Afghanistan Thread

I think nobody believed Taliban whatever spewed from their mouth.

I know some people here did believe that the Taliban did eradicate the poppies despite evidence to contrary.

Provide citations please.

What has actually been said on the subject is that the Taliban has overwhelmingly reduced poppie production. Which is not the same thing as elimination and is objectively correct. More importantly, it's still an incredible accomplishment that completely outclasses anything the republican government attempted.

For me #2 is the stickler here, if it wasn't the Taliban would we really be doing this kind of hair splitting? No, we would not be. But because they're bad people we have to play this tiresome game where we desperately attempt to downplay impressive accomplishments. It's pointless and frankly irrational, we don't need to like a government to recognize that it accomplished something objectively impressive.

What people believed was the satellite imagery.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 28th 2023 at 6:52:27 AM

https://www.alcis.org/post/afghanistan-dilemma

The BBC talked about this. If you have doubts or questions, raise it to them.

Ok? I'm not sure the relevance.

Frankly you seem to be arguing against a strawman. Neither anyone here or elsewhere has claimed that the Taliban have completely eradicated drug production. All that's been said is that they've drastically reduced it in the southern portion of the country, which the BBC article supports.

People have said that (based on sat) the poppies are mostly wrecked. But same sat images also showed other places in the south have increased production. A while back, the sentiment was that the Taliban are doing a good job. The exiles and anti-Taliban Afghans who are hiding scoff at this.

I agree with the assessment that there's no way the Taliban can fully get rid of them. Short of killing the farmers.

Al Jazeera follows Afghan refugees who ended up in US immigration detention facilities after trying to enter the country through the Mexican border. After the August 2021 evacuations, it has been extremely difficult for Afghans (even those with US ties) to secure asylum in the US: of the 66,000 humanitarian parole applications filed since then (each one costing the applicant around $500), just 8,000 have been processed, of which 123 were granted asylum.

In one of those dominoes people often don't think about, the disruption to opium production is going to lead to increased fentanyl deaths. The demand for heroin isn't going anywhere, so the supply has to come from somewhere, and not enough countries are willing to start handing out Buprenorphine to addicts.

Also, there is a new season of the Blowback podcast that's coming out now about Afghanistan. The first episode is out for free now (and covers an overview of what they're going to cover over the rest of the series), but the rest are behind a paywall for now. Free release later this year, I think. For those who don't know, Blowback takes a look at the history of various US conflicts, what lead up to them, and how US actions come back to bite them later. Previous seasons have been about Iraq, Cuba and North Korea.

"Which is not the same thing as elimination and is objectively correct. More importantly, it's still an incredible accomplishment that completely outclasses anything the republican government attempted."

I think the issue is probably the taliban have hyped the whole issue quite a bit and is not that cut and clear as "they crush 80% of opium as prove they can govern afganistan".

Also.....yeah, we kinda do this spliting hairs because it is the taliban, mostly a terrorist organization who skills is running a state have being questionable so there is some suspiction of the idea.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-66633178

Women aren't allowed to go to the Band-e-Amir park. That's the one with the large rubber swan-like boats in the lake IIRC.

Edited by Ominae on Aug 30th 2023 at 8:04:19 AM

https://www.voanews.com/a/france-evacuates-five-afghan-women-threatened-by-taliban-/7254203.html

The French evacced five women who were threatened by pro-Taliban groups. They left via Pakistani soil.

https://www.reddit.com/r/afghanistan/comments/16efdg6/times_square_new_york_city_today_on_this_day_22/

Been a short video of Massoud Sr. shown in Times Square.

https://kabulnow.com/2023/09/taliban-detain-shave-students-heads-as-punishment-for-playing-music-in-faryab/

Taliban fighters detained university students in Faryab for playing loud music. They're punished by having their heads shaved.

They're released, but the gates leading to the dorms were locked.

https://kabulnow.com/2023/09/afghanistans-hazaras-fear-displacement-as-another-civilian-is-killed-in-uruzgan/

Sad to hear more Hazaras are being displaced from their land as of September 12.

Edited by Ominae on Sep 28th 2023 at 12:12:42 PM

https://www.voanews.com/a/afghan-women-defy-taliban-will-participate-in-asian-games-/7289728.html

Afghan women are in Hangzhou to join the Asian Games, partially to raise awareness to what's happening and as a middle finger to Akunzada.

https://www.voanews.com/a/taliban-undertake-speedy-overhaul-afghanistan-justice-system/7289101.html

Attorney General's office is taken down by the Taliban. No one ought to be surprised by this.

