Not really. The Taliban’s attacks on civilians didn’t help their cause. They found success when they started acting as a more-competent government than our fucks in Kabul. If we want to debate whether the Taliban under occupation had any success with its terrorist tactics, I guess I’d concede that one man’s terrorist is another’s guerrilla fighter. But even then, guerilla tactics rely on a sympathetic local population. So a guerrilla team bombing civilians is undermining its own cause.

I'm not exactly an expert on Afghan politics and the reason for the failure of the western backed government are surely multifaceted, but don't you think that destabilizing the country through terror attacks played a role in the sustained weakness of the government as well as the withdrawal of the West?

> don't you think that destabilizing the country through terror attacks played a role in the sustained weakness of the government as well as the withdrawal of the West?

Not an expert either. I haven’t seen one make this case. What I have seen is cross-conflict studies on the success of terrorism, and that sets my baseline for Afghanistan being a special case. (Domestic terrorism works a little bit more frequently than international terrorism. But they’re both very, very bad strategies that frequently blow back.)

> The Taliban’s attacks on civilians didn’t help their cause

Umm, do you mean al-qaeda (if you are referring to 9/11). Al-qaeda and the Taliban are different groups. Neither are particularly nice, but only one did 9/11.