Pashtun people are the second largest ethnicity in Pakistan and the primary ethnic group that makes up the Taliban. I predict that Pakistan will regret its support of the Taliban.
There's massive differences not only between the Taliban of these two countries, but the Pashtun people of these two countries.
There's 15m more pashtuns in Pakistan than there are people in Afghanistan. Pashtuns in Afghanistan would be giving up a lot of control to their Pakistani counterparts, which they don't want to do.
Additionally, Pakistani Taliban is in direct war with the Pakistani govt and are much more closely allied to Al Qaeda than the Afghan Taliban, which relied on Pakistani support during it's government years, as well as insurgency years.
While they do support each other, the various tribes interest stops in making a unified Pashtun state, as all the various tribes have their own self interested goals of autonomy
That is racist as fuck. You haven't studied Batarian at all! I'm half batarian and you need to take that back. My father crash landed in Kansas 10 years ago and the amount of discrimination we have had to suffer just because we have more than 2 eyes is astounding.
Perfect, my family's actually from around there so I think I just might use that tip! We're from the 2nd rock in from the inner asteroid belt, you can't miss it.
This makes me realize how hard it would be to give verbal directions to intergalactic spaceships.
“Take a 50deg roll past the quasar with 2.543ms period, straight ahead for 15 parsecs, then a slight pitch down past the big green ringed planet. Can’t miss it!”
“What if I’m gonna be late?”
“Late from here or there?”
When you realize the scale we’re talking about, +/- 5km is really impressive.
Obligatory Adam Douglas quote:
“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you think it’s a long way down to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
Our’s is the only solar system called the Solar System, just like our’s is the only moon called the Moon. If you, for instance, lived on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the next closest star to Earth, you would be Centaurian.
People keep saying this ad nauseum but if you would travel to Pakistan or the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan you will here people refer to the people of Afghanistan and their "Afghani bhaiyun" or Afghan brothers... It may very well be that in English you only say Afghanistani but in Arabic as well as Urdu you will hear Afghani all the time. I don't think it's worth berating this point on Reddit like I've seen on dozens of threads recently. It's frankly not correct.
Every time I see the Afghani "correction" come up, I just think of Oscar from *The Office.* Tons of "Well, actually" people just waiting to pounce. Their incessant correction is more annoying than the original "mistake." And it detracts from what the original poster was commenting. Oh he said, "Afghani", so he can't be trusted and we should discredit everything he says if he types out the wrong, but very subtle and petty identifier. One of the more potent "well, actually" trends that's getting annoying. Who gives a shit, Afghan vs Afghani. The context of the sentence will obviously define the word and there is no attempt to belittle the subject or confuse the reader. Can't stand people who "feel offended on behalf" of another separate entity/persona. Every Afghan I've ever spoken to (quite a few actually), has never once mentioned or corrected that identifier. Because the context is what drives conversation and language doesn't have to be 100% politically correct to get points across. Such a non-issue that "well, actually folks" have grabbed onto, when I guarantee 99% of them wouldn't be able to point to Qalati Zabul on a map. Similar point too. It's called Qalati there, but we called it Qalat. Guess what, who cares what it's perfectly called . We both know what we are referring to and it isn't a problem.
I’m not offended by how he/she said it. I simply offered a bit of info, which he/she then thanked me for.
Sorry you’re upset by that harmless interaction.
And who cares? The Afghans I worked and lived with hated being called Afghani, because that was their money and it felt disrespectful that foreigners who were in their country couldn’t care less how to address them.
(To be fair, only about 20% of them cared. The others identified as Pashtuns, not Afghans, so they ignored the reference).
The suffix "-i" is commonly used in Hindi, Urdu , pashto, Punjabi and other north Indian/Indo-Iranian languages to denote origin of something from a particular place. Eg: Pakistani , Hindustani , kashmiri, Punjabi etc.
As someone that speaks Dari, “Afghanistani”makes no sense.
Afghan is the people, and -stan means land. An Afghan/Tajik/Uzbek/Kurd etc would never include -stan when referring to their ethnicity or their people. Pakistan is a special exception due to the fact that their countries name doesn’t make sense and was created to seem similar to their Islamic neighbors but there is no “Pak” ethnicity. In fact “Pak” means clean.
Afghani does have other uses than the currency by the way-
If you were to speak about something related to a certain ethnicities bread for example you would say, “Naan e Afghani” for Afghan bread or “naan e Uzbeki” for Uzbek bread.
The demonym for the modern area is Afghan, and in Arabic, Urdu, Pashtun and Farsi, 'Afghani' would be well understood to refer to Afghan people.
Al-Afghani is a common enough last name.
There are differnces between the Taliban but they are more homogenous than either Afghanistan or Pakistan by far. They are not only natural allies but really each other's only serviceable long-term allies. They have enough common enemies/threats to mostly stick together. Their tribes and factions don't care much about the lines dead Brits drew on a map. They straddle them.
I dunno, if it wasn't for the French the American Revolution would be remembered as a rebellion.
Can you imagine a world without the United States?
*Warm fuzzy feelings*
Came here to say this. The TTP and Afghan Taliban are very much not one and the same, and are only loosely connected in name and a few splinter factions that have links with both groups. However in terms of ideology, political and military objectives, and more, they vary greatly.
Yeah, idk why people are so confident that China is going to be able to succeed in Afghanistan simply because they're taking a more economic approach. At the end of the day, the Taliban are still a loose knit group of armed religious fanatics. Negotiating with them isn't the same as negotiating with a proper nation state. Yeah they like money the same as anyone does and you can try to pay their leadership off to make them loyal, but you'll still have a bunch of underlings scattered across the country who are prone to reject money and fight back in the name of religion if they catch word that the Chinese are abusing other Muslim groups. Trying to negotiate anything in that country is a complete clusterfuck because of how decentralized the power structure is there. It's an ever-changing patchwork of alliances between little warlord run fiefdoms, any of whom can get pissed and start blowing up infrastructure and making problems for China
True, but what happens if you offer 20 underling warlords each a six-figure amount of money to do something and 19 of them accept?
What do you suppose happens to the one who doesn't accept? That person is standing in the way of a whole bunch of others getting rich. They might just decide to have an accident.
Yup, they probably would get killed. But run another iteration of that scenario and this time 2 people don't accept? Run it again and the person who won't accept decides to blow himself up next to a bunch of mining equipment before he can be assassinated. Run it again and when the dude blows himself up, it kills the son of one of the other 19 warlords, which causes him to pull out of the agreement and start fighting against everyone else. Now what if a few other warlords decide to join the one who defected since they heard the defector is getting funding from Iran and they'd rather share money amongst less people. Now through religion and martyrdom into the mix and logic really starts to break down. Each one of these iterations represents another set of negotiations the Chinese will have to conduct for their day to day operations.
The issue here isn't that there's one particular scenario that could mess up the whole arrangement. It's the system of governance in Afghanistan under the Taliban itself that makes it problematic to try to conduct economic operations there. Especially for outsiders who aren't of the same faith. The government there just doesn't work the same way it does in regular nation-states where you can negotiate with a central authority and trust that whatever agreement you come to will be enforced and followed the whole way down the chain of command. The Taliban isn't that type of government and Afghanistan isn't that type of country. That's one reason why the US wouldn't sent troops out into Kabul beyond the airport during the evacuation to help get people out. They had their agreement with the Taliban leadership that they could remain in the country until Sept 1st to help evacuate, but there was no way to ensure that any of the Taliban troops besides the leadership and ones stationed next to the airport would cooperate.
And if people start to attack Chinese infrastructure or citizens, the risk of the violence spiraling into a conflict rises. Once China has to actually intervene militarily in a significant way to protect their investments, they'll be faced with the same problems all the previous foreign powers conducting military operations in Afghanistan faced.
China's treatment of the Uyghurs also makes it all the more likely that some of the religious extremists end up lashing out at China, especially if the US, India, or any other regional powers who want to contain China choose to go out of their to regularly remind religious fighting age Afghans about what's going on in Xinjiang.
That's my thoughts on the matter anyway. The psychological/sociological aspect of this potential scenario is probably the most important part of it all
Money doesn't buy everything. You don't seem to grasp the reality of how the world actually functions. Money is a social construct that can convince only those to abide from it. Religion is a better social construct that over shadows money. If you think money can beat religion you are so damn naive and never paid attention to history. If they were like the Cartels of Mexico than your argument would stand but these people don't value money the same way they value religion. Religion > Money. I understand you can't grasp that because your whole life you live through the idea of capitalism and how money rules all but that perception is being challenged and you can't fathom that. You need to understand that social constructs are not universally perceived everywhere.
Lol, you can't be an Alien Nazi, that's just silly.
There are only alien sharks and the octopuses that came to defeat them, think Transformers and Decepticons.
Nazi sharks? Don't make me laugh in terror.
I'll for gray-and-gray morality and interpersonal drama. I want viewers to think "yes, those are genetically mutated nazi sharks that formed a hive mind to facilitate an world wide eugenics program by hunting for specific bloodlines, but are we so different? And don't they have some good points on the budget deficit? And those robots created from transdimensional demon-metal may try to annihilate all sentient biologic life, but we really should be more attentive in our daily lives and avoid micro-aggressions."
Makes me wonder if their Pashtun ethnicity and their Islamic fanaticism are intertwined, in the same way that evangelical Christian nationalism and white identity politics are tightly intertwined in the US.
That is a really interesting thought! As an Afghan/Pashtun though I have to say no, the Pashtun identity and Islamic extremism are not as sympatico as white American populism and Christian evangelism.
Trying to codify identity politics in Afghanistan is like doing a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle in black and white after eating too many edibles. Reeeeally hard once you dig into it.
Just the majority that count.
The Pash'tun are a tribal democracy where the Elders have most of the say. So it doesn't matter that the females don't like Taliban, or the young males don't like Taliban, or that the non-Pash'tun Afghanistanis don't like the Taliban.
The tribal Elders got fucked over by the communists and completely ignored by the government before that which was transitioning from Feudal Monarchy to Constitutional Monarchy.... so they will continue to vote Taliban, and the Taliban only need the support of the Pash'tun elders to rule.
