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MiddleOne posted:lol Saddam's attempt to invade Kuwait literally ended with Iraqi infrastructure being set back decades. He was not invading anything, if he had even made it this long. He wanted to do it in 1994. There were biannual large scale reinforcement exercises after 1991 because it was that necessary to impress upon Saddam that the US had the will and capability to intervene again. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edit...tsec=frontcover e: an awful lot of this counterfactual talk makes the tacit assumption that the US is the only world actor with agency. Saddam was a guy heavily convinced of his own manifest destiny and as pointed out above, with a history of catastrophically misreading foreign affairs. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Oct 3, 2021 |
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Oct 3, 2021 18:27
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Iraq probably would have fallen into an awful civil war if Saddam lasted this long, might have even spiralled into a second Iran-Iraq war even, I think thats far more likely than a second invasion of Kuwait.
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Oct 3, 2021 19:08
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OctaMurk posted:Iraq probably would have fallen into an awful civil war if Saddam lasted this long, might have even spiralled into a second Iran-Iraq war even, I think thats far more likely than a second invasion of Kuwait. Actually yeah, poo poo wasn't getting any better under US sanctions
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Oct 3, 2021 19:23
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Ron Paul Atreides posted:Actually yeah, poo poo wasn't getting any better under US sanctions Not even that. No War on Terror doesn't change the fact that the Global Financial Crisis is going to hit in 2008 and all of the fallout from that is going to cascade into the region. The obvious scenario is that when the Arab Spring goes south in Syria then even if Iraq is 'stable' at that point the Kurds in the North of Iraq decide that This Is Their Time and declare an independent Kurdistan under the protection of the no-fly zone. That creates a crisis point for the West on the question of intervention (Turkey will say no) and so you either get horrible repression or that's step one in a civil war where everyone else in the country decides to shoot their shot. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Oct 3, 2021 |
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Oct 3, 2021 19:37
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There was precisely one person in Congress who voted against going into Afghanistan. Any alt-history where 9/11 happens still has the US going to Afghanistan.
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Oct 3, 2021 21:24
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Apparently the Taliban have resumed persecution of the Shia Hazara minority, which could bode ill to their relationship with Iran. Witnesses report killings and forced expulsions.Al-Jazeera posted:The Taliban killed at least 13 members of the Hazara ethnic group, including a 17-year-old girl, in the central province of Daykundi, shortly after they took power in Afghanistan, according to a new report from Amnesty International. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/5/taliban-killed-13-members-of-hazara-ethnic-group-report
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Oct 5, 2021 12:29
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:Apparently the Taliban have resumed persecution of the Shia Hazara minority, which could bode ill to their relationship with Iran. Witnesses report killings and forced expulsions. well poo poo. This falling into sectarian fighting is gonna collapse it all back into a nightmare. Losing the support of Iran would be bad for dealings with basically every other neighbour, this is gonna collapse if this is leadership pushing this and not them just losing control of regional militias. Dunno what to believe anymore, if their overtures at the outset of the takeover were all just pretending for the international state then their leadership really hasn't learned much in 20 years.
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Oct 5, 2021 13:37
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It's hard to tell what intentions the leadership had and did they matter. The Taliban's autonomous command structure was key to their survival, but will prove a challenge now that they've won. There is a good chance the country could end up as a collection of petty kritarchies. Either way, pissing off Iran could lead to literally dark times for a lot of people: North–South Power Transmission Enhancement Project posted:Currently, 73% of Afghan power supply is imported—22% from Iran, 4% from Tajikistan, 17% from Turkmenistan, and 57% from Uzbekistan.
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Oct 5, 2021 14:57
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It's way way worse than that. Human rights violations will put aid funding in the crossfire again, meaning that it's not just Iran but all of that electricity import that is at risk.
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Oct 5, 2021 15:06
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Yeah that's one thing the military occupation government had going for it for sure, no amount of human rights violations would put reconstruction or aid money at risk.
