Well, IIRC you are Pakistani so you would know better than I. Isn’t the seat of government in Kabul? What is the population distribution between the mountains/countryside and the cities/large villages?
There are many different power centers. You have Kabul in the North, Kandahar in the South, Herat to the West. The Taliban’s power was and is in Kandahar. The population is overwhelmingly rural and divide into multiple ethnicities, tribes and sub tribes, with loyalty being primarily to the local sub tribe/clan. 35 years of war has only strengthened those loyalties, as various players made and continued to make and break alliances between the various clans, tribes, ethnic groups.
I knew that at least some of the Afghani people don’t have much of a national identity. As a percentage of the overall population, how many people do you think that comprises? I realize that you may only be able to venture a WAG, and that’s totally fine. I ask because I wonder if its possible for a nation of tribes and clans such as Afghanistan if it is even possible to foster pride in their nation writ large.
How, exactly, will we know when we have achieved success in Afghanistan?
Once the average American can pick up their prescription of opium from CVS and still have change left over for Baklava.
Sorry missed your question earlier. There is a concept of Afghanistan/Khorsan which dates back, well millenia. However its the concept of a region (like say Europe, or the Caucasus or the Far East) rather than a nation state. A good if imperfect analogy would be pre unification Italy.
Same as usual; when the President declares “mission accomplished”.
It would really have to be something for a George W Bush war to be “worth it” to the common man.
But hugely, hugely worth it for the owners of oil stock, anyone concerned with the military-industrial complex, and his election backers in general.
Afghanistan has oil now?
^ Everyone loves a smartarse. From the OP:
Wasn’t it recently discovered that Afghanistan has a huge amount of rare minerals?
Well, it is transliterated. Most spellings have a hyphen though.
I don’t know. It matters not so much what happened in the past, but what we accomplish there. If you just want vendetta, we’ve well and truly paid the Afghans back in spades. If you want to take down the al-Qaeda boys, that’s something else, and we’ve been doing that. If you want to reform Afghanistan into something that isn’t ripe for the Taliban, I don’t know, maybe stop propping up those warlords that are even less civilized than the Taliban?
They were shot to death by a “friendly” party. Haven’t we had enough of this insanity? Face it, there is no “nation” to build.
In a world full of uncertainty, we can still count on ralph to always post comments that are never quite on topic; and have the general tone-deafness and lack of insight one might find if Rain Man had a conversation with Eliza on a Commodore 64.
Afghanistan’s history might be summarized as a long series of Civil Wars, pitting one evil faction against another. In its own crude fashion, it began modernising during the mid-20th century. The Soviet Union took the side supporting human rights, so naturally the U.S. had to side with the Islamist fanatics. Since then, Pakistan and U.S. have been operating in their own perceived self-interests, Afghan people be damned.
The U.S. needed to intervene in Afghanistan to neutralize al-Qaeda. It should have done so, left the keys to the country in Afghan hands and said bye-bye providing generous aid. Instead it viewed the intervention as a grand experiment in Creative Destruction and used development aid to help connected companies rather than to help Afghans.
The government that U.S.A. created in Afghanistan is now ranked 3rd in the world for corruption, behind only North Korea and Somalia.
Just show 'em Tom Cruise movies and feed 'em with McDonald’s and all problems are over, hunh? Purple-finger democracy, maybe throw in some Christian missionaries?
– Sorry for the snark. The idea that countries like Afghanistan just need to be awoken to American values is just so … (checks forum) Bushian.
As for Iraq – U.S. should never have intervened there at all. I’ve read about five books that make clear what a travesty of hypocrisy that was. If anyone disagrees, I’d ask them to post their reading list.