Fjordman: The Disaster in Afghanistan

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The Disaster in Afghanistan

by Fjordman

The Western pullout from Kabul during the Taliban advance on August 16, 2021 was a chaotic and embarrassing mess. This was a global humiliation for the USA and the Western defense alliance NATO.

The Western-backed former Afghan leader, Ashraf Ghani, reportedly departed his country with so much money that it couldn’t all fit in his helicopter. He was thus forced to leave some cash at the airport.

The total costs of the war in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021 are disputed. However, sums of up to one trillion — one thousand billion — US dollars have been mentioned as reasonably realistic estimates. What did that money achieve? Absolutely nothing. In fact, worse than nothing. The Taliban in August 2021 controlled more territory in Afghanistan than they did in August 2001. And they had better weapons, too.

The Americans and their Western allies spent tens of billions on building up Afghan security forces, including the Afghan National Army and the police force. When the USA and its allies pulled out in 2021, the Afghan army collapsed with astonishing speed. Even the Taliban seem to have been surprised by how quickly any resistance evaporated.

This means that the modern military equipment that was intended to combat the Taliban is now in the hands of the Taliban. Twenty years of fighting, costing perhaps 1,000 billion dollars and the lives of over 3,500 Western soldiers, has simply handed the country back to the Taliban, with some weaponry added as a bonus.

The fact that many Muslims in Afghanistan put up little resistance against the Taliban probably indicates that they like them and share their Islamic sharia ideals. In any case, they deserve the Taliban when they are not willing to resist them. This result could encourage more Jihadist aggression, in Afghanistan and beyond.

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the country became a battleground in the Cold War. The USA and other nations supported various armed Muslim rebel groups in their fight against Soviet forces. After the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989, these Jihadist groups claimed victory.

The Afghan mujahideen included the embryo of what would become the Taliban, as well as foreign militant Muslims such as Osama bin Laden and the terrorist network al-Qaida. Islamic groups such as the Taliban can thus claim that the mighty forces of Allah in Afghanistan defeated two superpowers in just over three decades. This is not an entirely empty boast.

The disaster in Afghanistan was caused by the stubborn inability of Western elites to understand Islamic culture and tribal societies. They believe that other people think like us, and want to become like us. This is both extremely naïve and extremely arrogant at the same time.

Many Muslims do not think at all like we do, nor do they want to become like us. In fact, their religion specifically states that they should conquer us, rule us and eventually convert us to Islam. They have no intention of changing. They are here to change us.

The only sensible solution to this dilemma is to stay out of Muslim countries as much as possible. At most, we can undertake brief military campaigns to achieve critical military objectives, but never anything more than that. Above all, we should do whatever it takes to keep Islam and those who practice it out of our own countries.

The population of Afghanistan and other Muslim nations has continued growing rapidly over the past decades due to high birth rates. This development has been partly facilitated by Western medicine and technology. At the same time, the Muslim immigrant populations in Western Europe have also grown rapidly.

Even within the Islamic world, some countries are more brutal than others. Young men from Somalia and Afghanistan have committed many acts of gang rape, torture and murder in countries such as Germany, Belgium and Sweden. These include male Afghan asylum seekers of fighting age. Yet instead of fighting to make Afghanistan a better country, they come to us, leech off societies that they despise, and sometimes attack us.

Muslim immigration to Europe has caused countless deadly acts of terrorism and violent crime against native Europeans. Yet the ruling elites and the EU seem totally indifferent towards the suffering of the natives. At worst, they act actively hostile to the interest of native Europeans. At best, they are massively incompetent.

When the Titanic on its maiden voyage in April 1912 hit an iceberg and sank, over 1,500 people died. This has sometimes been treated as symbolic for European civilization. Two years later, Europe was plunged into the devastating European civil war that we call the First World War. Some people have compared today’s Western world to the Titanic. Yet Western Europe and the wider Western world is arguably worse than that now. When the crew of the Titanic finally spotted the iceberg, they reacted quickly and tried to steer the ship away from a collision course. It was too late, so they hit the iceberg. Nevertheless, their attempted response came within seconds of being made aware of the problem.

By comparison, the current ruling elites of the Western world have had decades to deal with the problems facing us. It is indisputable that mass immigration, especially Muslim immigration, has caused major social, economic and cultural harm. Yet despite overwhelming evidence, the captains still refuse changing course. They head straight for the iceberg, claiming that hitting it will be culturally enriching and good for the economy.

All warnings about an impending disaster are dismissed as hate speech and icebergophobia.

