Afghanistan deadline

[Jimbuna]

Since they took control of Afghanistan just over two weeks ago, the Taliban have sought to portray a more moderate image than when they last seized power in 1996.

They have repeatedly said they will grant amnesty to all, including those who worked for western militaries or the Afghan government or police. In a dramatic press conference after the group swept into Kabul, chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid made a declaration of forgiveness.

But there is growing evidence that the reality on ground is different to the rhetoric coming from Taliban leaders and spokesmen. It was not lost on some watching the press conference in Kabul that Mr Mujahid made his declaration from the seat of the former government spokesman Dawa Khan Menapal, who had been killed by the group just weeks earlier, as "punishment for his deeds".

Now sources inside Afghanistan, as well as some who recently fled, have told the BBC that Taliban fighters are searching for, and allegedly killing, people they pledged they would leave in peace.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58395954

[Otto Harkaman]

I hope this is true

[mapuc]

Read in a Danish newspaper in which it stood that the Taliban had given orders to the farmers in the north to stop producing opium. Right after this was known the prices on the black market went sky high.

Markus

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Read in a Danish newspaper in which it stood that the Taliban had given orders to the farmers in the north to stop producing opium. Right after this was known the prices on the black market went sky high.

Markus

The northern alliance will probably fight the Taliban to keep growing more freedom and democracy flowers.

[Otto Harkaman]

AGM-114R9X



Bladed, incredibly precise: All about US's secret 'Hellfire' missile used in Afghanistan airstrikes against ISIS-K
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/stor...238-2021-08-30

[August]

Originally Posted by Otto Harkaman

I hope this is true

Apparently those particular dogs were rescued by some private group.

Non-profit aiming to rescue dozens of military dogs from Afghanistan: report

Americans and Afghan allies weren’t the only ones apparently left behind inthe U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
A non-profit organization said it was continuing to work Tuesday to help evacuate dozens of contracted military working dogs from the country, according to reports.
Joshua Hosler, president of Veteran Sheepdogs of America, said the organization was given 51 working dogs with the responsibility of getting them out of Kabul. The non-profit tweeted a photo last weekend of more than a dozen dog crates in front of a helicopter, which Hosler said was just a fraction of the canines left behind in the U.S. troop withdrawal, according to TMZ.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/non-pr...gs-afghanistan

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

Here are a few things to consider with regards to Afghanistan.



First of all after having been in-country for 20 years what how much of a difference did we really make and if we had stayed any longer then that would we have still made any difference at all?



Secondly, it seems that many people forgot the the Taliban weren't really beaten and defeated but where pushed out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan where they like the NVA and the VC where in Laos and Cambodia, given a relativity safe haven from the coalition forces and simply sat and waited until it was time to strike again. Yet no president from Bush Jr. to Biden at least to my knowledge gave any orders to actively seek and destroy the Taliban while they where in Pakistan, why? I strongly think that if we had been allowed to fight the Taliban in Pakistan we probably wouldn't be in the mess that has come to pass.


Thirdly was there was no Lawrence of Arabia figure to give a guiding hand to all the different tribal and religious differences in such a fractured part of the globe. It is easy to forget the many of these countries are countries in name only, as Feisal ibn Husein who was crowned the King of Iraq in August 1922 said of his country in March of 1933 after 12 years as king, " There is still--and I say this with a heart of sorrow--no Iraqi people but unimaginable masses of human beings, devoid of any patriotic idea, imbued with religious traditions and absurdities connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil, prone to anarchy and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatever.". What Feisal said was true then and it's still true 88 years later. How long will it take for the Middle East to become truly modernized? Without a change to something like Islam or how the governments in such nations are run, i.e. like a separation between government and religion or at least limit to some degree the influence of religion in their political system and change is unlikely.

[Sean C]

Originally Posted by Feisal ibn Husein

" There is still--and I say this with a heart of sorrow--no Iraqi people but unimaginable masses of human beings, devoid of any patriotic idea, imbued with religious traditions and absurdities connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil, prone to anarchy and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatever."

And yet, the "erudites" of today denounce nationalism as xenophobic and/or racist.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Sean C

And yet, the "erudites" of today denounce nationalism as xenophobic and/or racist.

A lot of so called nations have been artificially founded by force through often colonialist action, especially in Africa and the middle east.
Within those nations you could call this rather micro-nationalism, or tribalism, where the values of one tribe or society does not match the other.

Such nations are prone to never grow together, at least not without a lot of education and their people having the time to think, instead having to fight for life and food every day.
Real nation building and the generation of common ideas takes a lot of time, instead of drawing some rectangular lines across maps by colonialist politics that have no idea of geography and ethnicities.

Easier to exploit Iraq when it is a nation of course, you cannot demand to negotiate with every warlord and tribe from companies like Shell or BP, or DeBeers

[Skybird]

Nations are the material condensate of long historical processes of identify forming along ethnic and ideologic borderlines and shared histoircal events. See European nations. Thats why the EU must necessarily fail in trying to delete these many different identities and replacing them with one uniform surrogate identity from the sociological EU super-lab, in fact it creates growing conflicts due to mounting resistence to this misled ambition. Thats why the colonial powers failed in creating stable lasting states when they drew lines on maps that cut right through tribal, ethnical, ideological contexts and realities and forced together what did not match, and ripped apart what belonged together.

