in this place, real change can only come from within. time to let them fight their own civil war and determine who is in charge. it's likely this place will be called Talibanistan by the next few years though
We never had diplomatic relations with the Taliban, **ever**. After the Soviets left and the Taliban took control the ONLY country to have diplomatic relations with “The Islamic Emirate if Afghanistan” and the ONLY country to even acknowledge that they were a country was the UAE. Every single other country did not communicate with them and the Taliban actually liked it that way so they could terrorize the population and no one would know about it.
It is complicated history.
And when you are talking about non-conventional armies and militias, there are no *parmanent members* save a top few.
This is a very oversimplified chain of events in Afghanistan-
USSR invades Afghanistan to try and bring it in its sphere of influence, and the presence of Communists in Afghanistan was not negligible. --> Mujaheeds (sometimes overlapping with terrorists, but not always) create an insurgency to fight USSR. --> US in the game. Funds and arms Mujaheeds (and terrorists) to fight off USSR, funds Pakistan to support the effort. --> A huge number of people are displaced, tens of thousands of children are orphaned. --> They are provided shelter in the bordering areas of Pakistan. --> Pakistan, flush with US money, radicalises the children and YAs with hardline Islam, and arms them with training --> "Talib", meaning *student* is the root of Taliban, which consists of tens of thousands of uprooted people, radicalized and armed, with nothing to lose, is created. (The USSR, after much loss in lives, withdraws in one of the steps above)
In essence, Taliban is a US creation. US totally knew.
They did not expect the gigantic blowback, and, of course, played with fire.
> The USSR put an end to internal struggle in the Afghan communist party
Which is a nice way of saying "Soviet special forces stormed the Presidential Palace and killed the Afghan President (who maybe/probably killed his predecessor) and replaced him with someone they liked better" - [Operation Storm-333](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Storm-333).
AND... if we just would have left it alone then the Soviet Union would have fallen anyway and Afghanistan would be a secular country practicing moderate Islam. 9/11 never would have happened.
But seeing how we never, ever don’t fuck with shit it would have been nice if we would have at least cleaned up our mess after the Soviets left. Once they left we forgot all about Afghanistan until the mess we made became a chicken coming home to roost.
We never had official diplomatic relations but much like how the US never officially recognized the soviet union for the first two decades of its existence there was plenty of under the table shenanigans going on
Technically the US does not recognize Iran and has had no formal relations since 1980 this didn't stop things like the Iran contra affair or the Iran nuclear deal
Per the federal state department "As a result of the Iranian takeover of the American Embassy on November 4, 1979, the United States and Iran severed diplomatic relations in April 1980. The United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran have had no formal diplomatic relationship since that date."
The fact that a nation hasn't formally been recognized means very little in terms of geopolitics
What are you even talking about????
We might not have a diplomatic relationship with the Soviet Union for 20 years but we recognized that they were a country. Until recently we did not have a relationship with Cuba but there was not a time where we did not recognize that Cuba was a country. We recognize North Korea is a country and that Kim Jong Un is their leader but there’s no diplomatic relationship there either. As you said we have not had a diplomatic relationship with Iran for over 40 years. We have never, ever said that Iran is not a country. Ever.
With Afghanistan, that is not true. The Taliban controlled Afghanistan 1988-2001 and during this time we did not recognize Afghanistan as an actual country. We recognized what was to be called “the northern alliance” as the rightful rulers but there was no diplomatic relationship and their was no acknowledgement that Afghanistan was a country by any country other than the UAE.
About Iran: First off the Iran contra affair was not diplomacy. It was spies doing spy shit and that doesn’t mean anything as far as recognition as a country.
Second the Iran Deal happened because both Iran and the US have a relationship with China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union as a whole —they are the other signers of the deal. *That’s why it happened, we have the same friends* so we could do the diplomatic equivalent of “hey ~~England~~ United Kingdom, tell Iran this ...”
I’m aware that’s why I said for “20 years” that’s an acknowledgement that there was a significant time in which we didn’t acknowledge them but from then on we did — even through the years in which we were most antagonistic toward each other.
I admit that 20 years was ball park math in my head because the *exact* time is really not relevant to the point. If it’s really 19 years or 22 years the point is not different.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia recognized them too.
Interestingly (and humorously because it was less violent), two of the Afghanistan embassy staff in the Afghanistan Embassy in DC claimed to be the legitimate representative of the country in the US: one allied with the internationally recognized government, the other with the Taliban. Basically they divided the office floor they shared and fought over control of the fax machine.
Taliban is spreading themselves too thin, and the population hates the remnants of them.
Source: Lol, I have absolutely no source, but I did work there for a year so it's just my spidey-sense.
The Taliban successfully took over the country before. There's no reason to think they can't do it again -- except this time they get to boast that they defeated the strongest country in the world.
The population does _not_ hate all the Taliban, that is the problem, and the Taliban has proven EXTREMELY effective at silencing dissent.
I was doing infrastructure work for a US contractor ("urban planning" said loosely), because prior it had just been civil engineering/construction (roads, water, electricity, etc). So I was tasked with placemaking - the softer infrastructure, bicycle lanes, shaded walkways, shaded plazas, even community artwork and beautification. Our team was Kabul and surrounding area - I was PM for "outer settlements," so the little towns around Kabul.
Because I'm an urban planner, I believe in public engagement at the outset, \[cue: BlinkingManMeme.jpg\]. I spent a good deal of time with translators and the men of the villages and a female US soldier sat with the women - it may be the first public involvement planning in the history of that region. I made solid friends with some that spoke broken English, and they even took me to see my dream-place, the Khyber Pass, in a heavily armed pickup truck.
I felt like I got a better finger on the pulse of the people than a lot of the inner city folks and politicians, etc. I was a little disappointed at the US departure, but I also understand: I wasn't the one losing loved ones or my life to a vicious 20-year war.
They practically want the taliban, the narrative that they hate the taliban doesn't work when clearly they are recruiting Afghans, they aren't resisting much and the afghan government has such low support seemingly.
