Today's man, president Ashraf Ghani.

Doesn't he look like Karzai?

Karzai also. Isn't it.

Tomorrow the Gyppos.

Ah, Mr President, how many times I have said these words, but not to such a true leader of men.

Insh'allah, we will play golf, isn't it. Do you have a buggy?

Hey, Hamid, here's one of me and the Deep State. You have that over in your country?

"Gary! You got another call!"

"Who is it?"

"What?"

I said, who... Never mind. Here."

Gary is putting together an IKEA cupboard, or trying to. He takes the phone from his mistress in Maine. "Hello?"

"Gary."

"Hamid? How..."

"Do not worry, Gary. We Pashtuns also have central intelligent agents, isn't it".

"Intelligence, Hamid, and I don't doubt that."

Karzai comes straight out with it. "I want to meet Trump."

"Trump? Why? Look, Hamid, you and I aren't young anymore. We went through this years ago. You're not even president anymore."

"I am a leader of my tribe. I..."

"Spare me, Hamid. I'm a leader of nothing. I'm retired. I haven't been in the business for years. I'm out."

"Yes, Gary, but you still know people. Important people. You are - how to say - the Deep State, isn't it."

"Hamid, I was Kabul station chief for a few years. Who do you think I know in the states? You want a waterboard or a drone strike, I can hook it up, but the president? Come on."

"But you were Central Asian station chief. Insh'allah, it was the trickiest post in the CIA, you said. You had Bush's ears, Gary, even his tongue. I saw this. You told me one thing on the phone, and then, Kabesh! I would hear Bush say it on CNN. It was like an echo, a hall of mirrors..."

"That was then, Hamid. It's a different time. Things change."

"Ah, Gary. Here, nothing changes. Here, we have Russia and Pakistan and China and yes, America also. We have 36 official tribes. We have the government, the army, the Taliban, al Qaida, ISI, even Daesh. All of them merge and shift. In our time, we had a Northern Alliance, remember? Then they splinter, they swap sides. There are maybe 6 different Talibans now, I lose track. It upsets my stomach. Nothing changes, Gary, and nothing stays the same. It is our lot here. God willing, it is our fate."

"That's the problem, Hamid, nothing changes. The US is pulling out, I guess they finally woke up to it. You want my advice? Move to Florida. We even got you a compound. Hang up the turban and get out while you can."

"And I am grateful, Gary. Insh'allah, I am blessed, peace be upon us both. But I have friends..."

"We all have friends, Hamid."

"Call the White House. Get me a meeting. Just one."

"It doesn't work like that anymore! You know what this guy does? He watches TV. Some talking head he likes says something, and that becomes the policy. The guy's a germaphobe. He uses a Wet Wipe if he has to shake a hand. He goes through a box of them a day. He's the Howard Hughes of presidents. You've got to play him, and you need money. Then he changes his mind and screws you anyway. It's not easy."

"Ah - ah. TV, money, germs. Germs I can do. I don't know about the rest."

"You can't get to him, Hamid, I'm telling you. He doesn't care about the rest of the world. Angela Merkel tried calling a few months back, and he hung up on her."

"An easy mistake to make - I can't work out these phones either."

"I don't think it was a mistake, Hamid."

"Look, you say he likes TV, yes? What if... what if I could..."

"You can't, Hamid. He doesn't watch the long stuff. No analysis, no BBC. He likes Breakfast TV. Fox & Friends, celebrity chat - light, but political. Nothing foreign."

"Celebrities, you say?"

"You got any of them in Afghanistan?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"They're all Afghani, right? Forget about it, Hamid. You can't get him."

"Money..."

"You've got none of that either - just the dollars we give you. Face it, Hamid, we're old men. We're no longer players."

"Gary, I am coming to America."

"No problem. Come. We'll welcome you. But come as a tourist, not a statesman. Much easier."

"I will call."

Gary hears the dial tone and, in a puff of smoke, Karzai is gone.

Good God, Karzai, after all these years. Sure Gary has contacts, but he's out of the game. No more spying, no more Karzais, Gary is too old for all this.

But deep down, Gary has regrets. Without a doubt, they left Afghanistan a far worse place than they found it. For a time there, Karzai was their only hope. And what if he could get a meeting with Trump? Karzai would run rings around him! Russia? China? Pakistan? No chance. But Karzai?

As for CIA station chiefs, they're never really out of the game. They're always running into each other, usually at funerals.

Karzai, if only in Gary's mind, is not gone. Karzai, like a genie in a lamp, is back.

FD:

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You're still not making any coherent argument FD. No, a timespan on its own is not relevant to how 'stable' they were (to an extent - 2 days obviously doesn't qualify, and it is simply idiotic to compare it to 5 years). What is relevant, are the actual measures we use for determing how stable society was during that time. And so far, the best evidence we have seen is the doctors you quoted asserting how brutally effective the taliban were at controlling the population. Then there's your maps which clearly shows the taliban consolidating and expanding their control of the country, thus making their rule progressively more stable as time went on. Comparing this rule to the regime that preceded it, where women were routinely being raped, and artillery was deployed literally in the streets to massacre protesters - we undeniably start to understand it as a period of relative stability. And moreover the comparison with the utter chaos that followed the fall of the taliban, is chalk and cheese.

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Obviously they did not have control over AQ and bin Laden - otherwise they would have prevented 9/11, which they knew straight away most probably was the signing of their death warrant. Whether or not they could have followed through on their pledge to extradite bin Laden is debatable, but it doesn't mean they couldn't have provided crucial logistical and political support to an internationally mandated team sent in to capture him. And this course would have been a win-win for all involved - the US would have a much greater chance of capturing bin Laden and dismantling his terror camps, with the double bonus of not being saddled with an entire country to occupy and try and rebuild - while the taliban would get to survive and hopefully, with international pressure and support, work harder to grant human rights to its citizens and democratise the country.

freediver wrote on Dec 24^th, 2018 at 9:55am:


So you keep saying. Pity you have no evidence to support this - other than to say 'because their actions or non-actions invited foreign intervention' - which as I've explained is no criteria for a failed state.