Not sure if there’ll be a huge amount of interest, but thought it might be worth a thread, as this thing is only going to get more prominent in coming months, as we are now discovering what the consequences of the US pullout might be.
The Taliban have taken a lot of Afghanistan in the past six weeks or so, faster than anyone really expected. Yesterday, they seem have have taken the main border crossing with Iran. It’s maybe not exactly the right comparison, but it reminds me a bit of reading about daesh taking Fallujah in 2014-ish, in terms of impending doom.
saw something that iran are also willing to work with the taliban on the condition that they don’t start ethnically cleansing the hazara again too, which is probably good.
from what I’ve read the pro-world-jihad sort of faction in the taliban is much weaker than it used to be and the leadership is much more interested in just maintaing power in afghanistan now.
it’s obviously gonna lead to a lot of awful stuff but that’s true of any big power vacuum & I don’t think it’s realistically similar to daesh or isis taking a region. hopefully
It’s one of the main inaccuracies that people tend not to be aware of with the Taliban I think, the idea that they were anything to do with global jihad. they’re better described as a rural pashtun thing rather than part of the al qaeda - daesh continuum. they’ve only ever been interested in retaking power in Afghanistan, they aren’t really interested in what’s going on anywhere else. the US government for whatever reason weren’t able to make this distinction in 2001, and that’s one of the reasons why the conflict wasn’t ended then. Basically the taliban are an afghanistan thing, rather than a global thing.
It’s really hard to interpret what kind of role China will play going forward. So far they’ve been essentially absent, aside from having the contract for a couple of mines. The main way that they could have potentially been involved in the last seven years or so is through convincing Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban, but for whatever reason they haven’t done that.
Going forward China might get more involved as the US washes its hands, but it’s hard to judge. I’d think that after the NATO failure they would have second thoughts about trying to do anything much in Afghanistan.
you probably know better than me but my impression was that in the early stages of the war the rhetoric was very much pointed at afghanistan as a battlefield in global jihad, could just be expediency to get money and fighters in from abroad idk enough about any of it
on the taliban side, it’s basically impossible to know their position on infrastructure development. it’s so far off being a possibility, and i don’t think they say very much about it. am sure the government of afghanistan would be well up for it, it seems quite in line with some of what Ghani says about the future of the country. but again it’s such an impossibility at the moment that it’s all pretty meaningless talk.
According to local journalists, the Taliban took a district in Bamiyan today, which marks their first inroads into the province. It’s significant because it’s the only part of the country that has managed to have totally kept the Taliban out since 2001, and also because it’s the Shia and ethnic minority part of the country.
It’s the first time I’ve heard of this idea, and its quite surprising. India will always be involved in Afghanistan in one way or another, given that the India-Pakistan conflict is one of the main drivers of the conflict in Afghanistan, but my gut feeling is that an actual Indian military presence would be a catastrophe. The Indian government always seems a lot less…paranoid and stupid than the government of Pakistan so I don’t see them doing it, but I guess we’ll find out
This is another thing that no one was even talking about as a possibility a month ago. I do bits and pieces of work relating to this border crossing, this was not in our thinking at all. It’s a big deal and just makes me think that they’re going to march through the rest of the rural parts of the country very quickly. It’s a very important border crossing and will at a minimum be a big earner for them, though the significance of chamen is greater than that.
i’ve been wondering about this a lot over the years. i actually wonder if they’ll be able to do it again any time soon, in england and in the US. syria is obviously the totemic example. but the weight of two total failures seems to sit heavily with the electorate, and honestly i think within the brains of uk politicians as well.
They’ve taken two provincial capitals in the last couple of days, one in the north and one in the south. There’s serious fighting in another few provincial capitals in the north, and the capital of Helmand seems to be going back and forth between the Taliban and the government. This is the first time they’ve taken (and presumably will keep) urban areas since 2001.
The US is now back in Afghanistan, launching airstrikes, including in the aforementioned urban areas. Generally airstrikes in urban areas mean civillian casualties.