Afghan Conflict: “We Will Conquer Iran Soon” -Taliban

[Nociav]

No it hasn't.

I've pointed out concrete ways in which it has damaged institutional access and harmed the prospects of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of vulnerable people already. I could even elaborate on a lot of the social dysfunctions the Islamist approach to policy has introduced or exacerbated in countries where it is embraced, including both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

You cut up my sentence and cut out the context ie. your post. You said:

In many cases, pursuit of conventions promoted and supported by these institutions has made many Afghans worse off in real terms.

I said no they haven't. Peace and order is a very real benefit. Afghans are better off with peace than they are with war.

The Taliban's ruthless drive for peace and order produced a very real net gain, peace and order.

There's an ongoing insurgency in Afghanistan. Hazaras and women's rights activists are being murdered by local Taliban. Taliban patrols are being ambushed and beheaded by IS-K. The NRF is still likely active in its heartlands around Panjshir, continuing resistance in the mountains. Given the Taliban contributed significantly to the absence of peace and order, I'm not sure we should give them credit for not waging a war against the government because they became the government. Feels a lot like praising the Nazis for bringing peace to the streets of Berlin or Munich.

There isn't ongoing insurgency that matters. No insurgency on the Taliban's level. Hazaras and women activists aren't being murdered. Your exaggerating the few incidents into some nationwide campaign. Taliban patrols are not being ambushed and beheaded by ISKP. Your once again exaggerating a few ambushes and a beheadings of civilians. Stop propagandizing ISIS. The NRF is defeated. I only know of one confirmed NRF attack since the 6th of September. Stop propagandizing the NRF. Things are more peaceful since the Taliban took over. Read here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/worl ... ssoud.html

and here:

https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en ... f-history/

Your creating a false equivalence by comparing the Taliban to The Nazis.

These matter substantially more than being able to drink beer or wear a skirt in Kabul.

Do they matter more than having a right to be educated or receive adequate medical attention? What about access to food?

Peace matters far more than access to education. Your line of reasoning goes:

"A teenage girl being educated in a bombed out forward operating base and risking being killed by an IED or a stray bullet" is better than "a teenage girl sat at home with no education but not risking their lives by IEDs and bullets".

Medicine and food is on the world. Afghanistan never had any self-reliance in these sectors. The world is to blame for the catastrophe.

And, if the Taliban reenacts what they did the last time around and what they promised to do as they assumed control of the country, we can expect sexual and ethnic violence to increase as well.

Really interested to see where you've gotten the data to draw this conclusion, the reasoning behind it, and your supporting arguments. Then again, your probably trying to divert this discussion.

Stop throwing around the word genocide. Your devaluing it. The Holocaust was a genocide. There's no Holocaust in Afghanistan.

I feel like genocidal is the right adjective to describe a group that murdered 8,000 civilians based on their ethnic and religious background, that occasionally conducted killings and war rapes against civilians based on ethnic and religious background between 2013 and 2018, and that has been summarily executing unarmed men based on their ethnic and religious background since they assumed power. You don't have to be a Nazi to be engaged in genocidal policies or to be genocidal.

1. Instead of admitting your in the wrong to so lazily throw the word genocide around, you've doubled down.

2. Instead of throwing around numbers and hinting at things. Lay clear what your talking about. Where were 8000 civilians killed for their ethnicity? Where's your proof they have a policy of killing summarily on an ethnic basis? Stop appealing to most people's ignorance of Afghanistan's nuance and start posting with your arguments, facts, and reasoning laid bare the first time.

Weening off Afghanistan from aid is possible. Kick up aid to NGOs,

This is literally still aid.

Once again, stop cutting up my posts when subsequent lines are incredibly relevant.

Fair. But, again, this isn't a long-term economic solution.

Read above.

I'm not certain Afghanistan actually have strong centralized institutions at the national level anymore. Those have been effectively destroyed by firty years of off and on civil wars. That's part of why I tend to advocate for regional power bases under the moral guidance of a widely-respected leading figure as a means of eventually creating alliances and paving the road for institutions that are agreeable to as many Afghans as possible. At present, the only one everyone seems to agree on Islam - and the Islamists still fight each other all the time.

As you admit, the only institutions still left are the Islamic ones. There is an Islamic government in charge. The Taliban have a proven track record of running a highly centralised state. What is there to doubt? The Taliban have the backing of just about every Mullah in the country.

I mean... in practice, the Taliban is often decentralized - at least if we're hospitable in how we characterize a lot of the purges that seem to have taken place in the last few months. I doubt Akhunzada or Baradar are directly ordering hits on women's rights activists or Hazaras. If they are, yeah, I don't want them to have more money.

The Taliban are not decentralised. I don't know how anyone can draw that conclusion when we have 27 years of history that says otherwise. What the Taliban do have is a level of autonomy for their commanders which exists out of necessity for fighting as an insurgency. They've been purging and shuffling their ranks ever since September and have been progressing towards more centralised control.

