Apparently the main part of Pakistan relevant to Afghanistan is the 'tribal regions' mostly not governed by the rest of Pakistan. There your claims of a "mix" seem to be not correct.

Further, much of the problem the US has had with Pakistan is from the strong role of Islam there and in Afghanistan. For reasons of religion, culture, domestic politics, and foreign policy, Pakistan has been mostly on the side of the Taliban, that is, wants to dominate Afghanistan.

My comments about Islam were focused on Afghanistan. The comments also apply a lot to Iran and Iraq. For Pakistan, sure, it used to be part of India which is wildly mixed from Muslim, Hindu, what it got from the British, and the old cultures from before the British. India is a forbiddingly complicated place, and Pakistan has been influenced by that.

But the main reason for the formation of Pakistan was just Islam -- they wanted an Islamic country. Net, the main culture in Pakistan is just Islam.

Italy is heavily a Roman Catholic country, but the church does not run everything. Turkey is an Islamic country, but the clerics don't run everything. An Islamic country can have a culture more varied than just Islam. No doubt the culture of Pakistan is more varied than that of Afghanistan.

The main interest in this tread is what the heck is the US going to do about Afghanistan and why? The main content of why is just the role of Islam.

The US brought to Afghanistan constitutional government, free elections, roads, schools, hospitals, training and equipment for police and a military, but Afghanistan is about to throw away all of that and return to an 'Islamic state' run by the Taliban. Thus, I and much of the US are losing patience with both Afghanistan and Islam.

No, it doesn't. I don't disagree with you on the whole (and certainly appreciate that you are even attempting to understand the issue, which is more than almost anyone does), but like neebz I think your narrative is very simplistic and out of touch with reality.

Islam is not as powerful in the "Islamic world" as you portrayed. Taliban is the exception, not the rule.

I currently live in Tehran, and TBH I personally know less than 8 people (less, because it's been a while since I've talked to a few of them) who are supportive of the government, or in general of Islamic rule. And the number of "religious" (as in, religion is more than something theoretical for them - you believe in Quran, and even though you don't follow it's instructions, the mere belief gets you a place in paradise) people I personally know is probably no more than 20 (most of them friends at college).

The reason for Islamic rule (at least in Iran), is not because they have the support of the people, but simply because they have the money and power. You don't sell hundreds of billions of dollars of crude oil every quarter and get rich and powerful, only to allow to be overthrown! You do everything you can to prevent that.

I hate typing on iPad, so, please read the rest of what I wanted to say in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4820604

Sure. But I was talking mostly about Afghanistan. And the US got 'impatient' with the Shiite/Sunni fighting in Iraq. And the Shiite yelling and screaming, "Death to America" from Iran is difficult to respect.

For the connection between the clerics and the economy in Iran, there was an article in, maybe, 'Forbes' long ago explaining that basically the clerics get a 'cut' of nearly everything in the economy, control who gets to do what, etc.

But, why? That is, why are the Islamic clerics in Iran running the economy with a short leash and running an aggressive military and foreign policy at great cost to their domestic standard of living? Is this just religion? No. But Islam is not just religion and, instead, is often also economic, legal, military, foreign policy, etc. That's not new: The Roman Catholic church was doing that in Europe for hundreds of years. They owned a major fraction of all the farm land in France which has a major fraction of all the good farm land in Western Europe. They built little things like the cathedrals, while the people were living in, what, mud huts? They built the Bishop's Residenz in Würzburg, awash in some of the fanciest art and architecture in all of civilization -- not cheap, and built by citizens in, what, mud huts? The Roman Catholic church was running everything. E.g., to be a king, had to have the Pope tap you on the head or some such. And they were corrupt. So, they had the Protestant Reformation, religious wars, etc. Lots of blood. Finally they learned their lessons about religion. In the US, we borrowed those lessons -- the state will establish no religion; there will be separation of church and state; there will be freedom of religion. Done. Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan still have to learn these old lessons.