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16 thoughts on “Fjordman: The Disaster in Afghanistan

  1. I respect your writing but disagree with the premise.

    The western elites are not unaware of the issues caused by muslim backwardness, aggression to each other and outsiders especially those from the West and their explosive birth rates. On the contrary the rapid retaking of Afghanistan accomplished many elite goals. It has irretrievably diminished America’s military reputation and has put all other nations with security agreements with the USA on notice that they too will be abandoned when the relationship is no longer convenient. Enemies have been emboldened and encouraged to embark upon military adventures of their own now that our military impotence can no longer be hidden. The piles of weaponry and billions of dollars in the Kabul central bank were left deliberately, so that they can be put to use destabilizing all of Central Asia and Pakistan for the next decade as well as being turned against western targets. The soon to be hordes of fleeing Afghanis will further flood the EU with non assimilable orcs which will ultimately fracture the EU. For the elites at the top of the pyramid it means endless profits from the security industrial complex, new wars, and acts of terrorism to come. And an excuse to even further tighten their grip on what vestiges of freedom remain in the West. Historians from the future will point to the date that Kabul fell as the date the American Empire, Pax Americana forever ended. And that is exactly what the elites want.

    • You’re attributing the rapid fall of Afghanistan to malice rather than incompetence. I concede the possibility, but I tend to think incompetence played a larger roles. For several reasons.

      1) The neocon approach is likely to be discredited in the near future;

      2) The immigration trends you mentioned are already taking place; if the drawing card is welfare and work, those were attracting immigrants prior to the fall of Afghanistan.

      3) The neocon/globalists are aligned with China, and China does not have an interest in destabilizing the region. They are focused on countering the US, gaining control over Taiwan, and developing trade and commerce treaties with Pacific countries.

      • Wrong! The Chinks love the destabilization because it means they can move in almost unopposed. The more destabilized, the more in the interest of China. Look at Africa, they are moving millions into the Continent by destabilizing the whole bloody continent.
        As for Taiwan, they want that province back because it is a principle of national prestige. As for the pacific rim, they know who to hitch their wagons too, the strong man, except Japan, who hate the chinks with a passion and vice versa. The Japanese know their history and a resurgent China is bad for Japan and they will reconstitute the code of Bushido to keep the chinks out. That is why the Japanese Navy was never purged of it’s die hard officers and they carry on the traditions of the old ways which will serve them well in the coming years.

        • Exactly. The Chinese launched the germ attack to soften us all up. They have been ready for war for years.

    • Many books will now be written about “what went wrong”. It’s what we do; try to make a buck explaining why the west is dying. But that’s it; we’re dying and we don’t want to look at that. We want to pridefully try to continue to resuscitate the terminal patient.

      It began when we turned our back on Jesus. He would have helped us, all we had to do was ask. Now we think we don’t need Him and we can defeat evil and Satan with high-tech weapons and $trillions of dollars of debt.

      I knew a person who went into a hamburger stand where two Christians worked and started a conversation with him and tried to convince him of his need of the Savior, the Lord Jesus, because of sins and God’s wrath against sin to come. Years later I joined that Christian fellowship at that hamburger stand and one day we were talking and the conversation arose about the young man who they witnessed to and I told them he was a friend from school and he was killed one night when he with some other rowdies, drunkenly began harassing a man in an adjacent car who had a child with him. The man and my friend got out of their cars and the man stabbed my friend with a knife and he died. The incident took place one week after those Christians tried to plead for my friend’s soul. This was the working of God, and He does it with individuals or nations.

  2. Thank you for confirming my thoughts that while Muslims claim to come for a better life most of them would also be quite happy to live under Islamic sharia law as they are used to it. This is why mass Muslim migration is so dangerous because they don’t see any problem with a Muslim invading army and would not die to defend western values – why? They would welcome an invading Muslim army of brothers secure in the knowledge they would be “top dogs” and take everything off their non Muslim neighbours.
    The same with mass communist Chinese migration which western countries encourage as these Chinese ( mostly CCP members as they are the only ones who can afford migration) know that if a Communist Chinese army invaded they would be “ top dog” . The rules would change to ones they have made millions out of in China. Their non communist neighbours would be dragged from their homes to be re-educated and they would get to take over all our homes and possessions. Again why would they die to defend Australia? The loss of Australia is a total win for them, only a los for European Australians who would be living in camps and treated as second class citizens.
    Australia now has over 3 million people who have a lot to gain by Australia being invaded and who have no interest in defence.
    Australia cannot be defended. Australia is already lost, just waiting.

    • Australia isn’t lost, there are millions of diggers who will fight and the rest don’t matter.

  3. Fjordman is on the money when he says the Muslims in Afghanistan don’t think like we do. Afghanistan is a tribal society; everything revolves around the tribe. The Taliban were associated with the majority Pashtun tribe. One reason the US special forces were able to overrun Afghanistan so quickly is, they allied themselves with the smaller, rival Tajik tribe, associated with the Northern Alliance, holding about 10% of Afghanistan and in constant warfare with the Taliban.

    But, things went downhill when the US diverted from revenging itself on Osama bin Laden to nation building. Afghanistan is not a nation; it is a patchwork of tribes. In trying to build the foundation for a national government based around the Northern Alliance, the US gave the Northern Alliance the honor of actually capturing bin Laden, who was bottled up in the Tora Bora mountains. The Tajik fighters naturally let bin Laden slip away.