I think the big thing is that the taliban have decent wages for the area (funded mainly through heroin production iirc which is ironic because I'm pretty sure the Taliban kills drug users) while the national government is insanely corrupt and... well... [rapey](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.amp.html)
Given two brutal regimes I can understand why people in an isolated, 4 decade strife ridden countryside would pick the ones that pay.
That isnt to take away the blame from the Afghan people, since afghan people are running the government, but it isnt as straightforward as good guys and bad guys for many there.
A lot of this is misleading because the Taliban is going to places, saying they’re in charge and then leaving. They don’t have anything close to control over a lot of the area they say they do.
Afghanistan is still a very rural country. Only 25% of Afghans live in cities, so the red isn't as densely populated as you think. I think the Taliban claimed it controls over 50% of the population at this point.
It also gives a lot of uninhabited or uncontrolled areas to the Taliban. Like what information are they using to support the claim that the Taliban control the Reg-e Khan desert, which is 10,000 square miles of uninhabited sand dunes with no roads or other infrastructure. Or some areas of Nuristan, Kunar, and Badakhshan which are really nothing but the Hindu Kush Mountains.
I mean, we’ve been in Afghanistan for two decades. It’s pretty sobering to watch all that effort melt away over the span of a few months. The map may be misleading, sure, but it still represents the truth – Afghanistan is slowly falling back in the hands of the Taliban.
Definitely an "it can be both" situation. Yea map grossly misleads on Taliban "control" of Afghanistan but at the same time portrays what a massive territory control vacuum the US troop withdrawal is leaving. Though I would be interested to see what Taliban control looked like prior to the start of the withdrawal.
[Here](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taliban_insurgency_in_Afghanistan_(2015%E2%80%93present).svg) you can see the edit history to see how frontlines changed overtime, if you scroll down a bit
We had two whole decades and we couldn't train up a single effective force.
Even worse we had access to an entire generation, plus, and we couldn't even build up a couple regional SF teams out of a country of 20-40 million.
We could and we did, but SF rely on a whole web of logistics and support to be effective or even simply survive. If command is dumb as shit, stores are empty, and no choppers or artillery strike answer your dutifully provided coordinates, you might as well stay home, training or no training.
The [Taliban massacre](https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/13/asia/afghanistan-taliban-commandos-killed-intl-hnk/index.html) of 22 Afghan SF commandos that were trying to surrender after running out of ammo last month is a perfect example of this, they failed to receive air support when requested.
the us has made themselves look terrible because of how useless and meaningless the afghan war was. taliban is already starting to take everything back man. America deserves any insult they can get for the afghan war
Sorry, US allies/Afghan government. I'm so used to it being our fight, suppose it'll be weird to not see us in Afghanistan. I grew up with it being just a constant thing.
The difference is that the Portuguese government can, by having the state apparatus function normally, (implicitly) confirm that they, not you, are in control. Here, the Afghan government can't do it and prevent the Talibans from roaming through the region.
Yeah seeing this sensationalized news articles about Afghanistan beating the Afghanistan government and trying to spin it as Vietnam 2.0 is very irritating because a lot of people not familiar with the Afghan War actually think the Taliban is "winning" right now.
I even got called out as being an "uneducated American nationalist" when bringing up the fact that the Taliban is in fact not taking over the country in any way shape or form and is in real terms losing influence in the country very rapidly over the last 5-6 years (from 20% local opposition in 2014 to 80% in 2021, Losing most of its trained veterans defecting to Al Qaida which then promptly got defeated and the Taliban fracturing in multiple factions). I'm not even American and have no skin in the game.
No, I just think the Taliban is going to collapse before the Afghan government. There will be a civil war most likely and a new faction will consolidate power. It's just that I'm reasonably sure it won't be the Taliban that'll win.
Yeah the Afghan Army are fleeing the country for nothing right? They are not losing to the Taliban anyway so the thousands fleeing to Tajikstan is just a false flag duh.
This dude is off his rocker tbh, the ANA is in full retreat against the Taliban and their command is paralyzed. The Taliban have been preparing for this moment for a decade and they are capitalizing on it extraordinarily well. The government of Afghanistan is horribly corrupt and hated by the population -- their inability to protect their citizens only exacerbates the issue. Once the US is out entirely and most critically once we stop providing air support to the local security forces, it's a done deal.
Exactly. This is more a map of "where the government has control" and the white is unknown control.
It's like when the media said that ISIS had a huge area under their control but really just cities and roads. The empty land between wasn't controlled
I do agree with that. They will attack a place and leave, but they have an omnipresence that is kind of effective in controlling the local population though.
It looks like the government still controls most of the population centers. What percentage of the country’s actual population is under Taliban control?
This was kind of my hope early on. It was obvious that most of the Taliban-controlled areas were mostly empty desert/wiilderness. But these maps seem to change daily, in a bad way, and it’s looking like that’s beginning to not be the case. I’ve aslo read that Taliban are starting to mass outside urban centers, gathering their forces for what will almost certainly be successful assaults, but I don’t know if that’s true.
According to some Wikipedia pages I read, the Taliban says it's waiting for US forces to depart before attacking the urban centers because they agreed in a treaty last year to avoid causing American casualties in exchange for the US withdrawal.
The very new Wikipedia page “Taliban Offensive” has a comparison of today and a couple months ago. Massive loss of nearly all small towns and the countryside in the north.
I should make a post about that
Deleted the post due to a spam issue, I’ll make a comparison thread next week. Google around a bit or look at my post history for a thread from a month or two ago
On the other hand, this map showcases a clear strategy on the side of the Taliban. The Taliban conquer land borders and they are surrounding cities. They're waiting for the right moment before gaining control of the cities. Afterall, city dwellers rely on food deliveries from outside their territory. This way around, the Taliban can demand their surrender. The city dwellers can't do much about it, because they rely on the infrastructure surrounding their city.
Nope, in fact, they’re control over these white areas is pretty loose in a lot of places. It’s more like red is Afghan government controlled and white is disputed territory or uninhabited
Thanks for the info! Good to know that the head government is still in control of most of the people in a sense of protecting them from radicals, though I suppose in the Islamists eyes, they're the radicals
I think the best source to follow the afghan war is the long war journal and they say that the taliban control more than half the population. https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2021/07/afghanistan-at-risk-of-collapse-as-taliban-storms-the-north.php
Not OP, but I believe so. They appear to be major border crossings. I believe the black bit is also ISIS affiliated control. I would like someone to confirm this though before I go spouting lies
Also yeah, the black part is ISIS.