Sorry about the Shah; he was a pawn in the Cold War. The US had just finished WWII and, thus, took the Cold War seriously. We spent a LOT of money, and blood, winning the Cold War.

Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the other Arab oil states, should all do the same thing: Cool down. Relax. Embrace peace. Get the clerics into religion only. No more clerics measuring the lengths of women's skirts or censoring the Internet. Pump oil. Enjoy life. Then work on culture, good government, education, technology, and a strong economy for when the oil runs out. And stop shouting "Death to America". Want nuclear power for electric power, taking the salt out of water and growing vegetables? Fine. Just accept the usual international rules, safeguards, and inspections, and light up your cities and have fountains and big swimming pools of pure water.

All this fighting is over nothing, wasteful, and absurd.

I agree. But the problem is that those who chant "Death to America", like the status quo; they don't want change! If things change (like you said in the second to last paragraph), they'll be out of their jobs and have to do an honest day's work. They don't want that. And do everything they can to prevent that. They "have" to portray US as the "Great Satan", that is behind all their economic, cultural and political mistakes.

It might be strange and unfathomable to you and me, but some people prefer to be King in a wasteland, than to be an ordinary citizen in a country with much greater standard of living. They'd rather be a powerful Mullah in Taliban, than to live normally in a western country. Many of these clerics have spent years studying in European countries, but after finishing college they've left the west and now are living in a shack somewhere in Ghandahar and are the local commander of Taliban. Why? I don't know.

Most of these people won't "cool down, relax or embrace peace", because they are enjoying their shitty lives. And that's the problem, because they have the power to make life miserable for others too. They'd sooner bomb their people (Saddam, Ghadafi, Assad) and ruin their own country, than to "let it go".

There are exceptions like Mubarak or Bin Ali (or Iran's Shah) that fought furiously, but in the end decided not to completely ruin their countries and fled. But not all dictators are like that; some are like Assad.

Off-topic: You seem to be using the word "net" a lot in a way that seems odd to me. Net as in "the net effect of which is"?

More generally "net" means a summary or a very simple statement of the core point.

In writing to be understood, often it is good be clear, and even too simple, about the main 'points'. Otherwise it is too easy that no 'points' at all get across.

Your comment and at least two 'siblings' are far more thoughtful than mine was so that my oversimplifying with "net" is not appropriate.

Back here in the US, after 9/11 and now 12 years in Afghanistan, we need to make some difficult decisions: We tried, hard but in total ('net'!) not hard enough, to make Afghanistan a "shining city on a hill" but apparently have failed and maybe even 'net' have done more harm than good.

Bin laden is gone. The Taliban government that let Bin Laden use their country as a base to attack the US is not gone but is out of power. There are stories that some even in the Taliban now understand that it was a big mistake to let Bin Laden use Afghanistan as a base to attack the US.

The US has tried 'nation building' in several countries of the world. We were largely successful in Germany and Japan. With US military protection, Taiwan and South Korea have done well. The US has tried hard to have peace with both Russia and China and not have them become another 'Axis' like Germany and Japan in the 1940s. Still, in Viet Nam, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the results of US efforts been from frustrating and/or poor (Iraq) down to worse.

Viet Nam is the grand tragedy: I have a nice 600 dot per inch black and white printer from Brother, made in Viet Nam. Terrific for Viet Nam. The US couldn't be happier. The Brother printer is much better than the HP printer I bought in 1994. That Brother and Viet Nam are at least in part beating HP in the printer business is mostly fine in the US (except for HP stockholders!). As far as I can tell, what Viet Nam is now is just fine with the US. The big, huge point for the US is that Viet Nam is not part of some Axis of Moscow, Peking, and Hanoi that seemed to be a threat starting just after WWII where the US had just defeated the Axis and didn't like things that looked like an Axis. The WWII Axis also hurt Viet Nam -- Japan occupied Viet Nam.

But, the way Viet Nam is today, it is clearly no threat to its neighbors or the US, and that's really all the US wanted. The US didn't want a colony, and for the rubber or lumber, wanted to pay fair prices for it.

