MOAB Dropped in Afghanistan

[Smitty-48]

Well, yeah, the Taliban are not a monolith neither, that's true, but I'm not suggesting signing a treaty and making them your formal proxies, more just getting out of the way while your enemies fight each other, let the Taliban fight ISIS in Afghanistan, and maybe just keep bombing ISIS and not the Taliban, because given a choice between ISIS and the Taliban, you'd be better off with the Taliban running the place.

[TheReal_ND]

That is essentially our stance in Syria except, as far as I can tell, it's the regime we are helping the rebels with.

[Smitty-48]

Syria is more chaotic, and the "rebels" that America is backing are not that tough, the Taliban at least, are a match for ISIS, if the US stops trying to degrade the Taliban. If you keep degrading the Taliban, you could end up handing the win to ISIS, so I would just lay off the Taliban, and then let them fight ISIS while you hang back.

[heydaralon]

Taliban was fairly strong in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. The only real fallout they had was when we said they were harboring Osama. Since th n it's not been the same. In fact there is hardly a regime that doesn't stipulate "we can win if the USAF doesn't get involved.

Gas.

Lmao

I don't know if this is true or not, but supposedly the Taliban reached some kind of agreement with Bin Laden where if he assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader, that the Taliban would allow AQ to coordinate their 9/11 attack from the safety (not much) of Afghanistan. A few days after Massoud got blown up, the planes hit the towers. I still don't really understand why the Taliban decided to go to bat for Bin Laden at all. Basically Bin Laden attempted to set up some small infrastructure projects in Afghanistan as a goodwill gesture to Mullah Omar, but it couldn't have been much because by the time he got to Afghanistan, Hassan al-Turabi and the Sudanese government had fleeced him of most of his wealth. He didn't really have much to offer the Taliban and since they were walking a tightrope with the West, drawing unwanted attention via harboring terrorists is not a good PR move. Many of the local leaders hated OBL. I understand why bin Laden wanted the US to get sucked into a middle eastern conflict, but it is very weird that the Taliban didn't see how badly they were about to get played.

Still, in the long term the Taliban are likely to be bigger winners than AQ. Their aims are actually realizable. A global caliphate is not going to happen, but the Taliban's goal of staying in charge of a shitty central asian country is pretty modest.

[Smitty-48]

I think the Taliban were actually wary of a conflict with AQ, or rather, Arab foreign fighters in general, because now that ISIS is moving in and trying to take over, that seems like what the Taliban thought that AQ would try to do, so the Taliban tried to keep the peace with them, live and let live. The Taliban had their hands full with the Northern Allaince, they still do, the Northern Alliance being the government in Kabul, but now here comes an Arab Sunni group from the Gulf, and suddenly the Taliban are fighting on two fronts.

[heydaralon]

I think the Taliban were actually wary of a conflict with AQ, or rather, Arab foreign fighters in general, because now that ISIS is moving in and trying to take over, that seems like what the Taliban thought that AQ would try to do, so the Taliban tried to keep the peace with them, live and let live.

If you read about how these "global" terror groups operate in the ME, you will find an obsession with local branding. That was the downfall of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia the ISIS precursor. The Sunni tribes of Iraq resented foreigners coming in and taking over their smuggling routes, marrying their daughters, sermonizing to them about the sins of local customs etc. This discontent was used by the Iraqi government and US to divide and conquer, an during Sawha we pitted Sunni against Sunni. For awhile, it worked. The lesson that AQ took away from this is that you need to downplay the foreign and global aspect of your project. Many of the areas that AQ controls are not even identified as being AQ affiliates. Instead, AQ tries to find locals to lead the franchises and emphasizes local conflicts and disputes over global ones. That's why Jahbat al Nusra keeps changing its name every 15 minutes to Fatah Al Sham or whatever, even though its the exact same thing. Many Arabs have a strong dislike for foreign troops in their countries, whether they are NATO or jihadis.

[Smitty-48]

And ISIS has become even better than that than AQ, the ISIS brand is more successful, because the ISIS that the Taliban are fighting, I don't think they're coming all the way from the Gulf, I think ISIS is recruiting them in Pakistan. ISIS is winning the branding and recruiting war, to the point of now being able to threaten the Taliban in Afpak.

ISIS has come from nowhere, to suddenly becoming the Taliban's chief enemy, more threatening than the Northern Alliance, or even the Americans, and I think the main reason is, they are recruiting right from the Taliban's base, they are flipping Taliban recruits to ISIS, and none of the other of the Taliban's enemies could do that.