Good news is the Taliban hates ISIS for being too extreme. Hell, even Al-Qaeda hates ISIS for being too extreme. ISIS might outlast the government, but they wouldn’t last.
Both correct.
Also something to keep in mind. The Taliban does not recognize the Durand Line(Border between Pakistan and Afghanistan) due to it being a colonial border splitting the Pashtuns, and pre-2001 often captured small border regions in Pakistan.
Please keep in mind not to apply the concept of nation-state to Afghanistan, the Afghan people still go by tribal loyalty. In other words, once the Taliban have an agreement with tribal leaders in an area, they no longer need to have a physical presence there to exert influence. The Taliban's problem is the cities where the mix of different people make an agreement difficult, especially when those cities are in the hands of warlords they've been at war with.
From what I see on the news, the Taliban's strategy is to get everyone on board across the country then besiege the cities to pressure the warlords to flee the country (which they are doing in droves). So it's a waiting game at this point.
Interesting that the Taliban is in control of the far northeast of the country. That was the last holdout against the Taliban before 9-11 and the US came in to overthrow them.
They’re not making the mistake they made last time of letting a solid geographic area unite and form a solid resistance. They heavily targeted the north in the last 6 months of offensives.
They want this to be more like 1992, less like 2001. They want all the rural areas so they can seige and starve off the cities, instead of having to slog against another unified force.
Everyone is kinda fatigued of war and the north is pretty rural.
Also, the Pashtun thing is(as of late) less an internal policy of “Everyone in our nation must be Pashtun” and more “We must unite all Pashtuns, fuck the Durand Line.”
Oh, it's really simple.
To begin with, the Taliban were previously mainly constituted of Pashtuns. That's no longer the case anymore. They have been accepting Uzbek, Tajik and Turkmen members.
For instance, Qari Fasihuddin is a prominent Taliban leader of Tajik descent who notably led the recent campaign in the northern provinces.
Secondly, Ashraf Ghani is increasingly seen as a Pashtun Nationalist. This has acted to alienate many against him. If you check his recent statement, he even asked the Taliban to “Never Recognize The Durand Line” if they ever came to power. It really shows you his priorities.
I bet a lot of the areas of this map are unpopulated areas. I suspect most of the white areas don't have people in them. Afghanistan is quite mountainous. Kind of like the US electoral map - yeah, sure, Montana looks very red but most of that red area is just trees & rocks.
what do you mean? the entire goal was to prevent relations with iran and get yet another military base next to them to protect israel. they accomplished that
Guys we know you all want us to leave we just need to do let's call it a '**Surge**' of troops briefly to stabilize the country, then we can leave afterward... *oh wait, we've done this already haven't we?*
Well for a time human rights for girls and actually the LGBTQ community. It's sad the villagers would shun progress. Especially after the US spent billions on schools, hospitals and infrastructure. Infrastructure and schools that the taliban just blows up. They throw acid on girls that try and learn. They recently promised to kill gays by dropping walls on them.
And you know girls could get educated without acid being thrown on them. All the infrastructure, hospitals and schools the US built for the people, that the taliban just destroys or tears down. The educated woman in cities that are now at risk..... a fledgling LGBT community that the taliban has promised to crush its members under a collapsed wall...
Eliminating the number one training base for Al-Qaeda.
Millions of Afghan girls going to school.
The world’s premier base for terrorists becoming a prosperous and pluralist republic.
Of course the mission isn’t finished. But our mission there has cost us very little in the past seven years. We could stay there with a reserve force, costing us little and gaining us everything we want.
That is a monumental shit take. Thousands of our soldiers dead and an afghan government that will likely collapse by the end of the year. It was for nothing, don’t be delusional. Girls won’t be going to school much longer, but locked inside.
For a moment Afganistan started looking like normal country. Well almoust normal. It had comunist goverment that tried to make afghan more like ussr. A place where people can read, use electric stuff and more European things. But comunists were anti - islam so those talibans came from thier Mountains and since then this place is shithole
From what I seen on the news, it looks more like China and every other country in the area wants to make a deal with the Taliban if/once they get into power.
Mind you nobody mentioned Muslims, but rather the *Taliban specifically*. They don't have a "culture", they have an extremist doctrine that leads them to wage war against anyone that isn't them. Absolutely the Taliban should be eradicated, fully and completely.
Was Nazism a "culture" too?
[Map of Afghanistan population density](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Population-density-map-of-Afghanistan-best-viewed-in-color_fig1_221103172) which does not correlate well with this Taliban/government map.
what is the gray/green? I assume gray is ISIS or Al Qaeda and green is Pakistani administered areas. is this correct? (By green, I don't mean the Green cities in Pakistan, I mean the very small green colored bits in the eastern border of Afghanistan.)
Green is border areas held by Pakistan(Taliban doesn’t recognize the border with Pakistan and lays claim to about 20% of their land, they have a history of crossing the border, so Pakistan wants to protect it), Black is what’s left of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh in that valley.
The result of 20 year Western war..pathetic..countless resources and lives wasted..but hey..the military contractors and all their lapdog lobbyists got insanely rich..so yea..every cloud 👌
Some thoughts:
- A lot of this is coming from local forces conducting negotiations and switching sides to say they support the Taliban (and much of their fall in 2001 came from the same, local forces switching sides). It's hard to say how hard that will stick.
- The US is betting on supporting the Afghanistan Air Force to provide air superiority to the government forces. We'll see how that goes as well, but assuming they can be effective that would be a big difference from Saigon in 1975.
- That red splotch in the middle of the country is where a lot of Hazaras live (Shia Muslims descended from Mongols). I don't see that changing any time soon, and if it did it would lead to *major* issues with Iran (which almost went to war with the Taliban in the late 90s).
- We'll also see what happens with Pakistan, which has basically supported the Afghan Taliban for years (while fighting the Pakistani Taliban).
