A Question About Afghanistan

[dewline]

Are we looking at consequences of intergenerational trauma in the reaction of the Afghan government and forces to the US withdrawal and subsequent Taliban assault?

Comments

[armiphlage]

Considering this follows on the former Soviet occupation and withdrawal, and the former British occupation and withdrawal, we're looking at multiple generations of trauma.

Cultural norms may also have been changed with generations of conflict. I would not be surprised to see weaker trust of large organizations (governmental and otherwise), and stronger ties to family groups, as a survival mechanism.

[sabotabby]

Agreed.

Afghanistan has been consistently under assault by foreign interests for what, at least 100 years? It's no wonder it's a clusterfuck.

[dewline]

All the way back to Alexander the Great, if you go back far enough...?

[armiphlage]

First Anglo-Afghan War, 1838–1842
Second Anglo-Afghan War, 1878–1880
Third Anglo-Afghan War, 1918
Soviet–Afghan War, 1979-1989
Pakistan-funded Taliban insurgency 1996–2001
NATO War in Afghanistan 2001-present

[mtbc]

We did a rather poor job of building local forces there in the first place. Sure, we taught front-line tactics, but there's a whole lot of support behind the scenes in terms of processes and organization of the military and police that were never there and we didn't much attempt or manage to help them to build. Without that backing, the front's going to crumble.