Afghan government collapse.

[CumbrianLefty]

As if anyone with a brain couldn’t see this happening. This is the big mistake of Biden’s presidency so far, and he’d be well advised to reverse so we don’t face these disastrous consequences. I now look forward to the anti-war mob calling me a neocon and warmonger.

The US should have done a better job of nation building in the previous two decades, then.

Given their brutality *and* incompetence, a return to Taliban rule in Afghanistan is most certainly a depressing thought - but the only long term remedy to that lies with the local people themselves.

[CumbrianLefty]

Massive whitepill to see the good guys in Afghanistan win despite facing down the most powerful war machine and empire in human history.

You don't have to try *this* hard, you know.

[CumbrianLefty]

Could the Taliban take Kabul, a city of over 4 million people, with the forces they have?

They could if hardly anybody puts up a fight (did anyone do so in 1996?)

[CumbrianLefty]

Biden is going to get blamed for this by the usual suspects, isn't he.

[CumbrianLefty]

What happened to the Taliban being part of a "political process?"

And if you ever actually believed that.....

[CumbrianLefty]

Vietnam 2, electric boogaloo.

Not exactly; the North Vietnamese had tanks and aircraft.

Also "Not exactly," the South Vietnamese held out for about a year and a half after American withdrawal. Afghanistan will be 100% Taliban held by year end, and they never held 100% of Afghanistan in the 90s.

Well that remains to be seen, I can certainly see some groups in the country not submitting willingly.

And as far as South Vietnam was concerned, yes and no. The country literally collapsed in a couple of months once the North actually began their military offensive in earnest (they have said themselves that they were astonished how quick and easy it was) And equally strikingly, there wasn't even some token attempt by the AVRN to carry out guerrilla type resistance once Saigon fell.

[CumbrianLefty]

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

Biden is absolutely correct but maybe not in the way he meant. The Vietnam war was cheaper and South Vietnam lasted a couple of years  after we pulled out.

Only because the North didn't start their assault until they felt fully ready (and were confident the US wouldn't meaningfully re-enter the war again if they did)

Once it happened, the Southern collapse was almost as swift and total as we are seeing here.

[CumbrianLefty]

Lots of claims above that the Taliban enjoy "massive" public support in Afghanistan.

Has there ever been any serious attempt to quantify this?

Have just seen somewhere else an equally serious claim that only about 10% of the population are strong supporters, and that what is happening is more akin to a military coup

[CumbrianLefty]

Lots of claims above that the Taliban enjoy "massive" public support in Afghanistan.

Has there ever been any serious attempt to quantify this?

Have just seen somewhere else an equally serious claim that only about 10% of the population are strong supporters, and that what is happening is more akin to a military coup

The latter is probably a more accurate assessment (although these things are impossible to quantify with anything like precise figures), but at this point it’s pretty clear that the Taliban enjoy more popular support than the ‘legitimate’ government in Kabul. As is always the case I suspect the majority of the population simply want to avoid trouble and if that means conceding to Taliban rule than they’ll concede to Taliban rule.

Yeah, there is much talk that the Taliban have "moderated" themselves this time round (making much more effort to win over non-Pashtuns than in the 90s, for instance) but it looks like we will see soon enough. They made themselves very unpopular very quickly when last in power.

[CumbrianLefty]

Well, part of their previous fiasco in charge is that they didn't do those things terribly well.

[CumbrianLefty]

This is objectively pretty disastrous, but ngl - the neocon screams and tears are a consolation.

[CumbrianLefty]

You almost sound pleased, do you actually support these monsters?

[CumbrianLefty]

British Parliament is being recalled next week over all this.

Almost the ultimate pointless gesturing.

About the one useful thing it could do is agree to let in any anti-Taliban Afghans who want to come here (I don't suppose it will surprise anyone that the sociopaths in the Home Office oppose this)

[CumbrianLefty]

Said bureaucratic mentality is much the same everywhere, alas.

[CumbrianLefty]

South Vietnam really put up more of a fight.

My comparison is pro-USSR Republic of Afghanistan government.  Even after the USSR troops pulled out they continued to exist although with smaller and smaller areas of control.   The held out for 3 more years and only fell when all USSR aid disappeared as USSR itself disappeared at the end of 1991.

Actually that government outlasted the USSR itself. But in April 1992 certain "warlord" figures made a deal with the insurgents and withdrew their support - and after that it fell in days with barely a shot being fired, very like now.

[CumbrianLefty]

I can't remember much from 2001 but i'm curious if it would have been possible to try to root out Bin Laden without doing much to the established order in Kabul?

The Taliban did reject Bush's initial ultimatum to give bin Laden and Al Qaeda over, but honestly even if the Taliban had been interested in cooperating, American bloodlust was so high it's impossible to explain. America wasn't going without a war here even if the Taliban had bent over backwards to cooperate.

What MIGHT have worked is if the US actually had gotten bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and the rest at Tora Bora in December 2001. If Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were captured or killed just three months after 9/11, it's quite possible the US public opinion would be so happy we'd be more open to declaring victory and calling it quits rather than staying another two decades. It's more or less the failure of the punitive aspect of the Afghanistan war that forced us into the nation building aspect to look for SOMETHING to be a win.

