Originally Posted by
skridlov
Having travelled around Afghanistan in the 70s whilst Zaher Shah was still present and having read many books about the country's history, I can strongly recommend to anyone interested that they read the above book. The historical parallels with the current situation are nothing short of astonishing.
The core problem is that "Afghanistan" is a faulty notion, not a country. It never has been a unitary entity and never will be. It's a tribal region that has been intermittently (and mostly continually) in a state of internal conflict since the time of Alexander the Great. One of the original phases of "nation building" this time around was the stated objective of creating a national army / security apparatus which comprised a demographic which is representative of the Afghan population - ie about 40% Pashtun. This was never achieved even at officer level, with a high proportion being Tajiks - who had previously been at war with the Pashtun/Taliban. In consequence the National Army would always be seen as occupiers in the Pashtun region. Add to this the fact that the country has long been a proxy for the conflict between India and Pakistan, the latter having a vested interest in maintaining Pashtun/Taliban dominance.
During the long running civil war in the post-Soviet period the only effective counterbalance to the Taliban was the Tajik army based in the Panshir Valley under the command of Ahmad Shah Massoud (whose comrade Dr. Abdullah has since been a constant presence in the national government). Shortly before "9/11" Massoud visited Europe where he attempted to warn us about the peril represented by the presence of Bin Laden in Afghanistan. European politicians simply ignored him. Before the 9/11 attacks could be implemented, Bin Laden made sure that Massoud was assassinated. What might have been if only we'd listened?
The current withdrawal from the lost war in Afghanistan really does resemble the US debacle during withdrawal from Vietnam. Afghans of various ethnicities who believed that the West could drag this primitive region kicking and screaming into the 20th century are being abandoned to the tender mercies of the obscurantist mullahs of the Taliban. TV news programs are already recounting the appalling situation of translators who have been denied even provisional asylum - often for completely absurd reasons. Tens of thousands of people are even less able to obtain asylum.
The country will be largely under Taliban control within a matter of weeks and they will be utterly merciless to the "collaborators"..
And “ The Great Game “ by Peter Hopkirk circa 1990.
Sadly our political masters don’t read history.