The collaborators in Afghanistan are routed

"I give you one statistic. 91 percent of the men in Afghanistan, 86 percent of the women, listen to at least three radio stations a day. In terms of their discourse, in terms of their sophistication of knowledge of the world, I think that I would dare say, they're much more sophisticated than rural Americans with college degrees and the bulk of Europeans -- because the world matters to them. And what is their predominant concern? Abandonment. Afghans have become deeply internationalist."

From a TED talk given in 2005 by Ashraf Ghani, the president who fled Afghanistan this week rather then stay and fight. 

But there was no point in fighting. His very corrupt government was composed of self-interested people collaborating with the American occupiers and supported by the minority of people who preferred American rule to the Taliban. 

In the same way regimes in Europe that collaborated with the Germans fell from power when the German troops were defeated in 1944-45.

It is interesting that in his exile in America where he was an academic he developed the antipathy to rural America that seems to be general in American academia and among liberal intellectuals. 

Was his government better than the Taliban?

Probably, because it received huge amounts of dollars from foreign powers, but it was utterly venal. It benefitted from the heroin trade and permitted paedophilia, two things the Taliban stamped out in areas they controlled.

Questions.

Was the bungled collapse of the government the result of elements in the American forces of occupation and defence establishment wanting to sabotage the withdrawal? 

Will this mean more neo-con wars for values? 

Will Europe allow in refugees who don't like the new government? 

If so why?

Americans who don't like Joe Biden can't use that as a reason to settle in Europe if they do not have the right to do so, though I well understand their wanting to get away from the horrors.