Taliban Learned from Past Mistakes

 


They had 20 years to figure it out - and they did. The Taliban Mk. 2 were not going to repeat their past mistakes. They were not going to invite another, pre-9/11 civil war. This time there would be no Northern Alliance to fight them to a standstill.

The rapid Taliban offensive across Afghanistan that culminated Sunday with the flight of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was meticulously planned and executed with ruthless efficiency, say Western military experts.

And they note the Islamist militants appeared to have learned from their tactical mistake in the mid-1990s, when they overran Kabul before having secured the north of the country, allowing opponents to form a Northern Alliance opposition.

This time around, Taliban commanders have been much more methodical, building up momentum by securing outlying districts, securing the main border posts with neighboring Pakistan and Iran, then moving on to regional capitals, and leaving Kabul for last after seizing Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan’s fourth largest city and the onetime stronghold of the Northern Alliance.

If the Taliban have an Achilles Heel it isn't apparent yet. We'll just have to watch from the sidelines as events unfold. Pakistan, China and Russia are poised to attempt to fill the vacuum left by the West and they've all got sharp elbows.

Fun Fact:

One of the Taliban's key strategists is Abdul Ghani Baradar. 

Baradar is a veteran leader and was largely brought up in Kandahar -- the Taliban’s birthplace. His military experience goes back even before the formation of the Taliban — he fought against the Russians in the 1980s. After the Russians left, he partnered with Mullah Omar, his brother-in-law, to set up the Taliban movement of young “purist” Islamic scholars with the backing of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. With the same rapidity seen in recent weeks, the Taliban in 1996 seized power after capturing a series of provincial capitals.

Baradar was detained by Pakistani security forces in 2010 at the request of the Obama administration but freed three years ago, again at the request of the Trump administration, to lead the Taliban’s negotiation team in Qatar, where a partially secret deal was struck in February 2020 outlining the principle of a U.S. withdrawal.



Comments

  1. TrailblazerAugust 16, 2021 at 4:52 PM

    It's amazing that a so called third world, often illiterate, country can learn where the educated west cannot!
    Perhaps it is the simplicity of Afghan life that gives them clarity?

    The west never could understand that you can bribe some people some of the time but cannot bribe all the people all of the time.

    TB

    ReplyDelete

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