Afghan government collapse.

[jaichind]

President Ghani has fled. Some reports say to Tajikistan. Former President Hamid Karzai is staying on the other hand.

Makes sense for Ghani to go to Tajikistan since he is Tajik himself.  There are many reasons why the Ghani  regime collapsed.  One of them is favoritism toward Tajiks by the Ghani  regime which served to drive other ethnic groups toward the Taliban.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Pakistan, the Russian puppet states, Myanmar, Syria initially and fairly quickly. Then most of the other oppressive governments out there, and some of the less scrupulous semi-democracies and democracies.

It would be nice to be wrong, but I doubt it.

Reasonable chance that there is - at least for a time - a bizarre echo of Afghanistan's situation after the Second Anglo-Afghan War, with Pakistan taking the place of the Raj and setting Afghanistan's foreign policy for it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yeah, as long as Pakistan was providing aid and support to the Taliban the 2% chance of things working out was cut in half.

Once we evacuate everyone we should evacuate - as many Afghans as we can - and leave entirely, can we at least cut off all aid to those treacherous Pakistani snakes?

Pakistan's position is more or less delicate management of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations (a good offense is the best defense) through any means it feels are necessary, even if that means getting one's hands messy and doing things that might look hard to justify to an outward observer.
Not that I expected anything besides misinformed views from most Americans on this issue.
Reality tends to be nuanced. Pakistan is in a tough neighborhood. I suggest you read up on the history of the Durand Line and consider the difficulties Pakistan's geography presents.

Hold on there, are you justifying the actions of the Pakistani government as a whole and the ISI in particular in Afghanistan? Because they have indirectly and directly lead to the deaths of thousands of Americans and many, many more Afghanis of all stripes. Those are the actions of a hostile power, not one the U.S. should be giving aid to.
I know damn well about Pakistani geography issues. There were plenty of articles about Pakistani needs for strategic depth versus India as well as the artificial nature of the border with Afghanistan. I can see their desire for a friendly power in Afghanistan.
But Pakistan didn’t have to choose to support the most brutal and extreme Afghani factions, now did they? They chose to support Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and then the Taliban. They chose to give aid and refuge to both the Taliban and Al-Qaida. They chose to send their own military against Ahmad Shah Massoud, the one Afghani leader who actually wanted something better for the Afghani people.
As long as the U.S. was dependent on the logistical supply chain through Pakistan little could be done about any of this. But that’s coming to an end.
So why in the hell should the U.S. give a penny to Pakistan after they leave the region? They’re not even our ally, but China’s!
A lot of people on this forum want the U.S. to cut ties with Saudi Arabia. There’s at least as good of a case to do so with Pakistan.

I didn't say Pakistan's doings are wholly justified or even necessarily smart (their track record of doing good things for Afghanistan is no better than that of the British). But to treat Pakistan as if it is a hostile actor is oversimplifying things to an insulting degree, given the fact that either way they would have an Afghanistan that would be a uncertain place for them. Additionally, it is an utter oversimplification to say they chose to do X and Y. What's new under the sun? A lot of decisions - choices - are made by states in the belief, correct or otherwise, that it will help their strategic interests. The US has a right to make those kinds of decisions, the Russians do, the Indians and Pakistanis do, etc. And those choices need to be understood in context, in the moment. Far from all these decisions are justified but they are both a normal part of statecraft and not in and of themselves justification for such outrage.

The ISI's decisions are comparable in rationale and context to the actions taken by Chinese states over the centuries to involve themselves in the affairs of so-called barbarians. Afghanistan is a wild, untamed land, a black hole of sorts where money comes in and seems to disappear. It is among the most militarily weak corners of the globe yet among the hardest to govern. Pakistan doesn't have a choice - the Taliban and related groups will always be knocking, just as there always would be nomads menacing or harming China somehow. So they feel that trying to pick winners (so that those winners will have something to owe them hopefully) is a worthy enterprise. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. ISI has no real obligation to put the interests of the people of Afghanistan above the interests of Pakistan or even consider it a strong factor in their decisionmaking. ISI works first and foremost for its interests and secondly for the welfare of Pakistan. The same goes for Indian intelligence agencies and Afghan ones, which probably are all involved in much the same kinds of clandestine activities. The game is innately "dirty". But what's new?

