Afghanistan

[Nefertiti2]

But what can we do? We spent ten years defeating the Taliban (or not, they just hid in Pakistan). We trained up a brand new army and air force, a new police force, gave them ammunition, gave them the discipline to act against these people and when the Taliban came back they walked away and gave up. I don't see why another British serviceman should lose their life trying to transform a country which wants to live in the dark ages. Afghanistan is a disgusting place with disgusting people who live a disgusting way of life but there is nothing we can do. As horrifying as it is if they want ti live like this, let them until they get cut off from every help the World can give them and then they will - eventually - maybe in decades - change.

not a good thing to say about anywhere on this planet, Paul S



and we created a corrupt narcocracy which meant some people felt the Taliban were the lesser of two evils

read for example the Falluja Birth Defects Twitter feed (if you can bear t) to see what disgusting things our government does

https://twitter.com/shailjapatel/status/1615003772618526720?s=20&t=dP2ODf11LuAvsNn4-47biw

[Paul S]

I'll have a look tomorrow morning when I will feel a bit more rational. I had some bad news about a mate this afternoon which may colour my judgement so I'll have another look with a sensible hat on. I'll leave the comments for context of the thread.

[Nefertiti2]

ok. sorry to hear about your friend

[Patrick Thistle]

I'm not convinced a lot of Afghan people want to live like this.

[Paul S]

I'm not convinced a lot of Afghan people want to live like this.

Neither am I, but what do we do?

[ad hoc]

One small starting point that the UK could do would be to allow refugees to enter. In particular to help the people who actually fucking worked for the British Council in Afghanistan to get out and settle in the UK, as they are currently on the run and in hiding with nowhere to go

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...-to-come-to-uk

[ad hoc]

Mosque bombing in Peshawar kills (so far) 19, but likely to be a lot more. Fucking awful.

It's not in Afghanistan, but likely connected

[ursus arctos]

It was once suggested that I go to Peshawar to assist a client who had gotten into a spot of bother with a "well connected" Pakistani counterparty.

I almost certainly can nsuderedit for longer than was reasonable under the circumstances.

[Hot Pepsi]

I'm not convinced a lot of Afghan people want to live like this.

My understanding is that at this point, they'd rather have relative peace and stability under the Taliban than constant violence and upheaval. They'd like a lot less corruption too, but I'm not sure if the Taliban can really bring that. Maybe they can, but the way they achieve that will be no doubt very nasty.

Those of us in relative privilege have a tendency to expect different reactions to that kind of choice depending on how it suits us. We want the Afghans, Vietnamese and Iraqis to fight for their freedom when "freedom" somehow aligns with our values or interests (really just the interest of a small group of international businesses) but when people in West Baltimore or Memphis or South Central are agitating for their freedom, we tell them they should calm down and just settle for the peace of the conquered.

[Patrick Thistle]

I've yet to see a real case for increased stability under the Taliban. It's like you haven't read the posts about women being excluded from education, executions, NGOs pulling out, hands being chopped off and so on.

Either human rights are universal or they're not. And if they're not then they are just white human's rights.

[Hot Pepsi]

I've yet to see a real case for increased stability under the Taliban. It's like you haven't read the posts about women being excluded from education, executions, NGOs pulling out, hands being chopped off and so on.

Either human rights are universal or they're not. And if they're not then they are just white human's rights.

Stability doesn't mean justice.

Besides, I don't think the taliban bring stability and I know they sure as hell don't bring justice.

But from what I read, a lot of people there were at least hopeful there'd be fewer daily bombings, for example, if the western forces gave up.

More to the point, I guess, is that the Afghan government we tried to prop up wasn't enough of an improvement over the Taliban to gain enough widespread support to defeat them. And the Taliban could at least claim be a) local b) fighting the invaders. That appealed to a lot of people. Or, at least, enough people to overthrow an unpopular, corrupt government.

There's a ton written about all of this, but this example seems to cover it all and it's free.
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/a...f-afghanistan/

[Patrick Thistle]

Did I.misunderstand what you meant here?

My understanding is that at this point, they'd rather have relative peace and stability under the Taliban than constant violence and upheaval.

Because I read that you were saying people were getting what they wantsd under the Taliban.