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Oct 5, 2021 15:39
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VitalSigns posted:Yeah that's one thing the military occupation government had going for it for sure, no amount of human rights violations would put reconstruction or aid money at risk. You know, it's a bit like having your syphilis cured by malaria, neither is particularly pleasant and it's probably cold comfort that the latter is endemic while the former came from America.
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Oct 5, 2021 17:53
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VitalSigns posted:Yeah that's one thing the military occupation government had going for it for sure, no amount of human rights violations would put reconstruction or aid money at risk. E: Actually I think I misread your post and we're in unironic agreement and not ironic agreement.
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Oct 5, 2021 23:29
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HootTheOwl posted:Correct. 
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Oct 6, 2021 22:45
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:Apparently the Taliban have resumed persecution of the Shia Hazara minority, which could bode ill to their relationship with Iran. Witnesses report killings and forced expulsions. I think it's a bit of a leap to go from the execution of 11 former ANSF troops and 2 accidental deaths to claiming the Taliban are persecuting Hazara. I'm sure they've killed more Turk and Pashtun people. Oh wait, they killed 9 other Hazara a month and a half ago! TBH I'm not convinced the Taliban ever particularly singled out the Hazara. Plenty of Uzbeks died at Mazar I Sharif. Presumably Tajiks too.
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Oct 7, 2021 10:14
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https://m.republicworld.com/world-n...p-official.html The economic situation looks really, really bad. I'm not even sure if the Taliban can hold on to power once everything comes crashing down. Another civil war might be in the cards. Makes their decision to go ahead with the misogynistic policies even more baffling. The country is completely reliant on foreign aid for its naked survival and these fuckers couldn't put off stomping down on women for even a single year to improve their negotiation position. 
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Oct 7, 2021 11:40
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GABA ghoul posted:https://m.republicworld.com/world-n...p-official.html It's 20 years on from the point where people had notice to pay attention to the Taliban and people are still surprised that the fundamentalist feudal reactionaries are acting like fundamentalist feudal reactionaries.
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Oct 7, 2021 11:52
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Weka posted:I think it's a bit of a leap to go from the execution of 11 former ANSF troops and 2 accidental deaths to claiming the Taliban are persecuting Hazara. How about mass evictions? al-Jazeera posted:Azad, the former MP, said the Taliban’s abuses in Daykundi do not end with the killings.
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Oct 7, 2021 12:01
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Alchenar posted:It's 20 years on from the point where people had notice to pay attention to the Taliban and people are still surprised that the fundamentalist feudal reactionaries are acting like fundamentalist feudal reactionaries. As some itt have pointed out, their misogynist tendencies are not even particularly religiously motivated. It's some Pashtun tribal baggage. And they have already made concession on other issues.
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Oct 7, 2021 17:31
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Alchenar posted:It's 20 years on from the point where people had notice to pay attention to the Taliban and people are still surprised that the fundamentalist feudal reactionaries are acting like fundamentalist feudal reactionaries. Less than 10 years really. Think about Malala, the then-13 year old girl pulled from a bus and shot in the head by the Taliban for blogging and seeking an education.
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Oct 8, 2021 05:37
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Wheeljack posted:Less than 10 years really. Think about Malala, the then-13 year old girl pulled from a bus and shot in the head by the Taliban for blogging and seeking an education. I'm sure the distinction doesn't matter to anyone outside the region but that was the TTP, not the Islamic Emirate.
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Oct 8, 2021 06:39
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GABA ghoul posted:As some itt have pointed out, their misogynist tendencies are not even particularly religiously motivated. It's some Pashtun tribal baggage. And they have already made concession on other issues. It's worth quoting that excellent New Yorker article on this: quote:All the women I met in Sangin, though, seemed to agree that their rights, whatever they might entail, cannot flow from the barrel of a gun—and that Afghan communities themselves must improve the conditions of women. Some villagers believe that they possess a powerful cultural resource to wage that struggle: Islam itself. “The Taliban are saying women cannot go outside, but there is actually no Islamic rule like this,” Pazaro told me. “As long as we are covered, we should be allowed.” I asked a leading Helmandi Taliban scholar where in Islam was it stipulated that women cannot go to the market or attend school. He admitted, somewhat chagrined, that this was not an actual Islamic injunction. “It’s the culture in the village, not Islam,” he said. “The people there have these beliefs about women, and we follow them.” Just as Islam offers fairer templates for marriage, divorce, and inheritance than many tribal and village norms, these women hope to marshal their faith—the shared language across their country’s many divides—to carve out greater freedoms.
