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Afghanistan

I don't have am unable to prove anything to you.

FTFY

Easy to sweep away criticism by claiming you don't need to prove anything. You do - you criticise the Taliban for doing exactly what other countries do without criticism.

Just show me where you've been equally critical of equally-repugnant regimes doing the same thing. Even Saudi isn't alone in using barbaric punishments, and since you care so much about the subject, I'd expect you to have dozens of posts lamenting the inhumane treatment some regimes hand out to their people.

One post will do. There are dozens of mine criticising both Saudi and the Taliban, along with lots of other despotic regimes.

If you're a one-trick pony, as I strongly suspect, that would be on you. I'm betting you're not quoting posts critical of Saudi because you haven't made any. I'm sure there's a name for attacking one group of people while turning a blind eye to others doing exactly the same thing. It'll come to me...
 
Did you read the article? The problem is not that they can't control their soldiers, it's that the nice people in Qatar who promised an inclusive tolerant government (shockingly) don't accurately represent the Taliban. They have no control over the military leadership, who ultimately are the ones with the most to say.

I suppose it is a matter of terminology. The Taliban are a Pashto religious movement, the leaders are predominantly scholars, judges etc. There are military forces 'directly' under the control of the Taliban, but e.g. the military in Kahbul are under the control of the Haqqani network. A military war lord led group with an awful track record of atrocities, and the group that historically had relations with Alqaeda and Arab Jihadist groups. If they had power I think things will be far worse than if the Taliban can maintain control. I exclude from the discussion of the Taliban non-Taliban groups. Clearly in a thread on Afghanistan they should be discussed, but it is inaccurate to describe all actions in Afghanistan as those of the Taliban. Some atrocities have been committed by Arab jihadist groups (often descendants of those groups supported and trained in insurgence by the CIA) who may have fought to overthrow of the previous government but who have serious ideological differences with the Taliban (and vice versa). Even where the military are Taliban forces, civil government may not have control. If you look across at Pakistan, it is clear that the civil government is not in complete control of the military or intelligence services. Indeed the military have overthrown the civil authorities in the past. Countries where governments have secure control of military and intelligence services are probably a minority given the frequency of military coups. Even the CIA has a track record of carrying out deniable black ops that are illegal under US law.
 
The US, of course. Not the UK. Not France or Canada. Not Sweden. Not Japan or South Korea. Or South Africa. Not your beloved China. Not your blameless Pakistan. Not Monaco, which must surely have an immense concentration of idle wealth looking for a good deed.

Why isn't this a job for the UN? Why isn't this a job for any one of a number of UN affiliated NGOs? Why is this more about sticking it to America for you, than about actually helping the Afghanis?

The reason for the US is because the US is where the money is - literally. The Afghanistan government has $billions in accounts with US banks. They cannot access the money because of US sanctions. Not EU sanctions or UK sanctions. The people cannot get money out because banks are closed and will not allow money to be transferred in by private persons or NGO because that are afraid that to do so will lead to prosecution by US authorities for breaching sanctions. That may mean they individually end up in prison and their companies are fined $billions. The UN sanctions are there at the request of the US.

Although nominally US sanctions on Iran, Cuba etc. are supposed to exempt humanitarian aid and medicines the reality is that they stifle all transactions. Many things are potentially dual use, vaccine manufacturing equipment could be used for making bio-weapons, pharmaceutical manufacturing may be used for producing chemical weapons (so the US claim when they have blown one up). Not to mention medical radiation equipment and isotopes. The consequence is US sanctions feed dependency, they act to prevent the development of independent manufacturing capability. Non US companies doing business with non US persons are still subject to US sanctions. Most countries do not have that degree of extra-territorial jurisdiction in their law.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/24/tre...fghanistan-easier-amid-taliban-sanctions.html
 
There is something of a contradiction in your position here.
You claim the US funded the Taliban, and the Mujahideen generally. If that is the case, then the US funded the forces fighting the Taliban too. If the opposition to the Taliban had won the civil war, would you still be condemning America, and claiming it was US policy to facilitate (intentionally or not) the Taliban rise to power?
Also, you attack the US for not installing a government after the Russian withdrawal, and then attack them for supporting the government that formed after the civil war.
This makes no sense to me.



