Afghan Conflict: Russian Political Leader Meets With Massoud

[Chess Reloaded]

ASCOR? You can't possibly be serious. Are you? This “Afghan” firm which collected the data is literally founded by D3 Systems, a Virginian firm. It's operated by Americans who put the Afghan flag on the company and furnished findings for the war

Do you have a reason, other than the parent company being American, to believe that their methodologies are flawed or dishonest? And I imagine there staff is broadly Afghan, especially in local offices. Since you need to speak Pashto or Dari to poll Afghans properly.

Of course I do. America, the most powerful country in the world, funded, trained and equiped the Afghan military for twenty years. And as soon as America stopped holding their hand, a guerilla offense steamrolled the entire country all the way to the capital in a fortnight. That absolutely doesn't happen when popular support is for the government

[Fahran]

that is not quite what he means
Chess means that the Taliban have won the war and the NRF is, for all intents and purposes, using people's desire that the Taliban could be overthrown to maintain a smokescreen when the facts don't support that being a plausible outcome

which is my view as well tbf

(mind you i think the trump supporters did actually come closer than the NRF will )

That's the charitable interpretation, I suppose.

That said, they don't really need to outright win the war to remain a relevant consideration in the future of the country. If they can cling to regional holdouts and remain a nuissance, they could theoretically create safe zones where their political models are employed and wait to capitalize on crises of confidence that will no doubt beset the Taliban government. The Taliban managed to do this for twenty years on the losing side of a war. Mind you, Tajikistan isn't Pakistan, but it can create plenty of problems if it wants to. And can probably expect protection from neighboring powers like Iran and Russia.

[Fahran]

Of course I do. America, the most powerful country in the world, funded, trained and equiped the Afghan military for twenty years. And as soon as America stopped holding their hand, a guerilla offense steamrolled the entire country all the way to the capital in a fortnight. That absolutely doesn't happen when popular support is for the government

It's actually not unprecedented given the highly mobile nature of modern warfare. The US-backed Northern Alliance managed to defeat the conventional Taliban forces in the span of two months without a significant swing in public opinion. And the Americans provided less than five hundred troops. The main difference was air support, intelligence, and coordination. If anything, the Taliban were the stronger military force off paper in 2021, compared to the Afghan military, because they could count on higher levels of cohesion and morale. They're also highly decentralized, to the point that infighting was presumed likely until recently.

This isn't just me talking either. It's something military historians have pointed out. On multiple occasions. The articles may not seem relevant at first, but I'd invite you to examine the culture of Afghanistan and reflect on the sort of warfare that is likely to succeed there in the absence of foreign backing.

[Chess Reloaded]

Of course I do. America, the most powerful country in the world, funded, trained and equiped the Afghan military for twenty years. And as soon as America stopped holding their hand, a guerilla offense steamrolled the entire country all the way to the capital in a fortnight. That absolutely doesn't happen when popular support is for the government

It's actually not unprecedented given the highly mobile nature of modern warfare. The US-backed Northern Alliance managed to defeat the conventional Taliban forces in the span of two months without a significant swing in public opinion. And the Americans provided less than five hundred troops. The main difference was air support, intelligence, and coordination. If anything, the Taliban were the stronger military force off paper in 2021, compared to the Afghan military, because they could count on higher levels of cohesion and morale. They're also highly decentralized, to the point that infighting was presumed likely until recently.

This isn't just me talking either. It's something military historians have pointed out. On multiple occasions. The articles may not seem relevant at first, but I'd invite you to examine the culture of Afghanistan and reflect on the sort of warfare that is likely to succeed there in the absence of foreign backing.

The factor in the NA's defeat of the Taliban was overwhelming air support

[Fahran]

The factor in the NA's defeat of the Taliban was overwhelming air support

Air support likely expedited the process, but you need more than air support to win a conventional war. Infantry forces still remain foundational to any modern military if you're not glassing everything and moving on.

My point in all of this is that we shouldn't interpret the military superiority of the Taliban off-paper or the deep unpopularity of the IRA as sweeping support for the IEA. I imagine most Afghans are deeply religious and conservative, but there's not really any concrete indication that this necessitates them supporting the Taliban. Especially since the Taliban's most committed opponents have often been fellow Islamists. Some of them just as extreme. Like IS-K. And Hazara militias.

[Insaanistan]

Armed Civilians in Khost Farang District Start Uprising, Chanting “Long the the Mujahideen, Long Live Ahmad Massoud”

Source: Reddit

With a video of armed people in an area that looks like Baghlan were people can clearly be shown with guns and can clearly be heard chanting “Zindabad Mujahideen” and “Zindabad Ahmad Massoud!”

