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[Frumple]

... do note the daily fail is about the exact opposite of reliable.

[scriver]

Nup, you're mudslinging alright (...at best).

Jeez guys I should ease off on the blood sausage I think I might be developing irony poisoning

[Starver]

You probably forget that Trump had set May 1st as his withdrawal date. Not that I think it would have happened then, but the draw-down for that would have been even more hasty (or incomplete).

A May 1st (is that the start of or end of?) withdrawal would've been under the condition that the Taliban not take any additional territory, which they had violated.

Let us assume that the Taliban did nothing to prevent the presumed Trump-led start of the process, which we shall assume goes ahead with measured retreat as the Taliban politely offer no action to jeapordise the agreement (not even rogue(/more-rogue!) elements, which have obviously been itching to rise up). The staged withdrawal you describe happens over months, all strangely but reassuringly peaceful, until it reaches the almost-totally-withdrawn status of just before our own timeline's surge-resurgance. We can see that the force needed for the surge-resurgance was there (or was built up) and would therefore have surge-resurged in even the perfect Trumpian world.

The only unbeliivable part of that scenario is that the underground mass of the (re-)occupying Taliban could be so restrained, having by practical necessity eschewed an official command hierearchy with ranks and organisational structure charts and all the guff that conventional armed forces do not need to so overwhelmingly keep obscured and fluid and versatile in case of counter-intelligence compromises.

Actually "gone completely quiet, causing no trouble at all" is probably a warning sign in itself. If there's suddenly not some Taliban cell causing trouble for some national army outpost somewhere, at times like , I'm convinced that a "trust but verify" approach would tread even more carefully. With absolutely none of the remote Taliban equivalents of country-bumpkin yahoos causing ruckus, it suggests that someone (via the concealed command-structure) has put the fear of GodAllah into them to keep the noise down. And for what reason are they all lying low? Perhaps because the same someone who is equally capable of prompting a coordinated uprising has plans (e.g., said coordinated uprising) for later.


It's far too early and far too fog-of-warred to really say what would have worked. I'm tempted to say 'nothing', including continuing whack-a-mole actions as before. The question "if not now, then when?" has been posited in multiple situations, this year, and strangely those who use it for opening up 'post' Covid (where we definitely know there's still reservoirs of illness itching to unleash themselves upon the population) seem also to be amongst the crowd inclined to the "not yet!" post-hoc rationalisation for Afghanistan (where we definitely know there's still reservoirs of insurgents itching to unleash themselvez upon the population). And, to be fair, there's those who have been working with exactly flipped supporting/hesitating attitudes to these two scenarios. And I'm sure plenty have changed their minds on either/both of these example points even if at least being equivolently ideological on such matters at some precious moment of time.


It's all above my paygrade, this is just me being a rando with a viewpoint. You seem to have the same limitations, though applied in a different direction. And perhaps a lot more self-certainty, I know.

[Starver]

Given that I tend to get so very TL;DR; about some things let me just add a short(er) clarification that I all too often complain internally that something is being done wrong, for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time, in the wrong direction, at the wrong target and/or with the wrong justification. I'm not at all lauding the Biden approach, nor entirely codemning what Trump did/tried to do/appeared to do. But you can't polish a turd, and if you even start to try to gild it I'd say its probably wiser to just step a few paces further back. Not that I'm wise.

[Dostoevsky]

Worth noting that the Trump-Taliban agreement had an uncertain number of secret provisions, which makes it generally hard to judge. (Though of course their very existence doesn't speak well of it.)

And while I only did a gloss of the public contents of the deal, I'm not seeing any obligations on the Taliban that they have clearly broken so far. Partly because their obligations are pretty light...

[Lidku]

Feelotraveller, you are focussing too much on semantics. It's probably indeed what Starver said, translation of translation.
It's completely irrelevant, I could have posted marital age, majority age or whatever wording, the statement of my post would remain the same.

No it would lose the implication that somehow the Taliban's verbal committment to a step in the right direction for the education of girls and women is irrelevant.  It's not.

It is also remarkable that you have not posted about child marriage in Niger, which leads the statisitics  by percentage of marriages, in the Africa thread. Nor commented about India, which has the great number of child marriages as an absolute number/national figure in whatever thread would be relevant.  My conclusion is that your aim is not to highlight the problems of child marriage (which continued to be a significant problem in the non-Taliban Afghanistan) but rather to use the emotional issue to denigrate the new proto-Afghani government even as they are making announcements that are something of an advance in other areas.