Once again, you appear to want to blame America for everything.
The US military presence was there to fight the Taliban. You appear to condemn this.
When the US withdrew, and the Taliban resurged, you condemn America for that, too.
Is there anything that the US can do that would meet with your approval?
Another:
You want the US to provide aid, yet don't want Afghanistan to be financially dependent on US aid. Once again, you need to resolve these contradictions and present a more coherent case.

None of that answers the question of how you think America is to blame for the corruption and incompetence of the former Afghan government. You said the US controlled it: you still have not detailed how.

No, please do not lie about what I said; repeatedly. I never said the US funded the Taliban. I responded to that in my previous post yet you repeat the falsehood. I said the US funding of forces that overthrew the communist government led to the Taliban coming to power. The issue that funding jihadist groups might lead to a hostile government in afghanistan was raised at the time. The possibility of The Taliban coming to power (or something similar), was recognised and the argument made that more secular elements should be supported. This was not only a predictable consequence of the policy, it was predicted. A criticism of what happened in Afghanistan or Iraq was overthrowing the government without any idea of what happens next. At least when the US overthrew the democratically elected government in Iran they installed the Shah so there was not a prolonged period of civil war. I think when the object of the war is regime change as was the object of the US vs the communist government in Afghanistan, the invasion of Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, the second Iraq war, having a government ready to go is important.

I did not say it was US policy to facilitate the Taliban rise to power. Again do not lie about what I said. Overthrowing the communist government with no clear alternative led to the Taliban coming to power. This was not the intent of the US. it was an unintended consequence, a predicted consequence. One that could have been prevented. I would have preferred a secular socialist government, keeping in place many of the governance structures. The communist government was progressive in terms of women's rights, education and health care. The Taliban were a set back for Afghanistan. Having pushed the first domino the US walked away leaving Pakistan to 'clear up the mess'. Not surprisingly they did so in a way that was in Pakistan's interests and not the US (nor Afghan's), and partly was intended to be inimical to Iran's interests; the majority of Afghanis are Persian speakers with cultural ties to Iran.

Yes the US certainly funded forces opposed to the Taliban e.g. the Northern alliance.

I do not condemn the Us for trying to establish an Afghani government, but for it not being functional. The US was in control because it held the purse strings. It funded elections, it was party to the development of the constitution. The Taliban returning to power is an obvious foreign policy failure by the US. Ultimately the US had the money, and called the tune.

Did the US have power in Afghanistan? It killed and arrested, imprisoned and tortured Afghanis with impunity. The Afghani government had no control over what the US did in Afghanistan. Why did it go so wrong? My guess is the US was too centralist, they were unable to engage with local power structures. The US sanctions and policy excluded Taliban associated groups from participation. The Taliban and associated Islamist groups were important players that the US excluded from Afghan governance. The US brokered Good Friday agreement in Ireland allowed for terrorists to participate in government, in a way the US did not allow in Afghanistan. The fall of the Empire is littered with terrorists becoming Presidents, even in Israel! There may not have been a colonial governor and civil service in the way the British Empire governed colonies, but the British also had protectorates and dependencies, that were self governing, but it was clear who was in charge.
 
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No, please do not lie about what I said; repeatedly. I never said the US funded the Taliban. I responded to that in my previous post yet you repeat the falsehood. I said the US funding of forces that overthrew the communist government led to the Taliban coming to power.
No. This is the same butterfly effect nonsense you've been flogging all along. What led to the Taliban coming to power was Pakistan funding, training, and indoctrinating the Taliban.
 
FTFY

Easy to sweep away criticism by claiming you don't need to prove anything. You do - you criticise the Taliban for doing exactly what other countries do without criticism.

Laughable. You are just embarrassing yourself by lying like this.
 
The new nice tolerant and inclusive Taliban now mandate beards are de-facto mandatory:

The Taliban have banned hairdressers in Afghanistan's Helmand province from shaving or trimming beards, saying it breaches their interpretation of Islamic law.

Anyone violating the rule will be punished, Taliban religious police say.

Some barbers in the capital Kabul have said they also received similar orders.

...


In a notice posted on salons in southern Helmand province, Taliban officers warned that hairdressers must follow Sharia law for haircuts and beards.

"No one has a right to complain," the notice, which was seen by the BBC, read.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58700159

It says a lot about their priorities. Amid social devastation, famine, total economic collapse, massive maternal and child mortality... The Taliban of course focus upon imposing petty totalitarian religious fundamentalist rules.