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Oct 8, 2021 11:44
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Conspiratiorist posted:I'm sure the distinction doesn't matter to anyone outside the region but that was the TTP, not the Islamic Emirate. It's confusing because both the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan are commonly referred to as "the Taliban" in the west, but yeah, different organizations. Even the IEoA isn't monolithic. The Southern or "main" Taliban originated in Kandahar and consists to my understanding mostly of members the Durrani Pashtun tribe, while the Haqqani network originates from the khyber Pakhtunkhwa region in Pakistan and is mostly Zadran Pashtun. 
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Oct 8, 2021 15:33
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:It's confusing because both the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan are commonly referred to as "the Taliban" in the west, but yeah, different organizations. and again, the organization in Afghanistan was entirely destroyed and rebuilt afterwards. I understand the temptation to generalize middle eastern factions premised on Jihad as all equivalent but that really ignores the context.
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Oct 8, 2021 15:38
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:How about mass evictions? The two sources given for this are Raihana Azad and a fellow from Gizab. I'm not sure the former is impartial seeing as she's quoted as describing the killings of 13 people as "mass killings" and is a member of the political class. Gizab district was the site of an anti Taliban uprising in 2010 so people being there being punished by the new regime is hardly surprising and explainable without ethnic motivations. This of course doesn't mean that it doesn't have racist motivations.
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Oct 10, 2021 01:11
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drat she described a mass killing of 13 people as a mass killing??
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Oct 10, 2021 01:18
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well, if there was an uprising there once 10 years ago, I guess collective punishment is fine
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Oct 10, 2021 05:43
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AFancyQuestionMark posted:well, if there was an uprising there once 10 years ago, I guess collective punishment is fine what
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Oct 10, 2021 05:53
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I was responding to this insane statement:Weka posted:Gizab district was the site of an anti Taliban uprising in 2010 so people being there being punished by the new regime is hardly surprising In a glib, ironic fashion
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Oct 10, 2021 06:12
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Herstory Begins Now posted:drat she described a mass killing of 13 people as a mass killing?? It's not a mass killing in common English parlance, 13 is not a large number of people. Mass killing is also a term of art. The person who used the phrase has a politics degree so there's a pretty good chance she was being disingenuous. wikipedia - mass killing posted:Mass killing – referencing earlier definitions,[nb 1] Joan Esteban, Massimo Morelli, and Dominic Rohner define mass killings as "the killings of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under the conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims."[22] Valentino defines the term as "the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants",[23] where a "massive number" is at least 50,000 intentional deaths over the course of five years or less;[24] this is the most accepted quantitative minimum threshold for the term.[22][25] AFancyQuestionMark posted:well, if there was an uprising there once 10 years ago, I guess collective punishment is fine I'm not suggesting it was fine but that it may have had motivations other than racist ones. It is not insane to suggest that it's to be expected that the Taliban will settle scores like this. It's insane not to expect that. And it was not a collective punishment based on that report, it was targeted. Plus the 2 accidents.
