Not to mention the potential for blowback ie Taliban reprisals against India either with bombings and terrorist attacks in the subcontinent itself or against US installations in the persian gulf.
China's strategy in Afghanistan.
- Thread starter ohan_qwe
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Before you attack them, you have to find them. They're not walking around with foreign passports. They're part of the local population. The Taliban's actual enemies haven't been "eradicated." They have just melted into the population, just like the Taliban did when the US arrived.
If it was that easy to root out agents and collaborators, there wouldn't be any terrorists/separatists/radicals/agents anywhere in the world. But they exist everywhere, including inside China. And Chinese agents exist inside the US. Their just not shooting at each other. But in Afghanistan, if a bomb goes off, or people go missing, that's just Tuesday. And you're not going to find who did it either. This isn't TV where the bad guy gets caught at the end of the episode. Nor is this the South China Sea where you can see your enemy a hundred miles away on radar.
Clandestine troublemaking is easy even inside an actual country, let alone a pseudo-country, which is exactly what Afghanistan is right now. It will be like this for decades, even if development starts immediately.
The Taliban's actual job has just begun. For the past 20 years they were just having fun shooting stuff and getting a ton of cash for free. Actual governing and making progress, that's a lot harder. And I bet the Taliban will tell you that themselves if you ask them. It's been a week and they're already dealing with protests and all the multi-dimensional problems that start once you actually get power.
You don't "send in" proxies. They're already inside. They're part of the population. That's the whole problem.
Look, if China sends in any personnel right now, there will be casualties. Which is why for now, China is not committing personnel. It needs to set the stage, send in aid etc. and ramp up building its own local assets and contacts. And even in a year, if it sends engineers etc., there will still be some casualties. Either you accept that and commit, or don't and stay home. There's no middle ground. And yes, it's a lot easier to say this theoretically, then to commit some poor worker's life who's got family back home. These are not easy decisions, but they are strategically important for nations.
I agree with this. It is also why I said that such a "peaceful" conquest would cost the Taliban dearly in the future. Sometimes, blood need to be shed, sometimes a purge us required before building the new foundations for a new country
That doesn't work either. That's what the Soviets tried. That's how the Taliban were born, from the ashes of blood and 'purges.'
We're not in Gengis Khan's era where you can simply "eradicate" enemies from the map. This isn't Rome vs Carthage.
There is no quick and easy solution to this. Long term solutions take a lot of patience and hard work.
I've been thinking about this and one of the candidate solutions bouncing around in my head is to send in Pakistani engineers. The Pashtun population is split between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and while I'm sure there are cultural and linguistic differences as a result of being in two countries, there's a lot less of a distance between a Pakistani and an Afghan Pashtun then between a Chinese and an Afghan.
The BRI should have built up a sufficiently large cadre of Pakistani engineers that would blend into Afghan society a hell of a lot better than any Chinese could. That should make them much harder targets than a diaspora that travels in the same bus, sleeps in the same dormitory, and can be picked out of a crowd as easily as a radar picks up a target in the South China Sea.
Another solution is to do the Hammurabi thing. China's got far deeper pockets than India and Pakistan has a large and well-developed network of readily deployable irregular forces (despite your statements that it really doesn't do this kind of thing anymore
). If India gets bothersome, maybe something along the lines of a Mumbai attack happens to it again. Or worse.This may seem a morally abhorrent question to ask, but why not? From a purely practical perspective, I wonder both why Genghis-level genocidal violence isn't used more often and why it wouldn't work. In the Soviet case, why didn't they just keep killing?
They'll cripple the country with sanctions...I've been thinking about this and one of the candidate solutions bouncing around in my head is to send in Pakistani engineers. The Pashtun population is split between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and while I'm sure there are cultural and linguistic differences as a result of being in two countries, there's a lot less of a distance between a Pakistani and an Afghan Pashtun then between a Chinese and an Afghan.
The BRI should have built up a sufficiently large cadre of Pakistani engineers that would blend into Afghan society a hell of a lot better than any Chinese could. That should make them much harder targets than a diaspora that travels in the same bus, sleeps in the same dormitory, and can be picked out of a crowd as easily as a radar picks up a target in the South China Sea.
Another solution is to do the Hammurabi thing. China's got far deeper pockets than India and Pakistan has a large and well-developed network of readily deployable irregular forces (despite your statements that it really doesn't do this kind of thing anymore
This may seem a morally abhorrent question to ask, but why not? From a purely practical perspective, I wonder both why Genghis-level genocidal violence isn't used more often and why it wouldn't work. In the Soviet case, why didn't they just keep killing?
Not to forget a war with India is also possible
Pakistan genuinely stopped a lot of it's activities over the years
I am not saying it doesn't exist or Pakistan completely lost the means to do so
But shifting towards geo economics is not just a slogan but a genuine policy- stopping this despite having the capability to do so is part of it
Issue is India is also pushing it proxies so I don't know how long can Pak hold of without firing back
Probably because west controls power structure and India is with west
So consequences for Pak are greater than India
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Eventually, yea. But there are so many Afghan refugees in Pakistan (that don't want to go back to Afghanistan) that we have our hands full already... plus, we've got a ton of work to do in Pakistan. We can't help others until we sort out our own mess first. We'll try and do what we can.I've been thinking about this and one of the candidate solutions bouncing around in my head is to send in Pakistani engineers. The Pashtun population is split between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and while I'm sure there are cultural and linguistic differences as a result of being in two countries, there's a lot less of a distance between a Pakistani and an Afghan Pashtun then between a Chinese and an Afghan.
The BRI should have built up a sufficiently large cadre of Pakistani engineers that would blend into Afghan society a hell of a lot better than any Chinese could. That should make them much harder targets than a diaspora that travels in the same bus, sleeps in the same dormitory, and can be picked out of a crowd as easily as a radar picks up a target in the South China Sea.
Another solution is to do the Hammurabi thing. China's got far deeper pockets than India and Pakistan has a large and well-developed network of readily deployable irregular forces (despite your statements that it really doesn't do this kind of thing anymore
Because there were no cameras in Gengis Khan's time. If an army starts raping and pillaging today, the entire planet sees a video of it 5 minutes later. You can't hide it anymore or pretend it isn't a big deal. What the Soviets did was level a city which started the war. But Rome and the Mongols didn't stop with just 1 city. If you're gonna go down that route, you have to wipe out every city, like the US in Japan. Just keep wiping them out, one by one until unconditional surrender or total extermination. You can't do that anymore. Even your own population and soldiers would start to revolt. And that's a good thing.
Why genocide and (rightfully) attract the whole world's wrath?
Better to reeducate them. Most of the times, the main problem is the lack of education and poor living conditions. The correct way for saving the people and the state is by educating the whole lot of them and get them to adapt to the local culture