Also, I talked to Afghans with family in Baghlan…

[Mostrov]

‎

[Alcala-Cordel]

It's actually not unprecedented given the highly mobile nature of modern warfare. The US-backed Northern Alliance managed to defeat the conventional Taliban forces in the span of two months without a significant swing in public opinion. And the Americans provided less than five hundred troops. The main difference was air support, intelligence, and coordination. If anything, the Taliban were the stronger military force off paper in 2021, compared to the Afghan military, because they could count on higher levels of cohesion and morale. They're also highly decentralized, to the point that infighting was presumed likely until recently.

In what sense were the Taliban schooled in 'modern warfare'? They were essentially an unmechanized militia sans artillery, air support or a sophisticated command structure: if they had any of this, the Americans would have targetted it. I doubt there was any sophisticated plan of attack at all. The actual events suggest a complete collapse of the Afghani army once the underpinning support, the Americans, was removed. If it were a military triumph, then there would have been no mass surrenders. The ANA were defeated politically to paraphrase Clausewitz, not militarily. There are innumerable reasons for this, from the poor quality of troops, corruption, tribalism, over reliance on American forces to accomplish anything &c.

The blog of a historian of Rome and a book concerning the standing armies of Arab counties aren't particularly relevant. The latter, aside from the point that Pashtuns aren't Arab, mainly deals with conventional conflicts and has little to say regarding politics.

They did get US training back in the Cold War.

[Mostrov]

‎

[Evil Wolf]

This resistance business is getting to be as bad as the Trump supporters talking about how he'll get back the election Biden won and stay in office after all

Remember that time that Trump supporters aided a terror group that killed 3,000 foreigners in less than 3 hours and then started an insurgency that resulted in 170,000+ deaths? Me neither. Remember the time the NRF did that? No, I can't recall that either.

Guess that must have been the Taliban.

[Kumarinadu]

Do you have a reason, other than the parent company being American, to believe that their methodologies are flawed or dishonest? And I imagine there staff is broadly Afghan, especially in local offices. Since you need to speak Pashto or Dari to poll Afghans properly.

Of course I do. America, the most powerful country in the world, funded, trained and equiped the Afghan military for twenty years. And as soon as America stopped holding their hand, a guerilla offense steamrolled the entire country all the way to the capital in a fortnight. That absolutely doesn't happen when popular support is for the government

You’ll never believe who they funded, trained and equipped 20 years before that.

[Evil Wolf]

You’ll never believe who they funded, trained and equipped 20 years before that.

The correct answer is mujahedeen groups that largely became the Northern Alliance, with some exceptions.

The bad meme answer is "tHe TaLiBaN" which didn't exist until 1994, well after America stopped giving a shit. The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was largely funded by Pakistan, both times.

[Kumarinadu]

You’ll never believe who they funded, trained and equipped 20 years before that.

The correct answer is mujahedeen groups that largely became the Northern Alliance, with some exceptions.

The bad meme answer is "tHe TaLiBaN" which didn't exist until 1994, well after America stopped giving a shit. The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was largely funded by Pakistan, both times.

The Mujahideen groups absolutely funneled into what became the Taliban

[Gallia-]

Kemalists are not Muslims generally, neither was Kemal, he was an explicit atheist. So I don't see your point. Turkey has offered to recognize the Taliban but only if they can lease the airport and have soldiers there which won't happen

First of all, review your historical knowledge. The great leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk opened the Turkish Grand National Assembly by reciting the Quran. Nobody can question anybody's religion. The views of the Turkish government and the views of the Turkish nation are not in common. The pro-European social democrat Kemalists will not allow terrorist organizations in Europe. The only purpose of the Taliban is to handcuff the feet of European women, but do not forget the year 1923 ! 1000 years from now, we will continue to fight against political Islam. Social democrat Kemalists will defeat political Islam with the education sword of Europe because political Islam is a universal problem. Hayatta en hakiki mürşit ilimdir

Turkey is astounding because it's simultaneously a national Islamist state like Qatar and a atheist secular leftist state like the USSR.

Erdogan is great at playing both sides. Mad props.

[Kumarinadu]

Not solely, but still. Pakistan did fund the Taliban and still does but American support is definitely a factor in the Taliban’s rise to prominence. It’s contrarianism to think otherwise.