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Oct 12, 2021 10:55
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Weka posted:It's not a mass killing in common English parlance, 13 is not a large number of people. I don't believe this is true. Even just a cursory search online reveals the term "mass killing" being used in contexts where the term is referring to low double-digit or even single digit deaths: Encyclopedia of Forensic Sciences posted:According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), serial murder is defined as the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events. These murders may occur over a period of days, weeks, months, or even years. This is in contrast to mass murder where, according to the FBI, four or more persons are killed at one time. In the United States, mass murders occur approximately every 10–14 days, which include both public killings and domestic mass killings. Serial murder, however, is usually not as noticeable at the outset but becomes more visible to the public as news of bodies being found are reported by the media. Here is an example of an article using it as a synonym for "mass murder", defined as "two or more victims". The Independent posted:Four people found dead inside SUV in Wisconsin cornfield in suspected mass killing Here is the term being used to refer to four deaths. ABC posted:The state of Texas won't pursue the death penalty against a man accused of killing eight people, including six children, back in 2015. This is eight deaths described as a mass killing. Global News, Canada posted:About 50 people from the community of Debert, N.S., turned out to meet investigators from the commission of inquiry investigating the mass killing that claimed 22 lives in the central and northern parts of Nova Scotia last year. A mass shooting that killed 22 is described as a mass killing. World Socialist posted:That same year, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 and injuring 17 others. The shooting triggered nationwide walkouts by students and the March for Our Lives demonstrations demanding action be taken on gun control legislation. And here, another article that clearly considers "mass killing" to be a synonym for "mass shooting" or "mass murder". Now it may be that it has a specific technical definition in specific contexts, but I think this is a fairly solid indicator that in common English parlance, "mass killing" is a reasonable term to use to describe the murder of 13 people.
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Oct 12, 2021 12:49
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Is this really the hill to mass die on? On how many corpses make a "mass" killing?
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Oct 12, 2021 14:54
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I guess you're right about it being used in smaller numbers. I still stand by my claim a member of the last government might not be the most impartial source. Like maybe the Taliban is making GBS threads all over Hazara but I'm going to reserve my judgment just yet based on this article alone.
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Oct 13, 2021 12:49
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https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-praise-suicide-bombers-offer-families-cash-land-2021-10-20/quote:Sirajuddin Haqqani, the acting interior ministry who has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head as a "specially designated global terrorist", met the families at a ceremony at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, which was itself targeted by suicide bombers in 2018. I'm sure that'll sort of policy from that sort of person will help keep the foreign aid rolling in and show that they're a kinder, gentler Taliban. Seems like a bad idea for their government to be praising suicide bombers when ISIS-K is sending them to blow up mosques in an effort to undermine the Taliban.
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Oct 20, 2021 10:05
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Wheeljack posted:https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-praise-suicide-bombers-offer-families-cash-land-2021-10-20/ Praising people who sacrificed their lives for the cause and (if possible) compensating their families is a pretty fundamental part of maintaining a loyal fighting force. After sending people off to go suicide bomb, they can't just sweep the suicide bombers under the rug and pretend they never existed. The families, friends, and fellow fighters of those dead suicide bombers wouldn't look kindly on it, and that matters a lot more than what the defeated Americans might think halfway across the world.
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Oct 21, 2021 07:16
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Wheeljack posted:https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-praise-suicide-bombers-offer-families-cash-land-2021-10-20/ The US praises "gold star families" for the sacrifice in a war where we killed vastly more civilians than a suicide bomber ever has or ever will. It's gross for sure, but it's all in how you sell it.
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Oct 21, 2021 08:02
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Those men died heroes.
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Oct 21, 2021 10:53
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Shouldn't we allow the anti-imperialist PoCs Taliban decide how many people they can kill before it's a mass killing instead of being racist by imposing white people definition of mass killng on them? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 9, 2021 18:35
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Alchenar posted:It's 20 years on from the point where people had notice to pay attention to the Taliban and people are still surprised that the fundamentalist feudal reactionaries are acting like fundamentalist feudal reactionaries. In particular I want nobody to be surprised when they are not civil policymakers, city managers, economic managers, etc
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Nov 12, 2021 17:48
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Apparently the leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is staying out of sight because of the risk of assassination by ISKP, while struggling to stamp out banditry committed by its troops.al-Jazeera posted:The supreme leader of the Taliban, Haibatullah Akhunzada, has warned the group that there may be “unknown” entities among their ranks who are “working against the will of the government”. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/4/afghanistan-taliban-leader-warns-against-turncoats-infiltrators People in the countryside are somewhat optimistic now that the the air strikes and firefights have stopped, but the worsening economy and spectre of famine is eroding confidence in the regime. https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/11/9/photos-taliban-rule-peace-rural-afghanistan-farmers
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Nov 15, 2021 17:07
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