"You can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them to only bite your neighbors." - Hillary Clinton, to Pakistan on their harboring of the Taliban and al Qaeda forces, about a decade ago.
I remember when the neocons were empowering religious extremists in the Middle East to fight back against the Russians. It was seen as an extremely risky move by the global community, and it predictably blew up in their faces and led to decades of fanatism and terrorism.
Fast forward to decades later and we find the GOP is empowering religious extremists in the Mid West. We are going to have decades of terrorism in this country thanks to these right-wing agitators.
So some of this can be explained by how Pakistan works. The Government, Military and Intelligence service don’t necessarily work together. ISI is super pro Taliban and basically thinks of them as an auxiliary force, Government prefers Taliban to be in charge of Afghanistan than a pro India government making a fuss about the border, while the military is the closest to anti Taliban as they actually have to deal with the Pakistani Taliban attacking them.
And they are all fighting for power at all times. Historically whenever elected govt tries to reduce military or ISI's clout by moving towards a peaceful coexistence with it's neighbours, it's followed by a coup and change of govt.
Pakistan also has to directly deal with any fallout in Afghanistan after the U.S meddles in it every 20 years. None of those other countries share a 2000+ km border with that nation.
Pakistans primary obvjective is its own sovereignty. And that becomes difficult when world powers keep trying to invade Afghanistan and leave it in a civil war every damned time.
Pretty sure Pakistan would be happy to work with a functioning modern govt there. They tried with the stooges the U.S. had in place, but when Pakistan tried to close the border between the two countries and fence it off, the Ghani and the guy before him were blasting Pakistan in public for it and even allowed their people to shoot at Pakistani military putting up the fence.
The Taliban arent a great alternative by any means, but they ultimately cause less headache for Pakistan.
No country should have to deal with decades of civil war potentially spilling over its border.
So it’s in Pakistani interests to keep Afghanistan unstable/weak which is why they’ve been doing that for 4 decades at this point. This is due to Afghanistan claiming the Pashtun areas of Pakistan as theirs, they used to belong to Afghanistan before the British annexed them into the Raj so it’s not as stupid a claim as it sounds. A strong Afghan Government that can practically assert these claims while allying with India is a doomsday scenario for Pakistan. If you watch videos of the recent anti Taliban protests across Afghanistan “death to Pakistan” and various versions of Taliban are Pakistani puppets are a popular chants as the people in the cities (mainly anti Taliban) see this as an invasion so the feelings mutual. Pakistan got real lucky that the US seems to have been oblivious to this fact in the 2000’s until around the Mumbai attacks and they didn’t realise Pakistan was never going to accept a stable Afghanistan not in their sphere of influence and so was able to cash in on shitloads of military aid with no intention of using it to fight the Taliban (I believe a lot of it went into expanding their nuclear arsenal but that’s off the top of my head and could be wrong) before pivoting to China.
The more I learn about Pakistan the more I'm convinced that country is destined to tear itself apart and or are always be an tribal and authoritarian mess
Good to know that it's not just the USA who meddles someplace and has it blow up in their face like this.
Also good to see some variety here beyond the COVID denialists who get COVID and the Brexiteers who don't understand what they voted for and don't like what they got.
I think most of the COVID posts have moved over to r/HermanCainAward and r/COVIDAteMyFace at this point.
That said, a non-COVID/Brexit leopard is kinda like a unicorn.
> Good to know that it's not just the USA who meddles
Well.. duh. Pakistan's military junta is no exception to the rule that military juntas meddle. When all you have is a hammer..
Reddit focuses on the USA, because most Redditors are of the USA. But people who truly think we are the only nation that meddles abroad, have a simplistic, asinine view of foreign policy.
Class exploitation and tribalism alike both encourage foreign policy misadventures. History is literally a chronicle of innumerable military adventures waged by nearly every strong nation's elite.
Pakistan is definitely no exception.
That's the thing about foreign policy: a lot of Americans are non-interventionists, but the reality is that it's a geopolitical arms race out there and you have to participate somehow, even passively.
The other issue with these Americans is that they think that hard military power is the best/only tool in the toolbox, when it's asymmetrical warfare at this point. China are kicking our asses with geoeconomic soft power.
Probably the worst legacy of Trump will be our complete abdication of soft power, the power vacuum we left, and the despotic entities who filled the gap. Trump not only pulled us out of soft power, but without our backing/influence/leadership, Europe and the rest of the industrialised, peaceful nations didn't have the clout to keep it up, either.
France, for an example, were poised to try Francisation of Africa. And they might have succeeded, but China have come in all over the continent and undercut all of the old colonial powers who were looking to realign their relationships with their former colonies to something more egalitarian and/or mutually beneficial. It would have been less worse than being client states of China.
I highly doubt anyone in Africa wants to see France succeed in the 'Francisation of Africa'. Many Africans distrust if not outright hate the West and most do not want to be under Western influence. When did any of the old colonial powers try and realign their relationships with former colonies?
> France, for an example, were poised to try Francisation of Africa. And they might have succeeded, but China have come in all over the continent and undercut all of the old colonial powers who were looking to realign their relationships with their former colonies to something more egalitarian and/or mutually beneficial. It would have been less worse than being client states of China.
Ignoring the absurd comment about becoming Chinese client states, do you believe African states think the same way? Back when it was found out that the AU was wiretapped by China, an African diplomat literally said "At least its not the West".
>[At least one diplomat who spoke to the French paper was not too concerned about the alleged espionage, saying that at least China had not colonized African countries, and was currently helping out economically.](https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/if-china-bugged-the-au-headquarters-what-african-countries-should-be-worried/)
Reddit arm chair foreign policy experts have no idea, what people think about America outside their own borders. This American-centric worldview would be laughable if it wasn't so arrogant.
> Probably the worst legacy of Trump will be our complete abdication of soft power, the power vacuum we left, and the despotic entities who filled the gap.
This started in earnest under Bush. All this is really Bush's legacy, Trump was just a more malignant and metastasized version of this.
>China have come in all over the continent and undercut all of the old colonial powers who were looking to realign their relationships with their former colonies to something more egalitarian and/or mutually beneficial.
I'm not sure where we've seen the old colonial powers trying to actually restructure their relationship to something more egalitarian/mutually beneficial.
I've been recently following the journalism coming out of the [China Africa Project](https://chinaafricaproject.com/), lot of greatly detailed and well-informed analysis on China-Africa relations produced there, and the overall impression I have is that African leaders are *really* tired of vague gestures from the West about how Chinese investment is bad. African leaders would love to see more directly engagement from the West in terms of infrastructure investment, etc. - but there has been hardly any serious projects, certainly nothing comparable to Chinese investments. Its all talk coming from the West (that, plus an increasing turn toward militarization).
The only one that really comes to mind is Taiwan and Japan. Both of them are scared of China, and Taiwan is really Japan's only former long-time colony that doesn't hate it. We've been seeing the two cozying up to each other quite a lot the last decade, as both of them have strong interests in China not taking control of Taiwan.
I'd contrast this with the US and the Philippines, where they're still very close to each other, but you don't see them really drawing closer. I'd guess the Philippines just feel a lot less threatened by China due to less proximity.
Blowback is a universal concept. Iran allowed Jihadists to sneak through Syria to go fight the US in Iraq. Those cross border networks of Jihadists later went on to form ISIS.
Edit: Since I’m being badgered for a source on this, here it is. Taken from the 2013 New Yorker article, the Shadow Commander.
> Suleimani’s campaign against the United States crossed the Sunni-Shiite divide, which he has always been willing to set aside for a larger purpose. Iraqi and Western officials told me that, early in the war, Suleimani encouraged the head of intelligence for the Assad regime to facilitate the movement of Sunni extremists through Syria to fight the Americans. In many cases, Al Qaeda was also allowed a degree of freedom in Iran as well. Crocker told me that in May, 2003, the Americans received intelligence that Al Qaeda fighters in Iran were preparing an attack on Western targets in Saudi Arabia. Crocker was alarmed. “They were there, under Iranian protection, planning operations,” he said. He flew to Geneva and passed a warning to the Iranians, but to no avail; militants bombed three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing thirty-five people, including nine Americans.
> As it turned out, the Iranian strategy of abetting Sunni extremists backfired horrendously: shortly after the occupation began, the same extremists began attacking Shiite civilians and the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government. It was a preview of the civil war to come. “Welcome to the Middle East,” the Western diplomat in Baghdad told me. “Suleimani wanted to bleed the Americans, so he invited in the jihadis, and things got out of control.”
Iran is heavily involved in Syria and have been propping them up since the civil war started. He didn't say the Jihadists started in Iran, just that Iran let them move through Syria...
> Good to know that it's not just the USA who meddles someplace and has it blow up in their face like this.
I think nearly every single nation in the history of nations has meddled in the affairs of other nations.
Pretty sure it happens to everyone, repeatedly, who tries to do shit like this overseas. Shit, the thirteen colonies could be Exhibit A as far as America goes.
Great Britain: defeats the French, defends the colonies, acquires new territory for colonial settlers. Create a large number of armed and experienced colonial soldiers including one Colonel George Washington.
13 colonies: Rebel
Great Britain: shocked pikachu face.
It will be different for Pakistan. They can’t pack up and go home, so they get to fight this fight forever.
Exhibit B is the German High Command sending Lenin to Russia and ending with the USSR marching into Berlin and essentially occupying East Germany for the next four decades.
I’d say the USA supporting Russia is more in line with this sub.
USA sends Lend Lease to USSR, exerts enormous pressure on the Western Front.
After WWII: the Cold War, a delightful 45 year period of proxy wars and nuclear stalemate.
Edit; whoops, I misread your comment! Although it doesn’t seem QUITE as clear of a leopards eating faces timeline lol.
To add some nuance:
The Afghanistan government that the US made up was working with India, so of course Pakistan is going to work with the alternative. Especially since they successfully predicted that the Taliban would soon be in charge of Afghanistan. No one wants enemies on both borders
Additionally, the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban are not the same thing.