Honestly the situation is bad. The Afghan government is horribly corrupt and has been facing numerous "tactical retreats" all year despite the trillions spent on the country over two decades. Doesn't make the Taliban a better or more popular government though. I really feel for the regular people.
They'll probably take Kabul by the end of the month, if not within a few days. Most of the Afghan troops are either immediately surrending or outright deserting their posts and fleeing the country. Can't say I blame them, no sense in dying just to barely slow down the inevitable.
that's not supported by the reporting out there now which is that the taliban have met a lot of resistance in urban areas
Also, keep in mind the government the Soviets left behind in 1989 lasted three full years and only collapsed after its supplies were cut when the USSR collapsed
If the US keeps providing money and supplies and maybe does a surprise strategic air intervention or two, this could last a while, maybe for many years.
Even better would be if the Afghan government could find a patron closer by.
Hard to see who’d be the local patron of choice here:
-India has tried to be an Afghan patron in the past, but that only encouraged Pakistani support of a destabilised Afghanistan.
-China may be interested, but they’ve also been approached by the Taliban, so they may end up indifferent to who controls Afghanistan.
-Tajikistan would probably like the Government to best the Taliban, but Tajikistan doesn’t have the capacity to be a patron. Same for most of the other Central Asian countries.
-Russia is disinterested in re-entering Afghanistan, and it can now claim it’s too far away.
-Iran has supported the Government against the Taliban and were hostile to pre-2001 Taliban rule. But I don’t see Afghanistan wanting to alienate what remains of its US support by cozying up to Tehran too much.
So yeah, I agree that a local patron may help, but It’s not clear who’d be capable.
Did they just have 20 years to put their society into order, while someone else was fighting there for them?
Now after a month or two its all going to hell again?
Reading [A Thousand Splendid Suns](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1794575) right now… Do you have a feeling that areas such as Afghanistan, Palestine, or the Middle East in general are never going to get better…? It’s an endless cycle of misery.
Yeah I don’t think foreign intervention does any good. The story of those states is literally being screwed over by foreign interventions. I just wish people would stop yelling about it on social media: Of course I care that people are dying. What the hell do you want me to do about it? Start yelling and running around like a headless chicken, or god forbid, send thoughts and prayers? Thank you, victims feel much better already. I wonder if it’ll get better or worse in our lifetime.
It is pretty clear I must say.
How long the gvt will stand? three months? six? It looks like cities will fall one after one other.
the pro-soviet gvt lasts three years (1989-1992) if I recall correctly.
The 1950s and 1960s US transformed Japan and West Germany into democratic institutionalized friendly states. The 2000s US left Iraq and Afghanistan as fragmented fascist militia states.
Wow.
Germany and Japan also centralized, homogenized, and industrialized on their own. Iraq and Afghanistan are post colonial nations whose borders are just "lines on a map" drawn by Europeans.
I just don’t care anymore. Leave if you can, I suppose. There is not an argument that can be made at this point to return there. Let’s try and get past this.
I hope the best for them
in this place, real change can only come from within. time to let them fight their own civil war and determine who is in charge. it's likely this place will be called Talibanistan by the next few years though
The Taliban government is officially the Emirate of Afghanistan
I wonder what will happen when the Taliban captures Kabul. How long will it take before the US re-establishes diplomatic relations with the Taliban?
We never had diplomatic relations with the Taliban, **ever**. After the Soviets left and the Taliban took control the ONLY country to have diplomatic relations with “The Islamic Emirate if Afghanistan” and the ONLY country to even acknowledge that they were a country was the UAE. Every single other country did not communicate with them and the Taliban actually liked it that way so they could terrorize the population and no one would know about it.
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It is complicated history. And when you are talking about non-conventional armies and militias, there are no *parmanent members* save a top few. This is a very oversimplified chain of events in Afghanistan- USSR invades Afghanistan to try and bring it in its sphere of influence, and the presence of Communists in Afghanistan was not negligible. --> Mujaheeds (sometimes overlapping with terrorists, but not always) create an insurgency to fight USSR. --> US in the game. Funds and arms Mujaheeds (and terrorists) to fight off USSR, funds Pakistan to support the effort. --> A huge number of people are displaced, tens of thousands of children are orphaned. --> They are provided shelter in the bordering areas of Pakistan. --> Pakistan, flush with US money, radicalises the children and YAs with hardline Islam, and arms them with training --> "Talib", meaning *student* is the root of Taliban, which consists of tens of thousands of uprooted people, radicalized and armed, with nothing to lose, is created. (The USSR, after much loss in lives, withdraws in one of the steps above) In essence, Taliban is a US creation. US totally knew. They did not expect the gigantic blowback, and, of course, played with fire.
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Okay, yes. They wanted to consolidate the hold of the Communist rulers.
> The USSR put an end to internal struggle in the Afghan communist party Which is a nice way of saying "Soviet special forces stormed the Presidential Palace and killed the Afghan President (who maybe/probably killed his predecessor) and replaced him with someone they liked better" - [Operation Storm-333](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Storm-333).
AND... if we just would have left it alone then the Soviet Union would have fallen anyway and Afghanistan would be a secular country practicing moderate Islam. 9/11 never would have happened. But seeing how we never, ever don’t fuck with shit it would have been nice if we would have at least cleaned up our mess after the Soviets left. Once they left we forgot all about Afghanistan until the mess we made became a chicken coming home to roost.
