Has Biden Made the Right Choice in Afghanistan?

[Savonarola]

I was reading Al Jazeera's Live Updates about Afghanistan and, to me, it looks like the choice is between staying forever or letting the Taliban have the country.  (Biden insists that the latter is not a foregone conclusion.)

As a second question if the Taliban does retake the country; was the coalition involvement in Afghanistan a success?  We ended up more or less where we started 20 years ago minus an Osama bin Laden.

[The Brain]

Depends. What's the plan for containment?

[Grey Fox]

Yes.

We do not have the resolve to actually what needs to be done to keep the Taliban out of power. We never had.

[DGuller]

The decision is right, but the timing is wrong.  This is the kind of decision you make just before you hand the office over to the other party.

[Admiral Yi]

One of my few criticisms of Obama was his decision to kick the can down the road.  The choice is much as Sav describes it.  Either stay forever or let the Taliban have the country.

[grumbler]

The Taliban won't get the whole country, of course.  They'll get the Pashtun majority of the country, and when they try to take over the Tajik and Hazera parts of the country they will be Taliban'd themselves.

Defeating the Taliban would require ethnic cleansing of the type that is just not acceptable these days.

[Tonitrus]

Yeah, being that Afghanistan is landlocked and entirely surrounded by countries who are opposed to everything we've been doing, there was always little hope for success.  Other than staying forever (just to keep their head above water), or throwing ROE out the window and fighting a literal war of extermination against the Taliban (Roman Empire style)...both unacceptable options.

And as China is already poised to back a Taliban government, it is likely their victory over any Northern Alliance-like resistance that might remain is a good bet (especially as much of that territory is already Taliban-controlled).

Our withdrawal has been pretty good...but a 1975-style abandoning of the embassy in Kabul is still not at all outside the realm of possibility.

Edit: Much like grumbles said...but I remain much more pessimistic about resistance to the Taliban.  Unlike us, I don't doubt they'd do some ethnic cleansing of the Tajiks/Hazeras.

[Admiral Yi]

One lesson I take from history is that bad guys are almost invariably better fighters than good guys.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The Taliban won't get the whole country, of course.  They'll get the Pashtun majority of the country, and when they try to take over the Tajik and Hazera parts of the country they will be Taliban'd themselves.

Defeating the Taliban would require ethnic cleansing of the type that is just not acceptable these days.

Yeah, I was going to post exactly this--it's misunderstood about the Taliban having support all over the country, Afghanistan's two largest ethnic groups are Pashtun and Tajik, the Taliban has no support amount Tajiks. Pakistan moved support to the Taliban in 1994 as it emerged, due to fall outs with some other Mujahedeen groups. Several of the other prominent Mujahedeen groups were in serious disarray from basically 20 years of fighting, the Taliban was arguably in a fresher position, and with a lot of outside support it was able to get most of the country other than the Northeast. The situation this time isn't quite like that, the Taliban has some outside support, but nothing like the relative support it had versus the other Mujahedeen in the mid-90s. Additionally the Taliban's entrenched enemies have a lot of support this time they did not have last time. The Taliban is going to do really well in the parts of Afghanistan that have basically been "under occupation" by the central government, due to their people completely rejecting the legitimacy of the central government. But not all of Afghanistan is like that. Areas that are not Pashtun majority and where tribal affiliations are distinctly not aligned with anything the Taliban is doing, will be very hostile operating territory for the Taliban. They'll be limited to terror attacks and raids into those areas, but occupations? No. They likely will suffer lots of counter raids and counter-terrorist attacks as well.

[Josquius]

China's turn to get Afghanistan'd?

[Tonitrus]

No, they might throw money/weapons at the Taliban in exchange for resources, but they're not going in there.

[Zanza]

Yes. GTFO of that place. Should have been done about 18 years earlier I guess.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally Adam Tooze's latest newsletter was on Afghanistan - from economic perspective largely - but I had no idea how catastrophic the Soviet war was:


As a share of the Afghan population it is up there with some of the worst conflicts/regimes of the 20th century but is not, I think, particularly widely known.

[The Minsky Moment]

The State Dept is releasing statement about their efforts to negotiate with the Taliban.  That makes no sense to me if serious as it is pretty obvious that a negotiation strategy that opens by ostentatiously abandoning your biggest source of leverage is suboptimal.

From which I conclude that either:
1) Biden screwed up big time, OR
2) The Biden people determined that negotiations would never achieve anything and decided to ditch, and the talk about negotiations is just fig leaves.

[grumbler]

Yeah, being that Afghanistan is landlocked and entirely surrounded by countries who are opposed to everything we've been doing, there was always little hope for success.  Other than staying forever (just to keep their head above water), or throwing ROE out the window and fighting a literal war of extermination against the Taliban (Roman Empire style)...both unacceptable options.

And as China is already poised to back a Taliban government, it is likely their victory over any Northern Alliance-like resistance that might remain is a good bet (especially as much of that territory is already Taliban-controlled).

Our withdrawal has been pretty good...but a 1975-style abandoning of the embassy in Kabul is still not at all outside the realm of possibility.

Edit: Much like grumbles said...but I remain much more pessimistic about resistance to the Taliban.  Unlike us, I don't doubt they'd do some ethnic cleansing of the Tajiks/Hazeras.

All of those minorities have ethnic fellows across the border, which is how they could Taliban the Taliban by slipping across borders when convenient and returning when convenient.  The US withdrawal represents an opportunity for more than just the Taliban.