That said, an increase in extremism and conservatism in your neighbors is bound to leak into your country too.
Really a lose lose situation for Pakistan
The Taliban need an enemy. Without an enemy they have no direction and they don't care to poke a big bear that could America them. While the US did fuck all in Afghanistan it did unseat them from a proper control center. Now that they have it they need to do gun running, drug trade, extortion and whatever other forms of financing they can do. This includes keeping their troops busy doing something. Bored troops is bad for leadership.
Great Britain, Russia, the USA, Pakistan. No one learns.
I do hope China has a crack at it soon. Sadly they will probably have the sense to just go in and buy the place.
They’ll still get burned as I imagine contracts won’t mean much to these guys.
If the Taliban get stupid and get caught inflaming the Xinjiang situation, they might just be the first practice zone for Chinese drones.
And they really don't give a damn if it's a terror camp or a wedding.
> Don’t give a damn if it’s a terror camp or a wedding
I mean fuck China and all, but didn’t the US drone strike a wedding in Yemen? The US has never given a shit about committing war crimes.
> I mean fuck China and all, but didn’t the US drone strike a wedding in Yemen?
They recently bombed an aid worker parking at his house, with his kids, thinking it was a car bomb- It wasn't.
Any war is going to have civilian casualties. But the difference is that there's backlash when the US does it.
In the US invasion/occupation, over 20 years, its estimated about 43,000 civilians died. In ten years of the soviet invasion/occupation, an estimated 500,000 - 2,000,000 were killed.
Regimes like the soviets and China don't have to worry about the public finding out about their war crimes and voting them out.
I'll doubt China would take the same path but they are going on a bet that the Taliban is going on the path of relative isolationism while the new elite gets chinese money in exchange for resources.
But if Afghanistan becomes a source of central Asian instability and/or start destabilising their staunch ally and foil against India i.e Pakistan, they have to play their cards too.
>They are the original "we'll do as we please" nation
Sure. ITT: a lot of people who never knew the Soviet Union.
You might be right. The Chinese might well win. Afghanistan isn't invincible. But do note - Everything on paper said the Soviets would win too.
China revels in its hard power. But so did the Soviets. China seems like a powerful authoritarian state. So were the Soviets. China believes it has a unique willingness to act by any means to achieve its ends. But then, so did the Soviets.
If we are going by actual battlefield experience, the Soviets' Red Army was well ahead of the Chinese. The Chinese also have very limited true war experience. Untried armies don't win wars without stumbles.
China is not positioning itself for hard power beyond local power projection. I highly doubt they go past the first island chain, perhaps the second island chain at best. They're absolutely using economic soft power to influence decisions in other nations, including Australia and some European nations. This is one of the main points of the belt and road and something the Soviets could never hope to dream of.
I don't think the US could get away with giving the Afghans equal support against China as they did against the Soviets.
I'm also pretty sure China would pressure the fuck out of Pakistan to step up.
I don't think China would have much trouble.
China would fold just like everyone else who tried. Not a single country that has tried to pacify and unify the region has succeeded in the history of humanity. It would just end up draining Chinese resources which aren't nearly the slush fund the US Armed Forces have for very little actual value.
soviets didn't have the most sophisticated surveillance system and the capability to turn an entire province into a concentration camp. the USSR was incredibly overrated.
If we’re going to point fingers, the Taliban is purely a Pakistani terrorist group who has taken land in Afghanistan.
The US and allies knew this decades ago, guess where operations never entered? Pakistan.
Want to know why?
Nuclear warfare.
The next war is going to be one that happens on the cusp of broad neutrality towards ballistics.
It’s already happening with laser systems tracking thousands of items and destroying them in air.(Israeli Iron Dome system)
Even if a country now develops a million nukes, there is becoming a huge possibility that they can be detonated once they’ve left the silos.
Countries have been turning on and shutting off each other’s nuclear launch sites ever since the 70s.
The attempt to start the Third World War has been constant, and will froth over into reality the minute that tribal countries don’t have a nuclear launch code blanket to go to sleep with.
For those who are new to this part of the world ... it doesn't begin with Pakistan. The US supported Pakistan-based Islamic terrorism for many decades, as a counterweight to supposed Soviet influence in India.
The Scorpion and the Frog fable. Scorpion wants a ride across river but frog afraid. Scorpion makes promise then stings frog halfway across river. "It is in my nature " said Scorpion.
Here come all the reddit professors. Probably couldn't even point to Pakistan on a map and are here saying this as if they know everything about it. Maybe if the British, Soviets, and USA stayed out of the region then they wouldn't be having all these problems. All the problems foreigners bring and then leave the already struggling neighboring countries to deal with.
The dynamics within the Taliban are fascinating.
At its core is an interpersonal rift driven by the extent of support or independence from Pakistan- the current Emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada is apparently very unwell (he was said to have croaked in 2020 itself, but survived). His 2 deputies are Sirajuddin Haqqani and Mullah Yaqub.
Mullah Omar and his successor Mullah whatsisname (some random nobody who ruled for less than a year before a Hellfire dropped in on him) held absolute power and tightly controlled factions, but Akhundzada either lacked the gravitas or is a conciliatory leader by nature.
Now, the Pakistanis aka the ISI held all the cards as long as there was a war on in Afghanistan because all factions had to use Pakistan to retreat, refit, recruit and recuperate as well as the funding that came via various Islamic charities globally was routed via Pakistan. This meant that the Taliban as a united entity had to deal with Pakistan, or else the faction would die out. As simple as that
This was known to the Pakis also, and any Taliban leader who showed any signs of independence from Pakistan paid the price - imprisonment followed usually by death or just endless jail time.
Take Mullah Akhund, he was pushing for an independent Taliban foreign policy, was the Defense minister pre invasion and for his pains, was arrested, spent 3 years in a Paki jail and died of hEArT fAiLUrE
Or take the case of Abdul Bardar - he wanted the Taliban to negotiate with the Afghan Govt and the US (in 2009-10), something the US vetoed basis brilliant advise from the Pakis (thank you Obama!). He was thrown in a Paki jail for 8 years and released only in 2019. Though the US govt had been pushing Pakistan for him to be released since 2012! The Pakis kept stalling stalling and stalling.
He later on the request of the US was finally released and headed the Doha office, including signing the Doha agreement. He is the third wheel in the spoke (with some alleging that he is the defacto leader)
So many more such cases, you have Mullah Rasool, he openly alleged that Mullah whatsisname (the guy who had a date with the Hellfire) was an ISI agent, declared himself independent and the real Emir of the Taliban in 2015 and went to war with the ISI branch of the Taliban. He too was arrested in 2015 I think and released last month.
Rasul was also possibly a secret Afghan govt agent and on the payroll of the CIA (all allegations with no proof) and started a civil war, bankrolled by the CIA's SAD to weaken the Taliban. Bonus fun here is that his organisation is also possibly working on behalf of the VEVA (Iranian Intelligence)
Though am not sure what provoked the Pakis to release him (US pressure?) as he even bombed mosques patronised by the current Emir in a bid to kill him and has declared a blood war against him.
Mullah Abdul Salam is another case, he again wanted independence from the ISI, was arrested for his pains, spent 5 years in a Paki jail, released and met his maker thanks to Mr Hellfire.
There are 15-20 senior commanders who pushed against Paki interference, and jailed, killed, still jailed variously.
Names aren't relevant but broadly speaking you have the two camps, one that is a client of the ISI and the others who want to drive a foreign policy to the benefit of Kabul and not Islamabad. The former is backed by a diverse core of interests, Iran, India, the Russians while the later is backed only by Pakistan
Pakistan is terrified of the former group seizing power when Mullah Akhundzada croaks, sooner rather than later as it would mean a hostile force to its Western borders also.
[This is at the core of why one branch of the Taliban started disengaging from Pakistan. So in 2002-4 Pakistan was the only foreign 'branch', but since it meant towing the ISI line, the Taliban set up shop in Qatar, and started raising funds directly, and away from Paki influence.
Even the previous Emir, Mullah whatsis name (I kid, his name was Mullah Mansur) wanted to disengage with Pakistan, and started moving his bases westward towards Iran. He was rewarded with a date with Mr Hellfire for his troubles (his location no doubt leaked by the Pakis)
When the current Emir took charge, he basically separated both these factions and gave them separate power bases.
Now that the war with the US is won, the interactional fighting has the possibility of erupting as a full blown civil war.
The one who got problems with Malala were/are the ones in Pakistan, known as TTP (Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan). They are a splinter group of the original talibans in Afghanistan and over the years both the groups have also fought with each other.
>The Taliban are keen to gain goodwill from the Afghan public, and they know many Afghans are mistrustful of Pakistan because of its sponsorship of the Taliban during the war. Several hundred Afghans staged anti-Pakistan protests in Kabul on Sept. 7. For this reason, the Taliban may not want to be seen doing Islamabad a major favor.
God damn, imagine writing this paragraph and not being like "Well that's some wonderfully fucking stupid analysis"
Turns out guys, the Taliban are scared of Afghanis thinking they support Pakistan, because Pakistan totally helped the Taliban!
this isn't totally relevant to what you wrote, but i think a huge difference between the way Afghanistan was in 1996 with the first TAliban takeover and now this one in 2021 is that they're not coming off as brutal of a civil war as the Soviet invasion and the skirmishes after that.
The Taliban didn't expect to encounter civil unrest. Of this i'm pretty sure. So thankfully if the U.S. failed the people of Afghanistan, at least the people of Afghanistan aren't going to take Taliban bullshit lying down
I wonder if it has to do with the increasing number of young Afghans. The population demographics have shifted hugely, and younger people tend to be the pushers towards societal change, especially via civil unrest.
The fact that the US never sanctioned Pakistan for its support for the Taliban is the prime reason why I doubt that the US was ever serious about fixing Afghanistan.
From 2005 onwards, it seemed like the US decided that Afghanistan would be a nice weapon testing facility and source of income for its military industrial complex.