[heydaralon]

And ISiS has become even better than that than AQ, the ISIS brand is more successful, because the ISIS that the Taliban are fighting, I don't think they're coming all the way from the Gulf, I think ISIS is recruiting them in Pakistan. ISIS is winning the branding and recruiting war, to the point of now being able to threaten the Taliban in Afpak.

I think its quite possible that AQ will outlive ISIS in terms of brand recognition though. ISIS is rapidly losing territory and its gain of territory is what made such an impression on the muslim world. AQ were playing a bit more of the long game. OBL and Zawahiri did not necessarily think the Caliphate would happen in their lifetimes. It was certain eventually, but had it taken 500 years that was fine for them. This gives them an advantage in the sense that they can make a vague promise in the future but they do not have to deliver immediate results. ISIS tried to speed things up and create a caliphate immediately. It delivered more than AQ did, so many jihadis jumped fences. The trouble is, once they lose the territory they gained, it will be hard to take the group as seriously. I think its quite possible that many former IS people will just jump into the arms of AQ. To be honest though, it doesn't really matter. AQ is not centralized and for years it has attempting to create thousands of independent self-radicalizing cells across the world. They would like to create a group that is not dependent at all on Zawahiri, but simply reads the texts and independently formulates attacks. At first ISIS was based on the geographic capital of Raqqa and the figure of Baghdadi, but it seems like they are taking a page out of AQ's playbook and trying the self-radicalization model. You can see it with all these fucked up attacks in Europe that are claimed by IS. Baghdadi did not plan those attacks personally and probably did not even give the terrorist any funds to carry them out. ISIS basically just plants the seed and takes credit for it after the fact, which is something AQ did for years...
sorry for the wall of text lol.

[Smitty-48]

That seems plausible, ISIS burning brighter but burning itself out in the process, AQ staying the course and as a result lasting for the long term.

ISIS may actually be doing better in Afpak than they are in the Gulf, but certainly, if they are defeated, or even just dislodged in the Gulf, that would hurt their brand and so recruitment, if they don't have the Caliphate anymore, that may roll them back in Afpak by default.

[heydaralon]

That seems plausible, ISIS burning brighter but burning itself out in the process, AQ staying the course and as a result lasting for the long term.

ISIS may actually be doing better in Afpak than they are in the Gulf, but certainly, if they are defeated, or even just dislodged in the Gulf, that would hurt their brand and so recruitment, if they don't have the Caliphate anymore, that may roll them back in Afpak by default.

I wonder what ideological direction the next terror threat will come from. The funny thing is, before we started fighting Islamists, we were fighting Marxists in the middle east. I believe many of the suicide tactics came from the Marxists, not the muslims. In fact, this Islamic terrorism as it is being practiced now is less than 50 years old. It seems like the pattern for middle east movements, is: "We'll try this out! It could help us defeat the West!"
then:
"This sucks, lets try this out!"
If you look at Nasser and the United Arab Republic or the FLN in Algeria, you see that Arab nationalism and PanArabism was a huge force for many people in the middle east. Once Israel humiliated Nasser via Six Day war, and the Baathist and Nasserite governments became stale and weak, people started looking elsewhere for a winning ideology. The Iranian revolution and the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan were framed as Islam triumphing over secularism, and many muslims went back to their roots. The reasoning was, if we follow the quaran, we ill defeat the West and create a prosperous society. The trouble is, that hasn't quite happened. Radical Islam has managed to stir the pot, but it hasn't launched any muslim country to the level of global power, or ended the poverty, war, and foreign interference in the region. It seems like its only a matter of time before some new ideology gains a foothold and the current jihadi stuff will go the way of baathism. Religion is a powerful force, and I don't think Islam is going anywhere, but it is not inevitable that terrorists in the future will cling to the ideology of Khomeini or Bin Laden. No doubt, they will be paying close attention to the tactics and strategies that IS and AQ used and might even be more brutal and destructive than they are. I could be 100% wrong about this, and I know idea what sort of ideology the new terror would take, but it is something that fascinates me. In the 19th century we had anarchists, in the 1960's we had marxists, and now we have Islamists. Each has borrowed heavily from its predecessors, and each though it was a vanguard of something permanent and timeless. But time and time again, these terror groups failed to bring about the change they wanted. So its always back to the drawing board, some new asshole thinking he has it figured out this time.