“People” in this case is Afghans who lived under the Taliban and now appear to welcome it back. Between 1996, when the Taliban took Kabul, and 2001, when the U.S. effected a quick and apparently decisive military victory in reaction to 9/11, the Taliban was in complete control. The nightmare datum in modern times is that people who have had such experiences as living under the Taliban — where it is all but a capital offense to be born a girl — should, having been liberated from it, move back in the direction of revived life in pain. It is as if in 1950 the German people had drifted back toward life under Nazism. ~William Buckley

Via Hit and Run

This is a nightmare for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, but should we be all that surprised?  The Taliban’s rule was brutal, indeed apparently sadistic in some instances, but it provided the sort of order that Afghans in 1996 desperately craved after 17 years of war.  This is not what I would call “good order,” obviously, but it was a kind of order, and in Afghanistan beggars could not be choosers.  It is no surprise that Afghans in the southern provinces, who are tied to members of the Taliban by tribe and ethnicity, should welcome them back when they return; in societies where tribes are the main organisations, these bonds are more important than almost anything.  Besides, when the fanatics with guns roll into town, would you be more likely to grumble and resist or make displays of approval and satisfaction at their arrival? 

The “life in pain” that the Taliban promises is certainly the product of unjust rule, but that rule is at least predictable after a fashion, and men will endure almost anything to be spared chaos.  For many Afghans, if they did not step outside the very strict boundaries the Taliban set, 1996-2001 was not so much a “life in pain” as a dreary, but slightly less chaotic life.    

A couple ways to deprive the Taliban of some of its popular appeal would be: don’t eradicate the crops of the people whom you wish to free from Taliban sympathies, since this achieves nothing so much as the strengthening of the Taliban’s appeal (as it has done with FARC in Colombia); provide a modicum of public order and security that takes away some of the value of the Taliban’s harsh law-and-order regime.  You do want to prevent opium money from funding the Taliban, which would involve securing more of the countryside and keeping them firmly ensconced in Pakistan, where they would remain but would have limited ability to undermine the regime in Kabul.  If we are for some reason unwilling or unable to do this, the Taliban will re-emerge as a real menace and become a relatively effective fighting force, perhaps even someday retaking Kabul. 

Of course, tribal loyalties and religious sympathies will not be entirely overcome, nor should we expect them to be or even really want them to be.  They are part of the native culture, and to uproot these elements removes what basic structures there are that might support a stable, relatively orderly society.  There are things that Mr. Bush can do, and he can start by focusing on what Afghanistan needs, which is not sermons on freedom or elections, but order, basic infrastructure, services and some kind of economic activity that does not involve fueling the heroin trade.  We do not have an indefinite period of time to fix this aimless Afghanistan policy; the longer we remain, the less credible it will seem to ordinary Afghans that we intend to leave, and the more difficult it will be to prevent a general uprising against Karzai and the NATO mission.  I sincerely hope I am wrong, but I suspect that we have no more than three years to make significant progress or we lose Afghanistan entirely and wind up with much the same problem we had in the first place.