[Fahran]

So if the stance of the United States is that it can do anything it wants, anywhere it wants, and the only justification it needs is that it is opposed to the ideology of the regimes governing the countries in whose internal affairs they are interfering,

I don't think that's the stance of the United States, and it's not really my stance either.

what makes you different from Eichmann?

I didn't participate in the genocide of millions of people?

From my perspective, both of you are a bunch of murderous foreigners who want to come in here and kill people like me.

Unless you conspired to murder thousands of people on 9/11 or shoot school girls in the head for funsies, I don't want you to be killed - emphasis on the word killed as opposed to murdered - which I also do not want you to be. Kinda feel like murder is something most people, regardless of ideology, can agree is not very nice.

A slight exaggeration, yes, but the point stands.

An extreme exaggeration that largely sidesteps the point I was making. Respecting national sovereignty in the abstract, at all times, does not constitute a moral stance because it may well imply respecting the edicts of governments perceived as illegitimate by the people and the boundaries of states engaged in serious human rights abuses or the subjugation of ethnic minorities in smaller regions within the state. It's a useful standard in IR, but I definitely wouldn't hold it up as an ironclad principle. I feel like you need to assess the concrete details a bit first.

...fair enough point. I will accept that my opposition to American actions in Afghanistan has very little to do with my ideological affinity to the Taliban, because certainly no such affinity exists. It’s entirely to do with opposing US interests. I wouldn’t call it “spite”, though; there are very solid realpolitik reasons why I want the US busy and invested in somewhere that’s not here.

I mean I didn't say you were supporting the Taliban because you love them.

I don't think you're really supporting democracy or liberalism here either. That's not really a damning accusation given I don't support either of those things when they're inappropriate in the context of the given political community, but I feel that's important to point out given you cite a lot of illiberal regimes in your complaints about American meddling. I think a lot of objections to American meddling from non-Americans come from a somewhat cynical geopolitical position - and, as I said, that's legitimate. I'm still going to point out when the position is incoherent, as the position of most tankies invariably is.

[Incelastan]

I would assert that the precedent of using human rights as a pretext for invading sovereign nations is ultimately worse for humanity than any national atrocities committed by said regime, and that the regimes that follow are usually worse than the ones just overthrown. Worse still, it strengthens the influence of the military industrial complex and national security establishment at the expense of calmer voices of reason.

[Insaanistan]

NRF Commander of Baghlan Flrces Says on of the Commanders Under Him was Shot by the Taliban After Surrendering, Fighting Baghdad Reportedly has killed 6 NRF Fighters & 20 Taliban

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

-snip-

My apologies for the unclear phrasing. I meant “you” in the rhetorical sense: you the target of my argumentation, the United States, not you the person who’s responding to me, Fahran.

An extreme exaggeration that largely sidesteps the point I was making. Respecting national sovereignty in the abstract, at all times, does not constitute a moral stance because it may well imply respecting the edicts of governments perceived as illegitimate by the people and the boundaries of states engaged in serious human rights abuses or the subjugation of ethnic minorities in smaller regions within the state.

And to be clear, not long ago the United States saw socialism and adjacent ideologies as the devil and an evil to be overthrown, so your assurances of “it’s only done to bad people” don’t reassure me much. As far as the United States is concerned, I would quite recently have fit in the same “bad people” box as the Nazis and, should the political climate shift a little over there, could very well be thrown in that same box again.

I really only have to look at what happened to my ideological predecessors in my country a few decades back to figure out what happens to people like me in US-backed dictatorships - and I’m not even “socialist” by the proper definition!

As long as “I think they’re bad people, so I get to trample on their internal sovereignty” remains American foreign policy, I will never consider myself safe from the CIA and their local stooges.

I don't think you're really supporting democracy or liberalism here either. That's not really a damning accusation given I don't support either of those things when they're inappropriate in the context of the given political community, but I feel that's important to point out given you cite a lot of illiberal regimes in your complaints about American meddling.

I will support my small nation making sacrifices for the common interests of the democratic world if and only if I see the democracies that are actual great powers start doing that. When the weak serve the common good while the strong are concerned for their own interests, that’s not cooperation, that’s exploitation.

I would of course prefer it if people far away in countries I will never visit live free and prosperous lives in progressive democracies, but come right down to it my priorities are towards me and mine first, and when my own democracy is so gravely threatened by China and the United States, anything that drags their attention away from my corner of the world is welcome.

[Insaanistan]

NRF Likely to Remain Politically Relevant as Taliban Fail to Prove Themselves Trustworthy to Iran, Russia, Afghan Situation not Going Exactly as Pakistan had Hoped

[Insaanistan]

Maisam Nazary:“The War in Afghanistan is not Over, it’s Simply Entering a New Era”

[Nociav]

US looking increasingly likely to recognise Taliban Government.

