In these parts of the world, 'defecting to the winning side' is a basic survival skill. As soon as the US stopped its support it was obvious who'd win (the people still getting state support from Pakistan). So why should a smart faction fight and die? To make the people who aren't there anymore look better?

I think you're overestimating Pakistan's capability. It gave Taliban leaders shelter at their worst moment, and that is about the only leverage ISI had.

The moment Taliban started to carve out territory inside Afghanistan, that leverage was gone. There's some gratitude, but also lots of resentment among Taliban leadership about the way they were treated by the Pakistani authority.

Yep, totally right. I think you need to also tell about Afghan government itself "returning Pakistan a favour," and dispatching the Pakistani Taliban.

The amount of support Pakistan provides Taliban is severly overblown. Did they provide them refuge when Taliban was on the back foot? Sure, probably.

Is Pakistan aiding them in this current offense? It really doesn't seem like it.

ISI help is significantly more than refuge. That said, the Taliban didn't need help for this offensive. They've been handed the country on a platter.

I don't know that much about the region, but the us-supported side had 20 years and lots of money to prepare for this day. I would assume if they enjoyed more popular support in the near past they would have built something that would less obviously be the losing side today, and people wouldn't have jumped ship so quickly.

The US built their side so as to maximally depend on them and then pulled support abruptly, while all but grovelling to the Taliban in public. There could have been no other result the way this withdrawal was done.

The corruption is so bad soldiers in hospitals starved to death.

It's clear that in the past 30 years afganistan did not have a functioning government at all. Its not about popular support, its a failure of 'statebuilding'

https://observers.france24.com/en/20200218-afghanistan-corru...

Most of the Afghan government just pocketed as much money as possible and stashed in (and their families) in Dubai:

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2019-11-04/the...

Well Russian government also pockets the money and stashes them in foreign countries, but it is not totally dysfunctional - they can get infrastructure built and the army organised. They dont do it well, but they can defend themselves.

Absolutely the government were in it for themselves, not for the people. The average Afghan has no love for the Taliban or the government but it’s pragmatic to side with whoever is winning.

And then there were "phantom soldiers"- it's the practice where officers would just create non-existent soldiers to pocket their salary.

> I have to say the speed at which the Taliban took over once the US pulled out is pretty astonishing: it's clear they have a strong level of popular support.

The explanation is very, very simple, but I don't see any Western media talking about it at all.

Basically, Afghan government fell apart when USA withdrew the pork barrel of military contracts from locals.

People forget that 20 years ago USA mounted all kinds of warlords, and other rogue elements into seats of power. The entirety of regional elites which emerged in these 20 years are a product of that system.

The only things securing their loyalty to USA, and thus to the government in Kabul were American money.

The moment they ran out, it all fell apart just like Middle Eastern, and Latin American US friendly regimes. The "Our Bastard!" theory showed extreme naivete of people following it yet again.

There is no such things as "Our Bastards!" Time to learn that after 60 years.

Henry Kisinger lured USA into a geopolitical deathtrap with his lunatical political theories. Now US has found itself in the world surrounded by backstabbing, and turncoat regimes of its own making, who nor fear, nor respect it now, and who will pounce the moment USA stops spoonfeeding them, and shows its back.

USA has less allies in the world now than at any time in the last century.

USA can't now fight half the world dominated by solidified group of corrupt regimes.

Escaping this situation will be extremely hard.

USA cannot rely on allies who are loyal only to American printing press.

USA will not score any real allies without changing itself first

This was always the view of Americans: Monry can buy everything. While it may be true for their democracy it is not true for other things that people value.

> USA can't now fight half the world dominated by solidified group of corrupt regimes.

If there is anything the past few decades have shown, it's that the pocketbook and the sword are both useless tools when it comes to any kind of Middle Eastern policy.

The locals keeping their heads down in the face of an insurgency the Afghan state is clearly unable to defeat probably shouldn’t be presented as “strong popular support” (the true level of which is supposed to be about 10%).

Is there even such a thing as an "Afghan state"? From what little I know of their culture, they're more accurately described as tribes or clans who happens to speak similar languages and have the same religion rather than a nation-state.

Taliban is certainly more popular than they were 25 years ago.

Last time there was a pretty strong grassroot movement against Taliban, particularly in the northern parts of the nation. Taliban didn't have to fire a shot in many of these places this time.

They are surely sick of 20 years of useless war so they will support the new leaders.

Vietnam ultimately became a pretty nice country a few years after the US government finally gave up on trying to turn it into hell on earth, and it’s only getting better.

If this really is Saigon 2.0, 20 years from now Afghanistan will be a peaceful country with active tourism. With the Taliban seemingly making efforts to appease China for economic gain, who knows, it just might happen.

Very unlikely, a version of Algeria 2.0 is far more likely than Vietnam 2.0.

More like Saudi Arabia but they don't have lot's of oil just poppy.

They don't have all that support from population; it's more like "if you can't beat them...". Unfortunately among those surrendering without any resistance it's the Afghan Army, with all their weapons, which means now the Talibans are much more heavily armed than a few months ago.

Just over a month ago [July 8] the President was actually arguing that the Afghan army would win:

Q Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?

THE PRESIDENT: No, it is not.

Q Why?

