All right, so now that the Taliban is firmly and clearly in power, just what bad exactly can happen?
They’ll be repressive and commit human-rights abuses, sure, but so do dozens of other governments. They probably wouldn’t want to invite a group like al-Qaeda to come back home to roost again. So is there anything America really needs worry about?
Thank you for the excellent explanation. The poppy production is part of the reason why I was so surprised that no other group had stepped up. I think of the situation in Mexico, where if the leadership of one cartel is wiped out, the money and power simply flows to another group, and the net flow of drugs continues. I also would have thought Pakistan would have given its support to the “Taliban 2.0”, where they would achieve the same basic “benefits” of working with Taliban, but not had the baggage.
I can understand Karzai and Ghani’s reluctance to allow any other tribe to get too strong, but it seems like it ended up dooming the whole situation.
Now that the Taliban are in control, what are the chances of any other group or warlord being propped up by (Russia, China, US, Saudi Arabia, etc.) against the Taliban, or has that ship sailed?
Every indication we’ve seen the past few year is the Taliban don’t want to really get too enmeshed in trouble with us. It’s also hard to say though, they aren’t a traditional government, they’re a Mujahadeen group, so as time passes by who knows what they might get into. The Taliban is fairly opposed to ISIS expanding too much in Afghanistan, ISIS ethos makes it an enemy of any other Muslim militant groups because its philosophy is that it is the only legitimate army of the Caliphate, and that all Muslims who do not follow its ideology to a tee, are apostates.
The indications we’re seeing suggest that the Taliban at least wants to try to get some “quiet moment” to consolidate control of the country. That may be so when they do start acting really brutally, no one will be in a position to resist them.
Regarding the question of how the Taliban funds itself, you might find this story from the public radio program Marketplace interesting. They tax opium production and kidnap for ransom, but most of the revenue is from taxes, such as food and fuel. The analyst quoted estimates their budget at about $10 million though others estimate much higher.
But did the generals lose this? Did Biden not have the right information? Did Sec of State Blinken not have the right information? If I - and any handful of Dopers - knew that this was just a fucking house of cards, how could the CiC and the highest echelon of Executive leadership not have known that this outcome was very possible, if not likely?
I agree that Taliban 2.0 is different than the original Taliban. What they lacked in the 1990s was legitimacy. I think that hey figured out that legitimacy matters and is in their best interests in terms of long-term survival. ISIS is a potential adversary. I could see the Taliban wanting some international intervention against ISIS, which is a transnational threat. That in no way means that the Taliban are going to be a liberal democracy; their rule will be harsh. Maybe think of the Taliban as Saudi Arabia on steroids.
This is the question I’ve been pondering. I’m at best a casual observer of the goings-on in Afghanistan, but going back to seeing Restrepo more than a decade ago, it seemed clear to me that attempting any kind of cultural reform was a fool’s errand. In that film and in videos I’ve seen since that showed meetings with tribal elders I’ve felt sure I could detect an attitude of just going along to get along with the Americans in their body armor and big guns.
There’s no doubt that American soldiers had good intentions and actually did some good things for the people of Afghanistan. But any expectation of a cultural shift was purely wishful thinking.
Where did all that money go?
To the contractors
Groupthink and/or wishful thinking from the supporters of war in Afghanistan. Most of the deciders were not military people and relied on the military to give them answers, and the military provided wrong answers for a variety of reasons.
Presidents will ask for advice, and typically get three options from the military. However it’s the military writing these options, so they can “close off options” and not really do what the president wants. I think this is why Joe Biden told Barack Obama not to let “them” jam him. When Trump wanted options, he would get five almost identical options from the military (since they weren’t going to let him make any decisions).
This is why things can take so long. An impatient president can ask the military to speed things up, and then they’ll get three options, the fastest of which will take a year longer than the president wants, subject to conditions on the ground.
Here is another breakdown summary by Al Jazeera (@ 5:30min):
$416M - Drugs
$464M - Minerals
$240M - Exports
$160M - Taxes
$80M - Realestate
$240M - Foreign Income
You left out Biden. Billions spent on Afghan army ultimately benefited Taliban.
You know, it’s a nasty thing to do, but the U.S. military really should have bombed the ANA’s air force bases as soon as they realized they weren’t going to fight.
One thing that struck me in all of these pictures of the Taliban sitting in government offices and strolling through abandoned US military bases is how many of them are carrying M16s, M4s, and AR-15s. Still quite a few AKs but 2 decades of us leaving our shit behind have had a marked visible impact.
Where do they get the ammo for said M16s, M4s and AR15s, though? I assume they aren’t making their bullets. Or maybe they are, I don’t know.
I’m puzzled at how little effort was made to ensure military equipment and assets didn’t fall into Taliban hands. (It’s almost as if Trump’s agreement with the Taliban included parting gifts.) There has to be a reason why the US military didn’t disable all equipment and structures that they were not able to take with them. I imagine they were pressed for time. I hope that at the very least they took a long piss into the gas tanks of the light armored vehicles they left behind.
My wife and I were speculating on something similar. Nothing Trump does is selfless or ethical. As such, does anyone think that there was a ton of cash flowing into a Trump account somewhere, from Russia or China, as part of the “peace deal”?
The 7.62 and 5.56 are both standardized NATO rounds, presumably they can buy either round from the same arms suppliers. It’s just that historically they would have bought 7.62 rounds because they were using Soviet discarded AKs, and now they’re buying 5.56 rounds to match the US discarded M16s.
Different type of 7.62.
Ah, I never knew that. Thanks.