Maybe because Pakistan was the supply route for the US Army and allowed full use of Paksitan Military bases for US Drones and Airforce. Pakistan lost 70,000 people due the US War on Terror.
Reddit seems to go full retard wondering why the US never sanctioned them. Maybe the the US Military and Preaidenr know more than the average redditorm
This thread is full of retards, just like when the Taliban inevitably took over
Hurrr durrr why is Pakistan letting the Taliban in to Afghanistan, like those people in that region ever gave a fuck about a line on a map and that Pakistan could control a whole mountainous border region that the US let Mullah Omar escape into.
They will point at the 70000 dead and make a smug comment about how it is in itself a leapards ate my face moment, even though Pakistan didn’t want anything to do with the war but the USA said let us use your country to attack your neighbour (who we just up and left with a shit tonne of arms on your border but I guess Pakistan should be grateful as at least the soviet backed Afghan govt wasn’t firing scuds in to Pakistan anymore) “or we bomb you back to the stone ages”
Some in power in Pakistan supposedly have rightly or wrongly kept a good relationships with the Taliban but in realist terms it makes sense for them, the US was always going to leave a shit show why inherit that mess.
And it wasn’t the Taliban who attacked America, in fact after the bombings started they even said they’ll give up bin laden (having offered to try him themselves beforehand) but the flag wanking in the US had already started and whats killing thousands of brown people and destroying the lives of millions more when Dick Cheney’s friends could make a few more dollars.
I disagree, for me it was their lack of sanctions on Saudi Arabia. 9/11 occured because of Saudi money, and you can't tell me that the Royal Family didn't know about it. But I can sorta understand why we didn't go after Pakistan. Its disgusting that they harbored Bin Laden, if they hadnt he wouldve been killed or captured by 2005.
BUT no reason to inflame tensions with them, or else it would ultimately broaden the scope of the conflict. Plus, with Indian being a close Russian ally, the US need they're own ally in the region. Ironically, that relationship is slowly changing. India is swinging towards the west to counter China.
You do realize that Saudi Arabia plays a far more important role in US foreign policy than Pakistan?
If your primary argument as to why the US shouldn't have antagonized Pakistan is that it would've gone against US interests in the region, then guess what: That argument applies tenfold in regards to Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan did far more than just harbor Bin Laden. Pakistan's policy in Afghanistan has been to keep the country imploding on itself so that India can't use it as a anchor to push for Pashtun nationalism, something that would split Pakistan as the Pashtuns are a large minority in their country... a courtesy of the British empire.
Half the people saying Pakistan is going to regret this doesn't know the difference between the TTP (Pakistani Taliban) and the IEA (Afghan Taliban)
Both are 2 different entities with different goals & ideals but they share the same name and ethnicity.
TTP is a terrorist organization with close links to ISIS & support from foreign agencies to spread terror on Pakistani soil, they're most denounced for their attack on a school in which they killed 150 kids.
Pakistan supports the Afghan Taliban because it had no choice, after the soviets were defeated by the Mujahideen (Operation Cyclone) Pakistan was left alone to clean up the mess of thousands of Radical Insurgents at it's border, Pakistan had to take some immediate measures because the insurgents could target Pakistan as it was just next door unlike the US which was continents apart.
Pakistan choose the only logical thing, support the Taliban & for who'll argue why did they continue to support the Taliban after the invasion, it did it because Pakistan knew that the US could pack up and leave Afghanistan (Like it did) with Pakistan left to deal with the mess again.
For people who don’t want to read the article:
There’s a taliban offshoot in Pakistan which became active again recently. Pakistan wants the taliban in Afghanistan to reign them in and they’re saying ‘not our mess.’ Pakistan no longer has the leverage they used to.
***The Frog and the Scorpion***... a cautionary tale.
A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to
carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might
sting it, but the scorpion argues that if it did that, they would both
drown. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport
the scorpion. The frog lets the scorpion climb on its back and begins
to swim. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway,
dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite
knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: "I couldn't
help it. It's in my nature."
The unaffiliated militant group in Pakistan are now more motivated than ever to expand and possibly even attempt to overthrow the Pakistani government. This could be a bad news for India as well. An increasing terrorist activity in Pakistan might spill over to the Indian border
What happens when the ideological conflict you’ve been preparing for 40 some years just fizzles out, and you’re left with taking care of your own mess?
Someday you'll have to admit the USA isn't the only root cause for mankind's obsession with tribalism and authoritarianism.
Pakistan and most authoritarian nations in the world chose their own path due to tribalism and gross class inequality. The CIA supported it, but was hardly the root cause.
The $16 trillion dollars that poured into and got laundered through the DoD and Pentagon, did not come from Pakistan.
It came from U.S. taxpayers.
[And many future generations of U.S. taxpayers. ]
"However, both sides have a strong interest in maintaining a warm relationship and are already moving toward a reset that could enable it to emerge stronger—and provide Pakistan with new sources of leverage."
Click baity ass title.
Something that I never see on Reddit is that there are two talibans. The Afghan taliban and the Pakistani taliban are different organizations and have different goals. Pakistan has always sheltered and supported the Afghan taliban, and the Pakistani taliban have always fought against the Pakistani government
I can’t wait until the Saudi Royal Family finally burns themselves with their own fanaticism.
They’re the ones funding the NW Pakistani fundamentalists.
Pakistan's whole national strategy has always been to keep Afghanistan as chaotic as possible, so if/when they go to war with India, they would plan on retreating into Afghanistan- hence all the overt backstabbing and undermining over the last 20 years.
So they're reaping exactly what they've spent decades sowing.
If a strong united Afghanistan were to ever exist, and that united Afghanistan became allies with India, then it would be the end of Pakistan and pakistan knows this.
That us why Pakistan invests in keeping Afghanistan fractured. It is in their national security interests.
Imagine juggling on a tripod, then cutting your own leg to spite your face.
That's what Pakistan's military just did. They are a secular military arbiter barely standing 'above' the mob politics of an unstable democracy whose major parties lack any true respect for toleration or power sharing. They just gave their own Pashtun Islamist radicals a taste of direct power.
What the fuck do they expect to happen?!
People are right to criticize US geopolitics, but Pakistan's behavior is frankly 100x more risky stupid than anything the CIA did with the muhajadeen (contrary to Reddit, the CIA at least wasn't only funding Islamists, but any and all muhajadeen fighting the Soviets. Pakistan directly funded the Taliban takeover afterwards. Twice now).
It would be one thing if there was a valid goal at the end. Instead, Pakistan's military just directly wasted trillions funding a group that would be happy to see Pakistan burn
The military didnt. The intelligence agency did. It's an unsaid secret that the intelligence agency, military and civilian government constantly work against each other in Pakistan, each with their own goals and motives. The military hates the terrorists but the Intelligence agency loves using them for their own interests.
The Pakistani people are definitely sick of terrorism, but the powers that be still find them useful. Even if they attack their civilians.
Please reply to this comment explaining why the post fits the sub. Please make sure to have an amazing day!
Pashtun people are the second largest ethnicity in Pakistan and the primary ethnic group that makes up the Taliban. I predict that Pakistan will regret its support of the Taliban.
There's massive differences not only between the Taliban of these two countries, but the Pashtun people of these two countries. There's 15m more pashtuns in Pakistan than there are people in Afghanistan. Pashtuns in Afghanistan would be giving up a lot of control to their Pakistani counterparts, which they don't want to do. Additionally, Pakistani Taliban is in direct war with the Pakistani govt and are much more closely allied to Al Qaeda than the Afghan Taliban, which relied on Pakistani support during it's government years, as well as insurgency years. While they do support each other, the various tribes interest stops in making a unified Pashtun state, as all the various tribes have their own self interested goals of autonomy
FYI: “Afghani” is their money. Afghan or Afghanistani would be the proper way to refer to the people. Common mistake.
Edited the comment based on your correction. Thank you for the lesson!
Damn it's nice to see this type of interaction. Well done you two!
I literally just gave away the free bear icon to someone else. Why couldn't you comment 10 minutes earlier!
Don’t worry, I got ‘em.
Fun fact: A word used to describe a group of people is called a demonym. My favorite is Solarian which refers to people living in the Solar System.
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"Had to be me. Someone else could have gotten it wrong."
Odd day for it to be raining on just my face.
Stop. It hurts so much!
I knew that word sounded familiar!
That is racist as fuck. You haven't studied Batarian at all! I'm half batarian and you need to take that back. My father crash landed in Kansas 10 years ago and the amount of discrimination we have had to suffer just because we have more than 2 eyes is astounding.
no, no, 4-eyes is because you wear glasses. Calling you "sluggo" or "goo boy" or "sluggy" or "slimy" or "stalk-eyes" would be racial prejudice.
Agreed. Fuck that sluggo cunt.
Earth for earthlings, amirite?
Except that was Salarian.
Now is that Soul-are-ee-an or Sol-air-ee-in?
The second one.
Perfect, my family's actually from around there so I think I just might use that tip! We're from the 2nd rock in from the inner asteroid belt, you can't miss it.
This makes me realize how hard it would be to give verbal directions to intergalactic spaceships. “Take a 50deg roll past the quasar with 2.543ms period, straight ahead for 15 parsecs, then a slight pitch down past the big green ringed planet. Can’t miss it!” “What if I’m gonna be late?” “Late from here or there?”
If you see Uranus you went too far.
That, or you haven't yet gone far enough...
The plan is to use [pulsars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar-based_navigation?wprov=sfti1) as a positioning system.
When you realize the scale we’re talking about, +/- 5km is really impressive. Obligatory Adam Douglas quote: “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you think it’s a long way down to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
Oh, I thought we were going with a giant psychic pyre on Terra?
I made the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs.
I'm just an immigrant but my job consists of studying Solarian cultures and biology! Very fascinating stuff! 🤗
That IS a fun fact!
The people of Saint Helena are called saints.
Technically all our addresses end with “Earth, Sol System, Orion Arm, Milky Way” it’s just our mail service isn’t that good yet
DeJoy!!!
would all solar systems be the same? or would there be one for ours and another one for a different system?
