What in God's Green Goodness Are We Up To In Afghanistan?

im being quite literal, as in the u.s. funding quite possibly swung the war for the mujahideen (this is not a particularly controversial view).

this party was garbage before I even got here! *shits on birthday cake*

I have no idea what s.clover is arguing about at this point... If anyone is in doubt, uhm, I agree that the US invasion of Vietnam was a bad thing...

― Frederik B, Thursday, June 16, 2016 3:22 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How is it a bad thing to defeat a soviet invasion?

― Frederik B, Thursday, June 16, 2016 1:55 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so uh in vietnam i guess the problem was they lost?

Wait, what? What on earth are you talking about?

im being quite literal, as in the u.s. funding quite possibly swung the war for the mujahideen (this is not a particularly controversial view).

right, but I don't think that constitutes the US "fucking Afghanistan", exactly. In a scenario where both potential victors were inherently bad actors, I'm not inclined to view one's victory over the other as anything but a wash.

yeah tbf the USSR and the Taliban have been equal forces for evil over the last 20 years

The U.S., solely interested in winning the battle against the Soviet Union, funded the Mujahideen to the tune of $3 billion; Saudi Arabia provided as much and likely more. Neither country appreciated the ramifications of such a decision—especially the effects it would have on women’s rights. When asked about support for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a misogynist figure who became notoriously known for throwing acid on the faces of women who refused to wear the veil, and whose group, Hezb-e-Islami received as much as 50 percent of U.S. aid , a CIA official in Pakistan responded: “fanatics fight better.”

https://this.org/2012/02/17/how-the-west-uses-womens-rights-as-an-excuse-for-military-intervention/

ftr, we're viewing both wars purely through the lens of the cold war being fought by proxy. the locals undoubtedly have very different ideas about the course of their respective wars, their outcomes and their eventual meaning. Apart from their being occupied (or, in Afghanistan's case, semi-occupied) and manipulated by European colonial forces and used as proxy battlefields by the USA and USSR, it would be hard to think of two more different countries than Vietnam and Afghanistan.

most of the hostility toward the soviet-allied, urban, political base in afghanistan was from people who felt their modernizations were too much of a westernization/secularization of culture? the united states (well, the cia) pitched it as empowering anti-soviet fighters, but they were empowering groups that were angry people were being what they perceived as secular and anti-traditional culture

the vietnam analogy is relevant inasmuch as the u.s. deliberately tried to provoke the soviets into invading afghanistan in the hope of giving them "their own" vietnam war.

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. Is this period, you were the national securty advisor to President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention...

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into the war and looked for a way to provoke it?

B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan , nobody believed them. However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

http://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview

What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

can we reevaluate this one in another thirty years

no surprise that Brzezinski considered getting the soviets out of central Europe to be of the highest importance.

the original point I was disputing (in some other thread) was the argument that the U.S.'s involvement in Afghanistan in the 80s was so ruinous for the country that it directly resulted in Muslims hating America, 9-11, etc. Which is just ridiculous. Yes OBL was personally bitter about the US abandoning his little "Abraham Lincoln brigade" (lol) but for the larger Muslim world America's participation in Aghanistan 80s shenanigans was not really a big recruiting tool for Islamic extremists.

Wait, what? No-one in that thread, even the quoted GWB, said anything like "Muslims hate America". "The larger Muslim world" wasn't responsible for 9/11, the specific group lead by OBL was - hence the connection with Afghanistan that you seem happy to agree with, once you can claim that it wasn't what you were disagreeing with?

I mean, I get that's your thing, you're never wrong, but the tap-dancing there has taken you to a very odd abyss..

Of course not. We've been caught in a self-perpetuating cycle of revenge ever since we invaded Afghanistan. They believe we are waging a war on them because of their way of life and vice versa. Not that hard to understand.

― flappy bird, Monday, June 13, 2016 2:11 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that particular statement of Bush's* stands out because of its position at the start of what a lot of people know about the conflict - rather than provide any shading of hey maybe we shouldn't have fucked over Afghanistan quite so hard in the 80s, it sets out the whole thing in Manichean terms - not only are we the good guys, but they hate us for our goodness, nothing else we can do about that. It's of a piece with unironically declaring it a War on Terror.