THE PRESIDENT: Because you — the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable.

...

I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- — more competent in terms of conducting war.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...

It's almost as though the American leadership doesn't really understand Afghanistan.

Of course they do. But is a nice playing ground for the army and the military industrial complex makes good profits. The lifes of milions do not matter for them.

I'm not necessarily doubting this, but I feel like this is always a convenient goto excuse to criticize any terrible, unethical military strategy the US is responsible for. Is there good evidence that certain powerful corporations/people made so much money and have so much power that they could and did successfully pressure politicians for two decades across a bunch of administrations into staying in Afghanistan? Not only successfully pressuring them to start the war but successfully pressuring them to stay there for so long?

(I of course don't at all doubt that the big military contractors have been making a ton of money from the wars, but I'm specifically referring to their corporate influence being the primary/secondary/tertiary/etc. force behind why we were still in Afghanistan after two decades.)

My own uninformed Occam's razor assumption would've been that it's primarily a matter of tangled geopolitics rather than a military-industrial complex scheme from day one to today. That is, that the State Department and top-level strategists and policy advisors are mostly the people to blame.

Maybe it's all of the above or some complex mixture. But what I want to know is the actual individuals responsible, or at least where they're contained. Not just an opaque storm cloud labeled "the military-industrial complex" or "the Deep State". For example, it could potentially be the case that this narrative might actually unintentionally help to shield the people who are truly culpable.

>OMG look at these new conspiracists attacking these well off gentlemen

I'm definitely not at all defending arms dealers and military contractors. I'm no fan of the military-industrial complex, or war, or imperialism, or the US government.

I just want to know - based on evidence - who's directly responsible for us staying in Afghanistan for 23 years. Everyone should want to know this. If the root cause is corrupt politicians and military contractors, that's extremely important information to know. And if it isn't, then the actual root cause is extremely important information to know.

>do you think those actually responsible want their names easily known? The powerful ones? They know their heads would be on the chopping block.

All the more reason to try to figure out who they are, then?

>eff off you monocle wanna-be shithead.

Good argument.

If a Muslim country will invade a Christian country, say Sweden, to improve democracy, what will happen when they will leave?

Like Caliphate of Córdoba?

They have 300,000 troops that are either poorly trained, lead by incompetent officers and/or corrupt to the bone. It is expected to lose badly. This was known, that makes the speech a big lie as many speeches of most leaders of most countries.

And wasn't there recently something shared here, that the afghan air force cannot really fly, because the US cancelled their contracted maintainance service?

Also with the sheer size of the US embassy - it rather looks to me like there never was a sovereign afghan government in the first place, so of course they don't stand a chance on its own. It was all too artificial and US dependent.

Now, who's equipped? History repeats itself...

He was obviously posturing to make the question go away. Everybody knew this would be the outcome, the die was cast.

More like Fall of Phnom Penh v3

...assuming you're referring to indiscriminate shelling of civilians and then mass reprisal killings... what was v2?

Maybe v1 is 1945/08/15 by his definition

They just have strong level of petro-dollar support from the Gulf.

And America has "just" the biggest invested army world wide. I guess you need more than money to win the fight sometimes.

Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary, exemplifies really well how limited commitment to fight a war, will result in similar situation as in Korea (to a degree, I guess), Vietnam, almost in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan.

Wars are not meant to be win. If you win a war quickly you don't make any profit.

US pulled out only because the general American public was bored of being in Afghanistan. Americans would had stayed there forever if they wanted to, and kept the Taliban at bay.

petro-dollar support from the gulf if actually exists was peanuts compared to 100s of billions from the US, Nato and India.

What makes you think they don’t get the same amount from the Gulf?

Only US and NATO provided military assistance. Others like India invested billions in constructive projects like Salma dam.

What would the talibans do with the money? It is quite obvious the Afghan army has a more expensive operation than talibans with rifles and pickups.

I guess the Afghan army should have focused more on quality than size to be able to afford talanted soldiers.

I don’t think that’s a valid question. What would they do with money? Buy more weapons, I guess? Invest in training. Hire more recruits.

Both you and the parent poster are missing the forest through the trees.

The failure is not in money, training, or conscription. The failure is in not giving the army any reason to fight.

If you don't give a rat's ass about your cause, and there's a serious possibility of defeat, why would you keep fighting?

The problem is that in twenty years, the coalition-supported government failed to make enough of its constituents give a rat's ass about their cause. They might not like the Taliban much, but they seem to prefer to live under them, than die for what is perceived as a corrupt, self-serving, ineffective government.

Ye well I agree. It is still astonishing how the army could collapse in this way. I guess the general staff more or less folded in some agreement with the Talibans. There should have been plenty of reports of artillery shelling with civilian causalities otherwise. Some kind of blood bath when high ranking officers have their backs against the wall.

> If you don't give a rat's ass about your cause, and there's a serious possibility of defeat, why would you keep fighting?

Keep fighting? My understanding is that there was no serious effort to fight from the army's side.

Exactly this.

Not really. Most Gulf states are petrified of militant Islam, and the Taliban subscribe to a creed (Deobandi) that's not particularly popular among Arabs.

Nevertheless, the funding they receive is more than enough to keep them going, as such point where US pulls out and they could fight the fledgling Afghan army.