Afghan culture and people

POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Sunday, August 30, 2026 16:20
VIEWED: 13932
PAGE 4 of 9

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but we DID invade there, and I think that carries a certain responsibility.

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Yep, as well as a geopolitical interest in the stability of the country. At the same time though, I do think we need a plan that involves an exit strategy. It'll be interesting to see what Obama announces in his upcoming speech.

What were your thoughts Niki during the Afghan election and run-off? Did you or the Afghan people you know, have any hopes that real progress towards working democracy might be made? Was there anything promising about the unsuccessful challenger, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, who was reportedly cheated out of a fair election?

Heads should roll

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I want to hear from the Afghan citizens who are members of this forum.

After 8 years and $1-trillion of invasion, occupation and democracy, I'm sure every citizen now has internet access and gold-plated toilet seats.

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Not that many Afghans have access to news from outside the country, but Niki, how do you think people there would react to the Germans recent resignations over their unfortunate airstrike...


http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,663820,00.html


the Defense Minister, the deputy defense minister, the head of the German Military all have resigned

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Again, responding as I read... lots of interesting stuff:

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The PDPA apparently did a lot of good stuff too. They moved to permit freedom of religion and carried out an ambitious land reform, waiving farmers' debts countrywide. They also made a number of statements on women’s rights...

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Without looking it up, I'm going to make some spot guesses, and then guess an Afghan reaction:

1. People's democratic is of course an international codeword for communist, following the rule "all advertising is a lie."

2. Communists tend to assimilate cultural traditions into a socially engineered mechanical form of universal equality.

3. I'm guessing that the Afghans are going to hate this idea. Probably more than the individual issues, the massive uniform movement towards a secular western "modern" society will get mixed reviews among the young, and prompt civil war among the general population.

4. This idea probably came from China.

Now I'll go look it up.

okay,

1.. check.
2. check
3. check
4.. Duh. Wrong. It came from Russia. Sorry, I thought we were back in some other decade... Oh, wait, we were. 1965. Now that's odd. Usually "people's democratic" is a good indication of China, and "socialist republic" means russia. This is some time before the Soviet-Afghan war. but it does go on through it.

Okay, continue...

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Then of course, in ’79, the Russians came and destroyed most of the progress and the country.

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This also seems at odds with itself If the PDPA *was* russian communist, about which I seem to see no debate, then it was the loss of control that prompted the russian invasion: I seem to remember an incident involving the slaughter of 2,000 or so Russian citizens by an anti-PDPA group. Don't quote me on this, but my memory is thinking this was northern alliance. I don't have the story... searching

Here's a motherlode of history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Democratic_Party_of_Afghanista
n

Here's more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan

I think Brzezinski's comment is very telling.

Moving on...

As an absolute non-defender of the USSR, I feel some information is lacking here:

Wiki agrees with your casualty figures. I know that no one has a kill ratio like that, so can we attribute this to anything? To be credible, there has to be a cause:
1. Civil war and tribal conflicts
2. Widespread famine or disease
3. Opportunistic genocide by some local group.
Just the reality that 100,000 soviets even with 300,000 allies can't kill 2 million afghans. Actually, they can't approach anywhere near those figures without suffering truly massive casualties. US involvement makes matters worse, but something else is needed to justify these figures.

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Enter the Taliban, and by the end 2000 they controlled 95% of the country.

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:?

Sorry, that's a dubious me. 45,000 of them? I get that they controlled Kabul, but the thought of 95% of the country, esp. given the history of regional conflicts, them and what army? If they had influence, it had to be something other than force, because they simply don't have enough force.

I tend to put these sorts of notions down into what I call the Cortez factor: Cortez attacked and defeated Montezuma II after years of urging by the Meshiko, or Mexicans as we now call them, and at the threat of excommunication and death by the crown of spain. But when he did it, he did it with 500 spaniards with guns, horses and ships.

Most histories end there.

The significant factors missing are that Cortez had an army of 300,000 or so Mexicans, against 15-30,000 Aztecs. It was a rout. That, and the fact that Montezuma had practically zero local support outside of his own army (read: Montezuma is Aztec for George W Bush) But I digress. Many histories have missing pieces like this.

