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Beechboy, on 2011-11-10 16:26:20, said:
Before the Taliban rule , Afganistan was a peaceful, relatively prosperous but factious country that was progressing at it's own rate and in it's own way. There was no hostility towards adopting Western standards such as dress or entertaiment. Schooling was becoming more widespread, for both sexes and old taboos were being eroded, although slowly. Kabul, in particular was developing all the facilities associated with a modern capital.
Nonsense. Before the Taliban the country had been in a long, continuous bloody and brutal civil war. The region (I won't say country because it wasn't one) was a series of warlord controlled fiefdoms who were equally as nasty as the Taliban. One of the reasons the Taliban was initially popular (and indeed still is in huge parts - likely the bulk - of the country) is that they offered a way out of this. In 2001 they had mostly succeeded in doing this, the last rebel zone being the shrinking area controlled by the Northern Alliance.
The Taliban too, have always been inward looking - they did not actively work towards a global caliphate. You are confusing them with their guests, the small grouping called Al Qeada, who were never more than a few dozen, albeit with the ear of Mullah Omar. The US did exactly the wrong thing in 2001 by attacking - it radicalised and dismembered the country and has cost god knows how many lives. That 40,000 dead quoted up-thread is an interesting figure. If it is an accurate number killed the obvious questions are a) are they all Taliban (given suspect US bodycounts in every war since WW2 - unlikely) and b ) since that is far more than the total number of troops or militia we know the Taliban had in 2001 and there is still a very large number of people actively confronting the US/NATO then something must've driven a lot of people to take up arms. It's not just some radical Islamic band versus the USA, the anti-coalition force is far, far broader than that.
And these people seem to be increasingly brazen and confident in their attacks. Shades of Saigon..... they know the US is beatable, it just takes time which they have without limit. It worked in Iraq too where the insurgents essentially won.
The Taliban did awful things in-country as a government and who knows if they would have evolved in a positive way, although in the large parts of the nation they still control they seem to have tempered their ways a little. One thing is certain though, the US coalition can never win this and Kazai will never be in any real sense the ruler of an Afghan nation.