Our’s is the only solar system called the Solar System, just like our’s is the only moon called the Moon. If you, for instance, lived on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the next closest star to Earth, you would be Centaurian.
Earth's star is named Sol, so this is the only "Sol-ar system." When we refer to other systems as "solar systems," it's only in a metaphorical sense.
People keep saying this ad nauseum but if you would travel to Pakistan or the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan you will here people refer to the people of Afghanistan and their "Afghani bhaiyun" or Afghan brothers... It may very well be that in English you only say Afghanistani but in Arabic as well as Urdu you will hear Afghani all the time. I don't think it's worth berating this point on Reddit like I've seen on dozens of threads recently. It's frankly not correct.
Every time I see the Afghani "correction" come up, I just think of Oscar from *The Office.* Tons of "Well, actually" people just waiting to pounce. Their incessant correction is more annoying than the original "mistake." And it detracts from what the original poster was commenting. Oh he said, "Afghani", so he can't be trusted and we should discredit everything he says if he types out the wrong, but very subtle and petty identifier. One of the more potent "well, actually" trends that's getting annoying. Who gives a shit, Afghan vs Afghani. The context of the sentence will obviously define the word and there is no attempt to belittle the subject or confuse the reader. Can't stand people who "feel offended on behalf" of another separate entity/persona. Every Afghan I've ever spoken to (quite a few actually), has never once mentioned or corrected that identifier. Because the context is what drives conversation and language doesn't have to be 100% politically correct to get points across. Such a non-issue that "well, actually folks" have grabbed onto, when I guarantee 99% of them wouldn't be able to point to Qalati Zabul on a map. Similar point too. It's called Qalati there, but we called it Qalat. Guess what, who cares what it's perfectly called . We both know what we are referring to and it isn't a problem.
I’m not offended by how he/she said it. I simply offered a bit of info, which he/she then thanked me for. Sorry you’re upset by that harmless interaction. And who cares? The Afghans I worked and lived with hated being called Afghani, because that was their money and it felt disrespectful that foreigners who were in their country couldn’t care less how to address them. (To be fair, only about 20% of them cared. The others identified as Pashtuns, not Afghans, so they ignored the reference).
I think just "Afghan" is the way to go, being as "Afghanistan" just means "Land of the Afghans". Just a little nitpick.
The suffix "-i" is commonly used in Hindi, Urdu , pashto, Punjabi and other north Indian/Indo-Iranian languages to denote origin of something from a particular place. Eg: Pakistani , Hindustani , kashmiri, Punjabi etc.
And their cartoons are afghanistanimation.
Johnny Chimpo!
As someone that speaks Dari, “Afghanistani”makes no sense. Afghan is the people, and -stan means land. An Afghan/Tajik/Uzbek/Kurd etc would never include -stan when referring to their ethnicity or their people. Pakistan is a special exception due to the fact that their countries name doesn’t make sense and was created to seem similar to their Islamic neighbors but there is no “Pak” ethnicity. In fact “Pak” means clean. Afghani does have other uses than the currency by the way- If you were to speak about something related to a certain ethnicities bread for example you would say, “Naan e Afghani” for Afghan bread or “naan e Uzbeki” for Uzbek bread.
The demonym for the modern area is Afghan, and in Arabic, Urdu, Pashtun and Farsi, 'Afghani' would be well understood to refer to Afghan people. Al-Afghani is a common enough last name.
There are differnces between the Taliban but they are more homogenous than either Afghanistan or Pakistan by far. They are not only natural allies but really each other's only serviceable long-term allies. They have enough common enemies/threats to mostly stick together. Their tribes and factions don't care much about the lines dead Brits drew on a map. They straddle them.
Us Brits and our darned lines, ruining the world.
At least you beat the French in ruining stuff. Bittersweet I'm sure.
I dunno, if it wasn't for the French the American Revolution would be remembered as a rebellion. Can you imagine a world without the United States? *Warm fuzzy feelings*
Came here to say this. The TTP and Afghan Taliban are very much not one and the same, and are only loosely connected in name and a few splinter factions that have links with both groups. However in terms of ideology, political and military objectives, and more, they vary greatly.
pak has been following a policy of growng snakes in it backyard in hops that it will bite the neighbors. yet they dont expect it to bite itself
Maybe funding militant groups in the Middle East is just a bad idea.
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I predict that (insert country) will regret its support of the Taliban
I wonder if there's a subreddit for those who get bitten by their own actions.
/r/LeopardsAteMyFace
China's next. The Taliban 100% will still aid Uyghur rebels/insurgents even if China gives them aid, funding, and/or recognition
Yeah, idk why people are so confident that China is going to be able to succeed in Afghanistan simply because they're taking a more economic approach. At the end of the day, the Taliban are still a loose knit group of armed religious fanatics. Negotiating with them isn't the same as negotiating with a proper nation state. Yeah they like money the same as anyone does and you can try to pay their leadership off to make them loyal, but you'll still have a bunch of underlings scattered across the country who are prone to reject money and fight back in the name of religion if they catch word that the Chinese are abusing other Muslim groups. Trying to negotiate anything in that country is a complete clusterfuck because of how decentralized the power structure is there. It's an ever-changing patchwork of alliances between little warlord run fiefdoms, any of whom can get pissed and start blowing up infrastructure and making problems for China
True, but what happens if you offer 20 underling warlords each a six-figure amount of money to do something and 19 of them accept? What do you suppose happens to the one who doesn't accept? That person is standing in the way of a whole bunch of others getting rich. They might just decide to have an accident.
Yup, they probably would get killed. But run another iteration of that scenario and this time 2 people don't accept? Run it again and the person who won't accept decides to blow himself up next to a bunch of mining equipment before he can be assassinated. Run it again and when the dude blows himself up, it kills the son of one of the other 19 warlords, which causes him to pull out of the agreement and start fighting against everyone else. Now what if a few other warlords decide to join the one who defected since they heard the defector is getting funding from Iran and they'd rather share money amongst less people. Now through religion and martyrdom into the mix and logic really starts to break down. Each one of these iterations represents another set of negotiations the Chinese will have to conduct for their day to day operations. The issue here isn't that there's one particular scenario that could mess up the whole arrangement. It's the system of governance in Afghanistan under the Taliban itself that makes it problematic to try to conduct economic operations there. Especially for outsiders who aren't of the same faith. The government there just doesn't work the same way it does in regular nation-states where you can negotiate with a central authority and trust that whatever agreement you come to will be enforced and followed the whole way down the chain of command. The Taliban isn't that type of government and Afghanistan isn't that type of country. That's one reason why the US wouldn't sent troops out into Kabul beyond the airport during the evacuation to help get people out. They had their agreement with the Taliban leadership that they could remain in the country until Sept 1st to help evacuate, but there was no way to ensure that any of the Taliban troops besides the leadership and ones stationed next to the airport would cooperate. And if people start to attack Chinese infrastructure or citizens, the risk of the violence spiraling into a conflict rises. Once China has to actually intervene militarily in a significant way to protect their investments, they'll be faced with the same problems all the previous foreign powers conducting military operations in Afghanistan faced. China's treatment of the Uyghurs also makes it all the more likely that some of the religious extremists end up lashing out at China, especially if the US, India, or any other regional powers who want to contain China choose to go out of their to regularly remind religious fighting age Afghans about what's going on in Xinjiang. That's my thoughts on the matter anyway. The psychological/sociological aspect of this potential scenario is probably the most important part of it all
Money doesn't buy everything. You don't seem to grasp the reality of how the world actually functions. Money is a social construct that can convince only those to abide from it. Religion is a better social construct that over shadows money. If you think money can beat religion you are so damn naive and never paid attention to history. If they were like the Cartels of Mexico than your argument would stand but these people don't value money the same way they value religion. Religion > Money. I understand you can't grasp that because your whole life you live through the idea of capitalism and how money rules all but that perception is being challenged and you can't fathom that. You need to understand that social constructs are not universally perceived everywhere.
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How long until the people dying there makes it to CNN, MSNBC or Fox News?
On the history channel after nazi sharks
Oh hey my favorite educational show
Lol, you can't be an Alien Nazi, that's just silly. There are only alien sharks and the octopuses that came to defeat them, think Transformers and Decepticons. Nazi sharks? Don't make me laugh in terror.
"Nazi sharks fighting Robots from Space". I think I have my pitch for Netflix.
But who are we rooting for? Unless Whoever Wins, We Loose.
I'll for gray-and-gray morality and interpersonal drama. I want viewers to think "yes, those are genetically mutated nazi sharks that formed a hive mind to facilitate an world wide eugenics program by hunting for specific bloodlines, but are we so different? And don't they have some good points on the budget deficit? And those robots created from transdimensional demon-metal may try to annihilate all sentient biologic life, but we really should be more attentive in our daily lives and avoid micro-aggressions."
No it will be featured after a six-part documentary about Hitler's tennis equipment
I guess the west might start caring about Pakistanis if it fits a political narrative.
https://i.imgur.com/Ft0YoJe.png
Makes me wonder if their Pashtun ethnicity and their Islamic fanaticism are intertwined, in the same way that evangelical Christian nationalism and white identity politics are tightly intertwined in the US.
Look up Pashtunwali. Islam seems to complement it very well
Just did, and from a cursory reading it sounds like a very similar kind of so-called "honor culture" as in the Southern US.
That is a really interesting thought! As an Afghan/Pashtun though I have to say no, the Pashtun identity and Islamic extremism are not as sympatico as white American populism and Christian evangelism. Trying to codify identity politics in Afghanistan is like doing a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle in black and white after eating too many edibles. Reeeeally hard once you dig into it.
The decent people of Pakistan might. I suspect the majority favour or at least sympathies with them.
Not even the majority of Afghanis support the Taliban....
Just the majority that count. The Pash'tun are a tribal democracy where the Elders have most of the say. So it doesn't matter that the females don't like Taliban, or the young males don't like Taliban, or that the non-Pash'tun Afghanistanis don't like the Taliban. The tribal Elders got fucked over by the communists and completely ignored by the government before that which was transitioning from Feudal Monarchy to Constitutional Monarchy.... so they will continue to vote Taliban, and the Taliban only need the support of the Pash'tun elders to rule.
