Afghan government collapse.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Starting to wonder how wise Biden was to stay that it wasn’t going to end up like Saigon in ‘75.

Has there been a good piece/comment on why the Afghan forces have fallen so quickly? I read that the Army tend to rout or give up a lot quicker than the police do, as the latter are locals and have more of a stake.

One reason for the swift fall of the north may be the army defanging older, more localised militia from the Northern Alliance era.

Sectarianism was an effective motivator for anti-Taliban groups in the past (and some, like Dostum's, had a lot of materiel supplied by allies like the Uzbeks), but the US-led intervention discouraged that in an effort to unite the country. They got what they wanted, but the monkey's paw curled.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Honestly, I do not support Biden's withdrawal and think we maybe ought to move back in. If that makes me an imperialist, so be it, but I prefer that to Taliban rule.

Without significant foreign policy changes (and I'm not talking about troop surges here), the occupation could only have delayed Taliban rule. In Rojava and many other places with frozen conflicts or low-level insurgencies, that is an acceptable compromise because it is a relatively bloodless delay. Not so in Afghanistan - Western casualties dropped, but it consistently remained one of the world's bloodiest wars which claimed tens of thousands of Afghan lives every year. The human cost that probably exceeded the cost of a Taliban government.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

At the end of the day, if the Taliban can keep the streets safe, the shops stocked and the lights on, many will tolerate the other stuff.

They did precisely none of that in their previous rule of the country. I don't know why people pretend that Taliban governance is unknowable, we know they don't get the trains to run on time. Their governance was farcical and one of the most incompetent in the world.

There's a reason that the us was able to initaly take over the country with about special forces, local allies and air support. They didn't exactly have a solid hold of the country.

Now they've learned from their mistakes and their long years of hiding and fighting has taught them some very sharp lessons. I'd doubt those lessons will carry into peacetime governance.

The previous Taliban governance was impeded by constant civil war (they've taken almost all of the areas most likely to be hostile to them) and ethnic tensions that have been smoothed over by their opponents being backed by Western outsiders.

There has never been true peacetime governance in most Afghans' lives. If the Taliban can ensure that, they will seem competent in the eyes of many.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

At the end of the day, if the Taliban can keep the streets safe, the shops stocked and the lights on, many will tolerate the other stuff.

They did precisely none of that in their previous rule of the country. I don't know why people pretend that Taliban governance is unknowable, we know they don't get the trains to run on time. Their governance was farcical and one of the most incompetent in the world.

There's a reason that the us was able to initaly take over the country with about special forces, local allies and air support. They didn't exactly have a solid hold of the country.

Now they've learned from their mistakes and their long years of hiding and fighting has taught them some very sharp lessons. I'd doubt those lessons will carry into peacetime governance.

The previous Taliban governance was impeded by constant civil war (they've taken almost all of the areas most likely to be hostile to them) and ethnic tensions that have been smoothed over by their opponents being backed by Western outsiders.

There has never been true peacetime governance in most Afghans' lives. If the Taliban can ensure that, they will seem competent in the eyes of many.

If you want to argue that the United States should leave Afghanistan for any number of reasons, that's perfectly valid, but you don't need to justify your argument by trying to rationalize what's going to happen.  Afghanistan is going to be an absolute hell hole for most of its citizens, and I highly doubt a single person here actually believes anything otherwise.

I agree that Taliban governance will be crap. I'm just disputing that it will definitely be crap enough to allow civil war to continue on the scale that it previously did.

They are not as weak as they were in the 1990s.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

British government embarrasses itself, presumably because it's afraid a small group of would-be university students might claim refugee status.

https://twitter.com/NZafary/status/1426563127102033926

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

If the USA is smart they should move quickly to form a relationship with the new Taliban regime as there is no alternative to the Taliban in the medium term.   Their goal should be try to lock out as much PRC-Russia influence over the Taliban as possible.

To think that there is someone unironically advocating this from the American perspective. Such a move would establish, once and for all and in the eyes of the world, that American foreign policy is about submission to American interests, period. All of the sanctimonious propaganda about "freedom", "democracy", and "human rights" is permanently revealed to be a complete sham.

It's a bad idea, but it's hardly crossing a Rubicon. They already have warm relations with the Saudis, who are similarly repressive and have done far more for international terrorism.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Ghani's tweet suggests to me that he's going to set up some form of government in exile.

I struggle to see this having credibility given the manner of his defeat.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://mobile.twitter.com/AstorAaron/status/1426955489427009541
Basically American Generals are reading too much DiAngelo and not enough Mao.

This has less to do with CRT/political correctness/the scare of the week and more to do with the natsec blob being predisposed to producing favourable metrics regarding their progress in Afghanistan. At some point in the process, there has been dishonesty as well as ignorance.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

ISIS would probably love nothing more than to have an attack on the airport that the Taliban gets blamed for.

I guess too much subtlety for ISIS to try to pin the blame on someone else.

They’d like their enemies fighting, but theyve always preferred self-promotion. IS needs attacks like these to win legitimacy among potential Taliban defectors, and the ideal outcome for them would be getting the blame for the attack but triggering animosity between the US and the Taliban anyway.