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Al-Saqr posted:well it looks like the Taliban arent gonna crack down on the Shiites for now and are showcasing their tolerance:- Looks like it wasn't all for nothing, 20 years was enough to make them think about their behavior and mellow out a bit
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Aug 16, 2021 19:15
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Blut posted:
FWIW, Clarissa provided some additional context. https://twitter.com/clarissaward/status/1427324200134533121?s=21
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Aug 16, 2021 19:15
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Ah interesting. Still a pretty grim evolution of standards though.
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Aug 16, 2021 19:19
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Sounds like next to no change at all to me.
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Aug 16, 2021 19:38
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Vegetable posted:Iran might start getting involved if they did at this point. The goal right now is to probably entrench themselves before doing all the sinister poo poo. There was a recent episode of PBS Frontline from about a month ago about the Taliban. And in the episode the Taliban were talking about how their biggest foe now are Shia groups backed by Iran. So its good to see these Shiites in Kabul not getting slaughtered but also that can change at any time.
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Aug 16, 2021 19:43
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mobby_6kl posted:Looks like it wasn't all for nothing, 20 years was enough to make them think about their behavior and mellow out a bit
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Aug 16, 2021 19:57
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mobby_6kl posted:Looks like it wasn't all for nothing, 20 years was enough to make them think about their behavior and mellow out a bit World's most expensive time out
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Aug 16, 2021 20:07
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BREAKING: Imperalists are callous fucks https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1427332973897166849
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Aug 16, 2021 20:34
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Boat Stuck posted:BREAKING: Imperalists are callous fucks https://twitter.com/anjalikdayal/status/1427339115968749571 https://twitter.com/anjalikdayal/status/1427347378839949312 QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 20:39
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Stay classy, people of the internet 
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Aug 16, 2021 20:41
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biden became president today
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Aug 16, 2021 21:35
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mobby_6kl posted:Looks like it wasn't all for nothing, 20 years was enough to make them think about their behavior and mellow out a bit Well if everyone is lucky, including remaining Afghanis, then the Taliban will have moved 200 years forward in the future and now be "only" hardline mid-18th century Wahhabism and not whatever they were back in 1996-2001. I guess we'll know pretty well in about a month and really well in about 6. It will be hard to completely turn back time since everyone has a cell phone and the Internet now, and if they were as brutal as ISIS I doubt they would have gathered as much popular support as they currently have. Still going to be a pretty terrible time to be an Afghan woman, but possibly it won't be an equivalently terrible time to be an Afghan male ethnic minority as 25 years ago. Certainly that's my optimistic take, but I don't see how much more optimistic one can be and even be remotely theoretically possible.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:49
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Saladman posted:Well if everyone is lucky, including remaining Afghanis, then the Taliban will have moved 200 years forward in the future and now be "only" hardline mid-18th century Wahhabism and not whatever they were back in 1996-2001. I guess we'll know pretty well in about a month and really well in about 6. It will be hard to completely turn back time since everyone has a cell phone and the Internet now, and if they were as brutal as ISIS I doubt they would have gathered as much popular support as they currently have. Would you say that... the next 6 months are going to be crucial?
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Aug 16, 2021 21:56
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steinrokkan posted:Would you say that... the next 6 months are going to be crucial? Got us a Friedman over here
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Aug 16, 2021 21:57
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mobby_6kl posted:Looks like it wasn't all for nothing, 20 years was enough to make them think about their behavior and mellow out a bit I think it's worth remembering that the Taliban is acting reasonable and merciful at a time when the media and governments of the world are watching them and armed forces from the world's largest military have thousands of troops in their capital city. Let's wait and see what happens when their power is uncontested before we start toasting the Taliban.
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Aug 16, 2021 22:02
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There have been more than enough reports of the Taliban walking around neighborhoods in Kabul searching for people that are hiding or made it out of the country. Especially women government officials and journalists. I'm sure they will get a court system up and running that they control and then shuffle a bunch of people through there to be sentenced to some bad stuff.
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Aug 16, 2021 22:13
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US gov should just take all the Afghani refugees into your country and provide decent living conditions to them. End of story.
