We tried to nation build in a area where 80% of the population (virtually 100% in 98% of the land area) does not understand the concept of a nation state.
Like, people love to talk about how ass backwards Kabul is, but it is also 1000 years in the future from the rest of the country.
I did a motorcycle trip through Taliban controlled Afghanistan in 1997. The people in rural afghanistan are the dumbest people on the fucking planet. You could seriously have dumped them in the year 997 and they wouldnt have noticed a difference between that and 1997 in the rest of their lives.
Keep in mind that this is very specifically a criticism of Afghanistan. Pretty much all muslim majority countries are fucked up in some way or another, but this specific phenomena to the extent that the country is ungovernable only exists in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Iraqis are a specific kind of fucking insane and need a dictatorship not a democracy, but nation building there was viable if we were willing to simply set up a replacement Saddam Hussein. No such thing in Afghanistan.
We tried to nation build in a area where 80% of the population (virtually 100% in 98% of the land area) does not understand the concept of a nation state.
Like, people love to talk about how ass backwards Kabul is, but it is also 1000 years in the future from the rest of the country.
I did a motorcycle trip through Taliban controlled Afghanistan in 1997. The people in rural afghanistan are the dumbest people on the fucking planet. You could seriously have dumped them in the year 997 and they wouldnt have noticed a difference between that and 1997 in the rest of their lives.
Keep in mind that this is very specifically a criticism of Afghanistan. Pretty much all muslim majority countries are fucked up in some way or another, but this specific phenomena to the extent that the country is ungovernable only exists in Afghanistan. Iraqis are a specific kind of fucking insane and need a dictatorship not a democracy, but nation building there was viable if we were willing to simply set up a replacement Saddam Hussein. No such thing in Afghanistan.
We tried to nation build in a area where 80% of the population (virtually 100% in 98% of the land area) does not understand the concept of a nation state.
Like, people love to talk about how ass backwards Kabul is, but it is also 1000 years in the future from the rest of the country.
I did a motorcycle trip through Taliban controlled Afghanistan in 1997. The people in rural afghanistan are the dumbest people on the fucking planet. You could seriously have dumped them in the year 997 and they wouldnt have noticed a difference between that and 1997 in the rest of their lives.
We tried to nation build in a area where 80% of the population (virtually 100% in 98% of the land area) does not understand the concept of a nation state.
Like, people love to talk about how ass backwards Kabul is, but it is also 1000 years in the future from the rest of the country.
I did a mountain biking trip through Taliban controlled Afghanistan in 1997. The people in rural afghanistan are the dumbest people on the fucking planet. You could seriously have dumped them in the year 997 and they wouldnt have noticed a difference between that and 1997 in the rest of their lives.
We tried to nation build in a area where 80% of the population (virtually 100% in 98% of the land area) does not understand the concept of a nation state.
I did a mountain biking trip through Taliban controlled Afghanistan in 1997. The people in rural afghanistan are the dumbest people on the fucking planet. You could seriously have dumped them in the year 997 and they wouldnt have noticed a difference between that and 1997 in the rest of their lives.