You can judge the answer by the reality on the ground. You've basically answered your own question.
As of right now [mo: 11AUG21],the only areas remaining under the control of the puppet regime are basically some districts near Kabul, plus the Hazarajat. This is not at all surprising to anyone...
Interesting take on things. And probably not far off for those who support the Taliban. +1 on that basis, though I wouldn't be surprised you'll get lots of downvotes. 2 remarks tho: the Talibs were no fun from 94 to 2001. And, whatever you think of Western states, their courts and police system don't have to be corrupt and inefficient. Perhaps it reflects both a failing of Westerners to understand the Afghan psyche, as well as a failing of Afghani society to work harmoniously for its own benefit and have power structures NOT based on tribalism and patronage.
also, I'm not going to be doing it, but would you mind if people edit out the more inflammatory language ("corrupt puppet", "Only a lunatic could believe otherwise.", etc...). There is, I believe, some benefit to getting an adversarial point of view, but really this site tends to delete answers that are too partisan. Like yours at this point . Last, your great liking of the Taliban seems to be a minority view from Afghanis. Do you even live there? P.S. I am well aware of what a quickly disintegrating situation in the north and by Herat means - this is not a Pashtun only thing anymore.
I prefer to call things by their proper names, regardless of how it is perceived by biased readers. A regime installed by an alien invading army, whose original leader is the owner of a chain of ethnic restaurants in the foreigners' country, is a puppet regime by definition. Double that when the alien invaders are of alien faith. Triple it when said alien faith has been at war with the nation's dominant faith for 1300 years.
Societies develop in accordance with a well understood basic pattern. Only a lunatic can believe that the pattern can be short-circuited, that required development time can be shortened, or that inappropriate structures grafted onto a society in violation of its present stage of development can ever possibly work, under any circumstances whatever. Western structures work in societies at the bourgeois-capitalist stage of social development. They work there very well. They cannot work in a primitive-tribal society. Again -- crocodile, horse.
And does my name look like the name of a man who would support the Talibs? The situation here is not about Afghan "fault". The fault is entirely American. When I see an ignorant lunatic trying to put out a fire with gasoline, or graft a crocodile's organs into a horse, I can predict the unfortunate outcome in advance. The resulting disaster is always, entirely, the fault of the lunatic.
I agree with @ItalianPhilosophers4Monica; you have some points, but they're buried under needless editorializing which makes the whole thing more like a rant, which isn't a good fit here regardless of the validity; nothing to do with bias, other than a bias for considerate well written answers.
Sorry @dandavis. Your perception that anything I have said is in any way "editorializing" is in itself evidence of massive bias. The regime presently ruling Kabul is objectively corrupt, and objectively a puppet. The American effort was objectively structured in such a manner that it could never succeed, under any circumstances at all. To point this out, forcefully, is to speak the truth, not to editorialize. In a country where the average tribal leader can snap his fingers and call out a 1000-man lashkar to confront the 60 Talibs invading his village, where are the lashkars? Enough said
@Moshe Well, I'm not Italian nor a philosopher myself. Nor American. So, not assuming anything. However, if you are not from there, perhaps you would like to cite articles or other sources you have for your insights? If you had lived there, or in the immediate neighborhood, well it would have been your day-to-day. As it is not, you must have some sources to inform your analysis about Afghanistan. Otherwise, well, you might hate the US, that's your perogative, but it's just your opinion and really it's a dime a dozen. Just like "USA above all" tends to be a dime a dozen here too.
I've started a bounty for 500 rep. If you could just add supporting links for all the claims in your post, I'd be happy to award it (please add them directly into the post).
I concur with the comments above that this answer could be improved by removing the rant-like elements. It's the very nature of politics that everyone thinks their view is "objectively correct" and "unbiased", while the next person thinks the same thing about the exact opposite view. That's why this site encourages neutral language.
I agree with your conclusion that trying to leapfrog from a tribal society to a democracy is futile. However the Inglehart - Welzel cultural map seem to indicate that the development of a country as measure by UN's Human Development Index (HDI) is a combination of material conditions and ideas. In particular most of the countries with highest HDI are protestant and all islamic countries have medium to low HDI. So the main problem here seems to be Islam and its inability to root out tribalism.
Respectfully, I am about as likely to enjoy reading about Historical Materialism as you are to read along as I go through The Gulag Archipelago for the 2nd time ;-) (Kindle often has Vol 1 at <$2 on special). If you were in-country, you might want to add it. And could you link to the Karzai (I assume that's who you refer to) Baltimore restaurant thing? Wasn't aware of it. I am not sure why the bot would pick your links as spam. Adding 5 or 6 should not bother it overmuch and if it is your new status here, maybe a mod can help.
Mazar-i-Sharif just fell today. Do you really think that the Shiite in Mazar-i-Sharif support Taliban?
Also: it seems your analysis ignores women altogether. Women are 50% of the population in Afghanistan. Do you really think they prefer the Taliban, who give them no rights at all, over the "puppet government", who gives them at least some rights? feminist.org/our-work/afghan-women-and-girls
@JonathanReez: Voila. Please read carefully and follow the links.
@ErelSegal-Halevi: Mazar fell because the local power brokers made a deal. Yes, for today, the Shiites in Mazar support the Taliban. You know, the way Michel Aoun supports Hizballah. The dynamic operates in Lebanon pretty much the same way it operates in Afghanistan. And in 'Aza, it operates the same way.