The tragedy is that Viet Nam and US relations as they are today could have been just the same in the early 1970s, the 1960s, ..., back to just after WWII (to heck with the French) just by both sides just deciding to and shaking hands on it.

In summary ('net'), the US has tried, sometimes at great expense in US blood and treasure, often with much more expense in blood in the other country, sometimes been successful, and sometimes not. When we have failed, we didn't really know why.

For why the US was successful in Germany and Japan, both countries had very strong, highly disciplined cultures, suffered just devastating, horrible, defeats, with homeless people wandering cold and hungry in the streets with rotting bodies under piles of rubble, and then used their discipline to say "never again", mean it, implement it, do a lot of really hard work, and rebuild themselves.

So, 'culture' played a part. So, why not success in Afghanistan? My view: Culture. The culture was different; either the US didn't understand it or it was insufficient. What was that culture? In a word, Islam; it runs nearly everything. The US tried to build a 'secular' (independent of religion) democracy, and the Taliban have Islam on their side. The US has B-52 bombers from 40,000 feet, GPS location, A-10 airplanes that reduce tanks to piles of scrap iron in seconds, supersonic F-16 airplanes that can reduce a tank to scattered scrap iron in even less time, schools, hospitals, etc. and lose, and the Taliban have sticks, stones, some RPGs, and rusty AK-47s and win. To me, the main difference is that the Taliban have the 'culture', in this case, Islam, on their side.

Whatever, likely the US will be leaving Afghanistan, fairly soon.

For the US, it's much more difficult to attack us now. In particular, it's difficult even to have nail clippers on a US commercial airplane. And I can believe that in many Islamic countries, anyone shouting "Jihad! Death to ..." will quickly get a 'corrective lesson' they won't forget, maybe even can't forget.

For Turkey, if they become more fundamentally Islamic, then they will find that the US, NATO, the EU, and maybe even Russia will become much less friendly.

They do. The 'tribal regions' are known 'tribal' for a reason. They are dominated by tribes, who have there own traditions & rivalry. They have affiliations with Taliban because of Pashtun traditions. This affiliation goes back even before the Pakistan came into being. Islam is a cultural part of this region but not the sole driving force. They used poppy/heroine for ages but Islam strictly prohibits using drugs. So yet another sample where your nice little narrative doesn't fit.

> Further, much of the problem the US has had with Pakistan is from the strong role of Islam there and in Afghanistan

erm ..US played an important role during the Afghan-Russia war. They actually pumped up the Jihadist sentiment at that time. Religion in the grand scheme has just been a tool to achieve interest.

> For reasons of religion, culture, domestic politics, and foreign policy, Pakistan has been mostly on the side of the Taliban, that is, wants to dominate Afghanistan.

Only foreign policy. Pakistan cannot afford to fight with neighbors on both sides of border. That's the sole reason Pakistan wants to friend whoever comes into power in Afghanistan (apparently the notorious double-game Pak army has been playing with US is because once US goes back they would have to deal with Taliban ..and they want to be in there good books). Pakistan has also been super-friendly with China but no religion, culture, domestic politics play any role in that. It's only foreign policy.

> My comments about Islam were focused on Afghanistan. The comments also apply a lot to Iran and Iraq

You do know Iraq fought war with Saudia Arabia ..the be and end all of all things Islam ? You do know how things were in Iran before the revolution ? If you start looking things from an economics-perspective then everything fits in place. There are some nut-jobs who leave everything to go and fight for the sake of religion but the majority of the population doesn't do that. They just want good food and good living style regardless of whose in power. Iranian revolution can be traced back to that as well.

> But the main reason for the formation of Pakistan was just Islam -- they wanted an Islamic country. Net, the main culture in Pakistan is just Islam.

then how come there hasn't been any Islamic governing system in Pakistan since the creation? There are gazillion open things in this country which are against the very premise of Islam yet no one talks about that. Pakistan wasn't created by an imam or cleric. The most ironic thing (and I would suggest you should go and study that) is that creation of Pakistan was opposed by virtually every single cleric at that time. Founder of Pakistan (Jinnah) lead a very secular life & wasn't a fan-favourite of Islamic imams at that time. Pakistan was created because Muslims were living a second-class life in all of India. Again economic reasons.

