As they seize more and more territory?
The group begins the task of trying display the very thing everyone is worried about violence and revenge….
And governing….
President Biden is betting on them doing this…..
Even if it means a different way of life for the country…
It seems to be working in some places….
But NOT in others….
And in some places?
Aghtan military forces have actually pushed Taliban force back….
As the Taliban gain ground, fighters have directions to treat captured government soldiers with care and ultimately release them. They have also been told to lay siege to larger provincial capitals on their outskirts, but not enter them. In places like Imam Sahib, some civil servants are being allowed to return to work — except for women — to help keep towns and cities functioning, though it is unclear who is paying them.
These directives are clearly aimed at avoiding bad publicity — destroyed homes, dead civilians and damaged public works — and at least appear to adhere to the U.S.-Taliban agreement made in 2020. The deal outlined certain military tactics that both sides would refrain from, including attacking provincial capitals.
But adherence to the deal was seemingly ignored when Taliban fighters entered not one, but several provincial capitals in recent weeks, with fighting reported in the streets and dozens of soldiers and civilians killed and injured, and untold amounts of property destroyed.
Reports of insurgent fighters enacting revenge on the local population have also surfaced, signaling the limited ability of Taliban leaders to control their assortment of ground commanders — all of different ethnicities, diverging loyalties and unclear levels of adherence to the group’s command structure.
A Taliban commander who was not authorized to speak to the media told The Times that though he was not cleared to assault Kunduz city, a provincial capital in the north, his forces saw an opportunity and took it — a move senior leaders later endorsed. Now after weeks of fighting, Afghan government forces, propped up by aerial bombardments and an influx of the Afghan military’s elite commandos, have pushed the Taliban back to some parts of the city’s periphery. But it remains surrounded.
Dozens of civilians and soldiers have been killed, hundreds more wounded and more than 40,000 have been displaced around Kunduz Province, according to a July 1 United Nations report. Some homes there were burned down by the Taliban, residents said….
…
Even as they seek to conquer the country, the Taliban are aware of their legacy of harsh rule, and do not want to “become the same pariah and isolated state” that Afghanistan was in the 1990s, said Ibraheem Bahiss, an International Crisis Group consultant and an independent research analyst.
“They’re playing the long game,” Mr. Bahiss said…..
A National Review contributor agrees with Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan:
Biden Should Stick to the Afghanistan Withdrawal
By DANIEL DEPETRIS
July 1, 2021 6:30 AM
…The question, though, has never been whether Afghan security forces would struggle to hold ground once U.S. forces packed up — even those who have advocated for a full U.S. withdrawal acknowledge the costs associated with the decision. The question is whether the U.S. has a better alternative.
Many Beltway foreign-policy professionals continue to believe that sustaining the Afghan government indefinitely with a few thousand troops and tens of billions of dollars a year is a “low-cost formula” for keeping Kabul afloat. Yet for the U.S. military personnel who would be asked to risk their lives on behalf of a corrupt, internally divided, and feckless government, it’s difficult to see how such a mission would actually enhance U.S. security in any meaningful way. What would be the purpose of such a deployment, other than maintaining a stalemate? How resource-intensive would it be? How long would it last? And above all, would it be worth it?
Proponents of reversing the U.S. troop withdrawal never get around to answering (let alone asking) these critical questions — perhaps because they recognize that the answers would hardly be acceptable to the American public.
There is nobody in America who likes to watch as Taliban fighters capture and pose with U.S.-supplied mortars and artillery pieces left behind by retreating Afghan troops. The fact that the Afghan government is openly calling on informal militias to backstop its security forces is all you need to know about the security situation there.
But the truth of the matter is about as ugly as the war itself: Afghanistan was in a state of civil war before the U.S. military entered the country, and it will be in a state of civil war long after the U.S. military leaves. U.S. national-security officials should have long ago realized that as professional, dedicated, and technologically superior as the U.S. military is, the men and women who swear an oath to protect the United States don’t have the power to drag Afghanistan into peace. If 140,000 U.S. and coalition troops couldn’t resolve Afghanistan’s decades-long civil war, it is ludicrous to believe that the presence of 3,500 American troops will do the trick. If this conflict is going to be solved, it’s going to be solved by the Afghans who are presently fighting one another in all four corners of their country. To ask a young American from New York, Arkansas, or Illinois to do it for them is blatantly unfair and is a fatal misreading of how little power the United States really has to push events there in a more constructive direction.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/biden-should-stick-to-the-afghanistan-withdrawal/
This guy needs to talk with James.
He has some useful “insights” here.
And I would agree with the Depetis basic….
The country IS fucked up….
The concept of a central government is NOT basic to eh curries history or culture…
BUT?
For the last 20 years THAT has been for part of the country….
My worry which has been expressed here is addressed in this linked pice…
Nuance and complexities …
The ‘Old’ Taliban was a ruthless and violent group…
I mused here a week ago….
Maybe with the intel briefing’s Biden was receiving he knew the story in this linked piece…
In history?
Those who fight to replace the leadership NEVER remain to actually run things which requires a completely different skill set…
The insights point to a different thing then what I , the US Military, The US/NATO Intel community, Congress and the media worry about….
IF Biden and Depetris ARE correct?
I would happy to say my worries are misplaced….
It IS gone take the a LOT of discipline from the Taliban to change to a political and governing group….
If they cannot?
Biden WILL have a ugly legacy dropped in his lap….
Depetris will be just a blip in a magazine
He’s saying nothing I didn’t say a month or ago and you spent a whole day arguing against every comment I made.
Now you agree “basically?”
Yeah ,whatever.
Who knows what tomorrow might bring?