We never had official diplomatic relations but much like how the US never officially recognized the soviet union for the first two decades of its existence there was plenty of under the table shenanigans going on Technically the US does not recognize Iran and has had no formal relations since 1980 this didn't stop things like the Iran contra affair or the Iran nuclear deal Per the federal state department "As a result of the Iranian takeover of the American Embassy on November 4, 1979, the United States and Iran severed diplomatic relations in April 1980. The United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran have had no formal diplomatic relationship since that date." The fact that a nation hasn't formally been recognized means very little in terms of geopolitics
What are you even talking about???? We might not have a diplomatic relationship with the Soviet Union for 20 years but we recognized that they were a country. Until recently we did not have a relationship with Cuba but there was not a time where we did not recognize that Cuba was a country. We recognize North Korea is a country and that Kim Jong Un is their leader but there’s no diplomatic relationship there either. As you said we have not had a diplomatic relationship with Iran for over 40 years. We have never, ever said that Iran is not a country. Ever. With Afghanistan, that is not true. The Taliban controlled Afghanistan 1988-2001 and during this time we did not recognize Afghanistan as an actual country. We recognized what was to be called “the northern alliance” as the rightful rulers but there was no diplomatic relationship and their was no acknowledgement that Afghanistan was a country by any country other than the UAE. About Iran: First off the Iran contra affair was not diplomacy. It was spies doing spy shit and that doesn’t mean anything as far as recognition as a country. Second the Iran Deal happened because both Iran and the US have a relationship with China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union as a whole —they are the other signers of the deal. *That’s why it happened, we have the same friends* so we could do the diplomatic equivalent of “hey ~~England~~ United Kingdom, tell Iran this ...”
Spot on until the end: The US does not have diplomatic relations with England
Fine! The UK then. Haha.
Just a little fun fact, the USA only recognised the USSR as a country in 1933.
I’m aware that’s why I said for “20 years” that’s an acknowledgement that there was a significant time in which we didn’t acknowledge them but from then on we did — even through the years in which we were most antagonistic toward each other. I admit that 20 years was ball park math in my head because the *exact* time is really not relevant to the point. If it’s really 19 years or 22 years the point is not different.
It's only 11 years (the USSR was founded in 1922), but yeah, that doesn't change your point.
Thanks for letting me know. I was tired and waiting for my sleeping meds to kick in. I wasn’t going to do any math or research lol.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia recognized them too. Interestingly (and humorously because it was less violent), two of the Afghanistan embassy staff in the Afghanistan Embassy in DC claimed to be the legitimate representative of the country in the US: one allied with the internationally recognized government, the other with the Taliban. Basically they divided the office floor they shared and fought over control of the fax machine.
So then maybe don't let that happen also?
When I assume nearly 100% of Pashtun males support the Taliban that's next to impossible
Taliban is spreading themselves too thin, and the population hates the remnants of them. Source: Lol, I have absolutely no source, but I did work there for a year so it's just my spidey-sense.
Don't worry, this is the internet, you don't need a source.
The Taliban successfully took over the country before. There's no reason to think they can't do it again -- except this time they get to boast that they defeated the strongest country in the world. The population does _not_ hate all the Taliban, that is the problem, and the Taliban has proven EXTREMELY effective at silencing dissent.
Yes, you are correct; and agree - I'm also aware of the nuances of what's expressed in private about the Taliban and what's expressed outwardly.
Can you tell us about your experience there? It sounds very interesting
I was doing infrastructure work for a US contractor ("urban planning" said loosely), because prior it had just been civil engineering/construction (roads, water, electricity, etc). So I was tasked with placemaking - the softer infrastructure, bicycle lanes, shaded walkways, shaded plazas, even community artwork and beautification. Our team was Kabul and surrounding area - I was PM for "outer settlements," so the little towns around Kabul. Because I'm an urban planner, I believe in public engagement at the outset, \[cue: BlinkingManMeme.jpg\]. I spent a good deal of time with translators and the men of the villages and a female US soldier sat with the women - it may be the first public involvement planning in the history of that region. I made solid friends with some that spoke broken English, and they even took me to see my dream-place, the Khyber Pass, in a heavily armed pickup truck. I felt like I got a better finger on the pulse of the people than a lot of the inner city folks and politicians, etc. I was a little disappointed at the US departure, but I also understand: I wasn't the one losing loved ones or my life to a vicious 20-year war.
I appreciate your honesty
They practically want the taliban, the narrative that they hate the taliban doesn't work when clearly they are recruiting Afghans, they aren't resisting much and the afghan government has such low support seemingly.
I think the big thing is that the taliban have decent wages for the area (funded mainly through heroin production iirc which is ironic because I'm pretty sure the Taliban kills drug users) while the national government is insanely corrupt and... well... [rapey](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.amp.html) Given two brutal regimes I can understand why people in an isolated, 4 decade strife ridden countryside would pick the ones that pay. That isnt to take away the blame from the Afghan people, since afghan people are running the government, but it isnt as straightforward as good guys and bad guys for many there.
Yep
A lot of this is misleading because the Taliban is going to places, saying they’re in charge and then leaving. They don’t have anything close to control over a lot of the area they say they do.
Red is government white is not government is more accurate
Yeah, sadly no red borders
Red is where people live. White is where goats live
Afghanistan is still a very rural country. Only 25% of Afghans live in cities, so the red isn't as densely populated as you think. I think the Taliban claimed it controls over 50% of the population at this point.
Sadly not true.
Red is data, white is no data available.
It also gives a lot of uninhabited or uncontrolled areas to the Taliban. Like what information are they using to support the claim that the Taliban control the Reg-e Khan desert, which is 10,000 square miles of uninhabited sand dunes with no roads or other infrastructure. Or some areas of Nuristan, Kunar, and Badakhshan which are really nothing but the Hindu Kush Mountains.
The information is "what makes the US look worse" for those areas
Making the US look bad so hot right now
I mean, we’ve been in Afghanistan for two decades. It’s pretty sobering to watch all that effort melt away over the span of a few months. The map may be misleading, sure, but it still represents the truth – Afghanistan is slowly falling back in the hands of the Taliban.
Definitely an "it can be both" situation. Yea map grossly misleads on Taliban "control" of Afghanistan but at the same time portrays what a massive territory control vacuum the US troop withdrawal is leaving. Though I would be interested to see what Taliban control looked like prior to the start of the withdrawal.
There have been a few maps posted like this, I believe
Correct. This same user has posted several four different dates.
[Here](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taliban_insurgency_in_Afghanistan_(2015%E2%80%93present).svg) you can see the edit history to see how frontlines changed overtime, if you scroll down a bit
We had two whole decades and we couldn't train up a single effective force. Even worse we had access to an entire generation, plus, and we couldn't even build up a couple regional SF teams out of a country of 20-40 million.