[Evil Wolf]

The Mujahideen groups absolutely funneled into what became the Taliban

Oh, some did, but there are a lot who did so after the fact and purely because the Taliban won. Jalaluddin Haqqani is a great example of this.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is another one who flipped flopped all over the place with allegiances.

[Gallia-]

Of course I do. America, the most powerful country in the world, funded, trained and equiped the Afghan military for twenty years. And as soon as America stopped holding their hand, a guerilla offense steamrolled the entire country all the way to the capital in a fortnight. That absolutely doesn't happen when popular support is for the government

It's actually not unprecedented given the highly mobile nature of modern warfare.

It definitely is lol. The only other people to suffer so badly was Iraq and they actually fought ISIS. Afghans absolutely prefer Taliban rule to...whatever the hell America was running out of Kabul that could not be described as "pederast kleptocracy".

It's not dissimilar to Vietnam except the South Vietnamese were conditioned to be afraid of the North, when the North wasn't actually that bad (and in the long run turned out to be quite good), whereas Afghans can't really be conditioned to be afraid of their brothers, cousins, uncles, and other extended family members in Pakistan who are fighting.

The factor in the NA's defeat of the Taliban was overwhelming air support

Air support likely expedited the process, but you need more than air support to win a conventional war.

Nah, you don't. Azerbaijan's retaking of lost land to Artsakh from the 1992 war should be evidence enough of that lmao.

[Evil Wolf]

It definitely is lol. The only other people to suffer so badly was Iraq and they actually fought ISIS. Afghans absolutely prefer Taliban rule to...whatever the hell America was running out of Kabul that could not be described as "pederast kleptocracy".

Well, if the Taliban is really so popular, I am sure there will be little risk of anyone launching a rebellion or insurgency against them. I mean, if they were unpopular, we'd be seeing signs of resistance, civil disobedience, and armed rebellion all over the place, and we've only see that...well, just about all around the country at the moment. Even the Jihadis are attacking the Taliban.

[Picairn]

That's an extraordinary extrapolation. As per your article they don't get paid by the month, they get $10 per day of fighting. That's not the same as $300 a month at all

Hey buddy, how many days does a month have?

and the article actually says this.

Lieutenant Colonel Dave Hylton, a spokesman for the NATO mission to train the Afghan security forces, says that's not an apples-to-apples comparison. His information is that the Taliban pays about $10 per day for fighters -- presumably that's where McChrystal's $300 monthly figure came from. But that's allegedly not year-round: the Taliban, according to NATO, don't pay when they're not fighting, while the Afghan security forces budget for a full twelve months. Plus, if a soldier or policeman is in a "hazardous zone," Hylton says, he gets an additional $75.

But that means our green soldier or cop working in Taliban country while the insurgents keep the heat on him is raking in... $240. He might be forgiven for asking himself why he should risk his life for $60 per month less than what his neighbor makes from the Taliban, even if the Taliban won't pay him when they don't need him. (Is that what passes for flex time in Kandahar?) And that's without a big bribe offer to walk off the job.

Not year-round =/= not monthly, unless you don't understand English.

The article also uses soldiers in the Afghan army for under three years as a baseline, which is not average in a war of twenty years. Their experienced soldiers make a lot more than $300 a month actually

Do you understand that not all ANA soldiers are 20-year veterans? Like, you think all ANA soldiers are immortals or some shit?

[Gallia-]

It definitely is lol.

Well, if the Taliban is really so popular, I am sure there will be little risk of anyone launching a rebellion or insurgency against them.

Indeed, there doesn't seem to be much of one. It would hardly be the first time there are lies, media manipulations, and fabrications invented to support a false narrative.

Because the Taliban don't support women getting university degrees and support women having children and raising children at home to support an agrarian economy instead. Because the Taliban don't support kleptocratic pederasts and murderous warlords settling their disputes with the locals by shooting them dead and claiming they're Taliban to the cheering of bearded commandos in fortified compounds in Helmand. Because the Taliban are a bunch of Pashtuns who embarrassed America and its allies by disproving the idea that liberal secular democracy can be spread by a B-52 bomb bay. I guess all that means they're ISIS, though.

Never mind that they're fighting ISIS and seem to be about as ordinary as you'd expect a Pashtun state to be.

They're no more fanatical or bad in actual policy decisions than any "Free Syrian Army" gaggle of Salafists and Islamists that the Ba'athists are fighting. If the USA had any ideological consistency then it absolutely would be supporting Assad against Turkey and ISIS/FSA fanatics, after all the Ba'athists are the people who want women to go to university, become literate, and become governors (in fact this sort of ideological imperialism started the war in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1978), but it literally cannot even decide what it wants to believe. America just does stuff with no coherent, sensible end game because its leaders are weak, its ideological foundations are nonsensical, and its practical policies are poorly implemented.