Note that even though they might not explicitly state it, the religious police and friendly neighborhood rifle wielding Taliban thugs will of course be making sure that men don't walk around without a beard. Woe be to anyone who is naturally beardless.
 
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The new nice tolerant and inclusive Taliban now mandate beards are de-facto mandatory:



https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58700159

It says a lot about their priorities. Amid social devastation, famine, total economic collapse, massive maternal and child mortality... The Taliban of course focus upon imposing petty totalitarian religious fundamentalist rules.

Note that even though they might not explicitly state it, the religious police and friendly neighborhood rifle wielding Taliban thugs will of course be making sure that men don't walk around without a beard. Woe be to anyone who is naturally beardless.

Interestingly this is the same reason why Sikh, and Jews also have beards; the religious dictat (remember this is from God who actually knows what he is talking about), is that the hair on you face shall not be cut (and for Sikhs that includes the hair on their head. So if you are a Sikh girl you can wax (not cutting) but not shave. (Electrolysis also allowed.)

The requirement is not to have a beard; it is not to cut hair with a blade.

I agree that enforcing religious beliefs on those who do not believe is petty, but your comment about 'naturally beardless' just displays ignorance.
 
No. This is the same butterfly effect nonsense you've been flogging all along. What led to the Taliban coming to power was Pakistan funding, training, and indoctrinating the Taliban.

'Butterfly effect' is nonsense. Butterfly effect means that a non predictable event occurs due to a trivial act. This was a predicted event, people said that the US funding Islamist groups raised the danger that when the communist government was overthrown it would be replaced by an Islamist government hostile to the US. This is the opposite of a 'Butterfly effect'. This was an A then B then C event. This was not a chaotic non-predictable event. This was $billions to fund an insurgency, not the flutter of a butterfly wing. The fact that you inappropriately use a phrase repeatedly does not make it true or clever.
 
The requirement is not to have a beard; it is not to cut hair with a blade.

I agree that enforcing religious beliefs on those who do not believe is petty, but your comment about 'naturally beardless' just displays ignorance.

Nope. Once again, completely untrue.
The requirement is to have a beard that, when you grasp it, will be long enough to stick out of the other side of your fingers.
Furthermore, clean-shaven men, or men with smaller beards, risk persecution by the Taliban. I spoke to an Ishmaeli man on the Pakistan/Afghan border, who had been pulled off the bus by the Taliban for not having enough of a beard. He was forced to recite passages from the Quran, at gunpoint, to prove he was Muslim.
 
Found on Reddit
Narrated Nafi’: Ibn Umar said, The Prophet said, ‘Do the opposite of what the pagans do. Keep the beards and cut the moustaches short.’ Whenever Ibn ‘Umar performed the Hajj or ‘Umra, he used to hold his beard with his hand and cut whatever moustaches. Ibn Umar used to cut his moustache so short that the whiteness of his skin (above the upper lip) was visible, and he used to cut (the hair) between his moustaches and his beard . (Bukhari Book 72 Hadith 780)

Presumably the highlighted word should be "remains" or similar.

Sounds like either a basic IFF identification method during battle, or simply a bloody minded intention to be contrary.

Neither can be justified in the present day.
 
Women will no longer be allowed in Kabuls most prestigious university:

Tightening the Taliban’s restrictions on women, the group’s new chancellor for Kabul University announced on Monday that women would be indefinitely banned from the institution either as instructors or students.

“I give you my words as chancellor of Kabul University,” Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat*said in a Tweet*on Monday. “As long as a real Islamic environment is not provided for all, women will not be allowed to come to universities or work. Islam first.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/world/asia/taliban-women-kabul-university.html

So much for the Talibans "1000% improvement" over their previous rules.
 
Nope. Once again, completely untrue.
The requirement is to have a beard that, when you grasp it, will be long enough to stick out of the other side of your fingers.
Furthermore, clean-shaven men, or men with smaller beards, risk persecution by the Taliban. I spoke to an Ishmaeli man on the Pakistan/Afghan border, who had been pulled off the bus by the Taliban for not having enough of a beard. He was forced to recite passages from the Quran, at gunpoint, to prove he was Muslim.

Rather than going into the details, I was making a broader point that the rule (as quoted above) is about not cutting the beard. That this seems to be a common theme in religions for some reason. Certainly in Sikhism and probably Judaism and Islam the rationalisation is more about separating out believers from non-believers. Old testament comments on shaving also led to uncut beards and long hair in Orthodox Christianity (or the Amish). I think in some interpretations it is not allowing a blade to touch the face, which prevents the clean shaved but not the stubble/short beard look. If for some reason you cannot grow a beard (e.g. post burn), that does not prevent you from being a muslim. I have a Sikh (girl) friend who does not shave but will pluck and wax.