*I'm assuming it's from Cheney / Rove / Rumsfeld, just because it's so good at what it does.

― Andrew Farrell, Monday, June 13, 2016 2:46 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

context of these comments was the general framing of the "clash of civilization" POV and whether islam sees itself as at war with the west and vice versa, nowhere did you say you were referring specifically to OBL's little band of Egyptians and Saudis, who certainly had way more grievances with the US than the general state of Afghanistan as a country.

be better at making yr points

Even in terms of OBL and his mujahedeen, while they *personally* were fucked over by the withdrawal of US support, that doesn't really have a whole lot of bearing on the state of Afghanistan as a whole. Obviously Afghanistan under the Taliban worked out just fine as a base of operations for Al Qaeda, OBL wasn't exactly upset about them coming out on top.

also I'm wrong all the time about stuff - man alive and Alfred just turned my head on the gun control thread yesterday for ex.

(and fwiw yes I know flappy bird's initial post there doesn't even make any sense since obviously the cycle of revenge - at least as far as radical Islamists are concerned - started *before* we invaded Afghanistan)

Even in terms of OBL and his mujahedeen, while they *personally* were fucked over by the withdrawal of US support, that doesn't really have a whole lot of bearing on the state of Afghanistan as a whole. Obviously Afghanistan under the Taliban worked out just fine as a base of operations for Al Qaeda, OBL wasn't exactly upset about them coming out on top.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, June 16, 2016 7:24 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Right. what fucked over afghanistan as a whole wasn't the withdrawal of u.s. "support" (for fucks sake) but the provision of huge amounts of arms and aid to crazy woman-hating nutball reactionaries to depose a government in the first place.

(and there was no cycle of "revenge" between the u.s. and islam for the duration of the cold war -- that's the point. they supported religious forces and allied with them all over the place as part of their moves against the ussr. e.g. http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/02/05/washingtons-secret-history-muslim-brotherhood/ )

The provision of arms was precisely what OBL wanted! We are arguing at cross-purposes here.

Sorta doubt muslims as a whole were upset about how u.s. support of mujahedeen messed up afghanistan.

no cycle of "revenge" between the u.s. and islam for the duration of the cold war

I would hazard that the cycle of revenge started in between the cold war and the invasion of afghanistan - ie gulf war I. Thats where the real grievances have their roots.

you mean the second invasion of Afghanistan, right?

context of these comments was the general framing of the "clash of civilization" POV and whether islam sees itself as at war with the west and vice versa, nowhere did you say you were referring specifically to OBL's little band of Egyptians and Saudis, who certainly had way more grievances with the US than the general state of Afghanistan as a country.

Specifically the context of the comments was the question of whether "They hate us for our freedoms" is a thing that GWB got (mostly) right - I'm not saying "No this is The Reason instead", but rather that any other "Hey this might have been a factor as well" was swept away by his statement. Afghanistan is just the one that has the clearest through-line. Not that I'm excusing Al Qaeda for anything of course.

xp getting invaded is kind of Afghanistan's thing (as well as killing all the invaders) - might be worth putting dates on it.

I don't remember the conversation being about whether Islam sees itself as war with the US - as in I think we were all agreeing that it isn't - this fella has the main of it:

There clearly is a "clash of civilizations" aspect to this (clumsily and inexpertly elucidated by Dubya) but it's not Dubya's shitty way with words that is the problem. Radical Islamists genuinely do hate the West and modernism and all that entails. And we hate them right back. But they do not represent all of Islam, and apart from Trump no one in the US federal gov't has ever openly argued that Islam *as a religion* is the problem or the "enemy". Which is not the case with radical Islamists, who explicitly *do* call out the West as the literal enemy. These two sets of rhetoric are not equivalent.

xp

― Οὖτις, Monday, 13 June 2016 22:18 (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also I'm wrong all the time about stuff - man alive and Alfred just turned my head on the gun control thread yesterday for ex.

