CHANGE REGIMES; DON'T IMPOSE THEM:

[T]he suddenly emerging resistance has been confirmed by an increasing number of witnesses in numerous provinces. And it also isn't as delusional as it might first seem - for two main reasons. First, these last few days of extremely rapid change have instilled deep fear in countless numbers of people. At the same time, though, the collapse of the state has oddly had something of a liberating effect. The government of President Ashraf Ghani was so discredited, disliked and even hated across the country that many places had felt and sounded almost paralyzed in recent months. The Americans were occupiers, the government was corrupt - what was there to fight for? What there was to fight against no longer seemed important.

Now, suddenly, it is. After 20 years of torpor, the political fault lines are currently shifting with unimaginable speed.

The second reason is even more important. Despite all of their detailed preparations to take power, the Taliban have underestimated what it actually means to switch sides in an asymmetric war. Now, they are the state. Now, they have to control every city and every province, now they must provide the personnel for every police station and every checkpoint. And they simply don't have enough people to do so, despite estimates that the Taliban include around 30,000 to 40,000 fighters.

Perhaps there are more of them now, but the personnel shortage has been confirmed both by sources within the Taliban movement and by independent observers in Kabul and other provinces. "I spent three hours driving from police station to police station," said a former European soldier last Thursday who was still in Kabul and trying to find Taliban fighters to help escort foreigners through the chaos at the completely besieged airport. "But in none of the stations, which used to be manned by dozens of officers, did I see more than three or four men."

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