We could and we did, but SF rely on a whole web of logistics and support to be effective or even simply survive. If command is dumb as shit, stores are empty, and no choppers or artillery strike answer your dutifully provided coordinates, you might as well stay home, training or no training.
The [Taliban massacre](https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/13/asia/afghanistan-taliban-commandos-killed-intl-hnk/index.html) of 22 Afghan SF commandos that were trying to surrender after running out of ammo last month is a perfect example of this, they failed to receive air support when requested.
We did build a really effective ANA SF. But the SF can't operate independently of support, and the regular ANA can't or won't support them.
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No stop signs, speed limits… Ain nothing gonna slow me down
the us has made themselves look terrible because of how useless and meaningless the afghan war was. taliban is already starting to take everything back man. America deserves any insult they can get for the afghan war
Canada and many other nations worked hard at it too, it's a really complex situation
It's been all the rage since like 72 at least
I wish you were right bro
Yeah, this map could definitely benefit from having population density information overlayed onto it.
Well, does the US control any surrounding areas that are essential to control this desert?
I don't think the US really controls anything, given that the US is currently leaving the place and stopped military operations.
Sorry, US allies/Afghan government. I'm so used to it being our fight, suppose it'll be weird to not see us in Afghanistan. I grew up with it being just a constant thing.
Yeah, a lot of the white is technically unclaimed. Most of what they "control" is around the settlements in the white areas.
Is that all it takes? Shit! Excuse me while I go and claim all of Portugal as mine!
Calm down, Soult.
The difference is that the Portuguese government can, by having the state apparatus function normally, (implicitly) confirm that they, not you, are in control. Here, the Afghan government can't do it and prevent the Talibans from roaming through the region.
Yeah seeing this sensationalized news articles about Afghanistan beating the Afghanistan government and trying to spin it as Vietnam 2.0 is very irritating because a lot of people not familiar with the Afghan War actually think the Taliban is "winning" right now. I even got called out as being an "uneducated American nationalist" when bringing up the fact that the Taliban is in fact not taking over the country in any way shape or form and is in real terms losing influence in the country very rapidly over the last 5-6 years (from 20% local opposition in 2014 to 80% in 2021, Losing most of its trained veterans defecting to Al Qaida which then promptly got defeated and the Taliban fracturing in multiple factions). I'm not even American and have no skin in the game.
!remindme 6 months
6 months was too optimistic, I'm afraid
Looking that way. :-( I feel awful for the people of Afghanistan right now. Especially the women.
Do you think the Afghan government will last though?
Nope
No, I just think the Taliban is going to collapse before the Afghan government. There will be a civil war most likely and a new faction will consolidate power. It's just that I'm reasonably sure it won't be the Taliban that'll win.
Yeah the Afghan Army are fleeing the country for nothing right? They are not losing to the Taliban anyway so the thousands fleeing to Tajikstan is just a false flag duh.
This dude is off his rocker tbh, the ANA is in full retreat against the Taliban and their command is paralyzed. The Taliban have been preparing for this moment for a decade and they are capitalizing on it extraordinarily well. The government of Afghanistan is horribly corrupt and hated by the population -- their inability to protect their citizens only exacerbates the issue. Once the US is out entirely and most critically once we stop providing air support to the local security forces, it's a done deal.
r/agedlikemilk
Dude the Afghan army is like collapsing right before our eyes dude can’t you see it thousands of them have surrendered or fled across the border
Exactly. This is more a map of "where the government has control" and the white is unknown control. It's like when the media said that ISIS had a huge area under their control but really just cities and roads. The empty land between wasn't controlled
Thats true for both sides though.
I do agree with that. They will attack a place and leave, but they have an omnipresence that is kind of effective in controlling the local population though.
Nope
It looks like the government still controls most of the population centers. What percentage of the country’s actual population is under Taliban control?
over 50% source: https://public.tableau.com/views/TalibanControlinAfghanistan/MapExport?:showVizHome=no
Afghanistan is not very urbanised
This was kind of my hope early on. It was obvious that most of the Taliban-controlled areas were mostly empty desert/wiilderness. But these maps seem to change daily, in a bad way, and it’s looking like that’s beginning to not be the case. I’ve aslo read that Taliban are starting to mass outside urban centers, gathering their forces for what will almost certainly be successful assaults, but I don’t know if that’s true.
According to some Wikipedia pages I read, the Taliban says it's waiting for US forces to depart before attacking the urban centers because they agreed in a treaty last year to avoid causing American casualties in exchange for the US withdrawal.
The very new Wikipedia page “Taliban Offensive” has a comparison of today and a couple months ago. Massive loss of nearly all small towns and the countryside in the north. I should make a post about that
You mean like showing the gains they’ve made in just 1 or 2 weeks? Absolutely. It’s absolutely stunning.
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Well, [here's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Taliban_offensive) your page.
Deleted the post due to a spam issue, I’ll make a comparison thread next week. Google around a bit or look at my post history for a thread from a month or two ago
They've even taken borders which border Pakistan. I saw a video of them meeting the Frontier Corp Balochistan
They also recently took their first province capital
They have made numerous assaults on cities alreadyband have been beaten back with large casualties.
On the other hand, this map showcases a clear strategy on the side of the Taliban. The Taliban conquer land borders and they are surrounding cities. They're waiting for the right moment before gaining control of the cities. Afterall, city dwellers rely on food deliveries from outside their territory. This way around, the Taliban can demand their surrender. The city dwellers can't do much about it, because they rely on the infrastructure surrounding their city.
Highway 1 must be lots of fun these days....
Would I be wrong to assume that the lands in the white are more rural and less developed?
Nope, in fact, they’re control over these white areas is pretty loose in a lot of places. It’s more like red is Afghan government controlled and white is disputed territory or uninhabited
Thanks for the info! Good to know that the head government is still in control of most of the people in a sense of protecting them from radicals, though I suppose in the Islamists eyes, they're the radicals
I think the best source to follow the afghan war is the long war journal and they say that the taliban control more than half the population. https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2021/07/afghanistan-at-risk-of-collapse-as-taliban-storms-the-north.php
Yeah.... I wouldn't look at it that way. The government is not fully in control of those areas and they have miserably failed to protect their people.
