THE NEW TALIBAN: AN UNKNOWN QUANTITY

Following the blitzkrieg gains of the Taliban and its taking power in Kabul the USA, UK and their minions have been ejected from Afghanistan. The hubris-permeated inveterate liars of the West are gone. Now we will see what the new Taliban are made of.

The final murderous assault by the USA before it departed in humiliation has left ten dead family members including six children, among them two-year-old Sumaya.

In multiple reports from ex-servicemen and state department employees who served in Afghanistan, we are hearing of a propaganda campaign of lies that began almost from the start of the invasion. All the positive gloss that was put on the Afghan campaign for almost the entirety of its occupation was based on bare-faced lies engendered by fears of demotion or worse.

Those at the bottom of the chain of command reporting officially to their superiors and those at the top reporting officially to their political elites continually hid the awful truth. That awful truth was that the western attack upon and invasion of Afghanistan was doomed from the start and that countless lives were lost for no good reason.

All that being said, what now? What is the net effect of the last twenty years going to be? How will the new Taliban now govern, in a different style and substance from before or simply through a surface patina of semantically-driven PR while those far from Kabul carry on as before?

From today onwards we will find out.

The Taliban certainly have the firepower to take on any who may seek to take control of Afghanistan or any part of it from them.

The Taliban potentially now have a total of 167 aircraft of a great diversity of types including Black Hawk helicopters, at least 3,000 Humvee vehicles, over 3,500 M4 Carbines and 31 Mobile Strike Force Vehicles.

Will the USA continue to use its assassination drones in Afghanistan after this point? This is a question U.S. officials do not appear to have answered as yet. If they do the consequences are unpredictable and potentially lethal for any hoped-for peace in the region.

After twenty years of violence on top of all the many decades of the same in the years previously will the people of Afghanistan finally experience a greater degree of peace and stability?

If Russia, China and Iran have anything to do with it, with help also from Pakistan, they will.

Only the behaviour of the new Taliban government and its shock troops can say and as all we know at this point is that they are a completely unknown quantity. We can only hope their actions match their words of recent weeks and that Afghans do now gain some well-deserved respite from war.