Was the Afghanistan collapse inevitable?

Axel Felix
Studied at Oslo, NorwayUpvoted by
Jawad Falak , MSC International Relations & Terrorism, National Defence University, Pakistan (2015)Jan 22
I would say Yes. For those who follow me here in this website they know I haven`t written an answer for some months now. Like everyone else I was shocked when the government collapsed. I was thinking to my self what could be the reason. After thinking much about this issue, in my view one of the major reasons was this:
Politicians from Afghanistan be it Tajik, Pashtun, Hazara or Uzbek saw the United states and its allies as their sugar daddy that would stay in Afghanistan for a long time. But this didn`t happen and Afghanistan collapse was inevitable.
Let me first explain what is a sugar daddy and how it compares with the situation in Afghanistan.
“Sugar daddying, also called sugaring, is a transactional dating practice typically characterized by an older wealthier person and a younger person in need of financial assistance in a mutually beneficial relationship.” Wikipedia

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In a such relationship the younger woman will offer companionship, youthful energy in exchange for the older man financial assistance. Some sugar babies have the financial assistance of the sugar daddy as their only source of income. Which is very sad. Now imagine if a countries politicians acted like sugar babies and this is exactly what happened in Afghanistan in the past two decades.
So what happened was that many of the ruling politicians in Afghanistan for the past two decades saw the US and its allies as their sugar daddy. Where they will be puppets and in exchange the US will do almost everything for them be it the economy, security, development etc.
Developing the economy? the United states will do it for us with the aid money. Security? We have the US forces they will protect us. Support of the local people? not so important since the US pay us etc. When their sugar daddy the US pulled out they were shocked and everything collapsed.

Anyway I will not judge them harshly from the comfort of my house writing this answer. If the government had any chance to fight the Taliban then the political actors in Afghanistan should have been much more smarter and much more united in the past two decades. Also they should have made sure that they didn't depend on another country 100 % for their survival. I can go on and write about the major political mistakes that they did. But writing about those mistakes is one thing and fixing those mistakes on the ground is another thing. The reailty is much harsher on the ground. Afghanistan really lacked good leadership.

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 The Tajik, Hazara leaders with the Pakistani foreign minister just before the Taliban took over Afghanistan. Then they were kicked out of Afghanistan.

Collected from Quora.com on 21 November 2022.