Every media outlet seems to have had, for days, some form of self declared expert who is there to share what ‘they should have done was…’. It’s getting old already, I think.
So here’s MY theory;
It occurs to me that things would look very differently, at this point in time, if the foreign forces in country, had decided to train an all female force. Sure it wouldn’t have been easy, but one secret unit and you’d soon have many more. They can hide a lot under those shrouds, after all. They’d be fierce in my opinion. They already have the kind of secret communications back channels born of oppressive conditions. NO ONE would be MORE invested, I think.
I cannot see them EVER laying down their arms to surrender.
My theory is, just about everything could be solved with microdrones. Drones that are the size of a small insect but pack an explosive charge.
Have those flying around upon command, ID’ing Taliban, then hit them, bang, in the neck. Would take out the jugular or carotid.
The Taliban would go absolutely berserk. This isn’t a human foe they can stop, and none of them would be safe.
And the United States would tell them, “Here are the terms and conditions you must abide by. Follow them, and the drones won’t fly. Violate them, and buzzz buzz buzzz bang. Number one, religious freedom…number two, suffrage for women…”
Historically, ISTM the way to change a culture forever is to completely overwhelm it to the point where the culture either doesn’t exist anymore or that it’s so small and weak that it is insignificant. Examples being the way that China has crushed Tibet and the Uighurs in Xinjiang, or the way that indigenous tribes were dealt with by the Americans. I certainly don’t want to see the U.S. or any power attempt to reform Afghanistan in that manner, but the reality is, that’s probably what it would take.
Afghanis under the age of 25, who are also in certain anti-taliban cities, have never really experienced Taliban rule. Afghanistan is a traditional muslim society so it is not like these young people would be like western young people. But I do think some of the worst excesses of the Taliban would at the very least rub them the wrong way. What? I have to wear a beard? What? I can’t have an education?
So my silly theory is that 20 years of relative freedom will not be lost on some Afghanis. I think they will fight back.
Imagine a bunch of rednecks invading UC Berkeley. How long would that last?
The Taliban operate a narco-economy. Destroy that.
Rather than bombing, straffing and poisoning of poppy fields as per current strategies, why not introduce (ie by air seeding) a GM poppy that looks identical, vigorously grows and outcompetes the wild varieties, produces more sap but has negligible opiate content?
Once established in the farmers seed supplies it would be almost impossible to remove.
As the realisation comes that you can’t get zonked on Afghani opium then the bottom falls out of the market. The Taliban are unable to fund their economy. The local warlords have their fiefdoms threatened. The regime falls by rotting from the inside.
Mind you, a few other narco-states and peddlers might object to that approach.
Ensure that Afghanistan has fast broadband and a good mobile phone infrastructure. Then ensure that TickTock, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media are freely available.
Then wait.
This is my solution. Import people from all over the western world and give them free land, tax benefits and no tarrifs. All of the natural resources now belong to the colonists. If the people of Afghanistan want a job they’ve got to work for the new residents. For at least the first 50 year brutally suppress any uprisings killing whole villages if necessary. Everything runs through the western world. Gradually over time native born people are allowed into the government and after 400 years or so turn the rule of the country back to the “natives” who will have had their culture removed. Basically, think Canada, New Zealand or Australia.
The challenge is, they have resistance. They have weapons. They have partners in the region who will assist them. If I were to bet on a foreign power that had even a slight chance of subjugating a territory like Afghanistan, it would have to be one within close enough range to simplify the logistics - that’s for starters. That rules out the United States. But India, Russia, Pakistan, China, Iran – they’re within that range.
But then you need sheer numbers of people, and you need money. That probably rules out Pakistan and Iran. Russia already tried occupation. Didn’t work, and I don’t see how it would work now. That leaves China and India, and of the two, China’s the only country that could conceivably pull it off anytime in the near future.
The last step is that they would have to be willing to use sheer brutality. China checks that box, and considering their Malthusian problem, they might have an incentive. But a lot could go wrong. China would run into opposition among other foreign powers. What China would need is some sort of superweapon that would intimidate other foreign powers out of coming to their aid.