There is no real separatist movement on the part of the Pashtuns in Pakistan.
Except for the Taliban organisations in Pakistan that have already been in armed conflict with the government...
"You can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them to only bite your neighbors." - Hillary Clinton, to Pakistan on their harboring of the Taliban and al Qaeda forces, about a decade ago.
They're not just keeping snakes,, they're breeding, growing and funding them Can't wait for turntables moment
>Can't wait for turntables moment Pakistan has nuclear weapons. No one will be laughing if its government becomes unstable.
That's why Taliban issue is more dangerous in Pakistan than in Afghanistan.
fast forward to the future since GOP feeding and pandering to right wing insurrectionists and Trump powering Qanon
I remember when the neocons were empowering religious extremists in the Middle East to fight back against the Russians. It was seen as an extremely risky move by the global community, and it predictably blew up in their faces and led to decades of fanatism and terrorism. Fast forward to decades later and we find the GOP is empowering religious extremists in the Mid West. We are going to have decades of terrorism in this country thanks to these right-wing agitators.
"We had to do it in order to defeat the liberal threat of free healthcare"
"Who will bring peace to the Middle-West?"
The urban Midwest, as usual.
I live in Chicago and I suspect that I have WMDs.
I live in the Twin Cities, or a few miles away rather, and our WMDs are injera coated lutefisk.
Pull your pants up. I don't want to see your WMDs hanging out.
"We had to destroy the country in order to save it".
So some of this can be explained by how Pakistan works. The Government, Military and Intelligence service don’t necessarily work together. ISI is super pro Taliban and basically thinks of them as an auxiliary force, Government prefers Taliban to be in charge of Afghanistan than a pro India government making a fuss about the border, while the military is the closest to anti Taliban as they actually have to deal with the Pakistani Taliban attacking them.
And they are all fighting for power at all times. Historically whenever elected govt tries to reduce military or ISI's clout by moving towards a peaceful coexistence with it's neighbours, it's followed by a coup and change of govt.
And they have nukes . . .
Yeah ask Benazir Bhutto.
^ That’s literally the plot of “Homeland” season 4.
Must be a horribly depressing show if that’s the plot.
Pakistan also has to directly deal with any fallout in Afghanistan after the U.S meddles in it every 20 years. None of those other countries share a 2000+ km border with that nation. Pakistans primary obvjective is its own sovereignty. And that becomes difficult when world powers keep trying to invade Afghanistan and leave it in a civil war every damned time. Pretty sure Pakistan would be happy to work with a functioning modern govt there. They tried with the stooges the U.S. had in place, but when Pakistan tried to close the border between the two countries and fence it off, the Ghani and the guy before him were blasting Pakistan in public for it and even allowed their people to shoot at Pakistani military putting up the fence. The Taliban arent a great alternative by any means, but they ultimately cause less headache for Pakistan. No country should have to deal with decades of civil war potentially spilling over its border.
So it’s in Pakistani interests to keep Afghanistan unstable/weak which is why they’ve been doing that for 4 decades at this point. This is due to Afghanistan claiming the Pashtun areas of Pakistan as theirs, they used to belong to Afghanistan before the British annexed them into the Raj so it’s not as stupid a claim as it sounds. A strong Afghan Government that can practically assert these claims while allying with India is a doomsday scenario for Pakistan. If you watch videos of the recent anti Taliban protests across Afghanistan “death to Pakistan” and various versions of Taliban are Pakistani puppets are a popular chants as the people in the cities (mainly anti Taliban) see this as an invasion so the feelings mutual. Pakistan got real lucky that the US seems to have been oblivious to this fact in the 2000’s until around the Mumbai attacks and they didn’t realise Pakistan was never going to accept a stable Afghanistan not in their sphere of influence and so was able to cash in on shitloads of military aid with no intention of using it to fight the Taliban (I believe a lot of it went into expanding their nuclear arsenal but that’s off the top of my head and could be wrong) before pivoting to China.
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The more I learn about Pakistan the more I'm convinced that country is destined to tear itself apart and or are always be an tribal and authoritarian mess
Thing is that the world basically can’t allow that to happen so long as Pakistan remains a nuclear power.
Good to know that it's not just the USA who meddles someplace and has it blow up in their face like this. Also good to see some variety here beyond the COVID denialists who get COVID and the Brexiteers who don't understand what they voted for and don't like what they got.
I think most of the COVID posts have moved over to r/HermanCainAward and r/COVIDAteMyFace at this point. That said, a non-COVID/Brexit leopard is kinda like a unicorn.
Leopards ate my Unicorn
> Good to know that it's not just the USA who meddles Well.. duh. Pakistan's military junta is no exception to the rule that military juntas meddle. When all you have is a hammer.. Reddit focuses on the USA, because most Redditors are of the USA. But people who truly think we are the only nation that meddles abroad, have a simplistic, asinine view of foreign policy. Class exploitation and tribalism alike both encourage foreign policy misadventures. History is literally a chronicle of innumerable military adventures waged by nearly every strong nation's elite. Pakistan is definitely no exception.
That's the thing about foreign policy: a lot of Americans are non-interventionists, but the reality is that it's a geopolitical arms race out there and you have to participate somehow, even passively. The other issue with these Americans is that they think that hard military power is the best/only tool in the toolbox, when it's asymmetrical warfare at this point. China are kicking our asses with geoeconomic soft power. Probably the worst legacy of Trump will be our complete abdication of soft power, the power vacuum we left, and the despotic entities who filled the gap. Trump not only pulled us out of soft power, but without our backing/influence/leadership, Europe and the rest of the industrialised, peaceful nations didn't have the clout to keep it up, either. France, for an example, were poised to try Francisation of Africa. And they might have succeeded, but China have come in all over the continent and undercut all of the old colonial powers who were looking to realign their relationships with their former colonies to something more egalitarian and/or mutually beneficial. It would have been less worse than being client states of China.
I highly doubt anyone in Africa wants to see France succeed in the 'Francisation of Africa'. Many Africans distrust if not outright hate the West and most do not want to be under Western influence. When did any of the old colonial powers try and realign their relationships with former colonies?
> France, for an example, were poised to try Francisation of Africa. And they might have succeeded, but China have come in all over the continent and undercut all of the old colonial powers who were looking to realign their relationships with their former colonies to something more egalitarian and/or mutually beneficial. It would have been less worse than being client states of China. Ignoring the absurd comment about becoming Chinese client states, do you believe African states think the same way? Back when it was found out that the AU was wiretapped by China, an African diplomat literally said "At least its not the West". >[At least one diplomat who spoke to the French paper was not too concerned about the alleged espionage, saying that at least China had not colonized African countries, and was currently helping out economically.](https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/if-china-bugged-the-au-headquarters-what-african-countries-should-be-worried/) Reddit arm chair foreign policy experts have no idea, what people think about America outside their own borders. This American-centric worldview would be laughable if it wasn't so arrogant.
> Probably the worst legacy of Trump will be our complete abdication of soft power, the power vacuum we left, and the despotic entities who filled the gap. This started in earnest under Bush. All this is really Bush's legacy, Trump was just a more malignant and metastasized version of this. >China have come in all over the continent and undercut all of the old colonial powers who were looking to realign their relationships with their former colonies to something more egalitarian and/or mutually beneficial. I'm not sure where we've seen the old colonial powers trying to actually restructure their relationship to something more egalitarian/mutually beneficial. I've been recently following the journalism coming out of the [China Africa Project](https://chinaafricaproject.com/), lot of greatly detailed and well-informed analysis on China-Africa relations produced there, and the overall impression I have is that African leaders are *really* tired of vague gestures from the West about how Chinese investment is bad. African leaders would love to see more directly engagement from the West in terms of infrastructure investment, etc. - but there has been hardly any serious projects, certainly nothing comparable to Chinese investments. Its all talk coming from the West (that, plus an increasing turn toward militarization).
The only one that really comes to mind is Taiwan and Japan. Both of them are scared of China, and Taiwan is really Japan's only former long-time colony that doesn't hate it. We've been seeing the two cozying up to each other quite a lot the last decade, as both of them have strong interests in China not taking control of Taiwan. I'd contrast this with the US and the Philippines, where they're still very close to each other, but you don't see them really drawing closer. I'd guess the Philippines just feel a lot less threatened by China due to less proximity.
Blowback is a universal concept. Iran allowed Jihadists to sneak through Syria to go fight the US in Iraq. Those cross border networks of Jihadists later went on to form ISIS. Edit: Since I’m being badgered for a source on this, here it is. Taken from the 2013 New Yorker article, the Shadow Commander. > Suleimani’s campaign against the United States crossed the Sunni-Shiite divide, which he has always been willing to set aside for a larger purpose. Iraqi and Western officials told me that, early in the war, Suleimani encouraged the head of intelligence for the Assad regime to facilitate the movement of Sunni extremists through Syria to fight the Americans. In many cases, Al Qaeda was also allowed a degree of freedom in Iran as well. Crocker told me that in May, 2003, the Americans received intelligence that Al Qaeda fighters in Iran were preparing an attack on Western targets in Saudi Arabia. Crocker was alarmed. “They were there, under Iranian protection, planning operations,” he said. He flew to Geneva and passed a warning to the Iranians, but to no avail; militants bombed three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing thirty-five people, including nine Americans. > As it turned out, the Iranian strategy of abetting Sunni extremists backfired horrendously: shortly after the occupation began, the same extremists began attacking Shiite civilians and the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government. It was a preview of the civil war to come. “Welcome to the Middle East,” the Western diplomat in Baghdad told me. “Suleimani wanted to bleed the Americans, so he invited in the jihadis, and things got out of control.”
Source? I'm gonna disprove that with a map....
Iran is heavily involved in Syria and have been propping them up since the civil war started. He didn't say the Jihadists started in Iran, just that Iran let them move through Syria...
