Trading Turbans

It seems like all this news of the Taliban quitting cities in Afghanistan is good news. But I note that the Russians, when they invaded, managed to take all the Afghan cities in less time than the US proxy forces. It was the next decade of attacks from the countryside that sapped their morale. And many of the cities in the south aren’t being taken by Northern Alliance forces but instead by Pashtun groups, or regular warlords. These are just Taliban, or friends of Taliban, or their relatives, or all of the above, switching turbans. They’ll switch back once they feel the time is right, or once they feel they need to challenge whatever Northern-dominated government is put in place by the Americans.