Well, I didn’t expect this! The lightning crumbling of Taliban resistance took me completely by surprise. I didn’t think the US air strikes were doing much, I thought the Taliban outnumbered the Northern Alliance and that they and the Arab volunteers would be highly motivated fighters. Mind you, I was not alone in my suppositions – most of the pundits seemed to be taking a similar line. That we could be so spectacularly wrong about this makes me wonder how much else I don’t understand about the situation. It certainly makes me even more uncertain about what will happen next.
Are the Taliban just going to regroup in the Southern region and continue a bloody guerilla action? Or is this the beginning of the end?
Most importantly, is the West going to stay in for the long haul and try to ‘win the peace’? I hope we have learned by now that poor lawless states are not just bad for their inhabitants and a blight on the moral landscape – they are breeding grounds for economic migrants and terrorists…
