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[...] The Taliban expect, by mobilizing forces, to increase local community support in their favor. Regardless of their position (and possibly their memories of the 1990s) it seems unlikely that families will be hostile to a group for which a father, husband, or son is fighting. In fact, the Taliban offer is attractive. Thanks to the bounty of drug profits, the Taliban can now pay their fighters around $300 per month, regularly, without payment delays or deductions - criteria that are less certain for the regular army. [...]
[...] The development of perspectives for a better life for Afghan workers, and schools of knowledge for their children, will solve these problems, as complex as they may be, as it has solved them in many other countries in the world. This is what we want for this country, which, after having caused so much commotion for so long, deserves a bit of stability. Bibliography AFP In Afghanistan, saffron as an alternative to opium, L'Express, 18/12/2014 CHOUVY, Pierre-Arnaud, Illicit Drugs, Territory, and Conflict in Afghanistan and Myanmar, Hérodote, vol no 2004 CHOUVY, Pierre-Arnaud, Geopolitics of Illicit Drugs in Asia, Hérodote, vol no 2003 CHOUVY, Pierre-Arnaud,Food Insecurity and Illicit Opium Production in Asia, Annales de géographie, vol no 2010 DE BAVINCHOVE, US Troop Withdrawal from Afghanistan: The War Without End?, Institut Montaigne, 25/01/2019 https://www.institutmontaigne.org/blog/retrait-de-troupes-americaines-en-afghanistan-la-guerre-sans-fin FAZELLY, Kacem, US Policy in Afghanistan, Académie de Géopolitique de Paris, 18/03/2016 http://www.academiedegeopolitiquedeparis.com/la-politique-des-etats-unis-en-afghanistan/ JAUFFRET, Jean-Charles, Afghanistan 2001-2010. [...]
[...] In our opinion, however, the best thing for the West and all actors who have a sincere desire to see the country develop and escape the Taliban threat is not to tell the government of Kabul what to do, but to accompany it in its own decision-making, which must be established in agreement with the local population, the very one that has suffered so much from successive incompetent or tyrannical regimes and apparently endless armed conflicts. This does not, however, exempt us from a duty of solidarity with Afghanistan. We know how the country has also suffered from repeated errors of a coalition that is often too confident to think twice about the consequences of its initial strategies for managing and developing the country. A duty that is also in our interest: our own security, as we have said, is closely linked to that of Afghanistan. [...]
[...] while Myanmar has maintained a significant activity, despite the efforts of its governments to put an end to this production. It is useful to recall that the surrender of the Mont Tai Army in 1996, a largely engaged and self-financed rebel group by the drug trade, generated a lot of hopes for the end of poppy cultivation soon. However, it is not enough for an illegal group to fall for this culture to disappear (no more than poppy disappeared with the temporary fall of the Taliban in 2001). [...]
[...] Instead of granting Afghanistan the status of a power, we already recognize its status as a crossroads country. This importance, moreover, was not much diminished more recently, when the USSR attempted to extend if not its territory, at least its model in Afghanistan a century later. The resistance generated both at the level of local leaders and with American support recalled both the identity of the former and the interest of the latter in the region. A region highly marked by radical Islamism The fight against radical Islam, before being the security issue of the United States and Europe as we mentioned earlier, is first and foremost that of the sub-region itself. [...]