Okay, that's cool, I shall try to emulate them more when arguing with you. I hadn't seen that, partly because I marked that thread as "Don't read, no-one ever changes their mind" :)

Have there been any notable articles about the China-Afghanistan relationship in the last decade? The most substantial summary of a study I've found is here: http://carnegieendowment.org/files/china_role_afghanistan.pdf

China as a whole has a lot of the seculization and legal protections that groups in Afghanistan have opposed, but tends to be more explicitly hands-off when it comes to addressing those issues with trading partners. Given the location and relatively untapped mineral/resource rights, there's no way China won't be a major player in the region in the next few decades.

There's the ongoing need to "protect American interests" in a region, meaning the protection of American-owned corporate interests, along with resource access. China's diversified enough for the time being, between ventures in-country, in Africa, and increasingly in neighboring countries that the latter might not be an issue. And as for the former, the majority of external business is fully- or majority-owned by the Chinese government, so unilateral withdrawal from a region lacks the complication of corporate interests

tl;dr version -- the long-term foreign interest and influence in Afghanistan is probably going to be China-focused

from the 2012 article posted above from a self-proclaimed "progressive politics" website

Prior to the ascendance of the Mujahideen, Afghanistan’s constitution, written in 1964, guaranteed women basic rights such as universal suffrage and equal pay. Women comprised half of university students, held government jobs and could travel and leave the house without a male escort. Moreover, “women made up 40 percent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 percent of its teachers and 30 percent of its civil servants. A small number of women even held important political posts as members of Parliament and judges, and most women did not wear the burqa.”

...In addition, according to Rachel Reid, a Human Rights Watch researcher, since the fall of the Taliban, the percentage of girls who finish school has risen from zero percent to just four percent—a very minor improvement, especially when considering statistics from the pre-Mujahideen era, when girls and women made up half of university students in Kabul. Girls’ access to secondary education, which is by far the most vital for women’s emancipation, is still very low as well. Only 11 percent of secondary school age girls are enrolled in grades 7-9 and a dismal 4 percent in grades 10-12.

Furthermore, today, for the first time in Afghan history, women must simultaneously face all the enemies of women’s rights. On the one hand, Mujahideen fundamentalists now comprise the Northern Alliance and are in positions of power, firmly supported by NATO forces; on the other, they must face anti-government insurgents: al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

again, that is not the kind of "fucking up" that radicalized Muslims or convinced them there was a war between Islam and the west

are there any post-soviet republics where secularization was forced and gender equality pushed where that completely reverted post-soviet breakup?

Not completely (to pre-1930s position) though everyone from Poland to Tajikistan has rolled back the rights of women. Takijistan has become much more conservative post-independence but women are still a high proportion of the workforce, universally educated, etc.

again, that is not the kind of "fucking up" that radicalized Muslims or convinced them there was a war between Islam and the west

― Οὖτις, Friday, June 17, 2016 11:51 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

here's what i've been trying to get at. there _was_ a conservative anti-progress wing developing throughout the region for a long time. the point is, it was in a tiny minority. it was watered, supported, fed, encouraged, armed, trained by the U.S. as part of the cold war. so... that is certainly a reason for why it became more prominent.

that's not the same as what convinced 'them' that "there was a war between Islam and the west". What did sort of maybe fuel that was the u.s. just like keeping invading and occupying countries throughout the region?

again, that is not the kind of "fucking up" that radicalized Muslims or convinced them there was a war between Islam and the west

I have read that American troops' presence on the Saudi peninsula was a major casus belli in the oughts. Exacerbated (it is said) by those troops including women who were permitted to drive and whose hair was uncovered, etc. Dunno about the last bits.

"Some agitated Moslems"

hand-wavin' Zbig Turgidson

What did sort of maybe fuel that was the u.s. just like keeping invading and occupying countries throughout the region?

right - see my note about Gulf War I

I have read that American troops' presence on the Saudi peninsula was a major casus belli in the oughts.

this is absolutely true, OBL and AAZ both referenced it repeatedly

stayin' forever just like Richard Dreyfuss Cheney said in W.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/750715418524917761

The memos reveal that Mr Blair and Mr Bush were openly discussing toppling Saddam Hussein as early as December 2001, when the UK and US had just launched military action in Afghanistan.
"How we finish in Afghanistan is important to phase 2. If we leave it a better country, having supplied humanitarian aid and having given new hope to the people, we will not just have won militarily but morally; and the coalition will back us to do more elsewhere," says Mr Blair in the memo.
"We shall give regime change a good name which will help in our arguments over Iraq."