So between the whole "America tells you do six different mutually exclusive things, shoots you when you do six of the things anyway," and "Taliban say do this or we'll shoot you," then you pick the Taliban any day of the week.

Simple. No matter how bad the Taliban are to Western sensibilities or aesthetic preferences, they are still more coherent and more sensible than American bureaucrats with their literal alien ideology. The only people who identify with them are kleptocrats who can abuse the system to get away with various excesses (rape, kidnapping, murder, among others), Westerners who don't realize what they're enabling and won't care in a year anyway, or lunatics who have no ideological basis beyond "the Americans let me kill people and it's fun".

So yeah I'd say they're popular. They might not be the platonic ideal of Afghan governance, but they're definitely popular among the realistic alternatives of "being bombed because you went to a cousin's wedding" and "Taliban".

I mean, if they were unpopular, we'd be seeing signs of resistance, civil disobedience, and armed rebellion all over the place,

We see none of that, you're correct.

and we've only see that...well, just about all around the country at the moment.

Except that doesn't actually happen. Where are the protests? The rebellion? Afghanistan is probably safer than Northern Iraq or Eastern Turkey at the moment, and those places aren't undergoing tremendous civil strife. Outside of a handful of die hards (maybe? who knows? they may not even be in the country) there isn't much fighting or protest going on. People seem to be just going about their lives while village headmen negotiate how much tax they'll need to pay the Taliban.

There's certainly no Syria situation where there's active resistance to the Taliban lol. Control of Afghanistan is based around control of villages and the mountain paths through connecting them. The Taliban absolutely have this.

Whatever resistance exists will be a bunch of salty bois in Kabul getting beat up by Taliban police and some random cave dwelling nomads in one or two provinces shooting back at periodic opium runs. The former will be easily cowed and the latter will just be a ordinary job hazard like a rock slide or something. Until someone big like the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras all conglomerate again and try to wage war from the northern part of the country (possible but that isn't happening right now nor soon) the Taliban have won. That may change in the future. Or it might not. Certainly the past 20 years of US occupation and its incoherent ideological crusaderism have soured anyone's mouth on the prospect of supporting foreigners from Uzbekistan or Tajikistan again.

Even the Jihadis are attacking the Taliban.

Not sure if you noticed but the "jihadis" (ISIS-K? what are you talking about? presumably ISIS-K though?) under Muhammad Rasul have been fighting the Taliban for about 5 years. You didn't notice, though. You were probably surprised when the Taliban took over Afghanistan. I wasn't surprised by the outcome, just by the speed, I'd assumed they'd have taken another fortnight than they actually did to take Kabul, but not even the kleptocracy's heartland was willing to be defended. Big oof.

[Evil Wolf]

-Snip-

So many bad takes in this, it's hard to count. First, I guess the protests in Kabul that are well documented don't count as protests. Second, Haqqani bitch slapping Baradar the Butcher in the Presidential Palace probably isn't a very good sign of Taliban stability, but I suppose that doesn't really address popularity, I just wanted to talk about it because I found it hilarious.

Of course, the NRF still existed, so that's a pretty major resistance less than a month into the Taliban occupation, and the NRF still fought the Taliban. They also still continue to exist and fight the Taliban according to a lot of sources, including the Taliban themselves, who while claiming that the NRF are totally defeated and dead, also weirdly keep sending out new and recent clips of them fighting the NRF, who is suppose to be dead and defeated.

Also, I love how you say there is "no resistance to the Taliban" and then still acknowledge that Daesh-K is actively fighting the Taliban. Big oof indeed.

[Gallia-]

First, I guess the protests in Kabul that are well documented don't count as protests.

Lol.

so that's a pretty major resistance less than a month into the Taliban occupation

Wild considering that article seems to suggest they don't exist. If they do, they're in a pretty precarious position since they have no real links to outside backers by land and aren't exactly helping themselves in that regard by trying to peace out with the Taliban. It makes them look weak. Maybe they are?

They also still continue to exist and fight the Taliban according to a lot of sources, including the Taliban themselves, who while claiming that the NRF are totally defeated and dead, also weirdly keep sending out new and recent clips of them fighting the NRF, who is suppose to be dead and defeated.