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Aug 16, 2021 22:34
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i wonder what the taliban response would be if the us started a months long program to airlift out anyone who managed to get to the airport
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Aug 16, 2021 22:44
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https://twitter.com/Rover829/status/1427354474159513608
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Aug 16, 2021 23:13
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Huh, the guy America propped up turned out to be a selfish prick that fled at the first chance possible. This is my shocked face.
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Aug 16, 2021 23:31
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We're all stuck with the 2001 mindset that the Taliban are crazed religious zealots who are not rational actors. While they may still be religious zealots they appear, at least for now, to be rational actors.
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Aug 16, 2021 23:33
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This needs to be a big lesson going forward for the US with regard to Iraq as well. I have more hope there for long term secular democracy but just goes to show you can't just pull the tablecloth and think all the chinaware is going to be standing
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Aug 16, 2021 23:38
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EngineerJoe posted:We're all stuck with the 2001 mindset that the Taliban are crazed religious zealots who are not rational actors. While they may still be religious zealots they appear, at least for now, to be rational actors. afghanistan is theirs to gently caress around and find out with now, and i honestly think it is not going to be too long before they hit the first significant challenges in running the major cities anywhere other than into the ground. you can't predict what kind of absurdity is going to be birthed from this, but it'll be something
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Aug 16, 2021 23:41
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AHH F/UGH posted:This needs to be a big lesson going forward for the US with regard to Iraq as well. I have more hope there for long term secular democracy but just goes to show you can't just pull the tablecloth and think all the chinaware is going to be standing I mean we could certainly have handled the details better but this overall situation was inevitable. We dumped 20 years into this poo poo and it all collapsed in seconds. I don’t see any reason why Iraq would be any different or why we shouldn’t just pull out there as well.
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Aug 17, 2021 00:05
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Staluigi posted:afghanistan is theirs to gently caress around and find out with now, and i honestly think it is not going to be too long before they hit the first significant challenges in running the major cities anywhere other than into the ground. Reports are they've started building electrical lines and other infrastructure, which is more than the US has done for the last 20 years. readingatwork posted:I mean we could certainly have handled the details better but this overall situation was inevitable. We dumped 20 years into this poo poo and it all collapsed in seconds. I don’t see any reason why Iraq would be any different or why we shouldn’t just pull out there as well. quote:In July 2021, President Joe Biden announced that he would end the U.S. combat mission in Iraq by the end of 2021 Wonder how that's going.
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Aug 17, 2021 00:09
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There are people here who are apparently so clueless about military operations that they think you can starve thousands of people to death in an airport. Like you have honestly never heard of a supply drop, or don’t know you can attach a parachute to food and drop it out the back of an airplane that’s too high to shoot at. As far as the meme about the CNN woman, Channel 4’s report showed what the state TV evening news looked like at the start of the weekend and now. It cut from a lady at a news desk to a bunch of stereotypically grungy guys with guns standing in the middle of the studio interviewing each other. They’ve also taken the equipment outside to interview people and coax them to say how pleased they are with the new landlord. That video of the Shiite rally is another one of those guys with another one of that network’s mics, so I wouldn’t take it as anything other than propaganda that says, “hey look at us NOT killing these folks, good yeah?” There is another more privately run news network in Afghanistan, and while it’s clear press freedom is dead the owner said their visit was courteous and the broadcasters are more concerned about anarchy and lawless bandits than they are the Taliban, at this point.
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Aug 17, 2021 00:12
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readingatwork posted:I mean we could certainly have handled the details better but this overall situation was inevitable. We dumped 20 years into this poo poo and it all collapsed in seconds. I don’t see any reason why Iraq would be any different or why we shouldn’t just pull out there as well. Iraq is likely viewed as a much more important client state. It borders Iran and Saudi Arabia and they generally don't like one another. I think our "allies" in the Middle East would have much stronger feelings about us up and leaving in the middle of the night like we did in Afghanistan. The reality is that they already essentially collapsed once, to ISIS. They are in a very precarious position and seriously want to avoid being the frontier or combat center for any confrontation between the US/Iran/Saudi Arabia/Israel/Russia or whoever else would want to jump into that fray.
