Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban and already the fingers are being pointed at whose fault it was. Several have called this an ‘intelligence failure‘. Is it? Phil Gurski weighs in on who ‘lost’ Afghanistan.
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Quick hits 171: When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban
The Taliban have seized power in Afghanistan two weeks before the US was set to complete its troop withdrawal following a costly two-decade war. Listen as former CSIS intelligence veteran Phil Gurski looks at what we know and what’s next for Afghanistan.
Who are the Taliban?
Formed in 1994, the Taliban were former Afghan resistance fighters, known collectively as mujahedeen, who fought the Soviet forces in the 1980s. Their aim was to impose their interpretation of Islamic law on the country and remove any foreign influence. After the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, the Sunni Islamist organization put in place strict rules: women had to wear full body coverings, weren’t allowed to work or study and were forbidden from traveling alone. TV, music and non-Islamic holidays were also banned.
One reply on “Was Afghanistan an intelligence failure?”
I think that what happened in Afghanistan was a total failure of Intelligence where U.S. lost $3 trillion dollars in a 20-year war. What they wanted was to make an event where they would invade Afghanistan, but their mission failed miserably. Even India who had several infrastructure projects worth billions of dollars going on left Afghanistan, but they were told by the Taliban that the projects must be completed at all costs. This us where the events of 9/11 happened and the raid at a compound in Abbotabad,Pakistan. This will cause more security problems and threats globally. OBL was a CIA agent who was sent millions of dollars to help the mujahadeen defeat the Russians and as soon as the Russians left, it collapsed. 2 superpowers United States and Russia could not defeat the Taliban in over 30 years with all their might. It is a reality. No country can defeat the Taliban no matter how much or how hard they try. It took the United States two decades to realize and understand that they should not be an international cop and meddle into the affairs of other countries. The other purpose was to obtain/steal the trillions of dollars in valuable minerals from Afghanistan that have been discovered recently which Afghanistan could have used to vastly improve its institutions and enhance the standard of living for its citizens a great deal for its population of 40 million people.