The same could be said about the multi- state that Yugoslavia was, or the Sovjet Union. China too is threatened by inner tensions due to dozens and dozens of cultural minorities that it deals with as was so often the case: it tries to suppress them with brute force and pure violence.


Obviously, Iraq and Palestine, Jordan and many place sin africa can be listed here, too.



The Balkan, too, is a region where again such imperial ambitions do not work, and imo never will work, whether it be Kosovo, or Bosnia Herzegowina. Both "states" since two decades stagnate and do not get their things otgether. And both have just hidden their inner potential for conflict that is embedded in their very founding like an ambe, and that could lead to a new blaze and huge fire any time.


These kind of things, desogning of nations against ethnic and tribal and historic and identity realities, cannot be created and enforced, they must grow at their own speed and will. Evolutions, not revolutions. Natural development, not enforced administration. Growing, not construction.

[Arlo]

Nationalists generally aren't interested in the wellbeing of all of the people in their nation. Nationalists are actually 'identity-ists' whose only regard is their own narrow definition of who they are (regarding skin tone and/or religion and/or radical ideology and/or gender roles and or sexual behavior ... etc.) and will bond with those of similar attributes and attitudes to attack other citizens of 'their' nation that are different from them as enemies (often dehumanizing them in the process). This isn't something new. Those who study history recognize it's destructive pattern and realize that if 'nationalists' are given free reign they will destroy their own societies from within ... gleefully.

[Rockstar]

Nationalism is not evil. Nationalism would do a place like Afghanistan some good. A people’s loyalty to one nation, one flag, one form of government. Unfortunately it is and has been for many centuries ruled by dozens of tribal warlords killing the other because of their ‘identity-ism’.

Tribalism is deeply engrained in human nature nationalism and established cultural norms IMO is a bond that brings these tribes together. Like anything it can used or abused.

[Arlo]

https://lithub.com/what-george-orwel...f-nationalism/

"Within this framework, Orwell lists three “principal characteristics of nationalist thought”:

1. “Obsession. As nearly as possible, no nationalist ever thinks, talks or writes about anything except the superiority of his own power unit.” His special mission is to prove that his chosen nation is in all respects better than its rivals. Therefore, even to the outer limits of plausibility, any question may be traced back to this central issue. No detail is indifferent, no fact is neutral.

2. “Instability.” The content of the nationalist’s belief, and even the object of his devotion, is liable to change as circumstances do. “What remains constant in the nationalist is his own state of mind”—the relentless, reductive, uncompromising fervor. The point is to keep oneself always in a frenzied state concerning vicarious contests of honor, whether indulging in spasms of rage over perceived insults or in sadistic ecstasies celebrating some new triumph. It is the single-minded intensity that matters, not the ostensible cause.

3. “Indifference to Reality.” Nationalists achieve by instinct the kind of doublethink that the denizens of Airstrip One cultivated by conscious effort: “Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also—since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself—unshakably certain of being in the right.” His fundamental belief, he feels sure, must be true; therefore, the facts will have to be made to fit it."

[Skybird]

The argument is made since long that "patriotism" focusses predominantly on a quality of "loving one's own peer group and its culture and living place", where as nationalism more defines itself by aggressively keeping separate from the foreign people and maintaining kind of a hostile attitude towards others that are not one's own peer group that one identifies with - this could lead as far as to violently wanting to eradicate the identiy of the other by wiping him and his nation out. So the one focusses more on preferring or loving one's own group, the other focusses on being hostile towards the others, the foreign country.



Personally I use the phrase "historically grown sense of identity" since long. It makes more sense to me, is closer to what the human focus is about, and seems to match realities on the ground more often. I can tolerate patriots, get along with them. With nationalists I see nothing but problems.



For these reasons I can still be against the EU and what it wants to achieve in identity ideology - and still not feeling affected when somenbody accuses me that therefore I must be a nationalist. I am not.



And if I would plan to become one, I first would prefer to change my German nationality.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

One wonders if the ChiComs, having observed the Russian and motor out across the bridge, and the DamnedYankees make a muck of the Middle East generally, incl. Iran Iraq and Syria, & Yemen would even care to try their greedy hand ..."two outta three" having been bad. Our stabilizing skill was gone way back in 'Nam!

quote of the day in the W.SJ.:

"The chaotic and sudden withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan is not good news for China", said Ma Xiaolin, an international relations scholar at Zhejiang International Studies University in Hanzhou, China. "China is not ready to replace the US in the region".

The effrontery of that remark: implying that America serves Chinas interests as it expands globally in its Road and Belt domination of the planet...but the 'belt' presently doesn't have enough notches to encompass Sino-global ambitions...ie expendable western troops were serving China's purposes for 20 years; and now China must step up, Russia and the West having pulled out ignominiously, or lose face on the internation stage. I suspect adding Afghanistan to their ambitions, alongside current South China Sea and Indian border aggrandisement/clash issues, will hamper China as their birth rate and economy is slowing. Their expansionist China-first policies may have put them in a bind.