This missing dynamic grows in importance with the telling. The history, of course, we mostly know, but the Taliban, who now number around 25,000, according to wiki and also the DoD, in a country with 3 millio

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" Still, a radical admission for someone who you fought a war against. I actually find this in the rest of the world: They demonize the enemy less. Massive carnage situations like yugoslavia, and they can sit down and debate it in a more civilized way than americans can debate democrat vs. republican policies (there's a difference?) "


Oh no.... One of the places I worked at, we had quite a few Croatians, and about a half dozen Serbians... things became bad enough they transfered all the Serbians to a different building...

Nothing civilized at all, might you most of these guys actually fought, perhaps less involved folk would be less emotional


Couple of things I'd like to add, Niki can correct me if I'm wrong

One of the reason the Taliban are viewed the way they are is because of the lengths they go to in order to keep foreign influences out... but look at what foreign influences have brought to Afghans, for every bit of progress an equal of greater amount of suffering. Not saying I agree with it, but can understand the view, and post 2001 hasn't exactly changed that model

The second involves why the Soviets went into Afghanistan, Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski actually started that war by arming and funding Muslim extremists in Afghanistan, in the hopes that any successes those movements had against the shaky communist leaning government would spread into the southern Soviet republics and destabilize the entire USSR into some type of civil war

http://terrorism.about.com/b/2007/01/02/al-qaeda-and-the-us-a-longer-r
elationship-than-we-might-have-thought.htm

of the Soviet invasion Alexander Haig said

" Between the Soviet Unoin and Afghanistan there is only the thin line of the Amu Darya. Because of this any successful Islamic movement at your southern borders will inevitably influence the Soviet Muslim republics. I can see Brezhnevs logic "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulbuddin_Hekmatyar

this guy said in 1987 " If the mujahedin persistently continue to fight, the day will soon come when the occupied lands of Soviet Central Asia will be liberated "

So two things really, the Soviets were faced with a nightmare situation. The US was at least partially responsible in provoking the original Soviet invasion...









Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists


Lets party like its 1939

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Gino,

1. Ah. We've had different experiences. I was in Slovenia, actually a few times. There's none of this in Slovenia, even among those who fought in croatia et al, but perhaps that's self-selecting. They ended up in Slovenia by avoiding conflict.

2. & 3. I see a real problem with long posts. I made very similar points, and agree, but it got lost in the shuffle

2. I just said Bin Laden held that, you could see why, didn't make him right, but by his experience, but yes, the Taliban feel the same, as undoubtedly do most Afghans. The issue here is who can make the argument that they are the ones who will bring about this change. This was a big problem for the sandinistas: The people liked their ideas, but did not like the fact that they, sometimes unwittingly, brought foreign intervention.

3. I just quoted Brzezinski saying this. It's also in the wikipedia link, but yes excellent points, all.

I need to work on communications skills.

I want to clarify one point that I was trying to make and took too long to do, and that's about subsistence lifestyle, which I think Niki took as an attack of Afghans, it's not. It's a comment on another myth: "these people have lived this way on this land for thousands of years" We know this both is and isn't true, but the story can be told much better in pictures, these ones from africa:

These people have always lived on this land, right?

No, they havent. They've lived near by.

They used to live here

Then they lived here

Then they thought they'd try here

They're almost done here

And moving in here

and after they're done, they'll try here

Someday, they'll try here

When they started, their home looked like this

We know that from satellite photos, and from the evidence everywhere, we can tell where they've been:

They need better solutions


A little ecological perspective, and yes, we *can* destroy the planet, but only piece by piece. Somethings gotta give. Don't let it be the Earth, for the betterment of the planet, and the people on it.

Peace out.

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I made mention of this discussion, such points of it as I understand, to one of my unofficial contacts over there, and they pointed out to me that the villages generally don't *care* who is in charge so long as they are left unmolested, which is what they primarily desire - life goes on, much as it always has, and to the minds of those involved, always will, right ?

So saying that the Taliban "controlled" them is kind of a misnomer, since their response to the Taliban, and *any* other interloper, is prettymuch thus.

"If I bend knee to you, will you go away ?"

Being that it's pointless to tax them, and they have nothing much to take, that is prettymuch how it goes - they don't care much about anything beyond the borders of their own village and lands, but you start droppin bombs willy nilly and kill off some of their people, they tend to hold *serious* grudges about it, especially if Badal is invoked.