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Aug 17, 2021 00:18
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readingatwork posted:I don’t see any reason why Iraq would be any different or why we shouldn’t just pull out there as well. Iraq is for the most part a modernized Islamic society with a common identity, and part of that is shared enemies. You understand how Saddam was able to keep the loyalties of all those men with guns, right? He kept Iran out. Afghanis resist attempts to progress Afghanistan beyond it's pre-industrial tribal roots, with the exception of some people in the largest cities. Iraq wants to be a post-industrial self-governing society, if only because Iran is one and they need to keep on relatively even footing (yes there's the whole Shia/Shiite/Kurd thing but there's a larger picture beyond that). What they need is border help in keeping Syria and Iran out of their country, which we're more or less obliged to do since we don't want Iraq to achieve the kind of military capacity that Iran is believed to have. We do not want Iraq to pull a Pakistan and react to their nuclearized bad neighbor by building their own nukes. Iraq isn't costing us many lives at this moment. Saying not one more dime on Iraqi defense and walking away is a quick way to ensure they build the Iraqi WMDs that we went in to prevent. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 00:23
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LostRook posted:Reports are they've started building electrical lines and other infrastructure, which is more than the US has done for the last 20 years. after the invasion the us poured a ton of money into infrastructure projects. a big part of that was grafted off by corrupt officials and sweetheart deals to american contractors, but enough money was pushed through to build or improve significant amounts of infrastructure. it turns out this didn't solve any of the underlying problems just as with previous guerilla wars were the occupier figures infrastructure investments will equal popular support
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Aug 17, 2021 00:30
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The vast majority of the infrastructure the US installed was based solely around urban centers, such as Kabul, leaving the rest of the country for the Taliban to woo. It's not just the graft, it's the narrow vision.
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Aug 17, 2021 00:34
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Just some pie in the sky wishing on my part here but: Kind of hoping that 20 years of occupation was long enough that some of the old Taliban hardliners died/aged out and the new wave is a little more progressive (relatively speaking). Things are somewhat different now in that in 2001 you didn't have everyone with cameras built into their phones live streaming things as they happened directly onto the net. Maybe the occupation was so long that we have an actual generational change in the Taliban and also the Afghan people so that things don't immediately go back to how they were pre 9/11 but somehow worse.
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Aug 17, 2021 00:38
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While we're here in the thick of this, now that the USA has all but flown the coup, what are the actual goals of the Taliban? For the past two decades it's boiled down to USA LEAVE; now that's basically completed, what do they focus on? Any real endgame aside from ruling Afghanistan? Or are they simply Bad Terrorist Organization for now?
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Aug 17, 2021 00:44
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Parrotine posted:While we're here in the thick of this, now that the USA has all but flown the coup, what are the actual goals of the Taliban? For the past two decades it's boiled down to USA LEAVE; now that's basically completed, what do they focus on? Any real endgame aside from ruling Afghanistan? Or are they simply Bad Terrorist Organization for now? They go back to what they did before 2001, which was govern Afghanistan as an Islamic theocracy.
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Aug 17, 2021 00:48
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Grip it and rip it posted:The reality is that they already essentially collapsed once, to ISIS. They are in a very precarious position and seriously want to avoid being the frontier or combat center for any confrontation between the US/Iran/Saudi Arabia/Israel/Russia or whoever else would want to jump into that fray. The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the Iraqi collapse are nowhere close to an analogue to each other. Iraqi security forces fled because, in large parts, they were formed from the majority Shiite population who occupied Sunni lands in the Sunni heartland of Anbar province. The cities that fell in rapid succession late 2013 and early 2014 to ISIS were in the so-called Sunni Heartland and Iraqi forces were effectively in enemy territory due to the dissatisfaction of the Sunni minority in Iraq at the time with the Baghdad government. Once outside Anbar province, government forces firmed up and stopped all further advances from ISIS on their own. Iraqi security forces also managed to retake their country without the direct involvement of major US ground formations on the ground leading the attack. US support was mostly limited to special operations and airstrike coordination. In stark contrast, the ANA since 2018 have proven time and time again that without a US or Western ground unit forming a nucleus from which to operate, the majority of ANA units were absolutely incapable and unwilling to mount any kind of serious resistance to the Taliban. You can go back and look up the maps showing the gradual takeover of Afghan territory by the Taliban. If a major US or Western unit wasn't in the area, it flipped to Taliban control and stayed that way. The current government also does not face a legitimate alternative like the Afghan government did when the Taliban operated what was effectively a parallel government in areas under their control. The closest thing to an alternative political power base is the Shiite militias and they are not openly fighting the government forces in protracted battles. Things are kind of rocky in Iraq but to say that they collapsed to ISIS in 2013 or using that as an instance to say that Iraq will fall apart the moment the last 2500 troops leave is very misleading.