[Nociav]

I was promised Massoud and the National Running Front would take Kabul by now with 100,000 troops. Severely disappointed.

[Insaanistan]

I was promised Massoud and the National Running Front would take Kabul by now with 100,000 troops. Severely disappointed.

Same.
The rando on Twitter with Ahmad Massoud in his PFP said that the resistance front has taken over Mars, but apparently that isn’t true.

[Nociav]

I was promised Massoud and the National Running Front would take Kabul by now with 100,000 troops. Severely disappointed.

Same.
The rando on Twitter with Ahmad Massoud in his PFP said that the resistance front has taken over Mars, but apparently that isn’t true.

I know right. Look at this nobody saying how the Taliban will be defeated once and for all:

https://twitter.com/alinazary/status/14 ... 8781356035

or this goon claiming the NRF are invincible:

https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/p ... 2021-09-06

What a shame!

[Christian Confederation]

So Afghanistan still sucks?

[Insaanistan]

Same.
The rando on Twitter with Ahmad Massoud in his PFP said that the resistance front has taken over Mars, but apparently that isn’t true.

I know right. Look at this nobody saying how the Taliban will be defeated once and for all:

https://twitter.com/alinazary/status/14 ... 8781356035
What a shame!

I was actually agreeing with you before, but Nazary was actually right. He claimed that the Taliban would go the way the Soviets had in Panjshir. The Soviets quite literally “took” Panjshir & declared victory several times, then weeks-months later pulled out & had to try again, as the Taliban seem to be doing.

[Nociav]

I know right. Look at this nobody saying how the Taliban will be defeated once and for all:

https://twitter.com/alinazary/status/14 ... 8781356035
What a shame!

I was actually agreeing with you before, but Nazary was actually right. He claimed that the Taliban would go the way the Soviets had in Panjshir. The Soviets quite literally “took” Panjshir & declared victory several times, then weeks-months later pulled out & had to try again, as the Taliban seem to be doing.

The Taliban haven't pulled out nor are they pulling out. They're going nowhere. Massoud isn't even in the country. Huge swaths of the NRF just up and surrendered when the Taliban began their offensive.

But alas the NRF are on the path to victory. All hail, long live Massoud, rise Parsiwans, defeat the Pashtuns, et cetera.

[Free Algerstonia]

NRF Calls on Afghans in Norway to Join Norwegian Protests Against Taliban

surely the NRF has bigger priorities

[Insaanistan]

I was actually agreeing with you before, but Nazary was actually right. He claimed that the Taliban would go the way the Soviets had in Panjshir. The Soviets quite literally “took” Panjshir & declared victory several times, then weeks-months later pulled out & had to try again, as the Taliban seem to be doing.

The Taliban haven't pulled out nor are they pulling out. They're going nowhere. Massoud isn't even in the country. Huge swaths of the NRF just up and surrendered when the Taliban began their offensive.

But alas the NRF are on the path to victory. All hail, long live Massoud, rise Parsiwans, defeat the Pashtuns, et cetera.

According to sources such as TRT World, it’s less Massoud “isn’t in the country” & more he’s now split his time between Tajikistan, Iran & Panjshir, visiting all three consistently.

[Nociav]

According to sources such as TRT World

The sources:

according to Ali Nazari, head of foreign relations for the NRF.

[Insaanistan]

According to sources such as TRT World

The sources:

according to Ali Nazari, head of foreign relations for the NRF.

They used Nazari as a source for how much land the NRF controls, not for whether or not Massoud is still moving between Afghanistan & neighboring countries.

[Insaanistan]

While Alem was Still in Custody, Another Taliban (of Tajik Origin) was Arrested, Fate Still Unclear; Fighting Reportedly Stopped in Panjshir but Raging on in Several Parts of North, Where Talibs Apparently Forcing Turkmens & Uzbeks out of Their Homes

[Insaanistan]

Russia Says it’s Ready to Hold the Next Round of Talks Between Taliban & NRF

[Nociav]

The sources:

They used Nazari as a source for how much land the NRF controls, not for whether or not Massoud is still moving between Afghanistan & neighboring countries.

Massoud continues to visit Panjshir as his fighters still control about 60-65 percent of the area, according to Ali Nazari, head of foreign relations for the NRF.

When your flatly wrong but try to insist regardless.

[Rusozak]

Oh great, more pro-Taliban terrorist sympathizers. I guess they really are more tech savvy this time around. Didn't they ban the internet, television, and cell phones in 2001?

[Nociav]

Karzai meets with Russian ambassador to "strengthen ties between the two countries".

Karzai is in Taliban super-position. He's both not Taliban and he works for the Taliban.

[Nociav]

Oh great, more pro-Taliban terrorist sympathizers. I guess they really are more tech savvy this time around. Didn't they ban the internet, television, and cell phones in 2001?

Who is this directed to and why?

[Nociav]

Second confirmed NRF attack since Sept. 6. Attack against Hamid Khorasani who survived.