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[feelotraveller]

Interesting to consider that Charlie Wilson's War, with its postscript "what (did not) happen next" commentary was released in 2007.

Many of the present-day Taliban would have been in school learning from the "violent schoolbooks filled with militant Islamic teachings" provided on mass (sic) to them by the American government.  To be fair, around 2002 efforts had been started to produce replacement schoolbooks for Afghani children (but not those the Taliban were teaching obviously) which portrayed apples and oranges rather than land mines, tanks and guns as items to count, to pick on a clearly understandable if rather trivial example. 

I mean providing guns, meh, yeah, a few years use generally, but fanning the flames of Islamic fundamentalism that's priceless! (um, I mean, something that lasts for generations).  To be clear I condone neither activity.

[StrawBarrel]

Ah, the Taliban, yet another monster the US created and lost control of in the Middle East:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban

The US government covertly provided violent schoolbooks filled with militant Islamic teachings and jihad and images of weapons and soldiers in an effort to inculcate in children anti-Soviet insurgency and hate for foreigners. The Taliban used the American textbooks but scratched out human faces in keeping with strict fundamentalist interpretation. The United States Agency for International Development gave millions of dollars to the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the 1980s to develop and publish the textbooks in local languages.

I've heard for quite a while that the US funded the Taliban, but I didn't know until reading yesterday that the US created and provided them right wing education material. Pretty wild stuff

I watched a 2015 documentary about a few months ago about the US govt funding a right wing Vietnamese organization called VOECRN.
Terror in Little Saigon (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

Things for the US to-do list: stop supporting right wing groups. Has had a lot of bad outcomes historically.

[Lord Shonus]

"The US created the Taliban" is more than a little oversimplified. They're a splinter group of a splinter group of the factions funded by the US in the 1980s that didn't form until well after US aid stopped. Most of the US-backed groups wound up in control of the country after the Soviet-backed government collapsed - they're the guys that Taliban kicked out, and who came back into power after the Taliban were ousted.

[Random_Dragon]

I'm wondering how likely it is that China is going to have their turn on the Afghanistan merry-go-round after we're out. If they do I suspect they might have an easier time in terms of the logistics of putting boots on the ground, but I suspect it's not going to be pleasant for them and it'll probably burn them out heavily.

Everyone loses when it comes to this sort of thing, it seems to me.

EDIT: On the other hand, China has made nice somewhat with them presumably because having US forces in a country that borders China can't possibly be reassuring to them, but I can see things breaking down into a complicated mess once we're fully out of the country.

An alternative is what might happen if the Taliban actually manages to take control over most of the country. If they do, given those tribal distinctiomn and other cultural issues, I suspect they're going to have a Bad Time trying to actually hold onto the country and make anything resembling a functional government out of it.

It'd be a bit poetic if the end result is that the Taliban falls apart basically to the exact same problems that has made it the graveyard of empires, but even if that goes sideways in the most fitting manner possible the human cost is going to be immense.

[StrawBarrel]

I quickly skimmed some wikipedia articles, and I see what you mean by oversimplified. Yeah the Taliban was formed in 1994.
Some Afghan mujahideen would go on to support the Taliban. While other mujahideen supported what would become the current government, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_mujahideen#Relationship_with_the_Taliban

[Frumple]

Press release by Biden on the current Afghanistan/Kabul situation. If nothing else, if that's actually held true to there's going to be something to note in him actually cashing the check his mouth wrote.

I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan—two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.

... doesn't make the civilian population of Afghanistan less omnifucked, mind, but still. Bigger balls in under a year than the entire previous administration, for better or worse

[Sirus]

It's not a good situation. If we stay, things are going to continue on the way they have for the past twenty years. If we leave, other interests are going to take over where we left off and probably add their own brands of fuckery to the mix.

Whoever wins Afghanistan, the Afghans are going to lose.

[Lord Shonus]

Looking over some old news, it looks like the Taliban have been advancing steadily for around 5 years now, and were gaining ground even at the high point of the troop surge. In other words, it appears we've been losing anyway.

[nenjin]

Would also point out that people have been fighting for or through Afghanistan for (technically) thousands of years. Babylon, Macedonia, Genghis Khan, India, the British, the Russians....Afghanistan has been fought over for a significant portion of its history. We're just another foot note.

[feelotraveller]

"The US created the Taliban" is more than a little oversimplified.

Yeah, that's fair enough.  It's a pity that you didn't engage with the 'why' of it in response to a demand for other nations to step up to the plate of the Afghanistan problem.  My use of it was in that specific circumstance and indeed surveyed the other countries who contributed in significant amounts to 'fanning the flames of Islamic fundamentalism' (as I put it in a following post) in Afghanistan.

[martinuzz]

Where US military intelligence at first thought it would take about 8 months, after the US troops leaving, for the Taliban to reach Kabul, they later re-estimated that to three months.

They were still wrong. Make that (less than) two weeks.

Taliban has now entered the outer neighborhoods of Kabul.

This could become a bloody confrontation between US and NATO evacuation forces and Taliban. Biden has sent an additional 2000 US troops to support the 3000 troops he already sent to evacuate personnel. UK and Germany are sending troops too. They better hurry.

[dragdeler]

a

[Dostoevsky]

Where US military intelligence at first thought it would take about 8 months, after the US troops leaving, for the Taliban to reach Kabul, they later re-estimated that to three months.

They were still wrong. Make that (less than) two weeks.

Taliban has now entered the outer neighborhoods of Kabul.

This could become a bloody confrontation between US and NATO evacuation forces and Taliban. Biden has sent an additional 2000 US troops to support the 3000 troops he already sent to evacuate personnel. UK and Germany are sending troops too. They better hurry.

https://wapo.st/3xRKkmi (should be non-paywalled, I think?) is a good article on how the Taliban has been quietly negotiating surrenders of local forces across the country for over a year now.

Also, the president has already fled the country and the Taliban is negotiating a peaceful capture of Kabul. It's over, pretty much.

[martinuzz]

Yeah. Taliban have captured the presidential palace and president Ghani has left the country.

[McTraveller]

Does it even count as "capturing?" It sounds like basically the previous government just ceded control.  If that WaPo article is anything to go off - basically the previous government just gave up.

I can't say I care for the politics of the Taliban, but I can say this: if they are willing and able to effect power transfer without combat, which it sounds like they were able to do, intentionally, far in advance - then I'll take some solace in that, even if it's a small consolation.