Deaths from terror attacks in Pakistan are declining and have been doing so for years, and it is clear there is some success on that front. Pakistan, much like the US, has been trying to pay down a bill it incurred for the way it saw off the Soviet threat (the greatest triumph in the history of the American-Pakistani relationship thus far). In this context Pakistan is a vital working partner that we need to cultivate, and Pakistan is an important player close to sea lanes (vital for US strategic interests) and Central Asia (an area where we need to try to counter Russian influence). We should wish Pakistan success in reducing, over time, the number of their citizenry whose lives are claimed by terrorism; they would do the same for us if asked.

I don't favor the zeroing out of aid to nations on this basis, aid is a basic thing to give to solidify a working relationship on a given issue, and nations work with each other on various things both military and civilian. Anger and high-and-mighty feelings of superiority makes for ruin in the long term and wastes resources. It reeks of the arrogance that costed us an easy win in Afghanistan, and can only harm the nation in the long run. Pakistan has its own interests, so do we, many of those overlap, but also many do not. And their intelligence agencies do try to help those interests, doing an imperfect but not completely terrible job. So do ours as well. And maintenance of those interests are key for national prosperity and thus the lot of every citizen. Is that too hard for you to understand? I hope not.

The "zero out aid for X and Y and Z" crowd either doesn't know foreign policy well, or is  careless on foreign policy, or both. Thankfully the people actually in charge are not often from their ranks.

[Sir Mohamed]

Appears there will be an immediate takeover, no transitional govt:

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1426931730414555138

[Filuwaúrdjan]

President Ghani has fled. Some reports say to Tajikistan. Former President Hamid Karzai is staying on the other hand.

Makes sense for Ghani to go to Tajikistan since he is Tajik himself.  There are many reasons why the Ghani  regime collapsed.  One of them is favoritism toward Tajiks by the Ghani  regime which served to drive other ethnic groups toward the Taliban.

Ghani is Pashtun (from, funnily enough, the same tribe as Najibullah) and extremely unpopular with Afghan Tajiks.

[jaichind]

President Ghani has fled. Some reports say to Tajikistan. Former President Hamid Karzai is staying on the other hand.

Makes sense for Ghani to go to Tajikistan since he is Tajik himself.  There are many reasons why the Ghani  regime collapsed.  One of them is favoritism toward Tajiks by the Ghani  regime which served to drive other ethnic groups toward the Taliban.

Ghani is Pashtun (from, funnily enough, the same tribe as Najibullah) and extremely unpopular with Afghan Tajiks.

Oops.  Thanks for correcting me.  I knew Ghani had problems with Tajiks relationship with other tribes so I figured he was a Tajik and not the other way around. 

[Logical]

Now that this chapter of Afghan history is almost over, I am interested to see how this would impact the global Islamic terrorism movement. In their first iteration, the Taliban sheltered many terrorist networks most notoriously the Al-Qaeda. Will there be a new rejuvenated wave of Islamic terrorism in the wake of this victory? Will the western powers be forced to intervene in Afghanistan again?

[walleye26]

CNN is reporting that as many as 60,000 Afghans are in need of SIV visas and evacuation from the country. On a House defense briefing, Kevin McCarthy said this is “like the fall of Saigon all over again.”

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

The fall of Saigon took two years of hard fighting from the North Vietnamese. The fall of Kabul didn't even take two weeks.

Thousands of people are trapped in Kabul Airport, the Taliban are closing in and the military had to completely shut down the civilian evacuations because they don't have the airspace to operate from. It's a total disaster even compared to Saigon.

https://twitter.com/Conflicts/status/1426931119103135749

https://twitter.com/AdityaRajKaul/status/1426963993130782723

[2952-0-0]

Taliban are inside the presidential palace, live on Al Jazeera.