Alternatively, the US might have tried to "finish the job" in Afghanistan (not just militarily but in the sense of creating a viable post-Taliban country) but as we know their REAL target was elsewhere - Rumsfeld told his staff just hours after the Twin Towers fell "we are going into Iraq". Even though of course that country had literally nothing to do with Sept 11 (which did not prevent a massive tide of obfuscatory disinformation propaganda in the US that they *had* been in some undefined way)

The irony is that, as of today, Iraq is in a somewhat less bad situation than Afghanistan - though it would very likely be in a similar place had the neocons left well alone and allowed the Saddam regime to decompose naturally (as was already slowly but surely happening)

[CumbrianLefty]

https://twitter.com/samhusseini/status/1427068129839042564
This.....is.....brutal.

It was indeed a matter of time, and duly happened, but it still took three years.

This time round......three weeks? And before all the troops had even gone!

[CumbrianLefty]

I'm sure the Taliban are just being on their best behavior while they know the whole world is watching and will probably revert to 90s-style governance as soon as the foreign cameras are off. But I guess seeing this is at least a better-case scenario than them just straight up coming into town and beheading everyone so... baby steps?

https://twitter.com/saadmohseni/status/1427531355538272269

Maybe its not just that tbh, Taliban mark 2 seems to be a much looser more "decentralised" outfit - more of a franchise - and certainly less Pashtun chauvinist. I've no doubt they are still a thoroughly bad thing overall and life is going to be grim for many Afghans who don't share their worldview (even if they aren't actually deaded) but there seems reason to believe they won't plumb the depths of depravity that they did in 1996-2001. Let's hope so, for Afghanistans sake and indeed our own.

[CumbrianLefty]

I hope that once the last plane is evacuated from Kabul that we de facto recognize the Panshjir enclave and ideally even enforce a 1990s Iraq type No Fly Zone around that area.

Well tbh I think that the international community will be waiting and seeing on that after recent events. If they can go on to credibly establish themselves - maybe capturing some more territory - there might be a case for it.

Worth remembering that the Northern Alliance only controlled about 10% of the country for most of the Taliban's first regime, but were still the widely recognised "government".

[CumbrianLefty]

Another triumph for the War On Drugs, then?

[CumbrianLefty]

This is a complete fiasco caused entirely by the Biden Administrations poor policies and inability to plan for the withdrawal. The evacuation of interprets and other local staff should have started much earlier and the embassy should have been massively scaled down .I am normally a fan of his administration's policies but he has completely botched the withdrawal process here. There was no need for chaos at the airport or for people to be clutching to the wings of taking off planes, he needs to take responsibility and publicaly outline a plan to evacuate everyone from the aiport. He should also address the nation tonight instead of waiting and take some actual responsibility, suspend the pointless paperwork and formalities.

There was no need for this to become a Saigon but his poor policies have caused it.

I wouldn’t fully blame Joe Biden for the downfall of Afghanistan and the rise of the Taliban. Really I think the blame should be placed on either Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan (for supporting the Taliban during the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan War) or Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, or David Ben-Gurion (for planning out and executing the 1953 Iranian coup, which is the direct contributor to al US interventions in the Middle East).

Mohammed Daoud Khan is who to blame

Some truth in that, probably.

[CumbrianLefty]

https://twitter.com/MSharif1990/status/1428755292171481088?s=19

Newsweek is reporting the number could be as high as (3) / (15) districts of Baghlan Province:

Resistance fighters in Afghanistan have recaptured three areas in the country's Baghlan province from the Taliban, according to reports on Friday, as locals fight back against the recent takeover.

Anti-Taliban forces reportedly took back control of the Banu, Pol-e-Hesar and De Salah districts in Baghlan province, while around 60 Taliban fighters were killed or injured in the fighting.

https://www.newsweek.com/anti-taliban-resistance-recaptures-multiple-areas-afghans-fight-back-1621437

It should also be noted that the province is majority Ethnic Tajik and Hazara, as well as partially adjacent to Panjshir Province, both of which could have future significance from both a political and military perspective with Taliban forces much more stretched out as they try to garrison large cities where historically they have had much less support than in many rural areas within the country.

It seems fairly clear now that in much of the country the Taliban secured the acquiescence of both the local elders and wider population (both through sheer war weariness and the almost total contempt for the outgoing government) rather than their active support.

Their leadership may well know this and thus want to move cautiously in imposing their will, but many of their foot soldiers will be a lot more impatient. Which portends trouble down the line.

[CumbrianLefty]

They could surely insist on the "original " Sept 11 date, I would have thought.

[CumbrianLefty]

Biden's ratings seem to be finally taking a significant hit from all this.

(not the most important thing I know, but still)

[CumbrianLefty]

This is a humanitarian tragedy, and while I understand the rationale for leaving, it should be obvious to anyone who isn't a hack that Biden has severely mismanaged the process. If this had been happening under his predecessor there would be no hesitation about laying the blame on him.

That is fair comment, but I would simply add that it *is* his predecessor's "process".

Of course that doesn't alter the fact that on this at least, Biden agreed with him.