2016 update: Phase 1 still not going so well

where does this end, exactly?

― Roughage Crew (Enrique), Wednesday, July 5, 2006 5:11 AM (eleven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/world/asia/afghanistan-trump-mineral-deposits.html

I actually drafted this earlier and lacked a place to put it:
1998: classmates in high school approach me with petition for the US to have a stance against the Taliban, citing murder of gay people and oppression of women under fundamentalist regime, which I sign
2001: Catastrophe. I worry about what is going to happen, but hold out optimism that the Taliban might at least fall
2017: Taliban at highest level of activity since mid-2000s. Headlines referring to US weapons having fallen into the wrong hands, and Russian arms possibly going to Taliban

everything is shit

More or less

Muddling Through

For the political science article, see Charles E. Lindblom.

Still the single greatest blog post ever, and unfortunately still completely timely: https://t.co/9ycCVZVwZX

— vastleft (@vastleft) August 22, 2017

Highest recommendations for Anand Gopal's No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes (2014).

The time to "win" in Afghanistan would have been 2002, when the Taliban was nowhere to be seen and Peshtun civilians were glad to be free of their yoke. But then to prove to higher-ups that they were doing something, US SOF started abducting political challengers named by local warlords like Agha Sherzai and Ahmed Wali Karzai (opium kingpin, brother to Hamid), offering bounties, and torturing (sometimes to death) the captured, sending many off to Gitmo without any evidence. By now, the U.S. has killed or arrested family or friends of nearly every Peshtun, so there's zero likelihood of peace before the US leaves.

a thread

The @NSArchive just released a huge amount (900+ pages) of memos from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. I’m going through them now and picking out ones I find interesting. /threadhttps://t.co/FDFPwNaiI7

— Paul Szoldra (@PaulSzoldra) January 24, 2018

why stop now?

https://splinternews.com/u-s-commander-calls-for-end-to-war-in-afghanistan-1828776497

“It is time for this war in Afghanistan to end,” Nicholson said, simply

For some unknown reason the Taliban would rather win the war outright, so they can get down to the serious business of killing everyone who disagrees with them, well, killing them faster, at least. We can't seem to persuade them this is not a worthy use of their time and energy.

so if we're staying eternally, let's do statehood!

I have a hunch that if the US pulled out not only would Kabul fall very quickly, but shortly thereafter the Taliban be involved with fierce fighting with ISIS and maybe several independent warlords on the side. There are no good answers in any direction, but propping up the Kabul government will never lead anywhere better than the situation at present. Violent death, rampant corruption, and social instability are already baked into the next decade or more, with the only question being the exact distribution of these evils across the general population. And whether our military gets to share in that dubious bounty.

this sucks

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/us/timothy-bolyard-afghanistan-attack.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-peace.html

The driver of a car that was stopped in the middle of the road, blocking traffic, was shocked when a passing motorist rolled down the window and shouted at him, “Dirty donkey.”

He was even more surprised when he looked up to see that the insult came from a woman. A woman driving a car. A woman driving a car without wearing the obligatory hijab.

That was Laila Haidari, who runs a popular cafe in Kabul that allows men and women to dine together, whether married or not, with or without a head scarf, and uses the profits to fund a rehabilitation clinic for drug addicts.

Nearly everyone addresses Ms. Haidari, 39, as “Nana,” or “Mom,” and her supporters describe her as the “mother of a thousand children,” after the number of Afghan addicts she has reportedly saved....

“Guys, the Taliban are coming back,” she said one day recently to a mixed group of diners at her restaurant, Taj Begum, which has been subjected to virulent attacks in the local media that have all but compared it to a brothel.

“We have to organize,” she told her customers. “I hope to find 50 other women who will stand up and say, ‘We don’t want peace.’ If the Taliban comes back, you will not have a friend like me, and there will be no restaurant like Taj Begum.”