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The reasosn for invading Afghanistan were many and had been in the pipes for a long time, you guys loved the Taliban while they managed to keep the prospect of a nice little pipeline open.

You were even friends of Osama, I find it increadible that you think you were justified in devastating a country for the sake of catching a man you created...

The Taliban had no way of bringing in Osama, and your government knew it, but that didn't matter because they had lost control and had outlived their use.

Oh and it has been the U.S which has facilitated the druglords, the warlords and the rapists and thugs...

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So OK, yeah, sure. Everything wrong with Afghanistan is America's fault.

Do we stay, or do we go, in the Book of Default the Magyar?

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Well you can be as harsh on your nation as you like, but don't go ahead and try to prove me wrong...

I think you have to stay, but to do so means a rapid change in tactics, the halting of high altitude bombings is the first change needed.

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A little exercise in reading the history of Afghanistan from the 18th century onwards is all that is needed to prove you wrong.

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Uhuh...

Sorry Banqo but no, a little reading about how the U.S has run the country over the past years will allow you to realise that the U.S mission to "liberate" is bollox, how close do you think the U.S is to the scumbags who really run the country now? Very, very close.

Lets drop the guilty charges placed upon history and look at the policies which the U.S has implemented in the country. The U.S cannot wash its hands clean by pointing to an Oxford History of Afghanistan.

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There is quite a difference between alleging that everything wrong with Afghanistan is America's fault (your avowed position) and washing that country's hands clean of current responsibility (the position you ascribe to me).

But complexity has ever been anathema to the pure of vision.

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Yeah, umm nice of you to choose a position for me but I'm ok on my own.

Nor did I ascribe a position to you, so lets move on, and go ahead and try and refute what I actually said Banquo...

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If I misunderstood your position, then I apologise.

However, that leaves me in a quandary, for I now don't know what your position actually is, even from re-reading your posts.

Is this the best summary of what you are arguing?

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Sure is, I don't think I wrote that the U.S was to blame for everything in Afghanistan, Kukri took up that argument.

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i disagree here, as i said in a previous thread about the possible waning of al-quada's influence.

the western representative democracy has no figurehead, and suffers not from the cult of personality.
this cannot be said of al-quada.

knocking of OBL will be a major blow to the perceived virility of al-quada in a way that killing even Saint Obama never would.

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Poor Bopa. He wants to argue the rightness-wrongness of US FoPo since 1945 - but nobody else wants to play. We're too busy looking for a way through our involvement in Afghanistan.

Some day US & NATO will leave that place. The question is when, and how. I say: tomorrow, the original mission having been 50% accomplished, and prospects for the other half getting done looking dim. He says:
but he doesn't say why, or for how long, or to accomplish... what?

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Very well then, let me address your points:

I certainly don't know of any solid evidence that the Taliban were supported by the US government - except perhaps through studiously ignoring them. Before 9-11 Islamicists barely figured on any administration's radar, which is possibly one reason that 9-11 happened. However, if you have any reliable links, I'm prepared to be proven wrong.

Whilst it is true that bin Laden was funded and trained by the CIA, 9-11 changed everything. Even I think it was acceptable to attack Afghanistan in the hope of destroying his infrastructure and apprehending him. He is, after all, a major war criminal. It is completely unreasonable to think that any country could sustain an attack like 9-11 and not do something immediate and overt to retaliate. No government would have survived such a low-key response, however noble their intention.

In addition, I think you are guilty of some hyperbole - the country is far from being devastated as its exports of opium testify. It has not progressed much, however.

Whilst the Taliban were pretty much powerless to facilitate President Bush's demands, and those demands were entirely unreasonable in their scope and timetable, said Taliban made it remarkably easy for the bellicose nature of the neo-cons to find expression. If they had possessed the wiles of Pakistan's Musharraf (who was similarly threatened at the time) they would have allowed US troops to conduct a search and destroy mission and gratefully accepted the millions of dollars which would have followed. As with all extremists, however, they were much happier to see their country and countrymen burn for purity's sake.

Here, we do not substantially disagree. The funding of warlordism is pragmatic, but entirely counter-productive to the stated aim of nation-building. However, nation-building was and remains, a misguided and amorphous aim. When bin Laden eluded capture, the United States and their NATO allies should have quit. The hunt for bin Laden would be better served by special forces infiltrating into Pakistan's North West frontier.

Had bin Laden been killed or captured in the first year, you would have had some point. Al-Qa'eda has always been a hydra-like entity (if entity is the right word) and extremely disparate. It coalesced for a while around the figurehead of bin Laden and the "success" of the 9-11 attacks. Now it has decayed back into lots of local Islamicist groups with differing agendas and bin Laden's demise is largely irrelevant to them.

