I was there in 2007. By the time I left, I had concluded we would need to stay 100+ years to make a difference. And no one in their right mind would stay there 100+ years...
Friend who served as an officer told me we cannot win there and cannot stop their opium trade, except with tactics we are not going to employ, such as telling key players we will kill their entire family if they betray us.
He also mentioned the level of lack of education. In training them to be part of a modern military, most of them had never seen a fork before. It was that basic.
Then there was the “boy night” every week. He learned not to smile at the children otherwise they would be brought to his room by an elder for sex that night.
We never won a thing because winning has been undefined. Time to leave. We never defined winning, never could and never would. We haven’t got the need or the will to figure out what winning is there or how to do it. At least the Afghanis have the guts to stand on principles.
We won’t a nd we have something worth far more to fight for.
Our troops won tactically but we could never lead them to strategic victory. Afghanistan is not known as the graveyard of empires for nothing.
The only way we could change it is total colonization using the British model. I am not too interested in that.
I work from r big time Afghans
They Say even Kabul
Is a war zone
We’re at 73 years in Japan