@Andy: You confuse sociology with material prosperity and the like. Before a society can change, the minds of its people must change. And before that happens, there must be good reason for change. Islam, in itself, is not the issue here. Had the Americans attempted to build their democracy in the Congo, or in the jungles of New Guinea, the result would have been exactly the same. Afghanistan is tribal because tribalism works in Afghanistan. When tribalism stops working, Afghanistan will change. Not before. Only after. And then -- very, very slowly.
@ItalianPhilosophers4Monica: As a descendant of men and women who experienced the Gulag Archipelago first hand, I sympathize with your sentiment. But you must separate Marx's ideology from his massive contributions to social science and the study of human history. His model is simplistic, it is crude. But it is very, very good within its limits. His problems came down to taking the model past its limits, and ignoring the fact that when the model becomes well known, it itself becomes a factor in the model. Azimov's Harry Seldon is obviously, clearly, a more aware Marx. With more money.
@Moshe. Good point. I am glad to hear that you think ideas matter. Unfortunately it seems the only way out of tribalism is trough a somewhat totalitarian regime? In the west we've had the catholic church for 100s of years with its prohibition against marriages within four degrees of consanguinity. Alternatively the US could have propped up warlords from ethnic and religious minorities. That would have been a more realistic strategy.
The original question was about "public sentiment". Your answer is about "public sentiment among men", or maybe "public sentiment among strong men". That's factually not the same question. Regardless of your or my ideology.
Also, if you interpret "surrender" as "support", then sure, all of Afghanistan "supports" the Taliban by definition, since they surrendered. But this is not the common meaning of "public sentiment". Again, I am not talking about ideology.
@ErelSegal-Halevi: Alas, you are talking about ideology. You persist in viewing all things through a highly distorting ideological lens. Making deals with the strong is not surrender. Once the Talibs have marched into Kabul, they will have to rule the country. Everybody's AKs are still there to vote against them. Do you think they forget this? As for "public sentiment," it is about the PUBLIC. In Afghanistan, women are not part of the public. Their opinions are therefore irrelevant to the discussion. Your wishing it were otherwise will not alter this reality.
@Andy: The only way out of tribalism is through rivers of blood and centuries of change. Yes, a brutal regime can break the tribal structure, or at least significantly weaken it, fairly quickly. Witness Saddam's Iraq. But mentalities do not change overnight. Witness how quickly the tribes came roaring back, e.g. in al-Anbar, after the American invasion toppled Saddam.
@Moshe women were part of the public during what you call the "puppet government". They worked, they participated in the government, some held weapons. Saying that they are not "part of the public" now, under the Taliban occupation, is circular logic. Today, by definition, everyone who opposes Taliban is not considered "part of the public" too, so here, everyone who is "part of the public" supports Taliban. QED
@ErelSegal-Halevi: And if you were to investigate the reality of Afghan women at work or in government, you would find, again, three kinds of status. Either the woman is a wife, helping her husband. Or she is a widow, holding a chair warm until her son grows up. Or she is a whore. Women do not have agency in Afghanistan. Never had. For the foreseeable future, will not. Feminism is 1000 years AFTER Saxon England. Your wishing otherwise will not make it so.
@Moshe My gawd, you are as brief as Solzhenitsyn in your writings ;-) Gimme some time to digest the substance, rather than the posturing, of the updated version. Agree wrt the brutal reality that womens' opinion counts for little on the ground there, but, again, there are ways to communicate the same information with more neutral language than b-slap and whore.
That's the answer to a different question however. The only thing in that answer that answers this question is one @AmerikaDC tweet. That answer references this one for more details, so this answer still needs to be condensed to be useful.
Your initial post is hard to read and unnecesarily colourful in language, but the part under P.P.S. [mo: 15AUG21] is solid (and highly interesting) information. (+1) Well-awarded bounty.
@Allure: The mechanisms behind what happened are not "minor points," they are the foundations of the answer. As for the summary, it consists of the first two sentences.
This was needlessly incendiary in parts (the same points can be made without calling people lunatics) but very insightful and an interesting read. As a sidenote, you can create hyperlinks so your links aren't just sitting out there, and there appears to be at least one picture you linked that you can embed if you so choose
I am not Afghan, but this article theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/08/… paints a quite different picture at the situation of women before the Taliban occupation. They studied in schools and universities, they worked in the media and government, they joined the police. One of the province leaders were a woman. They were much more than just "wives, widows, or whores..."
@Moshe if the summary is the first two sentences, are you saying that the Taliban could not have won without popular support? That doesn't match the rest of the answer, which talks about different things. Again I'm sorry but I am sticking with the downvote. The reason I downvoted has nothing to do with the content of the answer, only the presentation, which is exceedingly convoluted.
(ping @Andy) "The only way out of tribalism is through rivers of blood and centuries of change." Part of tribalism is the tribal leader's personal accountability to the tribe -- Taliban commanders sell their own land to pay their troops. If the tribal authority is never subverted, but is given the opportunity & freedom to grasp the economic/political benefits of adopting some Western standards, we can avoid the "rivers of blood". This is happening today in the UAE, which recently sent a female astronaut into space.
"centuries of change" Agreed. Tribal culture has been around for thousands of years, and persisted in some extremely harsh environments. It certainly has quite a few strengths against Western democratic institutions.
Discussion on answer by Moshe: Are th…
Discussion on answer by Moshe: Are th…