In the real world, al-Qa'eda is much more useful to the West as a soundbite "black hat" organisation (like SPECTRE but without the ugly women ) rather than being any kind of co-ordinated group whose leadership can be targeted or engaged.

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Counter-Insurgence experts (Well the enitre Coalition army) could most certainly learn a thing or two from the Portuguese Colonial War. We're the only country to have successfully defeated insurgency in large territorial spaces. That said, in what status is the situation of the Pakistani offensive against the Taliban on their side of the border?

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What do you mean by defeating an insurgency?

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i think he means this:

:p

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this might be a better example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_Emergency

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Ooo. So the British can also win wars against guerrillas. My respect.

In any case, yeah Portugal did crush the nationalistic independent guerrillas in Angola and Mozambique. By the time of their own independence they were so utterly crushed and man handled, they were already fighting more each other (In Angola), with the permission of Portugal, then the 'colonizers'. In Mozambique, a huge encirclement of the guerrilla forces crushed most of their forces as well. Guinea was the only place where large combats still occurred. But those large combats were basically Guineans attacking from other countries, under the cover of their own artillery, based off in other countries. Whenever the Portuguese sallied out of their camps, the Guineans would immediatly flee to other countries (That's the pity of fighting a war in a small piece of territory, with neighbouring countries pro-actively helping the rebels.) A sollution would be to do like the Americans did in Vietnam, and raze to the ground with napalms several known hiding spots of guerrillas near the borders, so they would have nowhere to hide. But of course that would cause the uproar of the International Community due to the possible high civillian casualties, so such a conflict ending sollution was not used.

Still the Portuguese Commandoes did dozens of Covert operations (Assassinations and sabotage) in those countries that could fall nothing short of great blockbuster movies.

But yeah, considering the size of the territories, the Coalition could probably learn some things through the Portuguese methods. (Of course, the general scenario of both wars are different, but it's still counter-insurgency)

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Given the postcolonial world, where pacification in the old style isn't so acceptable to the electorate any more, wouldn't it be more useful to think in terms of achieving one's goals at lowest cost, rather than straight out subjugation?

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Think is, by the time we had an Empire, we didn't have an electorate. It was a Dictatorship.

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Which can mean that strategies that were viable back then may not be viable now. If the British Army now in Afghanistan tried the same things that they did in Malaya, heads would roll, and not just those of insurgents. We build up our armed forces to be paragons, the brave defenders of our society, but stuff which they used to do as a matter of course would nowadays be seen as unworthy of our idealised heroes. So, as Kukri noted, it may be better for our "special forces" to take over, whom we can still accept in doing our dirty work.

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I certainly don't know of any solid evidence that the Taliban were supported by the US government - except perhaps through studiously ignoring them. Before 9-11 Islamicists barely figured on any administration's radar, which is possibly one reason that 9-11 happened. However, if you have any reliable links, I'm prepared to be proven wrong.

I know of what he's referring, apparently there was a deal in the works for the pipeline they are currently building in Afghanastan but the Taliban called it off so the pipeline was cancelled, can't remember where i heard that so ill leave the link for Bopa to get

I think Bin Laden is a useful PR icon at most, he possibly adds a bit of stardom to proceedings but most of these guys are very commited nutters, the loss of a useful PR icon will only slow them slightly... im sure they could replace him with a new guy as well

Big terrorist organisations survive leadership deaths... especailly one as spread out and fragmented as Al Qaeda

Edit: I think the much more important goal in Afghanastan was the destuction of AQ's training facilities and the removal of a safe haven....

I have to admit having paranoia boarding on conspiracy regarding both the pipeline and the poppy production...

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It was all quite open, if not well publicised, UNOCAL was the oil company involved
They later denied this, as one would after the U.S began launching missiles at terrorist camps in Afghanistan.
You can no longer access many of these web pages it seems, including one on the U.S energy Department's site, which talked about their support for the Taliban, being the stable government the U.S needed to secure energy in the region.
Glyn Davies is such a great guy right?
The U.S has had its hands dirty from the get go, money funding the Taliban and Al-Queda indirectly through friendly organisations like the ISI. During the eighties the U.S openly helped set up Bin-Laden's first Jihadi group.

But hey, a Taliban delegation did go and hang out with UNOCAL in Texas for few days to discuss the idea of mutual support.

Here is a nice timeline about the whole sordid afair.
Hey, the great ENRON is in there...
The current situation in Pakistan is so ironic
I almost lol'd

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In fifty years, in a thousand years, in fifty thousand years, the enlistment or not of Taliban as policemen means nothing.

The extinction of entire species means everything.


What is clear, is that the fortune of threatened species perfectly follows the ebb and flow of stable governments. This should be cause of grave concern for the powers that have assumed responsibility in Afghanistan:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8080079.stm

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