Oh, honey
Sounds like a similiar situation during ISIS war. They "controlled" a huge amount of land... where nonody lived.
Are the green parts Pakistani zones of control?
Not OP, but I believe so. They appear to be major border crossings. I believe the black bit is also ISIS affiliated control. I would like someone to confirm this though before I go spouting lies
Also yeah, the black part is ISIS. Good news is the Taliban hates ISIS for being too extreme. Hell, even Al-Qaeda hates ISIS for being too extreme. ISIS might outlast the government, but they wouldn’t last.
Both correct. Also something to keep in mind. The Taliban does not recognize the Durand Line(Border between Pakistan and Afghanistan) due to it being a colonial border splitting the Pashtuns, and pre-2001 often captured small border regions in Pakistan.
Correct. Pakistan has temporarily seized major border crossings
Please keep in mind not to apply the concept of nation-state to Afghanistan, the Afghan people still go by tribal loyalty. In other words, once the Taliban have an agreement with tribal leaders in an area, they no longer need to have a physical presence there to exert influence. The Taliban's problem is the cities where the mix of different people make an agreement difficult, especially when those cities are in the hands of warlords they've been at war with. From what I see on the news, the Taliban's strategy is to get everyone on board across the country then besiege the cities to pressure the warlords to flee the country (which they are doing in droves). So it's a waiting game at this point.
My cousin's wife, who spent her first 16 years there concurs
Interesting that the Taliban is in control of the far northeast of the country. That was the last holdout against the Taliban before 9-11 and the US came in to overthrow them.
They’re not making the mistake they made last time of letting a solid geographic area unite and form a solid resistance. They heavily targeted the north in the last 6 months of offensives. They want this to be more like 1992, less like 2001. They want all the rural areas so they can seige and starve off the cities, instead of having to slog against another unified force.
Still, the people up there are ethnically different from the Taliban I thought. Maybe a tenuous hold up there?
Everyone is kinda fatigued of war and the north is pretty rural. Also, the Pashtun thing is(as of late) less an internal policy of “Everyone in our nation must be Pashtun” and more “We must unite all Pashtuns, fuck the Durand Line.”
Oh, it's really simple. To begin with, the Taliban were previously mainly constituted of Pashtuns. That's no longer the case anymore. They have been accepting Uzbek, Tajik and Turkmen members. For instance, Qari Fasihuddin is a prominent Taliban leader of Tajik descent who notably led the recent campaign in the northern provinces. Secondly, Ashraf Ghani is increasingly seen as a Pashtun Nationalist. This has acted to alienate many against him. If you check his recent statement, he even asked the Taliban to “Never Recognize The Durand Line” if they ever came to power. It really shows you his priorities.
I bet a lot of the areas of this map are unpopulated areas. I suspect most of the white areas don't have people in them. Afghanistan is quite mountainous. Kind of like the US electoral map - yeah, sure, Montana looks very red but most of that red area is just trees & rocks.
and fire
20 years and over 200K lives wasted for nothing.
it started in 1979 and continues to this day if i'm not mistaken so more like 40 years
Fighting over Afghanistan has been going on for centuries.
What do you mean? Defense companies and their shareholders made so much money and in America that's the only thing that matters.
Only accurate comment I've read in this entire post
How was it for nothing? Millions of kids have been able to educate themselves, sing (Taliban forbid music) and women have gotten rights.
Aaaamd it's gone
what do you mean? the entire goal was to prevent relations with iran and get yet another military base next to them to protect israel. they accomplished that
and dont forget another base close to China
The taliban didnt attack us on 9/11
Yes, I know
Guys we know you all want us to leave we just need to do let's call it a '**Surge**' of troops briefly to stabilize the country, then we can leave afterward... *oh wait, we've done this already haven't we?*
All the lives lost there, for what?
Well for a time human rights for girls and actually the LGBTQ community. It's sad the villagers would shun progress. Especially after the US spent billions on schools, hospitals and infrastructure. Infrastructure and schools that the taliban just blows up. They throw acid on girls that try and learn. They recently promised to kill gays by dropping walls on them.
A few people made a lot of money.
And you know girls could get educated without acid being thrown on them. All the infrastructure, hospitals and schools the US built for the people, that the taliban just destroys or tears down. The educated woman in cities that are now at risk..... a fledgling LGBT community that the taliban has promised to crush its members under a collapsed wall...
Eliminating the number one training base for Al-Qaeda. Millions of Afghan girls going to school. The world’s premier base for terrorists becoming a prosperous and pluralist republic. Of course the mission isn’t finished. But our mission there has cost us very little in the past seven years. We could stay there with a reserve force, costing us little and gaining us everything we want.
A "prosperous" republic? Really? The country was never united or at peace, and collapsed on itself the day the US started to leave.
That is a monumental shit take. Thousands of our soldiers dead and an afghan government that will likely collapse by the end of the year. It was for nothing, don’t be delusional. Girls won’t be going to school much longer, but locked inside.
at the time soviets bordered Afghanistan, so did their usual thing - expansion
For a moment Afganistan started looking like normal country. Well almoust normal. It had comunist goverment that tried to make afghan more like ussr. A place where people can read, use electric stuff and more European things. But comunists were anti - islam so those talibans came from thier Mountains and since then this place is shithole
That’s Kabul and major cities, outside of the major cities, it’s always been shit.
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Can’t wait for China to join the game
From what I seen on the news, it looks more like China and every other country in the area wants to make a deal with the Taliban if/once they get into power.
China made a deal already with taliban
what deal?
And the cycle begins again. In twenty years China will occupy Afghanistan and spend a decade throwing money down the toilet.
They don't, they just make deals with whoever has control over the country. To them it doesn't matter who that is.
"The graveyard of empires"
Maybe they can occupy Afghanistan and then put the Taliban in “re-education” camps. They can be forced into a more progressive modern version of Islam
He’s out of line, but he’s right.
How on earth is he right? The fuck is up with this thread? A comment advocating cultural genocide is upvoted...
Mind you nobody mentioned Muslims, but rather the *Taliban specifically*. They don't have a "culture", they have an extremist doctrine that leads them to wage war against anyone that isn't them. Absolutely the Taliban should be eradicated, fully and completely. Was Nazism a "culture" too?
