Battles have rarely been massive charges from two sides of a flat battlefield, as we see in war movies. Historically, it's been really hard to get soldiers to charge to their deaths, which makes sense if you think for a second. Most armies throughout history were nonprofessionals levied by their lords or seasonal opportunists, who fought for extra income. Sometimes, the leaders would get the soldiers drunk before they went in, and they'd retreat and have to be coaxed into running in again.<p>Aside from all this, contrary to some sort of received chivalric ideal of loyalty and fighting-unto-death, a great number of military engagements in every part of the world were decided by bribery and deception. People don't want to risk their lives and are often tempted by monetary gain. Countless forts have fallen to people opening the doors from within. There's instances of Sufi leaders being admitted into forts only to open the gates. Hyderabad was conquered by Aurangazeb in great part due to bribery, too.<p>The calculus changes dramatically if the attacker has a history of lenient behavior toward those who surrender, versus massacre for those who do not. The Mughals regularly incorporated surrendering lords into their feudal system, with honors, income, and opportunities for social advancement. The Mongols razed the Khwarezmia because of their disastrous refusal of their envoys.
"Our failure to understand [the Taliban's] dynamic has had consequences."<p>There was no "failure to understand". This narrative that Afghanistan was a well-intentioned strategic/tactical failure is utterly misleading. The dynamic reality was very clear to every one involved (who cared to know), from servicepeople to 4-star generals, but the military's culture of careerism and corruption prevented these truths from being publicly acknowledged [1].<p>[1] - <a href="https://youtu.be/_bo7P_podIk" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/_bo7P_podIk</a>
British had a saying: you can rent an Afghan but you can't buy one<p>I heard the above saying during Soviet invasion but I cannot find the origin.
My understanding is that medieval warfare, among the noble class, had similarities to this: specifically, nobles didn't necessarily fight to the death. Capture and ransom was a big thing. The term "parole" comes from the idea of <i>giving one's word,</i> after capture, that you would not return to fighting if you were released. The nobles of Europe, too, had an extended network of kin, some of whom might be on the "other side."<p>I don't recall learning about switching sides with fluidity (as in Afghanistan), but I do recall learning that this little game got broken up once the common people were enlisted.
The consistent problem with most comments about the conflict in Afghanistan is they fail to fully account for the role of the Pakistan Army and ISI in all of this. They are the most important element in the conflict, not the Afghans, not us and not the Taliban. If they weren’t involved and the conflict were limited to Afghanistan and Afghans things like what Mr. Filkins describes would hold sway and accommodations and arrangements might be made. But that won’t happen because the Pak Army/ISI won’t let it. They have a mad idea of requiring Afghanistan for strategic depth (‘After the Indians beat us we can fall back on the tank factories of Kabul and regroup.’) and they require a compliant regime running the country. So they make it happen. As plucky as the Afghans can be, Afghanistan can’t handle Pakistan, especially a Pakistan that is a conduit for Gulf Arab money being sent to buy the donors a place in heaven.<p>Handling the Pak Army/ISI was our job and we didn’t do it. We never really even tried to do it. If we had kept the Paks out and the conflict was contained within Afghanistan, the Afghans could have handled what would have been left of the Taliban through means such as those described by Mr. Filkins. But we didn’t. We got had by Pakistan and tales of the Raj and their special knowledge. We gave them money even, lots of it to kill us and Afghans.<p>We did get something for this though. Hundreds of high ranking officers got their tickets punched. The spec ops community got their budgets and fanfare. Multitudes of State Dept. people got hazard pay and career points. Contracting companies and contractors galore got lots and lots of money over lots and lots of years. Several thousand of our guys died but they were mostly deplorable NASCAR fans and don’t much count. Now the party is over and the Afghans get to pay the final bill.<p>Nice going Americans! This is the second time in my life where we’ve bugged out on people who trusted us when we told them we wouldn’t bug out on them.<p>(The above comment was made by someone on the original article, but I think it's 100% accurate.)
Afghanistan was a war of attrition that the locals felt the most of. Likely one of those wars that your dad and granddad fought (if you trace it back from the Soviet invasion) and somehow you also ended up fighting in. After a while everyone gets tired and they want to live in peace and not die in a war.<p>Can see why it ended the way it did.
One statistic I think gets overlooked is the Afghan population almost doubled from 20M to 38M in the last 20 years. The massive young demographics growing up under occupation was going to come home to roost sooner or later. There's also the geographic reality that Afghanistan is a land locked country and US tenuous access via Pakisan or the even more perilous northern routes meant taming Afganistan was always going to be a long term losing proposition.