> The main interest in this tread is what the heck is the US going to do about Afghanistan and why? The main content of why is just the role of Islam.

That I agree. But that is not something which you can use as a reason to justify how things work in every Muslim country out there. US invaded Afghanistan at a time when they had right-wing extremists in power. So obviously they'll have to deal with problems in the same domain. You don't need to create grand conclusions out of it.

But, somehow while supposedly trying to help the US bring peace to Afghanistan, Bin Laden lived in a relatively large and nice house for some years about a good golf shot from the Pakistan army college. And no one knew he was there?

And when President Clinton fired cruise missiles at the Bin Laden training camp in Afghanistan, US Secretary of State Albright (also known as Half-bright) informed the Pakistan government since the missiles would have to fly over Pakistan territory. Then somehow Half-bright's information made it to Bin Laden who was well out of the area when the missiles arrived.

Of course Islam is not all there is to it, not in Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, or even Afghanistan. And clearly economics is also important.

But my point was about 'culture'. Or just why have US efforts to create democracy in Afghanistan failed? My answer, culture: There's no real basis for democracy in Afghanistan culture. Does this mean that Afghanistan has no culture? No, they do. They have a strong culture, one that runs nearly everything, Islam. Get rid of Islam and they don't have much except maybe a few goats, some poppies, some rusty AK-47s. So, they don't get rid of Islam. Not all of Islam is against democracy, but the culture in Afghanistan is Islam with no foundation for democracy.

This thread (sorry about the times I typed 'tread' instead) has mentioned that in part the Taliban act like the Mafia in Italy and at times parts of the US. That's some of what I thought, and, yes, it's not from Islam. But the main reason for a Mafia is that there is no good alternative system of police and government. With a good system of police, when a Mafia guy comes to a store owner and asks for a monthly payment, the store owner can go to the police who will be waiting when the Mafia guy comes and accepts the money and then ... lock up the Mafia guy for a long time. But this system needs a good culture to support such good police and, thus, good police to protect the citizens. In contrast, all Afghanistan has in culture is just Islam; Islam doesn't provide good support of police that support the citizens; there's no other culture; so the Taliban get to use Mafia tactics. Neither the Taliban nor the villagers believe that a democracy should be better. So, Islam and Mafia tactics are what's there.

It's not that Islam is against good police protection; it's mostly just that Islam doesn't provide good police protection, and in Afghanistan Islam is essentially all the culture. So, no good police protection. And it's not that an Islamic country can't have good police protection; I can believe that some Islamic countries have some very strong police. But in Afghanistan, about all there is is Islam and next to nothing about good police or democracy. And the Islamic clerics? It's not in their interest to see the growth of strong, secular institutions such as good police. So, again, no good police force can grow up.

Or Islamic Sharia law: Try to implement something descended from Napoleonic law or British Common law, etc., and, in a country that has essentially only Islam, many Muslims will keep asking for Sharia law. So, get a 500 year old legal system.

Education? Try to set up a 21st century, or 20th century, education system, and, in a country that has essentially only Islam, a lot of Muslims will insist on Islamic education instead. Halt: Again out of date by 500 years.

Look, if Islam were only religion, then it would be much less of a road block to progress in Afghanistan. Instead, Islam is running nearly everything there and, thus, is able to block nearly any change or progress.

