Giving the Taliban another chance?

Let's face it, the Taliban did a pretty good job.
Unifying the entire country, bar a few northern provinces and essentially eliminating crime and corruption. Obviously, they weren't perfect, Sharia law being the biggest problem. But lets not forget that the Karzi government isn't prefect either. A barley functioning democracy and rampant crime and corruption have made some Afghans reconsider the Taliban.

No they should not you can fight corruption and crime with investment and time. Afghanistan's economy is now better than ever and people especially women now have rights.

Neither is perfect.

The DRA and its Soviet ally would have made a great Socialist nation. But what do the Americans do, they help the religious sect the Mujahedin who would later become the Taliban, and they complain about Islam and invade them again.

And with investment and time peoples rights can be improved. The economy argument is hardly valid due to the billions of dollars of foreign aid pumped into the country.

Is it better than planting Opium plants?

I imagine this is the question "Should the Afghan people give the Taliban another chance?" Well I can see why they would give them another chance, being that getting invaded makes you want to side with the opposition. However, lets face it Sharia Law isn't poops and giggles. Would it not make more sense to work towards a society that doesn't work in a sickening way found and I quote "evil".


EDIT: I bet all my Steam games this will be the most active forum tonight. Some pretty high stakes people.

Don't confuse the Mujhadeen and the Taliban. A lot of the ex-Mujhadeen commanders had become warlords after the Russian's departure and they were causing the violence that the Taliban tried to stop. Also don't kid yourself about the US invading because of Islam.

Yea, because burning villages and farms, stoning women and killing those who disagree with your ideas really shows that you were trying to stem the tide of violence.

How about no? Tribalism and theocracy have no place in the modern world. Fuck your concerns about "cultural imperialism": liberal democracy is objectively superior to any other form of government.

I don't know about you, but I'd take a semi-organized theocracy over rape-happy marauding ex-guerrillas any day.

Every time I log onto this forum I find myself hating foreigners more and more.

Thing is, we don't have to worry about that. Where there are obvious wrongs, we have the right to correct them. Even when correcting them will endanger a lot of lives and destroy a lot of property, it will be worth it (for us, the actors) to annihilate tyranny. The people of that area will suffer, sure, but we don't owe anything to them, and ultimately they're better off for it. Making the world a better place doesn't necessarily mean that we're going out and saving lives.

I'm not sure internet forums are the best place to form opinions about entire swathes of the Earths population.

I wasn't talking about US intervention, I was talking about the state of Afghanistan after the USSR pulled out.

I suppose that's what I get for not actually reading the post you replied to.

What time period? Under the Democratic Republic or the Islamic State?

We're talking about the period just before the Taliban took power, right after the USSR withdrew. In which bands of ex-Mujahedin guerrillas roved the countryside raping and pillaging.

They don't deserve another chance. If they do, then all the work and progress made the last 10 years would be for nothing. Hell, when they were rioting and protesting us, if that had been the Taliban they were protesting, they would have just been mowed down and shot.

The Taliban were one of those groups, who gained power primarily because Pakistan and Al Qaeda backed them. I suppose it comes down to whether or not you think security(even though many atrocities were commited under that regime) is worth the Hardliner Theocracy. I don't think it was, it would have been much better had the Islamic state survived or had the Northern Alliance under Massoud taken over.

The Taliban had no Mujahedin origins, it was started primarily by a group of religious students after the war. They were also notorious for their brutal treatment of those convicted of crimes like rape and theft. So it doesn't really do the subject any justice to assert that they we're no different then the warlords, because, on account of the groups philosophy and origins, they were.

Realistically speaking the Islamic state was just an unsustainable mess, and while the Northern Alliance may have been preferable, the fact of the matter is that they lost. And honestly, anything can seem preferable when the alternative is marauding warlords.

The leader of the Taliban, Mohammed Omar was mujahideen fighter who fought against the soviets, he formed it with those relegious students as his followers.

Well actually the NA were never defeated and helped overthrow the taliban in the US invasion, however by that time Massoud was dead, and things would have been much easier over there had he not been assasinated. The Taliban were a brutal regime and while they may have made country a little more stable(keep in mind they were fighting the moerthern alliance the whole 4 years they were in power), I can't see how anyone can now say they are preferable to the current government.