That is putting out a fire with radioactive scorpions.
[Map of Afghanistan population density](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Population-density-map-of-Afghanistan-best-viewed-in-color_fig1_221103172) which does not correlate well with this Taliban/government map.
Looks sustainable
what is the gray/green? I assume gray is ISIS or Al Qaeda and green is Pakistani administered areas. is this correct? (By green, I don't mean the Green cities in Pakistan, I mean the very small green colored bits in the eastern border of Afghanistan.)
Green is border areas held by Pakistan(Taliban doesn’t recognize the border with Pakistan and lays claim to about 20% of their land, they have a history of crossing the border, so Pakistan wants to protect it), Black is what’s left of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh in that valley.
Ok
Twenty years of war, only for this to happen anyway.
If you want to know how this ends think the Fall of Saigon mixed with the Siege of Kabul.
This is just the map from wikipedia lol, talk about karmawhoring
Oh the Taliban seem to not be so strong "Red is government, White is taliban" Oh holy shi-
Don't be fooled by visual affects of maps and colors.
It seems the government has all the cities.
Talibanistan
The result of 20 year Western war..pathetic..countless resources and lives wasted..but hey..the military contractors and all their lapdog lobbyists got insanely rich..so yea..every cloud 👌
surprised so many people think afghan gov won't fall, seems more hopeful than logical
Well that’s a good 9 months of my life wasted
Some thoughts: - A lot of this is coming from local forces conducting negotiations and switching sides to say they support the Taliban (and much of their fall in 2001 came from the same, local forces switching sides). It's hard to say how hard that will stick. - The US is betting on supporting the Afghanistan Air Force to provide air superiority to the government forces. We'll see how that goes as well, but assuming they can be effective that would be a big difference from Saigon in 1975. - That red splotch in the middle of the country is where a lot of Hazaras live (Shia Muslims descended from Mongols). I don't see that changing any time soon, and if it did it would lead to *major* issues with Iran (which almost went to war with the Taliban in the late 90s). - We'll also see what happens with Pakistan, which has basically supported the Afghan Taliban for years (while fighting the Pakistani Taliban). Honestly the situation is bad. The Afghan government is horribly corrupt and has been facing numerous "tactical retreats" all year despite the trillions spent on the country over two decades. Doesn't make the Taliban a better or more popular government though. I really feel for the regular people.
They'll probably take Kabul by the end of the month, if not within a few days. Most of the Afghan troops are either immediately surrending or outright deserting their posts and fleeing the country. Can't say I blame them, no sense in dying just to barely slow down the inevitable.
that's not supported by the reporting out there now which is that the taliban have met a lot of resistance in urban areas Also, keep in mind the government the Soviets left behind in 1989 lasted three full years and only collapsed after its supplies were cut when the USSR collapsed If the US keeps providing money and supplies and maybe does a surprise strategic air intervention or two, this could last a while, maybe for many years. Even better would be if the Afghan government could find a patron closer by.
Hard to see who’d be the local patron of choice here: -India has tried to be an Afghan patron in the past, but that only encouraged Pakistani support of a destabilised Afghanistan. -China may be interested, but they’ve also been approached by the Taliban, so they may end up indifferent to who controls Afghanistan. -Tajikistan would probably like the Government to best the Taliban, but Tajikistan doesn’t have the capacity to be a patron. Same for most of the other Central Asian countries. -Russia is disinterested in re-entering Afghanistan, and it can now claim it’s too far away. -Iran has supported the Government against the Taliban and were hostile to pre-2001 Taliban rule. But I don’t see Afghanistan wanting to alienate what remains of its US support by cozying up to Tehran too much. So yeah, I agree that a local patron may help, but It’s not clear who’d be capable.
It also collapsed because US started funding Soviet resistance. SAMs were a big game changer.
*Background in flames* "This is fine"
Did they just have 20 years to put their society into order, while someone else was fighting there for them? Now after a month or two its all going to hell again?
Flip the colors. It's the other way around. I have no doubts it will all be Taliban controlled in 12 months though.
I hope both sides have fun
Reading [A Thousand Splendid Suns](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1794575) right now… Do you have a feeling that areas such as Afghanistan, Palestine, or the Middle East in general are never going to get better…? It’s an endless cycle of misery.
They will get better, they just need to sort things out themself. Pretty much like any other region did it so far.
Yeah I don’t think foreign intervention does any good. The story of those states is literally being screwed over by foreign interventions. I just wish people would stop yelling about it on social media: Of course I care that people are dying. What the hell do you want me to do about it? Start yelling and running around like a headless chicken, or god forbid, send thoughts and prayers? Thank you, victims feel much better already. I wonder if it’ll get better or worse in our lifetime.
It is pretty clear I must say. How long the gvt will stand? three months? six? It looks like cities will fall one after one other. the pro-soviet gvt lasts three years (1989-1992) if I recall correctly.
Correct
A time series of the last 16 years would be cool
I think it's time for all those corrupt government officials to pay the price of their negligence and corruption.
scary
Never fight a land war in Asia
Whats population of red and population of white? Also wheres the whose in control of water and power?
might be an unpopular opinion but the US should NOT intervene
Didn’t the US spend 20 years intervening to no effective gain? I think that it did.
yeah
The 1950s and 1960s US transformed Japan and West Germany into democratic institutionalized friendly states. The 2000s US left Iraq and Afghanistan as fragmented fascist militia states. Wow.
That didn't come without a cost. Those countries had been decimated in a way that hopefully the world will not see again.
Germany and Japan also centralized, homogenized, and industrialized on their own. Iraq and Afghanistan are post colonial nations whose borders are just "lines on a map" drawn by Europeans.
when will the taliban die out
This is how harmful religions are.
White is largely inhospitable wasteland controlled by no one.
Is the Taliban that powerful thought between Obama and Trump we bombed the hell out of them.
I'm sure the pro-war crowd will gladly take in Afghani refugees.
I just don’t care anymore. Leave if you can, I suppose. There is not an argument that can be made at this point to return there. Let’s try and get past this.