The other war that comes to mind that doesn't fit the standard model of black hat vs white hat is the Vietnam war. It was impossible to defeat the Viet Cong because they blended in with the citizenry. And so, despite superior technology and enormous wealth, America and its allies were unable to prevail in Vietnam.<p>And yet, today, the socialist republic of Vietnam is hardly a pariah, or a communist menace, or a backwater or a threat to anyone. It is a rapidly developing economic power in South East Asia, with a dispersed diaspora that has integrated well with diverse cultures in Europe, North America, Australia and South America.<p>Have you ever heard of a Vietnamese terrorist shooting up or bombing a public place in the west over the last 40 years?<p>What does that tell you about the paradigm of us vs them?
There was no way to defeat the Afghan Taliban without Pakistani help. The ideological reservoir from which Taliban recruits is bottomless; and with military and financial support from across the border, quite formidable.<p>Over the last decade, the US had lost all leverage with Pakistan. Pakistan is now fully allied with China.
The US image as the "brave" superpower has been heavily exposed. The US despite having the latest tech hardware and all these images of muscle pumped up soldiers in Hollywood movies were seen as fleeing the battlefield. It took the US 20 years to push Taliban to outer cities and the Taliban took 20 days to come back. It shows for me, the US is not a superpower when it comes to warfare, as we saw in Vietnam too. They are good when it comes to aerial combat where they do not engage on ground level but they are not trained or built for guerrilla warfare which many Asian countries employ. They would lost in most terrains like this.
No way to impose any sort of external order there.
Russia was there, US/UK and half NATO have been there, the insurgent groups have financing via drugs and God knows what else(look at Colombia how much drug financed groups can hold back progress).
All the foreign forces have done plenty of damage and lost credibility.
Looking back, what in the world made Russia go there in the first place and then the USA? Why is this matter not settled yet?<p>This has gone past many administrations and advisors, and yielded nothing.<p>Does anyone know if the Taliban actually have some sort of popular support there or only by fringe groups?
"It was in the waning days of November 2001 that Taliban leaders began to reach out to Hamid Karzai, who would soon become the interim president of Afghanistan: They wanted to make a deal.<p>“The Taliban were completely defeated, they had no demands, except amnesty,” recalled Barnett Rubin, who worked with the United Nations’ political team in Afghanistan at the time.<p>Messengers shuttled back and forth between Mr. Karzai and the headquarters of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in Kandahar. Mr. Karzai envisioned a Taliban surrender that would keep the militants from playing any significant role in the country’s future.<p>But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out forever, was in no mood for a deal.<p>“The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders,” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a news conference at the time, adding that the Americans had no interest in leaving Mullah Omar to live out his days anywhere in Afghanistan. The United States wanted him captured or dead."<p>-- Did the War in Afghanistan Have to Happen?
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanistan-taliban-deal-united-states.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanis...</a>
> After the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on September 27, 1996, Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abdul Rashid Dostum, two former enemies, created the United Front (Northern Alliance) against the Taliban, who were preparing offensives against the remaining areas under the control of Massoud and Dostum.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan</a><p>Amazing how it's almost an exact repeat of 25 years ago.
"<i>Only the civilians seemed to lose.</i>"<p>Yeah.<p>Something to keep in mind with everyone repeating the old "Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires" dismissal.
For a (much longer) exploration of this idea, I recommend reading the book <i>The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks</i> [0] by Joshua Cooper Ramo.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0196KYTA6" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0196KYTA6</a>
One side is an occupation force that despite all the propaganda understands that it kills people for power and mineral resources. Propaganda is strong, but it's hard to fool people completely, some intuition for truth remains.<p>On another side there're people defending their homes from foreign neo-colonial occupation.<p>Doesn't it explain why the comprador forces working for the occupational administration failed so quickly?.. "Democracy" on bayonets doesn't work.
After US withdrawal the Taliban probably had a massive financial advantage. They probably used the last years to save up billions which they used to buy them a "critical mass" of fighters that would steamroll the country with no chance of resistance.<p>Even when factoring out corruption, the government's ability to muster up funds for keeping it's own military is severely hindered by them having to upkeep basic services throughout the country and having to go through the usual government bureaucracy.<p>Now the tables have turned somewhat and being faced with the cost of occupying the country, the Taliban will have trouble keeping their freckle allies.