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Originally Posted by The Batlord
Alright, the generals in Afghanistan? Pre-existing warlords we gave uniforms and cash. Then they inflated their recruit numbers to get more cash out of cause we pay their troops for them. Then they took the money we'd give them for their actual soldiers and send it to Dubai. Then their soldiers who never gor paid would sell whatever they had (guns, ammo, fuel, shoes) to the Taliban so they could eat. Then they'd probably desert, the warlords would recruit more "soldiers", rinse repeat gor 20 years.
The Afghan army mostly existed on paper.
As far as I know the officials were just whatever tribal leaders we thought would be the best colonial figureheads and their power never went much further than the buildings housing their offices since they didn't actually have any functional control over the warlords. Mostly they just used their positions to do much the same as the warlords, grifting money and sending it to Dubai.
The Afghan government also mostly existed on paper.
This happened differently than in Iraq because despite everything that happened between the two Gulf Wars and the sanctions in the 90s it was still some semblance of a functional country, whereas Afghanistan has been one big crater since the 70s.
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the problem seems to be that Biden and his admin and advisers and all the intelligence they were working on were not at all prepared for that reality. Their pull out strategy assumed they had like 6 months to work with instead of 11 days. And that assumption didn't work out too well for them.
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Originally Posted by jadis
It never went away.
While it may only get even worse for ordinary Afghans in the coming years, there is something to be said for the alternative to the Taliban no longer being violent foreign invaders who don't even pretend to have any coherent long-term plan for the country. Say what you will about the Iraq war, but in addition to all the profiteering, it was also driven by sincerely-held delusions about "nation-building". With Afghanistan the pretense was never even there.
If only someone knew what was behind the change. Maybe Zbigniew Brzezinski could have an idea?
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/...ordering-pizza |
Wasnt the pretense that they were going to let the UN handle the nation building aspect or something like that initially?
I do believe there was a pretense that the point of invading the country was not only to get Al Qaeda but to remove the Taliban from power because they were the ones giving refuge to Al Qaeda in the first place.
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Originally Posted by Frownland
This but unironically
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i suppose when you are executed by the de facto state under shariah law that doesn't count as murder