Has Biden Made the Right Choice in Afghanistan?

[The Brain]

In the interest of spamming the thread: if you look at places like Latin America or Africa nation-states are few and far between.

[DGuller]

The larger the tribe is, the more it relies on a certain level of trust to keep functioning.  Afghan-style tribes may be like cockroaches; they'll survive anything, but amount to nothing.

[The Brain]

The larger the tribe is, the more it relies on a certain level of trust to keep functioning.  Afghan-style tribes may be like cockroaches; they'll survive anything, but amount to nothing.

Sometimes I envy you. Your tribe is easily recognizable (hardbass and Adidas tracksuits) and numbers many millions.

[The Minsky Moment]

The larger the tribe is, the more it relies on a certain level of trust to keep functioning.  Afghan-style tribes may be like cockroaches; they'll survive anything, but amount to nothing.

The Taliban has proven to be quite effective

[Valmy]

The larger the tribe is, the more it relies on a certain level of trust to keep functioning.  Afghan-style tribes may be like cockroaches; they'll survive anything, but amount to nothing.

The Taliban has proven to be quite effective

Maybe but the Taliban is not a tribe.

[Tonitrus]

In all of the madness, a feel-good photo from the evacuations (and noc to my fellow USAF bros):

[The Minsky Moment]

Maybe but the Taliban is not a tribe.

They are an ethnically coherent group sharing an ideology, religious belief and sense of communal connection. Looks like a tribe to me.

[alfred russel]

Maybe but the Taliban is not a tribe.

They are an ethnically coherent group sharing an ideology, religious belief and sense of communal connection. Looks like a tribe to me.

Movements like the Ustase would be a tribe under that definition. It is too broad.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The Taliban could be seen conceptually as a tribe, in the specific sense of Pashtun tribes, they are not a singular tribe, they have members from a number of the major Pashtun tribes. They have a smaller membership of non-Pashtuns, that has varied over time (they have had times when they've been more open to non-Pashtuns and times when not so much.)

[Admiral Yi]

Does anyone know off hand what percentage of the Afghan population is made up of Pashtuns?  I have a figure like 40% dancing in my head.

[Sheilbh]

Does anyone know off hand what percentage of the Afghan population is made up of Pashtuns?  I have a figure like 40% dancing in my head.

I think that's about right - somewhere from the high 30s to 50% but we don't really know.

But because most of the other groups speak Dari that's actually the majority language while Pashto is mainly spoken by Pashtuns.

[The Larch]

Does anyone know off hand what percentage of the Afghan population is made up of Pashtuns?  I have a figure like 40% dancing in my head.

Wiki says 42%.

[viper37]

Does anyone know off hand what percentage of the Afghan population is made up of Pashtuns?  I have a figure like 40% dancing in my head.

42%, I checked earlier today.  If only your memory of names was as good as your memory of numbers!

EDIT: Ah, grilled by Larch.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think at least some of the estimates of ethnic % and tribal maps date to the pre-Soviet times, FWIW. So I do think there's a little inaccuracy in some of those numbers. Pashtun is definitely the plurality ethnic group in the country though. I think there may be less Tajiks and Uzbeks in country than officially believed.

[viper37]

Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S. Miscalculations

An Afghan military that did not believe in itself and a U.S. effort that Mr. Biden, and most Americans, no longer believed in brought an ignoble end to America's longest war.

WASHINGTON — President Biden's top advisers concede they were stunned by the rapid collapse of the Afghan army in the face of an aggressive, well-planned offensive by the Taliban that now threatens Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.

The past 20 years show they should not have been.

If there is a consistent theme over two decades of war in Afghanistan, it is the overestimation of the results of the $83 billion the United States has spent since 2001 training and equipping the Afghan security forces and an underestimation of the brutal, wily strategy of the Taliban. The Pentagon had issued dire warnings to Mr. Biden even before he took office about the potential for the Taliban to overrun the Afghan army, but intelligence estimates, now shown to have badly missed the mark, assessed it might happen in 18 months, not weeks.

Commanders did know that the afflictions of the Afghan forces had never been cured: the deep corruption, the failure by the government to pay many Afghan soldiers and police officers for months, the defections, the soldiers sent to the front without adequate food and water, let alone arms. In the past several days, the Afghan forces have steadily collapsed as they battled to defend ever shrinking territory, losing Mazar-i-Sharif, the country's economic engine, to the Taliban on Saturday.

Mr. Biden's aides say that the persistence of those problems reinforced his belief that the United States could not prop up the Afghan government and military in perpetuity. In Oval Office meetings this spring, he told aides that staying another year, or even five, would not make a substantial difference and was not worth the risks.

In the end, an Afghan force that did not believe in itself and a U.S. effort that Mr. Biden, and most Americans, no longer believed would alter the course of events combined to bring an ignoble close to America's longest war. The United States kept forces in Afghanistan far longer than the British did in the 19th century, and twice as long as the Soviets — with roughly the same results.
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