AP: Powerful earthquake and aftershocks kill dozens and injure many more in western Afghanistan. Two magnitude 6.3 earthquakes hit near Herat on Saturday – somewhat unusually for a flat part of the country – with local authorities estimating the fatality count at 100, while the UN published a preliminary figure of 320 dead.

Washington Post: Taliban bringing water to Afghanistan’s parched plains via massive canal. Following the ruinous droughts of the previous years, the Taliban regime rolled out a setpiece infrastructure project: the Qosh Tepa Canal, which seeks to channel water from the Amu Darya River along the northern border to irrigate agricultural lands across the northern provinces.

Water access is a bit of a zero-sum issue in arid Central Asia: diverting water from the Amu Darya inevitably means that less of it will be available to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan downstream. The latter two countries, along with Tajikistan further upstream, have signed a treaty regulating their use of the Amu Darya; but Afghanistan has not, and this move, as necessary as it might seem for Afghanistan's agricultural sector, seems bound to produce nasty side effects for neighbouring countries.

A lot of major settlements and farmlands across Central Asia are clustered fairly far away from the major rivers, fed by non-concrete-lined surface canals that suffer massive water losses to evaporation and leakage. Up north, the Soviets quite infamously diverted large volumes of water from the Syr Darya River to irrigate cotton fields in Uzbekistan, which resulted in the gradual disappearance of the Aral Sea and toxic salt storms along its desiccated shores. The Taliban regime itself has seen ratcheting tensions with neighbouring Iran over the decades-old Helmand River issue. The water issue is just an all-around mess with no easy solutions in sight.

Reuters: Afghan earthquakes kill 2,053, Taliban say, as death toll spikes.

NBC: Hundreds of thousands of Afghan migrants face deportation from Pakistan in widespread crackdown. In a surprise announcement last month, the Pakistani government announced that it would start deporting the 1.7 million Afghans living undocumented in the country, many of whom have spent their entire lives in Pakistan and have never even visited Afghanistan.

The Pakistani government stated that the around 1.4 million Afghan registered refugees in the country won't be affected and that those deported will not face an entry ban from Pakistan in the future, but the move has prompted widespread outcry from the refugees and the Taliban government, which has begun to set up a high commission to deal with returning refugees.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Nov 1st 2023 at 8:45:40 AM

AP: Pakistan says nearly 25,000 Afghans waiting for visas to US won’t be deported as part of clampdown.

Dawn: Afghan refugees are leaving — and Pakistanis are enjoying the spoils they leave behind. The looming deportation order for Afghan refugees in Pakistan is forcing many of them to sell their belongings (including properties and businesses) at dirt-cheap prices, to the benefit of their Pakistani neighbours.

TOLOnews: Iran has also quietly sped up its deportation of Afghan refugees, with one Afghan official at the Islam Qala border crossing in Herat reporting that the daily number of deportees has doubled to 4,000.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/afghanistan-pakistan-refugees-1.7032602

Canadian military vets who did their time in Afghanistan are concerned that some Afghan families (with Canadian ties) are being deported from Pakistan.

https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/the-talibans-plan-to-rebuild-and-legitimize-al-qaeda/

Sajjan M. Gohel & Victoria Jones are warning countries/groups that want to "recognize" the Taliban after Ghani's departure. They explains that the links of AQ and Taliban are really, really close. Especially since future jihadis are looking up to them as a sanctuary.

They also throw the question on whether everyone else is ready to recongize that VIPs may be working/receiving Taliban/AQ personalities in the future.

Edited by Ominae on Nov 29th 2023 at 7:54:45 AM

https://www.cbc.ca/news/former-caf-interpreter-arrest-afghanistan-1.7047195

Looks like an interpreter who worked with Canadian troops was taken by Taliban fighters.

https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistan-seeks-us-help-against-pakistani-taliban-in-afghanistan/7397076.html

I think I need to get popcorn. Islamabad's asking for American assistance against the TTP and Pakistani Taliban operating from Taliban Afghanistan.

Well well well, if it isn't the people who trained the face-eating leopards to eat faces realizing that their faces are on the menu too.