My non-serious answer is to copy exactly what Britain did in India. Force the various groups to unite to force the colonizers out, then do so… but make sure you destroyed all the old ruling groups first so they can’t split up again afterward. Just like India stayed completed united and definitely did not split into two countries afterward. Oh, that was a bit awkward.
Serious answer: there’s no good solution. Imposing massive adjustments to their culture would require massive human rights abuses. I doubt even splitting up the country would work.
Anybody who believes that we are somehow going to enforce the American will upon Afghanistan, either by proxy or remote action, has pretty much ignored the last 20 years in addition to failing to read the history of the last few centuries of the region. And the idea that we are someone going to be able to uniquely identify and eliminate “the Taliban”—a loose group with no real leader or explicit hierarchy, and indeed no membership rolls, uniforms, or morale patches—defies belief. The first thing we need to do if the desire is to change the culture of Afghanistan is to at least reflect on the lessons of recent history before repeating the exact same mistakes, the consequences of which we are just now in the midst of extricating ourselves from.
I disagree primarily because the US has successfully controlled the country for the last 20 years. The major difference was that they didn’t bring in colonists to start taking the resources of the country. If, instead of attacking Iraq, those resources had also been applied to controlling larger swaths of the country the US could have successfully colonized.
Both of my parents lived in Afghanistan from 2004-2008 working for the corps of engineers they were just civilians building infrastructure that we handed over to the afghani government to run. If instead we’d taken those power plants and hospitals and given them to US business people on the condition they and their family live in country we would have had a bunch of entrepreneurs rushing over. Once you start adding in giving away the $1 trillion in mineral resources You could have easily developed a million or three colonists looking to get rich. Having colonists making up 10% of the population is a pretty decent start.
You can always count on greed just like the US land grants encouraged westward expansion both for settlers and railroads.
That’s debatable – depends on what you mean by control. You could have brought colonists over, but unless you erase or somehow displace and dominate the element that is opposed to the colonizers, then more numbers just means more potential dead bodies being shipped back to the states.
If you want to see a successful foreign occupation in modern times, I don’t know, look at Israel. But when you do, consider the fact that Jewish settlers had strong incentives beyond just money and economic opportunity to make their project work. Their view of nationalism was inextricably tied to the land. They were also fleeing danger. I don’t see how any American would have any reason to move to Afghanistan beyond money - which is no different than your typical colonist running around East and South Asia in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
In most cases, money alone won’t resettle people. And even if it did, other foreign powers in the region would likely intervene to discourage and disrupt our designs on Afghanistan. I’m going with history on this one. History says invading Afghanistan is about as fruitful as invading Russia from the West during winter. In both cases, it usually doesn’t end well.
False premise; the United States has controlled exactly nothing in Afghanistan outside of major cities and FOBs, and the reports claiming otherwise were progressively more disconnected from the reality of the situation. There has been the illusion of control in which local tribal leaders have accepted the succor of American and allied forces (who in turn have been willfully blind to sexual and occupational slavery, opium poppy cultivation, and numerous other offenses) only to turn face once outsiders are gone and Taliban forces return.
Setting aside the repugnant neocolonial aspects of the idea that you could entice “colonists” to enter the country and establish dominance, Afghanistan isn’t actually worth that much; it is largely arid mountainous territory that is worth little for general agriculture, lacks for a readily subjugated labor force, and is generally the kind of place that is best known for being difficult to transit on the way to better days. Yes, there are theoretical riches that could be wrestled from its veins, if one was willing to dedicate billions of dollars of capital and ongoing maintenance, protection, and defense of infrastructure for extraction and removal, but you’ll note that every single one of the European colonial powers who engaged in such enterprises around the globe—Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, the British—were all ultimately bankrupted in trying to maintain such empires.
Can we not learn from the example of history and avoid repeating the failures of others, or are we so foolishly doomed to repeating such lessons?