1944

and in other news,

The Taliban have now forbidden women from attending Universities, expanding their education ban.

"Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Tuesday banned female students from attending universities effective immediately in the latest edict cracking down on women’s rights and freedoms.

Despite initially promising a more moderate rule respecting rights for women’s and minorities, the Taliban have widely implemented their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.

They have banned girls from middle school and high school, restricted women from most employment and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gyms."

1945

A little surprised it took this long. Has any real internal opposition to the Taliban started to emerge?

1946

Women in Afghanistan have not only been deprived of a university education in their own country but are now being stopped from studying abroad as the Taliban refuses to issue them with graduation certificates.

A number of women in the northern province of Balkh told Amu that they want to continue their university studies abroad but that the Taliban has stopped distributing university graduation certificates to women; thereby preventing them from applying for foreign scholarships.

1947

Schools should just admit them anyway, after perhaps a perfunctory discussion. The downside possibly admitting someone with less qualifications is far outweighed by the moral good you’d be doing.

Assuming of course the troglodytes in charge would even let them leave the country.

1948
1949
1950

I watched part 1 of 3 part Frontline documentary, “Taliban and America”. Exploring why the US lost, by veteran documentary Martin Smith. It was excellent. I suspect that unless Ken Burns does a series, it will remain the definitive documentary on Afghanistans for many decades.

It was fascinating to watch Martin go back to the same places in Afghanistan that he had reported on 5, 10, 15 years earlier. My early impression is that we had nowhere near enough troops to be successful. But probably equally important, the wrong attitude of US troops spent too much time lecturing Afghans and not nearly enough time listening to them.

Highly recommended.

1951

Imagine that, not listening. Who would have thunk it?

I’ve probably told this story before, but I’m old, so I can tell it again. In 2004 I went to a Connections conference, some simulation thing the Air Force put on in Rome, NY. It was a bunch of presentations on, well, a bunch of topics related in some way to sims. I got to play in a cool umpired wargame, and best of all, got to hang with John Tiller, one of the truly great gentlemen of the wargaming world (I was lucky enough to meet him again a few years later when he flew his plane up here and we had lunch, too.)

But the thing I remember most maybe was the presentation by some contractor whose name escapes me that was giving an analysis of our successful one-and-done conquest of Afghanistan. They waxed lyrical about how we did in a few months what the USSR couldn’t do in nearly a decade. They had charts and graphs and whatnot showing how our special operations forces had hit here and taken there and all that stuff. Lots of rah-rah and back slapping.

Not everyone in the room though was as sanguine about the situation. I turned to the person next to me–cannot recall who it was–and said something to the effect of “call me in a year and let’s see how things are going.” The whole premise of the “mission accomplished” vibe was erroneous. The people giving the presentation seemed to believe that the challenge had been to kill X number of bad guys and occupy Y number of locations. Once that was done, voila, see, no bad guys running around! We win!

An utter and total disregard of every lesson not only from the USSR’s time in country, but also our own Vietnam experience. Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid… But then, I think this company made a living supporting special ops so there is that.

1952
1953

That sums it up very well. Afghanistan is a study of how once we begin to compromise on the fundamentals, everything starts sliding to a point where we have no idea what we’re doing in the end.

But there’s also a more philosophical question of whether we could have succeeded if we had been smarter about it.

Another word for an occupation that lasts too long is colonization, which is generally not popular with the people who are being colonized, and I don’t know how you avoid that, unless you’re extremely polite and go home as soon as you’ve toppled whoever you wanted to topple - and even then that comes with a fresh hell of it’s own, because you’ve basically left that country to its fate, which includes every other state actor that wants to screw with you after the fact, as we’ve seen in Iraq.

That’s not strategy, that’s just gambling.

So at least the first fundamental rule that we should never allow our leaders to compromise on ever again is: If you’re thinking about war, think again. Then think about it again. Then think about it again. Maybe think about it again. Only move if it is absolutely essential to your country in the future.

1954

Pretty much. In Afghanistan, about the only thing I can think of that might have worked, and only “might have,” is if we had left after eradicating the Al Qaeda bases as best we could, as a response to 9/11. Had we done that, leaving whatever government was there with the dire warning that we could be back whenever we needed to if stuff like that happened again, maybe we could have now been no worse off and have saved a lot of lives. But that’s uncertain too.

No matter how you slice it, I feel that no one on our side really thought the whole thing out. On top of the visceral burning desire to hit back at someone, It seems there was a sort of general assumption that, once the “bad guys” were taken out, “good things” would happen. Which is about par for the course for US policy over the last fifty years or so.

1955

You’re talking about a country where the minority that wields an unbalanced amount of power is made up people with a personally-invested invisible sky friend, a strong belief in “trickle-down” economics, etc.

Magical thinking is kind of our national forte.

1956

I think the idea that we could have won in Afghanistan (or Iraq or Vietnam) is fundamentally wrong, and the debate about how we should have done it right just drives home the fact that we apparently still haven’t learned the lesson.

1957

Yeah, once you frame the mission incorrectly from “terrorist hunt” to “regime change/nationbuilding” you’re already in trouble.

It is totally uncertain, but I think we could’ve achieved roughly the same thing with a far smaller security force supporting special operations.

Everybody just panicked after 9/11. It would’ve taken a leader many magnitudes greater than Bush to avoid this kind of mistake. We were at the part in the movie where the President gives the big speech and throws everything he has at the aliens.

I do think there’s a lot of competence in the US government, but there’s also a hierarchy, and if that hierarchy decides on some cowboy shit - based on magical thinking - then none of the competence matters.

1958

I remember when I was in Afghanistan I did think the whole endeavour was quite pointless from a grand strategy perspective.

Obviously I didn’t talk about it on the ground and, hypocritically perhaps, I had a great time there.

But I always thought thay if the enemy were the Taliban, then why weren’t we going after them?

If the enemy was the opium dealers, why weren’t we blocking all the access routes etc?

Why weren’t we blocking the roads into Pakistan?

Because all that was gappening is maybe we’d chase some Talib out of our area, they’d regroup south and then come back.

The whole thing felt like a giant, and expensive, police action, which i suppose it was.

But, I enjoyed myself.

Was a bit odd seeing things like the surveillance balloons going up, providing force protection for the balloon operators (who were earning 3 tomes as much as me, at what seemed a fraction of the risk!) And not building any roads or anything.

And the country itself. So dry and the air had a bit of shit woth every breath, then the rains would come and they’d be areas of green, like by the canal.

Simply beautiful.

Or the patrol where I cleared a path of IEDs, found myself in a paddock, with a cow, lots of cow turds and…pomegranate trees.

It was, again, surreal and beautiful.

And the cow thought I was an idiot, much like english cows…

Edit: or how the local kids would go crazy for pencils, colouring pencils and boiled sweets.

1959