But essentially, most of em just want to be left the hell alone, which of course sets them at odds worse against any "organized" empire like the Soviets, or us, cause such empires are damn nitpicky, and will spend ridiculous effort to try and civilize/convert/tax/etc them, which just annoys them and they can wait you out for generations, cause in their mind, sooner or later YOU will be gone, but their village is still gonna be there, it's how they think.

Blow up their village though, and you're lookin down the barrel of a REAL problem.

As for the urbanites, I dunno so much, most of the contacts I have are girls who have fled to RAWAs sanctuaries and safe houses - which now that you know something about that world, gives you an idea of just how tough, mentally and physically, these girls are.

While I do wholly support RAWA, personally I am more of a mind that the solution to old set-in-their-ways hardheads who value women as baby factories isn't exposing and educating them, being that they won't listen and the rest of the world wouldn't care if they did know, but it's not my decision to make.

Unfortunately for the USA, History supports them, would be conquers come and go, but still, afghanistan is afghanistan.

-Frem

Reccommended Viewing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_(1988_film) <-Add manually.

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Yes, I agree 100% that we need to get out, KPO; I wish we could leave people to help the country recover, but not military—the trouble is, military has to be around to protect the others, and I don’t know what Karzai or the Taliban would do to subvert their efforts, and it’s all so complex, I can’t even guess.

Dr. Abdullah (whether it’s two Abdullahs or one is unclear) was senior advisor to Masoud in the 1980s, and apparently became his successor. Masoud seemed to be more promising, but Abdullah had a certain amount of promise, too. He was foreign minister in the Karzai administration for a time, but when the Northern Alliance members who were in that government were ousted, he was tossed out too. That was a shame; the Northern Alliance never gave up fighting the Taliban; if we’d had THEM as allies all along, who knows?

Abdullah isn’t as charismatic as Karzai was, but the Afghans have completely lost faith in Karzai because of the corruption and his (as Abdullah says) “disconnect between his government and the people. I don’t know if he would have been better or not…the information I get is conflicting; some liked him, some thought he’d just be “a new boss, just like the other boss”. Beyond that, I don’t know much.

Gino, the Afghans really don’t pay attention to stuff outside Afghanistan. Most of them consider all the foreigners fighting there as “American” unless they actually meet them, and even then attribute whatever they do to the American interference. I’m sure there are politically savvy intellectuals who pay attention, but none of my friends are such, and the general attitude is that America is behind everything happening.

DT, your post is way too long for me to respond to in kind, it would take ages. And remember, what’s I’ve been talking about is Afghanistan and it’s people and culture; my knowledge of politics, and the interest in same of the Afghans, is limited. I had to look a lot of stuff up to answer the questions posed yesterday, to fill in what I, nor my Afghan friends, didn’t know, So I’ll just try to hit the highlights:

Yes, the PDPA was a communist organization. Per Wikipedia:

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The government promoted state atheism. Men were obliged to cut of their beards, women were not allowed to wear the burqa any longer, and most of the mosques were placed off limits at the start of the regime. The mosques re-opend in the 80s, because the party tried to win more supporters. The government also carried out a new land reform among others.
When the PDPA rose to power in Afghanistan they moved to prohibit traditional practices which were deemed feudal by the party. They banned bride price and forced marriage among others and the minimum age for marriage was raised. They also stressed the importance of education in Afghanistan. The government stressed education for both women and men, they also set up literacy programmes in the country. These new reforms were not well-received by the majority of the Afghan population (particularly in rural areas). As many saw it was un-Islamic and was seen as a forced approach to western culture in Afghan society as many tribal societies in Afghanistan tend to be conservative.

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From what I’ve found and been told, your # is only partially true.

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I'm guessing that the Afghans are going to hate this idea. Probably more than the individual issues, the massive uniform movement towards a secular western "modern" society will get mixed reviews among the young, and prompt civil war among the general population.

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Most urban Afghans like the idea of modernization; they did when we were there and I’m told that didn’t change. Remember what I get is from people originating in Kabul, Kandahar and other urban areas. From what I read, it was the villages which, as it said, are more conservative, didn’t like the idea, nor the idea of what they considered “outsiders” deciding how they should live. There was no civil war among the general population; remember, the villages and cities were separated by

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