“He’s saying nothing I didn’t say a month or ago”…
so, Jack, when is Rich Lowry going to commission a column from you?
I expect that having your by-line in National Review would alienate potential clients who are either ultra-Trumpissimo MAGA fanatics or Democrats/liberals/progressives.
On the other hand it would make a good impression with main-line conservatives and old-line conservatives.
I wouldn’t think so called”mainline conservatives” would share my views(or this NR contributor) .
Those types tend to be hawkish and in favor of various overseas military adventures.
Jack?
A month ago the Taliban wasn’t doing the ‘nice’ part…..
What’s that have to do with anything?
EVERYTHING…..
… and from the opposite end of the spectrum from NR, Dissent on rescuing U.S. allies from Afghanistan:
The Afghanistan Evacuation
¶ The Biden administration announced that it will accelerate plans to relocate Afghans who worked with the U.S. military. Their situation demands the most urgent response possible.
Nicolaus Mills ▪ June 30, 2021
…Two months after Joe Biden announced that the United States will withdraw all its forces from Afghanistan by September 11, the president has made a second, related decision: to evacuate Afghan interpreters, drivers, and others who assisted the United States in its twenty-year war, while their applications to come to this country are processed. “Those who helped us are not going to be left behind,” he told a gathering of White House reporters last week.
What this evacuation pledge will mean in practice and how quickly it will be implemented are open questions. There are roughly 18,000 Afghans who worked for the United States with 53,000 additional family members currently seeking U.S. visas, according to government officials.
The Afghanistan visa problem is a longstanding one. Since 2008 there has been a Special Immigrant Visa program (SIV) designed to help both Iraqis and Afghans who aided the American military and need to get to the United States for their own safety. But the number of visas issued never kept up with the number of applicants.
In a study published last month, the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs provided a detailed account of what was wrong with SIV in Afghanistan. The study found the program was “plagued by inefficiencies” that undermined its good intentions.
The inefficiencies, the report emphasized, started in Afghanistan itself, where the United States kept no central database of the translators or contractors it hired. This meant it was often difficult for Afghans to prove they had been employed by the United States; with the rapid turnover of American personnel serving in Afghanistan, it was still more difficult for many Afghans to get the letter of recommendation SIV requires.
Once they did get a letter of recommendation, Afghan visa applicants were still not out of the bureaucratic thicket: they had to prove they personally faced a threat—a difficult matter if the threat was verbal and not one of the “Night Letters” the Taliban often dropped off at a family’s home. Applicants also had to pass a notoriously unreliable polygraph exam. As a result of these hurdles, the total wait time for Afghans seeking an American visa was anywhere from three to six years, with as much as two years of that time taken up by processing delays.
In its assessment of the SIV program, the Brown study also pointed to remedies for its problems—from establishing a database of Afghans working for the United States to hiring more personnel to process visa applications. The remedies were in keeping with ones proposed but not implemented in June 2020 by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General.
The problems are similar to ones faced by Vietnamese and Iraqi citizens in the aftermath of other U.S. wars. In both countries, however, the United States was able to save lives that would otherwise have been lost through mass evacuations….
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-afghanistan-evacuation
Certainly we should make sure that those Afghans who were employed by the United States are relocated .
I don’t know why anyone would oppose that.
Except the ‘program’ is slow walking
There’s no appetite for continuing the war in Afghanistan. Even among conservatives. One good thing Trump did for the party is end their hawkishness (at least for now).
Scott?
There ARE Republicans complaining about the rapid withdrawal of troops from the Afghan country
I have posted rhis more than once
If there is no residual revenge violence Biden dine good….
If the old Taliban ways resurface?
Biden holds the bag
I hope he made the right call
I’m talking about humanity here
Of course people are going to die.
That’s what the NR guy was saying.You know the article you “basically” agreed with ? People die in civil wars.Often lots of people.Afghanistan has been in a state of civil war for over 40 years.Lots of people have died.Lots of people have been dying over the past 20 years that we have been there.
The Taliban are fanatics.Sure they are going to kill people and their opponents are going to kill them.
It’s a civil war that ,despite sending in over 140000 troops and supplying this “army” we created billions of dollars in equipment,much of which is now in Taliban hands due to the incompetence of this “army” and the rampant corruption endemic to the country, will likely continue for many years to come whether we stayed or not.
U do ‘NOT GET IT’ Jack ?
Me….
The US Military ….
Congress….
NATO leaders…
We ALL have been worried about a Taliban revenge violence movement that could leave a LOT of people hurt….
Sure it’s a civil war…
Sure people get hurt…
BUT WTF would we want to see MORE violence???
Again?
You don’t give a shit ….
I understand…
But others don’t feel comfortable standing buy while innocents suffer….
BTW?
None of the above are talking about 140,000 troops…
And?
The US will still have roughly 1,000 troops in country is WORST defensive positions then 3 months ago….
Again?
I hope that the Taliban leaders are able to control their people and seek to govern what they take over….
The Brits leave also…
The last British troops in Afghanistan are leaving, ending a two-decade-long presence in a move some of Boris Johnson’s own MPs condemned as a “retreat.”
As he follows the lead of U.S. President Joe Biden in drawing down his country’s military presence, British Prime Minister Johnson told MPs Thursday the U.K. must be “realistic about our ability alone to influence the course of events.”…
…
Johnson, who admitted Wednesday he is “apprehensive” about Afghanistan’s fate, brushed off the call for a post-mortem and tried to reassure MPs “we are not walking away.”
Britain will, he said, maintain its embassy in Kabul, and will continue to try to press for a “negotiated settlement” by urging neighboring Pakistan to convince the Taliban “there can be no military path to victory.”…
More…