We don't know what their stance on child marriage will be yet.  Sure it's fair enough to point to their previous stance - notwithstanding that without outlining why they think/thought it an acceptable practice you are not doing the issue even a passing justice - but you are hardly doing them justice in other areas either, such implying that women will be forced to wear the burka again, which is not what has been stated by the new regime - hajib yes, burka no.  No doubt you will turn this into a new point for (anti-)religious vitriol rather than acknowledging it as a promising development.  (The hajib debate I'll note is far wider than "Taliban' or even "Afghanistan'.)

Nup, you're mudslinging alright (...at best).

You seem oftly defensive of the Taliban...

[feelotraveller]

You seem oftly defensive of the Taliban...

Hmm... if you were around for the last election campaign you might have thought that I was oftly defensive of Joe Biden.  I'll let you in on a secret, Joe's not my friend, whether he's wearing a hijab or not.

[Gentlefish]

Can we talk about America and not Saigon Kabul? I thought it was "Mission Accomplished" after all.

Especially Niger & India, wtf? That's the most blatant "what about" I've seen in a while.

As for "something of an advance(sic)" like. Are you saying they're better than the legitimate government and ANA (which has/had 60% support from the peoples)? Because, uh... Have you read or seen the Handmaid's Tale? The Taliban want exactly that but Islam flavored. Gotta love it when America sticks its thumb in the natural resources pie of other nations that don't give us what we want. This isn't anything new, just a different world location.

[Lord Shonus]

Afghanistan does not, and never has, provided significant natural resources of any kind to the US. The nation has huge mineral deposits, but the complete lack of economic development has prevented any but the most limited exploitation of said resources.

[Gentlefish]

Huh, that's what I get for assuming things. Maybe it really is a closer parallel to Vietnam than I thought, seeing as the whole reason the Taliban came about was through the CIA backing the Mujahideen to fight USSR/Russian backed forces through Operation Cyclone starting four years after (oh boy) the fall of Saigon.

[Lord Shonus]

That's also not really correct. The Taliban are a splinter of a splinter of the forces that the CIA supported during the brutal Soviet occupation, but they were not a direct result. The hard-line Islamist fundamentalist strain was already present in the country, and would have emerged in any post-Soviet government. The mujahedin were also receiving funding and black-market support via wealthy Saudis and other Gulf states, and a guy by the name of Osama Bin Laden was fighting as a co-belligerent in his own independent war.

[Dunamisdeos]

I'm not going to be anything but blunt about saying that the Taliban's verbal commitment to allow women to be educated until married is 100%, completely, unequivocally, absolutely irrelevant. Meaningless. Inconsequential.

The irrefutable fact that they support child marriages as part of both local culture and religious practices completely invalidates any attempt whatsoever to present a face of supporting women as anything but chattel.

If they were to outlaw child marriages (And demonstrably enforce that concept) as both the secular and religious leaders of the state, then, and only then, would it matter.

[Frumple]

If they were to outlaw child marriages (And demonstrably enforce that concept) as both the secular and religious leaders of the state, then, and only then, would it matter.

Hell, that's a level of commitment the US doesn't even meet. It'd be an interesting way to one-up the West.

[Dunamisdeos]

If they were to outlaw child marriages (And demonstrably enforce that concept) as both the secular and religious leaders of the state, then, and only then, would it matter.

Hell, that's a level of commitment the US doesn't even meet. It'd be an interesting way to one-up the West.

Yo, if the Taliban does a 180 and starts governing with responsibility instead of psychopathy, I'll be pleased as punch. I'm not holding my breath, and right now I'm not going to trust for a hot second that this is their goal in light of their previous devotion to child rape and ethnic cleansing.

[Frumple]

Not really related to the discussion, exactly, but it's kinda' wild -- I had remembered the US hasn't outlawed underage/child marriage, but I had either forgotten or never noticed how bloody pervasive statutes that allow for it is. Supermajority of the states allow for under 18/below state age of majority, nearly two dozen just flat out don't have a minimum legal age for marriage, with basically anything allowed if you can get the right waivers for it.

It's pretty fucked up. You'd think we could at least come together as a nation and say, "Y'know what, no goddamn married children," but apparently not.