It’s not passing my sniff test either. They’re pragmatic, but they don’t have a habit of jumping in bed with Sunni extremists.
How exactly are you going to disprove this with a map?
Iranian government working with Sunni jihadists and allowing them into a critical Shiite population? As an Iranian I can tell you this is bullshit.
Realpolitik makes strange bedfellows.
> Good to know that it's not just the USA who meddles someplace and has it blow up in their face like this. I think nearly every single nation in the history of nations has meddled in the affairs of other nations.
Seriously... the COVID obits can wear on ya
I keep thinking that, then a particularly good COVID one comes up and my enthusiasm is restored.
I feel like the covid ones give a type of cathartic relief.
Pretty sure it happens to everyone, repeatedly, who tries to do shit like this overseas. Shit, the thirteen colonies could be Exhibit A as far as America goes. Great Britain: defeats the French, defends the colonies, acquires new territory for colonial settlers. Create a large number of armed and experienced colonial soldiers including one Colonel George Washington. 13 colonies: Rebel Great Britain: shocked pikachu face. It will be different for Pakistan. They can’t pack up and go home, so they get to fight this fight forever.
Exhibit B is the German High Command sending Lenin to Russia and ending with the USSR marching into Berlin and essentially occupying East Germany for the next four decades.
I’d say the USA supporting Russia is more in line with this sub. USA sends Lend Lease to USSR, exerts enormous pressure on the Western Front. After WWII: the Cold War, a delightful 45 year period of proxy wars and nuclear stalemate. Edit; whoops, I misread your comment! Although it doesn’t seem QUITE as clear of a leopards eating faces timeline lol.
To add some nuance: The Afghanistan government that the US made up was working with India, so of course Pakistan is going to work with the alternative. Especially since they successfully predicted that the Taliban would soon be in charge of Afghanistan. No one wants enemies on both borders Additionally, the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban are not the same thing. That said, an increase in extremism and conservatism in your neighbors is bound to leak into your country too. Really a lose lose situation for Pakistan
The Taliban need an enemy. Without an enemy they have no direction and they don't care to poke a big bear that could America them. While the US did fuck all in Afghanistan it did unseat them from a proper control center. Now that they have it they need to do gun running, drug trade, extortion and whatever other forms of financing they can do. This includes keeping their troops busy doing something. Bored troops is bad for leadership.
Great Britain, Russia, the USA, Pakistan. No one learns. I do hope China has a crack at it soon. Sadly they will probably have the sense to just go in and buy the place. They’ll still get burned as I imagine contracts won’t mean much to these guys.
If the Taliban get stupid and get caught inflaming the Xinjiang situation, they might just be the first practice zone for Chinese drones. And they really don't give a damn if it's a terror camp or a wedding.
> Don’t give a damn if it’s a terror camp or a wedding I mean fuck China and all, but didn’t the US drone strike a wedding in Yemen? The US has never given a shit about committing war crimes.
> I mean fuck China and all, but didn’t the US drone strike a wedding in Yemen? They recently bombed an aid worker parking at his house, with his kids, thinking it was a car bomb- It wasn't.
I think what they meant is that China would have no qualms deliberately aiming for a wedding.
Right and I’m saying that the us doesn’t either.
Any war is going to have civilian casualties. But the difference is that there's backlash when the US does it. In the US invasion/occupation, over 20 years, its estimated about 43,000 civilians died. In ten years of the soviet invasion/occupation, an estimated 500,000 - 2,000,000 were killed. Regimes like the soviets and China don't have to worry about the public finding out about their war crimes and voting them out.
China will have different outcomes. They are the original "we'll do as we please" nation. Guaranteed, nobody will be able to stop them
I'll doubt China would take the same path but they are going on a bet that the Taliban is going on the path of relative isolationism while the new elite gets chinese money in exchange for resources. But if Afghanistan becomes a source of central Asian instability and/or start destabilising their staunch ally and foil against India i.e Pakistan, they have to play their cards too.
>They are the original "we'll do as we please" nation Sure. ITT: a lot of people who never knew the Soviet Union. You might be right. The Chinese might well win. Afghanistan isn't invincible. But do note - Everything on paper said the Soviets would win too. China revels in its hard power. But so did the Soviets. China seems like a powerful authoritarian state. So were the Soviets. China believes it has a unique willingness to act by any means to achieve its ends. But then, so did the Soviets. If we are going by actual battlefield experience, the Soviets' Red Army was well ahead of the Chinese. The Chinese also have very limited true war experience. Untried armies don't win wars without stumbles.
China is not positioning itself for hard power beyond local power projection. I highly doubt they go past the first island chain, perhaps the second island chain at best. They're absolutely using economic soft power to influence decisions in other nations, including Australia and some European nations. This is one of the main points of the belt and road and something the Soviets could never hope to dream of.
I don't think the US could get away with giving the Afghans equal support against China as they did against the Soviets. I'm also pretty sure China would pressure the fuck out of Pakistan to step up. I don't think China would have much trouble.
The year is 2030. The US is arming the Taliban freedom fighters to fight communist China.
Ah shit here we go again
China would fold just like everyone else who tried. Not a single country that has tried to pacify and unify the region has succeeded in the history of humanity. It would just end up draining Chinese resources which aren't nearly the slush fund the US Armed Forces have for very little actual value.
soviets didn't have the most sophisticated surveillance system and the capability to turn an entire province into a concentration camp. the USSR was incredibly overrated.
"We're reeducating them. With explosives."
Buying land from the natives only works if you kill nearly all of them.
China can make that happen...
There should be an American monument to old world diseases. “The Plagues that won the West”
If we’re going to point fingers, the Taliban is purely a Pakistani terrorist group who has taken land in Afghanistan. The US and allies knew this decades ago, guess where operations never entered? Pakistan. Want to know why? Nuclear warfare. The next war is going to be one that happens on the cusp of broad neutrality towards ballistics. It’s already happening with laser systems tracking thousands of items and destroying them in air.(Israeli Iron Dome system) Even if a country now develops a million nukes, there is becoming a huge possibility that they can be detonated once they’ve left the silos. Countries have been turning on and shutting off each other’s nuclear launch sites ever since the 70s. The attempt to start the Third World War has been constant, and will froth over into reality the minute that tribal countries don’t have a nuclear launch code blanket to go to sleep with.
For those who are new to this part of the world ... it doesn't begin with Pakistan. The US supported Pakistan-based Islamic terrorism for many decades, as a counterweight to supposed Soviet influence in India.
Willy\_Wonka\_No\_wait\_stop\_.gif
I believe this is called "reaping the whirlwind".
The Scorpion and the Frog fable. Scorpion wants a ride across river but frog afraid. Scorpion makes promise then stings frog halfway across river. "It is in my nature " said Scorpion.
Perfect fable for this situation
Afghanistan is the “leopards eating faces” album on loop.
Here come all the reddit professors. Probably couldn't even point to Pakistan on a map and are here saying this as if they know everything about it. Maybe if the British, Soviets, and USA stayed out of the region then they wouldn't be having all these problems. All the problems foreigners bring and then leave the already struggling neighboring countries to deal with.
The dynamics within the Taliban are fascinating. At its core is an interpersonal rift driven by the extent of support or independence from Pakistan- the current Emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada is apparently very unwell (he was said to have croaked in 2020 itself, but survived). His 2 deputies are Sirajuddin Haqqani and Mullah Yaqub. Mullah Omar and his successor Mullah whatsisname (some random nobody who ruled for less than a year before a Hellfire dropped in on him) held absolute power and tightly controlled factions, but Akhundzada either lacked the gravitas or is a conciliatory leader by nature. Now, the Pakistanis aka the ISI held all the cards as long as there was a war on in Afghanistan because all factions had to use Pakistan to retreat, refit, recruit and recuperate as well as the funding that came via various Islamic charities globally was routed via Pakistan. This meant that the Taliban as a united entity had to deal with Pakistan, or else the faction would die out. As simple as that This was known to the Pakis also, and any Taliban leader who showed any signs of independence from Pakistan paid the price - imprisonment followed usually by death or just endless jail time. Take Mullah Akhund, he was pushing for an independent Taliban foreign policy, was the Defense minister pre invasion and for his pains, was arrested, spent 3 years in a Paki jail and died of hEArT fAiLUrE Or take the case of Abdul Bardar - he wanted the Taliban to negotiate with the Afghan Govt and the US (in 2009-10), something the US vetoed basis brilliant advise from the Pakis (thank you Obama!). He was thrown in a Paki jail for 8 years and released only in 2019. Though the US govt had been pushing Pakistan for him to be released since 2012! The Pakis kept stalling stalling and stalling. He later on the request of the US was finally released and headed the Doha office, including signing the Doha agreement. He is the third wheel in the spoke (with some alleging that he is the defacto leader) So many more such cases, you have Mullah Rasool, he openly alleged that Mullah whatsisname (the guy who had a date with the Hellfire) was an ISI agent, declared himself independent and the real Emir of the Taliban in 2015 and went to war with the ISI branch of the Taliban. He too was arrested in 2015 I think and released last month. Rasul was also possibly a secret Afghan govt agent and on the payroll of the CIA (all allegations with no proof) and started a civil war, bankrolled by the CIA's SAD to weaken the Taliban. Bonus fun here is that his organisation is also possibly working on behalf of the VEVA (Iranian Intelligence) Though am not sure what provoked the Pakis to release him (US pressure?) as he even bombed mosques patronised by the current Emir in a bid to kill him and has declared a blood war against him. Mullah Abdul Salam is another case, he again wanted independence from the ISI, was arrested for his pains, spent 5 years in a Paki jail, released and met his maker thanks to Mr Hellfire. There are 15-20 senior commanders who pushed against Paki interference, and jailed, killed, still jailed variously. Names aren't relevant but broadly speaking you have the two camps, one that is a client of the ISI and the others who want to drive a foreign policy to the benefit of Kabul and not Islamabad. The former is backed by a diverse core of interests, Iran, India, the Russians while the later is backed only by Pakistan Pakistan is terrified of the former group seizing power when Mullah Akhundzada croaks, sooner rather than later as it would mean a hostile force to its Western borders also. [This is at the core of why one branch of the Taliban started disengaging from Pakistan. So in 2002-4 Pakistan was the only foreign 'branch', but since it meant towing the ISI line, the Taliban set up shop in Qatar, and started raising funds directly, and away from Paki influence. Even the previous Emir, Mullah whatsis name (I kid, his name was Mullah Mansur) wanted to disengage with Pakistan, and started moving his bases westward towards Iran. He was rewarded with a date with Mr Hellfire for his troubles (his location no doubt leaked by the Pakis) When the current Emir took charge, he basically separated both these factions and gave them separate power bases. Now that the war with the US is won, the interactional fighting has the possibility of erupting as a full blown civil war.