A big point about Islam for people in the US is that Islam is not just religion but is also how to dress, what to eat, how to run a marriage, education, architecture, system of laws, government, etc. So, in the less developed Islamic countries, Islam is a roadblock to change. E.g., in Iraq, there are two sides to Islam, the Shiites and the Sunnis. So, since they have little more important in their lives than just their religion, they fight. They would just rather have a civil war than get on with pumping oil and living a life of milk and honey. They did that already in Europe, been there, done that, got the T-shirt, and had the rivers running red for hundreds of years from religious wars. Finally they learned: Have politics and government separate from and largely independent of religion; have freedom of religion; and don't fight over religion. Done. When the Muslims in, say, Iraq learn that lesson, they will be ahead some hundreds of years.

again, very trivial story. there is an argument to be made that how plausible it is for OBL to live in hiding in Pak but lets for a second we assume that Pakistan were providing a lovely cushy place for him to hide. The reasons are not Islamic, cultural, brotherhood ..it's plain old foreign policy. The war in Afghanistan brings aid and modern technology to Pak Army. And they are suckers for that. Our Army did the same when you guys funded Afghanistan in Russia war (and guess what they build a whole Atomic bomb out of it) and they did the same this time. Nothing to do with your grand illusions of how Islam runs thing here. It's all money. The generals will spend there weekend drinking & dancing (again banned in Islam!) to celebrate there achievements.

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and as for all your other points which is basically how Islam is hindering progress in Afghanistan: so at least you started with Islamic countries and then narrowed it down to the failed ones and now we are in Afghanistan only. So I'll say that's good progress. You can't compete me on Pakistan on details but you can't do that for Iran, Afghanistan or any other Islamic country. And these are not some hidden research which I did. You only need to visit the country once & meet with common people to understand how your nice little good (democracy) vs evil (religion) doesn't fit. It'll be an eye-opener.

Yes..Islam covers every aspect of life but the number of people who follow Islam like that are less than 0.1% of the world population. And I've given you gazillion examples of that (heck! we have a bigger red district area in Lahore than Amsterdam). Afghanistan was fairly happy with their system a few decades ago. They had universities, tourism, working-women ..all sweet. But then the Russia war happened & it's been downhill since then. Have you ever talked to an Afghani all your life? I can only assume no. Your total knowledge seems to come from watching OBL/Taliban released video speeches.

And I can't even fathom how you think Iraq learned the lessons. The only thing your ill-fated war brought to Iraq is more "love for religion" and more "Death to America". Maybe you have to make these sweet conclusions to make you sleep at night or something but it's hilariously unfounded and naive.

If you think Salafist Afghanistan, Kohmeinist Iran and Baathist Iraq had anything in common then you know jack shit.

That's like comparing Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and the US colonies in Cotton Mather's time, sticking them all into one big pot because they are all "Christian". Idiocy.

As you point out, there are still some differences. But what is in common is that Islam, in whatever flavors, is so strong, and not just a religion, and essentially all the culture there is, is able to block progress.

Look, to be more clear, the problem is not just Islam. Instead, the Roman Catholics ran everything in Western Europe for hundreds of years, were corrupt, blocked progress, and finally Europe got out of it, after religious wars, etc.

The point is not that Islam is a bad religion, even if it is. Instead the point is that to run a good society, need a good culture, and that culture needs to come from much more than just some religious clerics. A religious state, Roman Catholic, Islamic, or anything else, just will not be a successful state. In the countries where Islam is the only culture, Islam needs to shrink back to being just a religion, hopefully one of several, and let the culture have other inputs besides just religion. Got it now?

Don't patronize me. You wrote a screed justifying bombing the hell out of civilians because you didn't like their speech. Somewhere in your moral bankruptcy, you wrote

So, in an Islamic country, take away Islam, and there's no culture at all and, then, just chaos

This was your characterization of Iran and Iraq, which showed that you don't know jack. It also won't work for Turkey or Malaysia.

By the way, "nation building" failed in Germany as well, largely because Americans are hypocrites who SAY "nation building" and DO war profiteering, corruption and vindictiveness. The result was Adolf Hitler.

So the US had to fight another World War with Germany, and after getting their asses kicked so badly by the Axis, and coming close to losing in several ways, the US decided in 1945 to do actual nation building in half good faith, hence the Marshall Plan. This time round, it succeeded in Germany and Japan.

Unfortunately, the US forgot this lesson by 9/11, so when it came to Iraq and Afghanistan, they went back to "nation building" by Blackwater XE and Halliburton, with predictable results.