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Two views on what happened to Afghanistan over the last two decades. The first chart depends on the FDD series of maps¹⁾, and it appears to me to give an understandable narrative of how the Taliban emerged as winner. The second chart depends on “the Gilliams” set of maps²⁾, and it appears to be an overly optimistic view of the fortunes of Taliban and anti-Taliban forces. The reports were forced to conform more closely to reality as contested areas nominally recorded as being under government control were revealed to be certainly under Taliban control. The second chart is almost a perverse mirror image of the first. If one bases oneself on the second chart, it is more possible to view things in soft focus and claim that Afghanistan was in good shape until Biden became president. However, even the second chart shows things falling apart for the government during the Trump years.

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(The third chart is an inverted image of the second chart. Ironically, it seems to closely approximate the first chart, the one I regard as the more reliable of the two published sets of information.)

The moral of the story is that if you wear rose-colored glasses
you can't see the flashing blue lights of the police car bearing down on you.
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