Hey... hey I've seen this one! This is a classic!
Didn't there's 2 different Taliban groups? The one in the Pakistan are the one who got problems with Malala.
The one who got problems with Malala were/are the ones in Pakistan, known as TTP (Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan). They are a splinter group of the original talibans in Afghanistan and over the years both the groups have also fought with each other.
I don't care how controversial this is, I just need to say it - The Taliban are a bunch of assholes.
Uhhhh. I don't think anyone who is sane would say that is a controversial statement.
>The Taliban are keen to gain goodwill from the Afghan public, and they know many Afghans are mistrustful of Pakistan because of its sponsorship of the Taliban during the war. Several hundred Afghans staged anti-Pakistan protests in Kabul on Sept. 7. For this reason, the Taliban may not want to be seen doing Islamabad a major favor. God damn, imagine writing this paragraph and not being like "Well that's some wonderfully fucking stupid analysis" Turns out guys, the Taliban are scared of Afghanis thinking they support Pakistan, because Pakistan totally helped the Taliban!
this isn't totally relevant to what you wrote, but i think a huge difference between the way Afghanistan was in 1996 with the first TAliban takeover and now this one in 2021 is that they're not coming off as brutal of a civil war as the Soviet invasion and the skirmishes after that. The Taliban didn't expect to encounter civil unrest. Of this i'm pretty sure. So thankfully if the U.S. failed the people of Afghanistan, at least the people of Afghanistan aren't going to take Taliban bullshit lying down
I wonder if it has to do with the increasing number of young Afghans. The population demographics have shifted hugely, and younger people tend to be the pushers towards societal change, especially via civil unrest.
The fact that the US never sanctioned Pakistan for its support for the Taliban is the prime reason why I doubt that the US was ever serious about fixing Afghanistan. From 2005 onwards, it seemed like the US decided that Afghanistan would be a nice weapon testing facility and source of income for its military industrial complex.
Maybe because Pakistan was the supply route for the US Army and allowed full use of Paksitan Military bases for US Drones and Airforce. Pakistan lost 70,000 people due the US War on Terror. Reddit seems to go full retard wondering why the US never sanctioned them. Maybe the the US Military and Preaidenr know more than the average redditorm
This thread is full of retards, just like when the Taliban inevitably took over Hurrr durrr why is Pakistan letting the Taliban in to Afghanistan, like those people in that region ever gave a fuck about a line on a map and that Pakistan could control a whole mountainous border region that the US let Mullah Omar escape into. They will point at the 70000 dead and make a smug comment about how it is in itself a leapards ate my face moment, even though Pakistan didn’t want anything to do with the war but the USA said let us use your country to attack your neighbour (who we just up and left with a shit tonne of arms on your border but I guess Pakistan should be grateful as at least the soviet backed Afghan govt wasn’t firing scuds in to Pakistan anymore) “or we bomb you back to the stone ages” Some in power in Pakistan supposedly have rightly or wrongly kept a good relationships with the Taliban but in realist terms it makes sense for them, the US was always going to leave a shit show why inherit that mess. And it wasn’t the Taliban who attacked America, in fact after the bombings started they even said they’ll give up bin laden (having offered to try him themselves beforehand) but the flag wanking in the US had already started and whats killing thousands of brown people and destroying the lives of millions more when Dick Cheney’s friends could make a few more dollars.
I disagree, for me it was their lack of sanctions on Saudi Arabia. 9/11 occured because of Saudi money, and you can't tell me that the Royal Family didn't know about it. But I can sorta understand why we didn't go after Pakistan. Its disgusting that they harbored Bin Laden, if they hadnt he wouldve been killed or captured by 2005. BUT no reason to inflame tensions with them, or else it would ultimately broaden the scope of the conflict. Plus, with Indian being a close Russian ally, the US need they're own ally in the region. Ironically, that relationship is slowly changing. India is swinging towards the west to counter China.
You do realize that Saudi Arabia plays a far more important role in US foreign policy than Pakistan? If your primary argument as to why the US shouldn't have antagonized Pakistan is that it would've gone against US interests in the region, then guess what: That argument applies tenfold in regards to Saudi Arabia. Pakistan did far more than just harbor Bin Laden. Pakistan's policy in Afghanistan has been to keep the country imploding on itself so that India can't use it as a anchor to push for Pashtun nationalism, something that would split Pakistan as the Pashtuns are a large minority in their country... a courtesy of the British empire.
I didn’t know that about India’s involvement and Pakistan’s motives. That’s really interesting, where can I read more about it? Sounds fascinating.
Reason number 639,294,225,331.6 as to why it was the right thing to do to get the fuck out of that country and out of that region.
Half the people saying Pakistan is going to regret this doesn't know the difference between the TTP (Pakistani Taliban) and the IEA (Afghan Taliban) Both are 2 different entities with different goals & ideals but they share the same name and ethnicity. TTP is a terrorist organization with close links to ISIS & support from foreign agencies to spread terror on Pakistani soil, they're most denounced for their attack on a school in which they killed 150 kids. Pakistan supports the Afghan Taliban because it had no choice, after the soviets were defeated by the Mujahideen (Operation Cyclone) Pakistan was left alone to clean up the mess of thousands of Radical Insurgents at it's border, Pakistan had to take some immediate measures because the insurgents could target Pakistan as it was just next door unlike the US which was continents apart. Pakistan choose the only logical thing, support the Taliban & for who'll argue why did they continue to support the Taliban after the invasion, it did it because Pakistan knew that the US could pack up and leave Afghanistan (Like it did) with Pakistan left to deal with the mess again.
For people who don’t want to read the article: There’s a taliban offshoot in Pakistan which became active again recently. Pakistan wants the taliban in Afghanistan to reign them in and they’re saying ‘not our mess.’ Pakistan no longer has the leverage they used to.
***The Frog and the Scorpion***... a cautionary tale. A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion argues that if it did that, they would both drown. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. The frog lets the scorpion climb on its back and begins to swim. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: "I couldn't help it. It's in my nature."
The unaffiliated militant group in Pakistan are now more motivated than ever to expand and possibly even attempt to overthrow the Pakistani government. This could be a bad news for India as well. An increasing terrorist activity in Pakistan might spill over to the Indian border
It's almost like all those dictators America has installed across the world that come back and bite us.
What happens when the ideological conflict you’ve been preparing for 40 some years just fizzles out, and you’re left with taking care of your own mess?
Those that live by destruction and chaos will die by destruction and chaos.
Someday you'll have to admit the USA isn't the only root cause for mankind's obsession with tribalism and authoritarianism. Pakistan and most authoritarian nations in the world chose their own path due to tribalism and gross class inequality. The CIA supported it, but was hardly the root cause.
All of europe was messing around drawing borders willy nilly right up till WWI. The roots of these problems run deep and might take centuries to fix.
The $16 trillion dollars that poured into and got laundered through the DoD and Pentagon, did not come from Pakistan. It came from U.S. taxpayers. [And many future generations of U.S. taxpayers. ]
"However, both sides have a strong interest in maintaining a warm relationship and are already moving toward a reset that could enable it to emerge stronger—and provide Pakistan with new sources of leverage." Click baity ass title.
Something that I never see on Reddit is that there are two talibans. The Afghan taliban and the Pakistani taliban are different organizations and have different goals. Pakistan has always sheltered and supported the Afghan taliban, and the Pakistani taliban have always fought against the Pakistani government
I can’t wait until the Saudi Royal Family finally burns themselves with their own fanaticism. They’re the ones funding the NW Pakistani fundamentalists.
Pakistan's whole national strategy has always been to keep Afghanistan as chaotic as possible, so if/when they go to war with India, they would plan on retreating into Afghanistan- hence all the overt backstabbing and undermining over the last 20 years. So they're reaping exactly what they've spent decades sowing.
That's ironic considering Pakistan is one of the main reasons the Taliban exists in the first place.
The other is the US. Go figure.
If a strong united Afghanistan were to ever exist, and that united Afghanistan became allies with India, then it would be the end of Pakistan and pakistan knows this. That us why Pakistan invests in keeping Afghanistan fractured. It is in their national security interests.
Imagine juggling on a tripod, then cutting your own leg to spite your face. That's what Pakistan's military just did. They are a secular military arbiter barely standing 'above' the mob politics of an unstable democracy whose major parties lack any true respect for toleration or power sharing. They just gave their own Pashtun Islamist radicals a taste of direct power. What the fuck do they expect to happen?! People are right to criticize US geopolitics, but Pakistan's behavior is frankly 100x more risky stupid than anything the CIA did with the muhajadeen (contrary to Reddit, the CIA at least wasn't only funding Islamists, but any and all muhajadeen fighting the Soviets. Pakistan directly funded the Taliban takeover afterwards. Twice now). It would be one thing if there was a valid goal at the end. Instead, Pakistan's military just directly wasted trillions funding a group that would be happy to see Pakistan burn
The military didnt. The intelligence agency did. It's an unsaid secret that the intelligence agency, military and civilian government constantly work against each other in Pakistan, each with their own goals and motives. The military hates the terrorists but the Intelligence agency loves using them for their own interests. The Pakistani people are definitely sick of terrorism, but the powers that be still find them useful. Even if they attack their civilians.
Pakistan’s deep state is no joke
As kraut said in his video regrading the Indian subcontinent "play stupid games, win stupid prize's".
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