Posted on 05/02/2022 4:32:20 AM PDT by FarCenter
When the Taliban, loaded with guns and firepower and riding on the promise of “peace, stability and unity,” took over Kabul in August last year, few at the time believed the militant group’s seizure of power marked a transition from war to peacetime stability.
Fast forward eight months, the Taliban’s fractious regime is far from stable, either politically, economically or geostrategically. The poor economic situation, with the country careening towards widespread famine, is only one side of the Taliban’s problem.
Emerging power centers within Afghanistan pose a direct challenge to the Taliban’s claims to be the only representative party or power wielder. And those competing political forces are making their point in an explosive fashion.
...
Secondly, apart from the Taliban’s own inability and unwillingness to counter ISIS-K, the group’s growing strength is also tied to existing political opposition to the Taliban.
As some recent reports have indicated, many members of groups and militias previously trained by the US, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and NATO have since joined ISIS-K, not only because they are being hounded by the Taliban but also because these fighters think ISIS-K is the most effective opposition to Taliban rule.
Following the “enemy of my enemy” rule, these former militia members are effectively following the mission they were originally trained to accomplish: to hunt and kill the Taliban.
While some of those who have joined ISIS-K can be categorized as sympathetic to the organization’s core ideology, many others who are joining are from a more secular brand of resistance, including the National Resistance Front (NRF), based in northern Afghanistan and led by Ahmad Massoud and Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan’s former vice-president.
(Excerpt) Read more at asiatimes.com ...
We should probably send them more money. Wonder how much we have sent them to date...excluding what Brandon left behind.
‘Sounds like we will return...
Afghanistan is tribal, not national.
The displacement ot tribalism with radical, harsh, backward, religious fanaticism is not within the ruling tribal purview
Not our circus. Not our monkeys. Let the Chicoms support them.
Prediction: A couple of years from now, the Taliban will be inviting us back.
I hope we demand the return of the Air Base.
It’s Pakistan’s problem, largely because the Pashtuns are half in Afghanistan and half in Pakistan, thanks to Durand.
Pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan is the only thing Biden has done which I agree with. I just wish he hadn’t let it happen in such a dangerously clumsy and illogical manner.
Islam is the problem.
Pakistan’s ISI created the Taliban.
They had help from the Saudis who funded the madrassas.
Yet another country to whose suffering I am indifferent.
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