AFGHANISTAN RETREAT

Pakistan is the instigator. It is a rerun of the Kashmir problem.  It is the Pakistan-India conflict, going back to 1947. The Taliban are just a tool of Pakistan. That is the Indian embassy in Kabul.

NATO should have had it out with Pakistan long ago. Still could. But Pakistan and India both have the bomb.

Most unwise to withdraw without having turned off the lights and shut firmly closed the door that let Pakistani into Afghanistan.

Now can only hope India or China wring their chickens' necks. 

Hence a real humiliation for the States and NATO. 
History might ultimately be kind to Bush and Blair.

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Pakistan is involved because it fears Indian influence in Afghanistan. Pakistan's fears or muslim aggression, see it how you will, have driven it to be the aggressor in its relations with India. And it has mostly come off worse - biggest example is its losing east Pakistan. Time wounds all heals.

The original sin was letting princely Kashmir and Jammu choose independence or absorption into India. Kashmir was a hindu mi ority governing a muslim majority. Pakistan sent its soldiers in, obliging Kashmir to seek the protection of India. Pakistan lost that one too.

Now Pakistan is replaying the war. The Afghani leader cannot fight Pakistan on his own,  so he'll likely seek assistance - from India? From China this time maybe. 

Many of the Taliban fighters are mercenaires with experience from Syria where they were originally Saddam Hussein's old guard, renamed Al Qaeda. They were ISIS. 

Bashir al Assad and Putin knew how to deal with these Sunni extremists. The Americans should have supported the Shia, but of course they had to go with various anti-Iran groupings. Big mistake.

And where did OBL hail from? And who funds the madrassas? And how did the mujahideen who fought off the Russians, mutate into the Taliban, who are wahhabists, if it wasnt money from the House of Saud? 

If NATO or the States and its allies had wanted to take the fight to the real Taliban, they'd have carpet bombed Pashtun northern Pakistan and south west Afghanistan. And impoverished the Gulf by abandoning fossil fuels long long ago (technology is basic but oil companies werent ready).

The West ("The West") would have done better to keep things simple and to have had all this out with Pakistan from the start. And the House of Saud before that (Death of a Princess). But Pakistan and India both have the bomb and the House of Saud, which captured Arabia in 1928, has the oil.

Quite a tangled web.