According to Wiki, Afghanistan is a nation of 38 million people. In July, president Biden called for the withdrawal of America's 3,000 or so troops this August.
In the space of about a week and a half, the withdrawl of those troops led to the collapse of the Afghan government, and the control of the country by the Taliban.
Somebody explain to me: how is it that the departure of 3,000 US troops, in a country of millions, could lead to the total and utter collapse of a government in less than a month?
I am reading stories that in city after city, local Afghan troops laid down their arms and refused to fight. This was not a civil war, it was a civil surrender.
I am not an Afghan expert by any means. But it looks to me like the Afghan government was an imperial construct, made possible solely by the power of the United States. Lacking the power of the US, it appears that Afghani men, for the most part, decided that the Afghan government wasn’t worth fighitng for.
So my question is: why didn’t more Afghanis put up a fight against the Taliban? Why was the departure of several thousand US troops so decisive in a country of 38 million people? Did or did not the Afghan government have the support of the majority of the Afghan people?
Note that, I am not saying that the Taliban are the good guys. I acknowledge that the Afghan government, such as it was, served US interests. I get all of that.
But it seems like the Afghan government was an “artificial” government, that is, it was made viable solely by the expenditure of billions of US dollars and US military support, and lacked the support of the majority of the Afghani population, or at least, the Afghani men who were willing to fight the Taliban.
It seems to me that resistance to the Taliban was inconsequential to non-existent. Why? And it just seems to me that the press is not asking these questions.