There are wide differences on shaving in Islam, as this is not a Quranic edict. If you look at Shia mullahs, they tend to short beards.

What I think is interesting is this fuss about beards, whilst I think the real horror is the religious insistence on circumcision. MGM is common in religions, and unlike shaving that is reversible and really only becomes an issue in adulthood, MGM is inflicted on infant males.
 
Women will no longer be allowed in Kabuls most prestigious university:



https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/world/asia/taliban-women-kabul-university.html

So much for the Talibans "1000% improvement" over their previous rules.

Tragic. As I have pointed out this is not a common phenomenon in Islamic countries where women's access to higher education has often been greater than in non-Islamic countries. So I think it is important to blame the Taliban's interpretation not Islam as a whole.

I hope this is not a negotiating ploy (or perhaps I do). But I fear that it is genuine response to segregationist ideas. One of the problems with the Taliban is that they are a rural based movement with more traditionalist views in contrast with more urban people.
 
'Butterfly effect' is nonsense. Butterfly effect means that a non predictable event occurs due to a trivial act. This was a predicted event, people said that the US funding Islamist groups raised the danger that when the communist government was overthrown it would be replaced by an Islamist government hostile to the US. This is the opposite of a 'Butterfly effect'. This was an A then B then C event. This was not a chaotic non-predictable event. This was $billions to fund an insurgency, not the flutter of a butterfly wing. The fact that you inappropriately use a phrase repeatedly does not make it true or clever.

Once again: not all the Mujahideen groups were Islamist. They were, of course, all Muslim, but Ahmed Shah Masood's forces, for example, were moderate in their approach to such issues as education for women.
Islamist means fundamentalist/ jihadist. It is, really, an invented term designed to somehow distance jihadists from mainstream Islam. The problem, of course, as with all fundamentalists is that they are, by definition, closer to the original teachings and therefore more Muslim, than more moderate believers.
There is no reason to assume that, had the Northern Alliance won the civil war, they would have been hostile to the West.
 
Rather than going into the details, I was making a broader point that the rule (as quoted above) is about not cutting the beard.

No, you weren't. You claimed that beardless men were not at risk from the Taliban. That is still not true, and trying to claim you said something else won't help.

There are wide differences on shaving in Islam, as this is not a Quranic edict. If you look at Shia mullahs, they tend to short beards.

Like the Ayatollah Khomeini? Or his successor, Ayatollah Khameni?
Rubbish.
 
"I spoke to the executive director of the WFP [World Food Program], David Beasley, when he paid a visit to Kabul on Sunday.

"His analysis of the situation was alarming.

""It is as bad as you possibly can imagine," said Mr Beasley. "In fact, we're now looking at the worst humanitarian crisis on Earth.""

"Ninety-five percent of the people don't have enough food, and now we're looking at 23 million people marching towards starvation," he added. "The next six months are going to be catastrophic. It is going to be hell on Earth."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59202880
 
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I love the whole "I am not defending the Taliban but"..routine we have here.
I think some on the left are showing the one of the worst things about some on the Left: if you can qualify as some kind of "Anti Imperalist Freedom Fighters" you can do just about anything without fear of serious criticism.
 
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"I spoke to the executive director of the WFP [World Food Program], David Beasley, when he paid a visit to Kabul on Sunday.

"His analysis of the situation was alarming.

""It is as bad as you possibly can imagine," said Mr Beasley. "In fact, we're now looking at the worst humanitarian crisis on Earth.""

"Ninety-five percent of the people don't have enough food, and now we're looking at 23 million people marching towards starvation," he added. "The next six months are going to be catastrophic. It is going to be hell on Earth."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59202880


"Before the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August, there was confidence that the government of President Ashraf Ghani would be able to cope with the threat of a bad winter, given the help of the international community. That help evaporated when Mr Ghani's government collapsed.
Western countries have cut off their aid to the country, since they don't want to be seen to help a regime which bars girls from education and is in favour of reintroducing the full range of sharia punishments.
But will those countries just stand by now and allow millions of innocent people to face acute hunger?"


Are the people of a country more important than its politics?
 

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