How many villages do they control? How many headmen have agreed to back them? No one knows, but it's clear right now the Taliban have a lot of general support simply because they're strong and their opposition is incredibly weak. That seems to remain likely for the near future. Maybe in a year or two it will change. Maybe it won't.

Also, I love how you say there is "no resistance to the Taliban" and then still acknowledge that Daesh-K is actively fighting the Taliban. Big oof indeed.

So you support ISIS-K simply because they fight the Taliban? Wild. I thought you were mad the Taliban wasn't supporting women's rights but I guess you're mad that they're too moderate and not international enough.

Sorry about the mischaracterization but you need to make that clearer earlier.

[Evil Wolf]

Wild considering that article seems to suggest they don't exist.

You hear it hear first. The NRF never existed. Rumors about an armed organized rebellion that would suggest the Taliban don't actually have wide spread popularity? Western lies. Never happened. When you see Taliban tweets about it, those were really CIA agents.

So you support ISIS-K simply because they fight the Taliban? Wild.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about Afghanistan, has the focus now shifted to me? I don't support Daesh, obviously, but you're the one making the claim that the Taliban have all this support in the country and everything is roses and sunshine. When I point out that Daesh is attacking the Taliban, in spite of the peace offering and amnesty the Taliban offered Daesh fighters, apparently that can only mean I somehow support Daesh.

Also, where are you getting your figures on how popular the Taliban are? Is it the same Taliban twitter account you get all your hot takes from?

[Gallia-]

Wild considering that article seems to suggest they don't exist.

You hear it hear first. The NRF never existed. Rumors about an armed organized rebellion that would suggest the Taliban don't actually have wide spread popularity? Western lies. Never happened. When you see Taliban tweets about it, those were really CIA agents.

Rather, whatever resistance existed was rapidly extinguished for a variety of reasons, not the least of which may be the fact that they decided to make their stronghold in the middle of enemy territory where no outside country could help them, possibly leading to the leaders of any resistance either fleeing the country similar to the former Supreme Kleptocrat Ashraf Ghani or pleading for the Taliban to stop attacking them on Facebook.

They might both be true. Perhaps Massoud is rapidly tweeting from Uzbekistan. It would certainly be smarter than sticking around in Panjshir.

So you support ISIS-K simply because they fight the Taliban? Wild.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about Afghanistan, has the focus now shifted to me?

One would assume the main reason you would oppose the Taliban is because of some aesthetic preference differences that you hold, yes. Either you're incapable of viewing it objectively (i.e. that the Taliban are probably going to govern Afghanistan in a manner better for the common folks than anyone in Kabul would) or you don't actually care about the common people (which would be weird, since the US ideological talking point was that it was bringing "democracy" and "freedom" to Afghanistan, whatever that means in actuality).

If you have some real world reason to not like the Taliban, I suggest you expand that to either include "all Afghans" if it means something like "they don't like the gays and only want women to have kids" or constrict that to "radical Salafist Jihadists from Qatar/Kuwait/Saudi Arabia" if it's something like "they're Islamist terrorists we've been fighting since they helped bin Laden blow up the Twin Towers" or try to elaborate your exact reasons for preferring the Ghani kleptocracy to the Taliban.

I don't like the Taliban, I'm a Leninist, and my ideal Afghanistan would be something like a lithium strip mining/poppy growing field linked to Moscow or Beijing via railroad and protected by the 1st Afghan Armored Army, but I don't get to have nice things so I learned to live with it. I can at least thumb my nose at the USA that the fact that the only reason the DRA collapsed is because the USSR did and stopped giving them steady supplies of tanks and ammo. America only lets its weird ideological colonies collapse by choice.

I don't support Daesh, obviously, but you're the one making the claim that the Taliban have all this support is the country and everything is roses and sunshine.

No, I'm making the claim that the Taliban conquered Afghanistan and remain in control of it because most Afghans prefer the Taliban to Kabul's kleptocrats. It's really simple, honestly. You'll have to pony up some evidence to counter this by:

1) Proving that the majority of Afghans, as in the bulk of the country, are actively rejecting Taliban rule and not simply doing that thing you do where you begrudgingly pay your taxes (this isn't resistance). In Afghan terms this usually means tribal or regional militias blowing up convoys, shooting people, and lynching local governors. That hasn't happened. To the contrary, the opposite has happened: the Taliban have been lynching local governors, disarming tribal militias, and blowing up convoys.