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Aug 17, 2021 00:54
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Yeah I think the bigger danger in Iraq is the Shia death squads being loosed if there's another round of sectarian conflict than of the country being taken over by ISIS or something.
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Aug 17, 2021 01:02
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MikeC posted:Things are kind of rocky in Iraq but to say that they collapsed to ISIS in 2013 or using that as an instance to say that Iraq will fall apart the moment the last 2500 troops leave is very misleading. Agreed. The Iraqi military is also much larger and more unified than the ANA was, and the Shia forces are much smaller and more divided than the Taliban. Comparing the two cases is very useful, and I'm sure there will be a lot of prognostication focused on exactly that moving forward, but the situations have significant differences.
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Aug 17, 2021 01:08
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It's lovely to say but basically the only way to somewhat guarantee things don't collapse again is basically to stay for a full loving generation or two so that the current lovely but democratic and secular system becomes so entrenched that anyone who is intent on overthrowing it right now basically gets too old to go to war and rally troops. This sounds like some forever war-endorsing neocon poo poo but I think anyone would be wise not to trust the stability of the Iraqi government or its armed forces' competency right now, especially since the 2019 protests started. I think both the Iraqi security forces and ISIS both knew the scale was tipped and the US would come in and sweep everything out if things became too insane - unlike what's happening now in Afghanistan. The alternative is way, way loving worse for just about everyone and letting things slowly turn to poo poo again like in the early 2010s would be an unparalleled disgrace. America hosed things up there already enough, the least they can do is not just completely abandon everything and think everything will be okay. Things won't fall apart instantly but I think we can all imagine a very plausible bleed-out and attrition scenario. Or maybe I'm an idiot, who knows. Also, free Kurdistan and arm them (more). AHH F/UGH fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 02:39
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 Folks. the resistance has started. Amrullah Saleh has restarated... THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE is a new and upcoming, young guy, he swipes right on every tinder and asks you "Son, have you heardof the battle of maz al sherif?" he asks you thinks like "What's your favorite turkish gyro" he doesn't eat pork. He has child slaves like a true chad. 
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Aug 17, 2021 02:40
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:
Panjshir has likely already been surrendered
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Aug 17, 2021 02:48
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AHH F/UGH posted:It's lovely to say but basically the only way to somewhat guarantee things don't collapse again is basically to stay for a full loving generation or two so that the current lovely but democratic and secular system becomes so entrenched that anyone who is intent on overthrowing it right now basically gets too old to go to war and rally troops. This sounds like some forever war-endorsing neocon poo poo but I think anyone would be wise not to trust the stability of the Iraqi government or its armed forces' competency right now, especially since the 2019 protests started. I think both the Iraqi security forces and ISIS both knew the scale was tipped and the US would come in and sweep everything out if things became too insane - unlike what's happening now in Afghanistan. The alternative is way, way loving worse for just about everyone and letting things slowly turn to poo poo again like in the early 2010s would be an unparalleled disgrace. America hosed things up there already enough, the least they can do is not just completely abandon everything and think everything will be okay. Things won't fall apart instantly but I think we can all imagine a very plausible bleed-out and attrition scenario. Or maybe I'm an idiot, who knows. It is unlikely the US will do anything significant in Iraq unless it is literally ISIS reborn in Baghdad. There is one thing going for Iraq that Afghanistan didn't have going for it. There are 3 separate political groups that are all willing to fight (literally) for their piece of the political pie in Iraq. The Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds all are willing to take up arms and kill each other if it comes down to it. No one in Afghanistan was willing to take up arms to stop the Taliban because no one with people actually willing to fight believed in the government. That was made abundantly clear over the past 4 years.
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Aug 17, 2021 02:57
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