In reality, the Taliban put a stop to the opium trade, which was cheerfully revived once the Taliban got the boot (I remember a 2001 photo of a newly shod Northern Alliance platoon marching down a dusty road).

Thank you NinthAce for the reference to Rory Stewart's The Places in Between​​​​​​, a fine read.

UK to deploy 600 troops to assist UK nationals get out.

Pentagon spokesman getting a hard time right now trying to explain to correspondents why additional 3,000 US troops going into region - in addition to 3,500 already there - to be on standby to secure Kabul Airport, evacuation of the US Embassy (if necessary) and processing former Afghan interpreters seeking exit.

Telegraph says 600 paratroops. Shirley a job for the Rock Apes? I mean, it's bound to involve an airfield? :)

EFI shop not open to guard yet.....

I'll get my coat.

Given this demonstration of the US willingness to fold them when necessary, I'd think, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan would be reconsidering their need for a nuclear backstop.
This might get messy.

Kandahar has fallen - second largest city in the country….

https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/t...-b1901826.html

Twitter

UK and USA admit defeat in Afghanistan
 

I am very sad, dejected, and slightly lost to read that after the recent withdrawal of forces, and the immediate taliban resurgence, the UK and USA are going to commit forces purely for the purpose of evacuating their embassies.

That looks, feels and smells like a surrender to me.

The Taliban said they would wait for a thousand years if they had to and when we left they would rule again. Countless empires failed to defeat them and our aggressive predecessors, Russia, failed recently,

Was this a political vanity project always doomed to failure?

It seems the Taliban have been around since about 1978 and are in part a US product

”About 90,000 Afghans, including Mohammed Omar, were trained by Pakistan's ISI during the 1980s.[105]British professor Carole Hillenbrand concluded that the Taliban have arisen from those US-Saudi-Pakistan-supported mujahideen: "The West helped the Taliban to fight the Soviet takeover of Afghanistan"”

Does this count as an own goal or do we give it to Pakistan with a Western assist?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban

Flights out are going to be military now

US Sending 3,000 Troops to Protect Diplomats in Kabul - Air Force Magazine

Dr. William Brydon
 

The last survivor of the 1842 retreat from Kabul. It seems a fitting time to post the painting.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e9ce0977ff.png

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-first-...han-war-195101

Not a defeat at all, even if the invading Taliban would like to portray it that way. A merciless Sunni Pashtun band of leaders in exile negotiate some guarantees and then force their rule over all other ethnic tribes and religions in the land. A sad day for their people and for most of the world to observe.

For 20 years we tried our best to help the people of Afghanistan, and we can leave with a clear conscience on that score. Imagine if we hadn't.
(The timing and manner of closure is untidy and reflects badly, though.) What more could we have done for them? Perhaps the international community failed to win hearts and minds?

...well someone taught the Mujahideen how to use the weapons it sold them..

Didn't an author using the pseudonym Gaz Hunter explain his part in this in the 1999 book 'The Shooting Gallery'?

This whole mess occurred because politicians don’t understand the difference between what they want vs what is possible.

They wanted a Western style democracy, but what was possible was eliminating the threat to the West by defeating the Taliban and then leaving Afghanistan to be run by the Afghan people in the traditional way.

As soon as the politicians started talking about “nation building” in 2003, the war was lost

If the Taliban gets in and they are not giving support to terrorist organizations,
Then we have won.

I really don’t care about their human rights(and neither do you, even if you say differently). I care about not having terrorist attacks.

I am sure once the Taliban take over, the new leaders can be made well aware of that.

It all goes back to unclear purpose and objectives.

Yet another reason for Tony Blair to be nailed to a cross and crucified.

After the debacle of British losses in the 19th century in Afghanistan, the writing was on the wall as what would eventually happen after the 2001 invasion.

With the American pull-out in Vietnam 50 years ago, and now the Afghan pull-out, Western-and especially American credibility is in tatters.

The Chinese and Russians will be taking notes.

Blair became very rich-allegedly as a result of being Dubya's poodle in 2001. A vile and corrupt politician of the first order.

He did (nothing allegedly about that) and he is.....but plenty of utterly blinkered people still put him up on a pedestal as some sort of hero....:ugh:

I think it’s fai4 to say that the British defence establishment, including the minister Ben Wallace, arent happy having been put in this position by Biden.

The interviews of Wallace and Mercer on Sky this morning didn’t pull any punches - and Tom Tugendhat, Chair if the HoC Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote a long Twitter thread on the consequences last night.

One of the widely reported consequences is the lack of trust in the reliability of the USA by their allies such as Korea and Japan. That seems to apply in part to the UK..

https://www.politico.eu/article/joe-...llout-mistake/

Twitter

I came across a memorial to British soldiers lost during the conflict in Afghanistan in Reading.
Names like Kandahar caught my attention. Funny I thought "They were quick to place this memorial?".
Then I noticed the dates. 1800's. I guess we never really left in the first place.

The withdrawal worries me. Shades of airlifting people of the Embassy during the last days of Vietnam.
What worries me more is when we inevitably return and loose more lives re-taking the territory we just surrendered.

You can't win in Afghanistan because there is nothing to win. Just miles of rocky, featureless terrain held by thousands of deidcated, featureless enemy.

I look forward to the innevitable influx of refugees from Afghanistan that we created.
We never seem to learn do we?