The Human Condition: It’s perfectly clear why Afghanistan fell so quickly
By Daniel Schnee on September 1, 2021.
As a scientist trained in the field of anthropology I study how humans interact with each other through culture, which tells us many valuable things about how we organize ourselves and society. But unfortunately, leaders like Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau reveal just how uneducated they are about humanity when it comes to global politics and why a country like Afghanistan recently fell so fast. Trudeau himself said the speed at which the Taliban took over was a surprise to him. That is a significant indictment of his ignorance of even the most basic news. The rapid fall of Afghanistan was actually predictable, and his failure to notice is troubling as the top official elected to lead our nation in or out of war. The U.S.A., for example, has over 26,000 troops stationed in South Korea, a country with a tense but relatively stable armistice with North Korea for 68 years. Until recently, the number of troops stationed in Afghanistan was 2,500, with no casualties for over a year, surrounded by the allied forces of 13 countries plus 300,000 allied Afghani soldiers. You can’t utilize only 9% of the number of troops you have stationed in South Korea and call it a war. And don’t forget the enemy in this present war, the Taliban, arose from the ranks of the mujahideen fighters the U.S. trained and heavily armed to drive out the Soviets. They trained them to ferociously fight non-Muslim occupiers… the U.S. itself. Even the end credits of the movie Rambo III had a dedication to “the gallant people of Afghanistan,” gallantry being courage in battle, i.e. the actions of the mujahideen. Even the idea of Afghanistan as a “nation” as we understand it is an incomplete description of its social structure, as most rural Afghans are ethnocentric. For example, part of the Pakistan-Afghan border crosses through an ethnically Pashtun area, meaning the locals ignore it. They are Pashtun, not Pakistani. Tribal leaders also deal with politics internally: America builds a bridge, the Taliban destroy it, a local elder receives American money to rebuild, and he slips a little to his extended family, including his nephew, the Taliban fighter who blew it up. Also, Islam is Afghanistan’s majority religion, meaning they follow the Islamic calendar. It is currently the month of Muharram, in which all warfare is completely forbidden. This means the Afghan Army is going to be very reluctant to engage in even the slightest skirmish. Meanwhile, the Taliban follow their own rules, and just casually strolled into regional capitols and assumed control. And now from among their ranks has risen the ultra-terroristic group ISIS-K, which recently attacked a minority Shia Muslim maternity centre, killing 16 women and two babies. These are the people to which America is abandoning its allies. America even gave a list of the names and addresses of their own citizens and interpreters to the Taliban guarding the Kabul airport’s perimeter in order to grant them access to the front entrance, even though the Taliban have been hunting these citizens down. So if Trudeau is at all surprised by this, then maybe it’s time we give him another surprise by voting him out of office. Dr. Daniel Schnee is an anthropologist who studies East Asian creative culture. 13-12