    Thinking back on it, it makes perfect sense. Bin Laden was not really allied with the Taliban, except for being allowed to operate in its territory. Taliban and al-Qaeda were separate organizations. It was al-Qaeda, not the Taliban, focused on global jihad. The Northern Alliance may simply have seen no benefit to them to capture bin Laden for the US. He wasn’t that involved in the Afghan-specific tribal rivalries.

    Anyway, no wonder the Afghan army collapsed. They had no affiliation they were fighting for. The abstract notion of “nation” was foreign to them. They were all operating as individuals.

    I have one bone with Fjordman. Immigration is not really good, whether Muslim or otherwise. I don’t want sub-Saharans coming in, Muslim, Christian or animist. Even Europeans from countries currently being overrun with Africans and Middle Easterners are not guaranteed to oppose those very policies causing them to flee in the first place.

  4. I browse Muslim publics on Russian social networks. There is tremendous excitement in them after the Taliban victory. And nobody bans them.
    In addition to the multi-million dollar support of the Russian Turks for Erdogan, now this misfortune has also been added. The Taliban are backed by a multimillion migrant army and the North Caucasus.

    It sounds like nonsense, but for all the troubles of Afghanistan, they reproduce admirably. For some time I have been reading the Russian-language Afghan public on VKontakte. Even in “peacetime” they sent each other to “Allah” by the hundreds every day, but this does not affect the demography in any way. The whole system works for the unceasing functioning of the Muslim womb.

  5. The story of US and Taliban is a modern version of Frankenstein turning on his creator.

    Let it not be forgotten that it was the US who organized, equipped and supported it in every way with a view to chasing the Soviets from Afghanistan.

    Speaking of a better life, Afghans did have it under their good King before the USSR tried to modernize the country and turn it into another Uzbekistan or something of that sort. Under the King, the country was quiet, there was very little drug addiction, and the mores in the bigger cities were much more liberal.

    If only USSR and the US had left that unfortunate country alone, it would have been a much happier place. And fewer Afghans would have felt like emigrating to Europe.

  6. Read “The Fate of Empires” by Sir John Glubb and all your questions shall be sated

  7. When Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who was supported by the West, fled the country yesterday, he took so much money with him that it did not fit in the helicopter. Part of the booty was dumped at the airport, the Russian embassy in Kabul states according to RT.

    – Four cars were filled with money. They tried to get all the money into the helicopter, but not everything fit. Some of the money was allowed to remain on the runway, says the Russian embassy’s spokeswoman Nikita Ishchenko to RIA Novosti.

    Ishchenko calls Ashraf Ghani’s flight a “telling” example of the fall of the US-backed Afghan “regime”.

    Ghani became president of Afghanistan in September 2014. Since then, he has had a close relationship with the United States, which has pumped nearly a trillion dollars into the country.

    Swedish Sida provides one billion tax kroner a year in aid to Afghanistan.

    The president’s hasty flight to Tajikistan on Sunday, amid the Taliban’s incursion into Kabul, aroused disgust among his colleagues who portrayed him as a traitor.

  8. .
    Muslim anger when the United States evacuates dogs instead of Afghans

    Many are outraged that the US military has given priority to evacuating its dogs instead of Afghan civilians. It is noticed by the British Mirror, among others.

    In recent days, pictures and videos of American soldiers escorting their dogs to the planes at Kabul Airport have been spread on social media. The United States is accused in the posts of prioritizing the dogs over the Afghan interpreters and other staff they hired during their presence in the country.

    The dog is considered by Muslims as an unclean animal. Prioritizing away in favor of a dog, even if it is about dogs that have been trained for specific assignments, is therefore considered extra offensive for Muslims in particular.

    https://youtu.be/A93l9MdFyF0

    Not least, the videos and pictures are spread among Pakistanis. Pakistan is a Muslim country where many Pashtuns live, the same ethnic group as the Taliban. Pakistan is considered close to the Taliban and is accused of helping them regain power in Afghanistan.

    “A lesson for the traitors”, reads a scornful comment from a Pakistani on Youtube. Many Pakistanis believe that the Afghans who helped the United States and the coalition in Afghanistan are “infidels” and “traitors.”

    Following the Taliban’s takeover, all international flights to and from the country have been stopped. In other films that are spread on social media, you can see how Afghans are desperately trying to cling to the military planes from different countries that are evacuating their personnel from the country. In some films you see how people then fall from the plane, towards a certain death.

    Even the people who die in this way are mocked by Muslim Taliban sympathizers.

  9. Bringing your dogs out (taking up space) and thus restricting room for Muslims is entirely appropriate. We do not need any more muslims in our country.

  10. Apparently several of the “loony left “are campaigning to have western nations to pay “reparations “! to the Tailban .George Galloway ,Diane Abbot are names being mentioned.
    Idon’t need to explain the hypocricy of these specimens regarding Women ,Gay rights ,human rights adNauseum.
    When these people obtain political influence through free speech ,democracy ect.one wonders if a facsist dictatorship would be any worse.

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