An empty shell of nothing to hold it together. Any minor push from anything would see it crashing down in hours.