Humanizing and understanding the mentality and causation behind groups’ (especially the opposition’s) allegiance and participation in a historical or political event helps us understand the conditions that led to the event, its current situation, and its immediate outlook.

Then you can extrapolate statements like what you said with that information in mind

man I can’t even begin to think about the repercussions of this what the f***

Great post

Damn... here we go again

America, i’m not removing the blame on them, I’m just saying that the Taliban is as much of a oppressive force as the West that preceded them, and they are just playing into a perpetual cycle of it.

I hope the proletariat can liberate themselves from the grasp of oppression.

Kids being bombed and displaced into the hands of extremists is exactly how the taliban started off in the first place well before nato jumped in

And sure, you're not wrong but you haven't actually addressed the plight of everyone who isn't in the taliban who may not want their will.imposed upon them. You have to humanise everyone but you can't humanise the oppressor alone as the real victim here

Like yes it sucks what happened to them years ago, but in the new, there are people in danger from them

Do you seriously think that the past 20 years have solely been destructive for everyone in Afghanistan? Many would disagree. Sure the actions of NATO may have provoked some into extremism, but you're seriously on some s*** if you think that's the norm for everyone living there. We can humanise and understand what actions led people to join the taliban, but we can't pretend this is the situation for most afghani people either.

I think everything I've said here is reasonable and undeniable

the taliban does not holistically hate the US and also has never had global ambitions in the vein of ISIS - the afghan taliban is completely isolationist in its goals. the relationship between the US & them is complex at best and the reasons they were willing to work out diplomatic peace accords with the US repeatedly for years is further proof of them not just being a random rogue state. much information about the afghan taliban is just completely incorrect and misdocumented by the media.

regarding the saudi arabia and vietnam stuff, you're misunderstanding what I'm saying; i'm not saying that liberalization is a vehicle for better relations by the US, I'm saying that the end of all countries with liberalized economies ends up following the same path, and that path is near always in the interest of the US as a wider entity (even if its not in the interest of said US administration at the time). I also don't especially care about what Saudi Arabia's social laws are; my point is simply that social views are not an actual signifier of the ability for a country to retain relations with the US (nor should it especially be in most cases) - you can even be an absolute monarchy with theocratic views but still essentially facilitate bilateral benefit to both entities, hence saudi arabia, You can say this is bad because we'd enable immoral views, but what's the alternative? Libya? Yemen? Syria? Keep in mind simply ignoring them and leaving them alone isn't an option - they are literally the ones asking the US for diplomatic relations, as well as US regional allies, especially those who actually have meaningful relationships (UAE, Qatar).

Regarding China, I stand by my unpopular stance that the social and regional disagreements between the US & China are ultimately meaningless. People can talk all day and all night about how this is the new Cold War, but its simply not true, and its a vast understatement to just how much of parallel mirror societies the SU & US actually were (ironic given the acronym). Layman comparison, but rivalry between China & the US is more like roommates who don't get along, whereas the SU/US relations for the longest time where legitimately like mortal enemies. The truth is that we can talk all day on a civilian level about "oh these chinese x y and z" and they can be like "oh those stupid americans are x y and z" but we have largely intertwined economies and the literal framework for china's post-Deng government was inspired by American school of thought as per Xi's own words. China is not a radical threat to the modern "American way of life" because the Chinese way of life in the most urban and developing cities is literally just a clone of it

Yeah ok that's a lot more agreeable now you put it like that

Trumps biggest s***housery was the decision to pullout from afghanistan.

Thanks. I want to be clear - I'm not throwing my support behind the Taliban. I don't support them. I just think there's a lot of misinformation about the situation right now all around and more grounded takes on it are needed that show the reality of the situation and not "in an ideal world" situations.

If the US took steps to recognise this administration of afghanisyan and begin trading and integrating them into the global economy, where is the guarantee the taliban would co operate? As you say, they are an isolationist entity, but this is further complicated by how the taliban itself isn't that centralised, can we be sure a central authority in Kabul will actually command respect of tribal branches? It's difficult to trade with nations were property rights are not stable

Ive heard of CaspianReport but Ive never watched their videos, would you recommend them? I used to be interested in watching a lot of on the ground stuff from the ME, like Bilal Abdul Kareem. I always thought it was important to dissect the bias behind that stuff though.

Im from the US but ive lived briefly in various parts of europe for awhile. Ethnicity wise my background is a complete mess, mom is mixed south european but dad's side is jewish (non-practicing - just ethnically) and vaguely middle eastern - we lost family records from one of his family's sides (and have had trouble re-finding documentation), so we don't actually know where their from, our best guess has been Turkey, Iran, or Iraq.

grr i no nothing about afghanistan but im sooo looking forward to reading this book on my shelf about it
@americana @krishna_bound
have really enjoyed your posts, cheers

I feel that the country will slip into civil war, especially since the warlords might want to slip into full control of the state apparatus, or renegade factions within the Taliban

They are well on their way to full control already lol

With very little resistance

The question isn't really what the best case scenario of recognizing them is, it's what the worst case scenario of not recognizing them is. The thing is with widespread government legitimization is that it forces compliance under that sect of government because it pigeonholes how the country can actually operate relatively - there isn't a lot of wiggle room once you become broadly officiated; yes, it may not defer local policy (see: china and uighurs, the current situation in ethiopia, etc.), but it forces the government to operate in a strict way procedurally to facilitate its further existence. The biggest worry in recognition would be if you have different government recognitions (i.e. Libya); but that wouldn't happen here because all major powers (China, US, Russia) essentially would trilaterally recognize the Taliban altogether, meaning there is legitimately no room for them to operate in a different manner, as they have to appease all these countries at once, rather than trying to lean into appeasing one over the other, something we've seen happen in, say, Syria.
The Taliban (as in the current Taliban that just secured power) is certainly centralized; there are groups that call themselves the Taliban (i.e. the TTP in Pakistan) - طالب (Talib) just means "student" in arabic, but they arent necessarily related to the Afghan Taliban. For example the TTP is generally known for actual terrorist attacks (not targeted attacks for the purpose of gaining back ground militarily, but just random attacks), whereas the Taliban hasn't really been known for that, they dont even share the same root technically as Al-Qaeda, their overlap was brief and more geopolitical than religious. Also you're right to an extent about the property thing, but this is also an issue in many developing African countries, and no one has ever really piqued this as an issue there, saying we can't recognize governments because there still exists tribal sub-sects separate from said government (I realize their governments are not fundamentalist, but economically the concept is still there). I also want to note that a lot of western reporting on the taliban is just not true - most famously people report that the buddha statues were blown up because of them committing cultural genocide, but did you know the actual reason was in protest to them claiming western nations cared more about giving aide to historical sites to to afghan children and families? The Taliban isn't as stupid as we'd like to think they are, yes, they are fundamentalists, but their goal is to maintain a local government under their own customs strategically - it's not to be a rogue state or a thorn in the side of the international community.

I'll check it out, thanks for the recommendation.

I'm not sure bout that since Ethiopia has 110 million inhabitants. Wonder what happens when a huge part of them flees

nypost.com/2021/08/15/trump-calls-on-biden-to-resign-in-disgrace-over-crisis-in-afghanistan

there hasn't been a thread made on it to my knowledge

Yeah ive made some threads before but on ktt not much interest in subjects where USA/Europe play no part in. Understandable in a way but can be annoying at times