How practical/effective would it be to quarantine Afghanistan?

[Elok]

I mean, supposing Karzai's government collapsed totally and the Taliban took over, could we crater every runway, block off every road leading out, and effectively have the Allah-commandos caged in? I know that approach didn't work in Vietnam, but Afghanistan is a mountainous, landlocked country. You can only travel out by land through passes in the mountains, and there's not a whole lot of broad, flat expanses suitable for planes to land and take off from. There'd be none of that chain-of-bikes Ho Chi Minh Trail crap. Do you suppose it would be unfeasible to keep everything inoperable? Not for long, just until unrest toppled whichever Omar or Muhammed was in power and replaced him with someone of a less death-to-infidels mindset. And the lack of an export market would have all those poppy fields uprooted in favor of food or textile crops in no time. The moment new leader got friendly with the bomber crowd, we could just drop the curtain again. I doubt it'd be more expensive than maintaining our current ridiculous number of troops there.

I'm assuming there's some reason why we didn't do this already, but I'm not sure what. I don't imagine they'd starve in there. It seems half the population is living a fourteenth-century lifestyle anyway, herding goats and driving donkey-carts. If they had to trade to feed themselves, they'd have starved long ago, since they didn't have a damned thing worth selling until they started growing poppies. The main downside is that I believe that HalfLotus said an important oil pipeline runs through Afghanistan. Don't suppose we could redirect the flow or anything.

[Ben Kenobi]

Surprising ignorance about Afghanistan.

The whole area around Kandahar is all flat desert. It's only in the NE that you have high mountain passes.

[Elok]

Huh. Well, scratch that idea. Knew there had to be a reason.

[Elok]

Not surprising, though; like most of my countrymen, I never bothered to research Afghanistan.

[Kitschum]

The flattest areas are mostly in the Tajik north, and the Registan desert in S/SW. Afghanistan looks like this:



Now as for starvation,

http://www.wfp.org/countries/afghanistan

Preliminary data from the 2007-2008 National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA) indicate that 7.4 million people – nearly a third of the population – are unable to get enough food to live active, healthy lives. Another 8.5 million people, or 37 percent, are on the borderline of food insecurity. Around 400,000 people each year are seriously affected by natural disasters, such as droughts, floods, earthquakes or extreme weather conditions.

WFP plans to feed 8.8 million people in 2009, primarily in remote, food-insecure rural areas. WFP’s food assistance targets poor and vulnerable families, schoolchildren, teachers, illiterate people, tuberculosis patients and their families, returning refugees, internally displaced persons and disabled people – with an emphasis on vulnerable women and girls.

School Meals programmes aim to help the government rebuild the national education system. In 2009, WFP plans to provide a daily snack of micronutrient-enriched biscuits to more than 1.6 million children to alleviate short-term hunger and encourage school attendance. WFP also aims to provide 604,000 students with take-home rations of wheat, and to give 505,000 girls extra oil as an incentive to keep them in class. A new pilot programme provides children with a nutritious cooked meal at school every day.

There is no pipeline through Afghanistan currently, but before the Taliban were toppled there were talks of building one to connect the Central Asian oil/gas to the sea.


From a recent WashPost article some Taliban statements perhaps reflecting a strategic shift:

In a February interview with al-Samoud magazine, Taliban political committee leader Agha Jan Mutassim praised the Saudi Arabian government, called for Muslim unity and said the Taliban "respects all different Islamic schools and branches without any discrimination" in Afghanistan.

Such positions may put Omar's Taliban at odds with al-Qaeda's extremist Sunni agenda of overthrowing what it sees as corrupt Muslim governments and targeting Shiites. Analysts said that Omar, who leads a council of Taliban commanders based in or around the Pakistani city of Quetta, wants such countries as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan to recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government if it regains power and that he has little interest in fomenting war elsewhere.

"We assure all countries that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as a responsible force, will not extend its hand to cause jeopardy to others," Omar said in a written statement in September.

The messages from the Taliban leadership since the spring amount to something of a "revolution," said Wahid Mujda, a political analyst who was a Foreign Ministry official under the Taliban government. "Al-Qaeda's path is now different from the Taliban's path, and they are growing more separated."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/10/AR2009111019644.html

The sincerity is obviously open to question. The Taliban support for Al-Qaeda was sometimes 'explained' as a consequence of traditional Pashtun hospitality, an issue not addressed by the article.

[Zevico]

It can be done, but only if we all have angel wings and patrol the skies regularly. And France can't ***** out of the no-fly zone this time either.

[Berzerker]

I'd like for Al Qaeda to move back into Afghanistan

[SlowwHand]

I'd like them to move in with my ex girlfriend.

[Elok]

I'd actually read that last article in the WaPo yesterday, Kitschum, but the other stuff is news to me. It sounds like my plan is still salvageable, with some tweaking. For starters, we need to parachute in regular loads of BLT or pulled-pork sandwiches to the poorest regions. The three objectives being to stop the threat of starvation, teach the populace that Americans aren't so bad, and help them discover the joys of delicious piggy-meat (thereby undermining support for sharia law). Also, as an incentive, we could let them rename that "Hindu Kush" on the map "Allah's Fun Rocks" if they behaved.

Dunno what to do about the flat regions. You could isolate the rocky parts from the flat parts easily enough, at least. That's something.

[Drake Tungsten]

You don't actually need to travel through a mountain pass to go through the mountains. It just makes things easier.

[Wezil]

Elok - I'm not sure of your hypothetical goal. Is it to prevent the Taliban from governing Afghanistan or is it to prevent them from spreading their violence outside the country?

If currently our troops on the ground and air power are failing to prevent a new rise of the Taliban I'd be hard pressed to believe we could accomplish the same goal from the air. Without western ground troops Karzai and "friends" are done like dinner.

[Theben]

Dunno what to do about the flat regions.

"Allah's Fun Flats", of course.

[rah]

Nuke em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

[MOBIUS]

Nice bit of dithering about troop numbers coming from the Obama Administration...

We have lost the war here, it is only a matter of time as to when we withdraw with our tails between our legs.

[Theben]

It's due to our Welsh ancestry.