[AncestralDemocrat.]

https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1326306141056364544?s=19

Scrambling to escape from a band of cave dwelling troglodytes wasn't my idea of "being back in the game."

[_.]

Image Link

[jaichind]

Its pretty funny that all the Taliban fighters seems to each have their own separate smartphones.  This is not the Taliban of mid 1990s.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Its pretty funny that all the Taliban fighters seems to each have their own separate smartphones.  This is not the Taliban of mid 1990s.

Yeah, there weren't any smartphones in the mid-90s.

[H. Ross Peron]

https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1326306141056364544?s=19

Scrambling to escape from a band of cave dwelling troglodytes wasn't my idea of "being back in the game."

It's funny to see pro Trump "populists" talking like this as if Biden wasnt seeing Trumps policy to completion. As much as the neocons suck, they have been consistent in their fantasies of a permanent US military presence in Afghanistan in defiance of the popular will.

[Alcibiades]

https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1326306141056364544?s=19
Scrambling to escape from a band of cave dwelling troglodytes wasn't my idea of "being back in the game."

It's funny to see pro Trump "populists" talking like this as if Biden wasnt seeing Trumps policy to completion. As much as the neocons suck, they have been consistent in their fantasies of a permanent US military presence in Afghanistan in defiance of the popular will.

Yeah, as inexcusably badly as Biden has handled the withdrawal, Trump really left him in an impossible position with his ridiculously naïve deals with the Taliban which only served to embolden them.

[Estrella]

https://twitter.com/IntelDoge/status/1426988070528851973

[Estrella]

And it's over.

https://twitter.com/AJEnglish/status/1426981926385094665

[Cassius]

Blinken reviewing the situation with the media.

[Mr. Morden]

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/countries-should-not-recognise-taliban-afghan-government-says-uks-johnson-2021-08-15/

Nobody should bilaterally recognise the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday, adding it was clear that there would be a new administration in the country very shortly.

"We don't want anybody bilaterally recognising the Taliban," Johnson said in an interview clip, urging the West to work together on Afghanistan through mechanisms such as the United Nations and NATO.

"We want a united position amongst all the like-minded as far as we can get one so that we do whatever we can to prevent Afghanistan lapsing back into being a breeding ground for terror."

[Silent Hunter]

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

[Cassius]

The best way to avoid Afghanistan ‘lapsing back into a breeding ground for terror’ would be to recognise the new government.

[NOVA Green]

We have our first official anti-Taliban insurgency already. That was quick!

https://twitter.com/Hamidhaideri/status/1426897336312160262

Well, Amrullah Saleh appears to have the biography and a good geographical location in which to attempt to wage guerrilla warfare against the Taliban.

https://www.afghan-web.com/biographies/biography-of-amrullah-saleh/

https://pbsinternational.org/programs/the-spy-who-quit/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/28/world/asia/panjshir-afghanistan-taliban.html

https://time.com/5792389/taliban-peace-ballot-box/

[Agafin]

This is so heartbreaking to me. Biden campaigned as a moderate but on this issue he tried to pander to the anti-war left too much and rushed America's withdrawal from Afghanistan. This is so embarrassing, an unmitigated disaster.

One thing is clear though, the Afghan "army" are some of the the most useless army ever.

[afleitch]

There's a very strong chance that the Taliban have already over-reached. The government may have fled, because the armed forces didn't want to defend it, but it doesn't mean there won't be strong resistance.

[lfromnj]

This is so heartbreaking to me. Biden campaigned as a moderate but on this issue he tried to pander to the anti-war left too much and rushed America's withdrawal from Afghanistan. This is so embarrassing, an unmitigated disaster.

One thing is clear though, the Afghan "army" are some of the the most useless army ever.

I don't think this was pandering. He has been one of the more Dovish Democrats atleast since 2008. He even opposed the Bin Laden raid !.