The consequences of Vietnam never followed them home either. The Americans found out 20 years ago that they can't simply pull up the drawbridge anymore.
I can foresee a lot of NATO airstrikes continuing, but no foreign forces on the ground.
The EU countries that were directly involved can take them.
The difference is Vietnam ended up perfectly fine. I'm not sure that the same will happen in Afghanistan.
Canada have already said they will take 30,000 or something. No doubt we’ll end up doing the same
This dates me, but I remember the US withdrawal from Saigon and the same sense of events spiralling out of control.
Now that the Taliban are about to take complete power of the country, I assume governments around the world will be accepting Afghans under refugee status ? Seems quite alot of them want to flee the place in fear of being butchered. Reckon Ireland will take a few hundred in ?
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/taliban-celebrating-resurgence-seizing-girls-24752882
Awful
Foreign intervention has not been disastrous for the country, quite the opposite, it's the return to non-intervention status which will result in untold suffering for women and non hardline muslims.
Mission accomplished 😂😂
This time around things may be different, in the respect that the Taliban will be reluctant to harbour figures like Bin Laden and extreme terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, because of the future danger of foreign invasion. The Taliban are only interested in controlling Afghanistan. The extent of their international ambition is rather low.
That being said, it doesn't bode well for any Afghans that aren't sympathetic to their idea of Islamic law. However, outside intervention has been nothing but disastrous for the country.
But, while getting out of Afghanistan may prove to be tricky at some future date, I would still be broadly in favour of the US withdrawing from overseas in a major way.
It's probably the one thing I agree with Trump on.
,,...,
Congratulations on being one of the few posters to admit this.
If the US never went in, Afghanistan was always going to remain a brutal Islamic caliphate, now it's simply returning to that status quo, except worse, because they have the knowledge that the outside world will never dare try to uproot the Taliban. It will once again become a mecca for Islamic fundamentalism and a safe haven for extreme groups. Will be far-reaching repercussions from this.
Reports of a "Peaceful handover of power being discussed" by the BBC. I would read that as essentially a conditional surrender.
Trick is, the Taliban might sign up to an agreement that hands over the remainder of the Afghan State to them peacefully and promises a safe and honorable end to the war for the losing side, only for them turn around once they have military control of the city and execute the lot of them. They probably won't tolerate any living member of the previous state to remain, and there would be no-one to stop them at that stage.
It's interesting to see in detail how wrong I've been in the past when I said the US should just withdraw all troops and leave the region be.
Seems to me the Afghan army rank and file and many officers were only in it for the pay all along. The army should be considered a non-combative branch of the Taliban. A huge failing of US intelligence not to have realised this.
There are still a lot of westerners who though they had a week or two to get out, not to mention western governments who thought thay had a little bit of time to get local allies like interpreters evacuated.
Whether they were always there is doubtful. But it's certainly true that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda had a some what cosy relationship with the Afghan leadership, mainly due to his supply and bank rolling of Afghan fighters during the war in the 80's.
I think it's safe to say that both he and members of Al Qaeda were in Afghanistan on numerous occasions and, in fact, the Taliban did offer to hand him over to a third party. Now, whether he was there when America bombed their way through the country is another story. But there's a pretty good chance that he'd already made his way to Pakistan before the first US troop even landed.
They’ve conceded Kabul already, madness how quick they got through the country.
China won't get involved in running the place. Just extracting what they need.
Making sure the place looks well before the guests of honour arrive
The thing with China, they don't give a **** about how you run your country and have no problems with working with anyone as long as it benefits them. The Taliban will be told not to support the Uyghurs and they'll build them a road or a train line. I note the Taliban control the corridor between Afghanistan and China. A place they didn't Pre-2001.
The Taliban won't give a hoot about the Uyghurs. They want to control Afghanistan. Al Qaeda or ISIS may be different.
As I write this post, I'm getting an pop up saying there was an Earthquake in Northern Afghanistan. Fun times.
Kabul has basically fallen, it's just a formality now. The Taliban will put on a "we come in peace" act for awhile, start taking over administration, getting food to people, etc. Then the retribution and murders will start, seeking out traitors, etc. Then it will be fully back to 1996 in a matter of months, brutality and women everywhere in burqa's.
There were only two options. Stay in and delay the inevitable, or get out and face the inevitable. There was never anything to be salvaged from this at this stage regardless who was in office. Partisan critics will jump at the chance of course, but there was no right option, and not even a "least worse" option, both actions would have resulted in the same outcome.
They'll just leave it there to fester. They'll throw money at its corruption to milk it for something. Its a no win game for anyone. Left them to it.
But cut off all aid.
The "Butterfly Munitions" you mention Gary,( cluster Bombs banned under the Geneva Conventions, but still in use by Countrys which did not signed the treaty) were dropped from a high flying aircraft in a "Mother" bomb, which was set to open at a predetermined height, dispersing hundreds of these mines /bombs all on little yellow parachutes, which gave them a greater spread. While the majority exploded on contacted, between 2%-20 % did not. They yellow color was meant to act as a warning and make them visible, but in a lot of cases attracted children with horrendous results. And even after the yellow fabric has disntegrated, the bomblets remain live, a simple action, such as casting a shadow on one, can cause them to explode. They kill / maim thousands of people every year, and not only in Afghanistan, but worldwide.
Yep, was a matter of when rather than if.
What and more important who, kept the Taliban active these last 20 years? Yes, Iran, Russia and Pakistan. In every clandestine way possible, they hit the Americans, a war by any other name. None of them wanted a stable and strong Afghanistan...now we will see how they deal with the Taliban, an organisation not associated with excessive use of the milk of human kindness.
To be fair, I think we all saw it sliding back into chaos, just not so fast.
Good post. No matter what people think of the US and it's decision to leave, the Afghan people had 20 years, billions of Dollars in aid, expert training and help from all over the world, in order for it to be able stand on its own and prosper. Still they chose corruption and being backward. This failure is their own making, nobody else's.
China will have a pop. They are asset stripping anywhere they go to feed their machine and expansion.
They will just exploit the place, build a railway to rip minerals out of it. In fairness its what empires did in the past.
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