[Hot Pepsi]

Did I.misunderstand what you meant here?

Because I read that you were saying people were getting what they wantsd under the Taliban.

Well, that's not what I think, even if I appeared to say that. I have to say, I've been confusing myself a bit. I find myself thinking terms of triple negatives and so forth.

Of course, certainly some people in Afghanistan are getting more or less exactly what they wanted. Enough to build a small army. That's the Taliban.

And it seems pretty clear that hardly anybody except a few grifters and really wanted the status quo - continued violence, US bombs, all in service of a centralized, ineffective corrupt government that doesn't listen to them. And there doesn't seem to be much of an internal organized, military resistance to the Taliban yet. Or if there is, it's too diffuse and scattered right now. So that suggests there isn't a strong third option that is really gathering support yet.

So it seems that the sort of sum-total collective opinion of the Afghan people - insofar as it's possible to generalize - is that they don't really want the Taliban, but they saw the alternative as probably as even worse or, at least, not better enough that it would be worth risking their life to support.

My understanding is that what The People would really want is something more tied into their traditional locally driven, often-informal way of running things (or at least, it looks informal to us. Probably a lot less written down than what we're used to). Nobody with power has offered a way to make that stick nationally. Apparently, nobody really asked The People what they wanted at all and that's why we're here.

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://twitter.com/MeredithCAMM/status/1625206480419885070?t=jwJUlumYavfB_eSzRqurMQ&s=19

No wonder Braverman et al are so desperate to leave the ECHR.

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...droidApp_Other

With no safe routes this is what happens. The victims are reported to be all Afghans.

[Patrick Thistle]

https://twitter.com/NasimiShabnam/status/1685382491626987520?t=V5QJwsg0q9wtVdKLYf0Qmg&s=19

[Patrick Thistle]

BBC News - Afghanistan: Taliban ban women from visiting popular national park



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-66633178

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://twitter.com/DanFriedman81/status/1719878961709113605?t=xoXZ0vygGwzMCqR_o0COgw&s=19

As winter sets in Pakistan deports between 1.5 and 2 million people to Afghanistan.

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://twitter.com/AtRiskTeachers/status/1720111175700996328?t=iX2RYi9unvVXsIdqxjeTPQ&s=19

Some of those at risk actually have the right to move to the UK, Canada or US but aren't being helped.

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://twitter.com/ZohalAzra/status/1720178062741086593?t=Lgps_PQuw7eJ-V_7GbxTTg&s=19

It's not just recent refugees either who are being targeted.

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://twitter.com/OmarHaidari1/status/1720178924225773848?t=vm1VHfbS1CuOqA5p83prNQ&s=19

There have also been a number of very large earthquakes in Afghanistan in recent months.

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://twitter.com/MsMMason/status/1720073536075935978?t=lgH_s-OkhtzvxPI9Jz8ruw&s=19

Many are at risk of death by the Taliban as they were teachers of English employed by the British Council.

Others served in the military.

[steveeeeeeeee]

They would have been trained by the BC as part of a government sponsored training scheme for Afghani teachers and employed by the Afghan state. Not to say they shouldn't be better supported and they are highly likely to be at a high risk, but BC aim to train state school teachers in many countries over a long period, these are massive operations that run in partnership with the department of education of countries involved. Training is cascaded, so there would be a hierarchy of BC contact, I'm not sure how the Afghan scheme worked, but for example, in a similar operation in Egypt, you have roughly 5 directly employed BC workers initiating the cascade to about 800 schools, then they monitor the quality of the cascaded training, giving feedback and support.

It's a well received and successful scheme, improving the quality of English teaching in rural areas. There is a whole other argument about the effect of English dominating foreign language learning and becoming the generic lingua franca, but that is not relevant to this issue. But I would suggest Melody Mason needs to look a bit deeper into the employers of these teachers and the BCs responsibility for them.

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://twitter.com/GulwaliP/status/1721146970226454955?t=mIaeTTWUypoEznJz6feJEg&s=19

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://twitter.com/BBCJoeInwood/status/1734151621448192157?t=4UL4OsIpGYK1KIbL5eg8dg&s=19

Elwood and Mercer continue to remain silent.