2) That the Taliban, by some miracle, were only allowed to drive up to Jalalabad because of the sheer, inconceivable-yet-possibly-plausible-in-a-technothriller-sense of apathy that comes from being "outfoxed" in "modern maneuver warfare" by some dudes doing about 20-30 mph on a rough gravel road and stopping long enough to have lunch with the local headman before moving onto the next village, entirely out of some sort of spellbinding machinations of the Taliban and not simply by the fact that the ANA didn't really exist and wasn't really popular with anyone or anything in the country.

Right now all observed evidence makes the case that the Afghan people as a whole were simply sick of war, and didn't want to fight as much as the USA didn't want to fight, and the ANA was simply a paycheck machine designed to pump money into someone's bank account and pay their debts. It also probably protected a lot of child rapists and kleptocrats buying bitcoins or selling heroin on the Silk Road for a few years too. The Taliban offered an easy way out to accept a form of governance that was much closer to a natural fit with the local conditions of the place.

Whether that will remain the case is unlikely, nothing is static, but the Taliban seem like they will change according to Afghan preferences. The fact that Afghan preferences don't align with American preferences despite 20 years of killing people at weddings and protecting pederast child kidnappers from lynch mobs seems to upset a lot of people on the Internet though, as if the outcome were going to be any different.

Incidentally all of this was understood by individuals, organizations, and working groups in the US government at different times, especially the part about lynch mobs and protecting pederasts, since it tended to crop up a bunch in various legal proceedings and CENTCOM issued special orders about it in memos over the years. It just sorta ignored these as if they would be brushed under the rug and not come back to bite it in the butt at some point instead of addressing them (perhaps by asking Afghans what they think, but this is beyond science I suppose, though these are the same people who couldn't figure out how to build a school right).

I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of moral injuries from Afghanistan come from the fact that the US was running what amounted to a protection-racket-cum-human-trafficking operation and just told GI Joe to suck it up.

When I point out that Daesh is attacking the Taliban, in spite of the peace offering and amnesty the Taliban offered Daesh fighters, apparently that can only mean I somehow support Daesh.

Good. Taliban fighting ISIS is something the US and Taliban can agree on. Maybe the USA can use their drone armies to help the Taliban somehow?

Also, where are you getting your figures on how popular the Taliban are?

Observation. What more evidence do you need than what you see?

Is it the same Taliban twitter account you get all your hot takes from?

It's the fact that no one raised an army to fight them when they were happily strolling through Jalalabad and Kabul without nary a shot fired. Lol.

If Afghans don't like the Taliban so much how come they didn't pick up all those guns America gave them and fight the Taliban? They certainly weren't lacking in guns shipped, trucks used, and helicopters gifted for the past 20 years. What were they doing with all of these things? They apparently aren't broken, since the Taliban flew the Afghan's helicopters just fine, at least a couple of them anyway. Perhaps something was fundamentally broken with how the US puppet state's elite apparatus governed its territory and the welfare and sociopolitical underpinnings of the common folk. Perhaps kleptocracies aren't good at fighting foreign invaders? But the US kleptocracy was so fundamentally divorced from the common beliefs and religious backing of the typical Pashtun Afghan that they couldn't even form a hardcore body of troops like the communists did in '89 or the South Vietnamese did with their resistance to the PAVN.

It's a pretty astounding defeat for the typical American view of the world but naturally the US will view this as something wrong with Afghans, not something to do with its inability to observe the obvious.

[Evil Wolf]

It's the fact that no one raised an army to fight them when they were happily strolling through Jalalabad and Kabul without nary a shot fired. Lol.

At minimum the ANA suffered 2,000+ casualties in the 3 months of fighting during the 2021 Taliban Offensive.

That's a lot of soldiers who died while supposedly not firing a shot. Should be noted that non-government militia groups are not included in that estimation, so the count is likely fighter.

One would assume the main reason you would oppose the Taliban is because of some aesthetic preference differences that you hold, yes

I largely oppose the Taliban because I hold them directly responsible for 9/11. Their attacks on the people they supposedly wish to govern just ads fuel to the fire. They perpetuated 20 years of focused campaigns of terror against civilian populations. I don't think, for example, murdering a folk singer for basically existing is really something anyone should support and celebrate. Or bombing kids. The Taliban seemed to bomb a lot of kids when I was over there, and they didn't even have the excuse of it being airpower from 10,000 feet and all that "collateral damage" jazz. They likely had eyes on the child when they flipped that switch.

Tell me again how the Taliban represent "all Afghans" and how you can just observe how popular they are. You seem to confuse just wanting the suffering to end with "popular support".