Maintaining a modern tolerant state is probably harder than it looks. Like in the UK we take it for granted but it's the end result of centuries of sometimes bloody trial and error fixes. People think it's silly we still have a king but look what happened to Russia, France, Germany etc after they got rid of theirs.

Afghanistan might have worked out if the US took a king like role sitting in a fort somewhere and saying ok, you're prime minister to some Afgan after each election. The king role may seem like nothing but if a UK prime minister says sod this I'm ruler for life then the king doesn't endorse them and the king is the head of the armed forces which makes it difficult to do such stuff.

> and the king is the head of the armed forces which makes it difficult to do such stuff.

How did that work out for Russia, France or Germany ?

Maybe, in Afghanistan Soviet communists invaded and destroyed Afghanistan's state structures and started a massacre that would last years. That's why the Taliban attacked ... and probably why they won, with overwhelming support by the population of Afghanistan, and even US support.

But the details of the story expose a great many painpoints for many ideologies and parties so people don't like to talk about it. First it exposes that the US (and Europe, and many others, but of course not the UN or Russia) supported the Taliban ... because they were better than communists. My favorite stats is that the Taliban, as bad as they are, in 2.5 wars and ... still haven't killed as many people as the communists massacres killed in Afghanistan.

So "capitalist" or more accurately US and UK support for the Taliban did indeed exist (was a lot less than reported though), but yes, that included supporting and training a certain Osama Bin Laden ... Of course what's never mentioned when this is brought up is why people supported the Taliban. It wasn't to destroy socialism ... or at least that wasn't the only reason.

On the other side of the aisle it exposes that there was a time that socialism tried to eradicate religions ... using genocide (not just in Afghanistan). WITH the support of socialists in the west, the same socialist parties that still exist, were violently against immigration and protested against western states saving even one of those muslim men, women and children.

Both ideologies, left, center and right, want to believe they're constant, rational, and right. So an extremely large change in policy ... especially leftist parties who supported Soviet/communist genocides against a decent chunk of their current electorate.

Including famous current politicians like Antonio Guterrez, secretary general of the United Nations, who organised and personally physically attacked and hurt people for trying to give muslims sanctuary 40 years ago (he probably didn't even hate muslims, he just supported communism, including Soviet and Chinese genocides)

So everybody denies it but that's how Afghanistan got where it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Afghanistan