Why our freedom movement died out?

[Ranjeet01]

Interesting piece from Anatol:

ttps://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... pse-504977
Opinion | Why Afghan Forces So Quickly Laid Down Their Arms
Opposing Afghan factions have long negotiated arrangements to stop fighting — something the U.S. either failed to understand or chose to ignore.
ANATOL LIEVEN, 08/16/2021
In the winter of 1989, as a journalist for the Times of London, I accompanied a group of mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province. At one point, a fortified military post became visible on the other side of a valley. As we got closer, the flag flying above it also became visible — the flag of the Afghan Communist state, which the mujahedeen were fighting to overthrow.
“Isn’t that a government post?” I asked my interpreter. “Yes,” he replied. “Can’t they see us?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied. “Shouldn’t we hide?” I squeaked. “No, no, don’t worry,” he replied reassuringly. “We have an arrangement.”
I remembered this episode three years later, when the Communist state eventually fell to the mujahedeen; six years later, as the Taliban swept across much of Afghanistan; and again this week, as the country collapses in the face of another Taliban assault. Such “arrangements” — in which opposing factions agree not to fight, or even to trade soldiers in exchange for safe passage — are critical to understanding why the Afghan army today has collapsed so quickly (and, for the most part, without violence). The same was true when the Communist state collapsed in 1992, and the practice persisted in many places as the Taliban advanced later in the 1990s.
This dense web of relationships and negotiated arrangements between forces on opposite sides is often opaque to outsiders. Over the past 20 years, U.S. military and intelligence services have generally either not understood or chosen to ignore this dynamic as they sought to paint an optimistic picture of American efforts to build a strong, loyal Afghan army. Hence the Biden administration’s expectation that there would be what during the Vietnam War was called a “decent interval” between U.S. departure and the state’s collapse.
While the coming months and years will reveal what the U.S. government did and didn’t know about the state of Afghan security forces prior to U.S. withdrawal, the speed of the collapse was predictable. That the U.S. government could not foresee — or, perhaps, refused to admit — that beleaguered Afghan forces would continue a long-standing practice of cutting deals with the Taliban illustrates precisely the same naivete with which America has prosecuted the Afghanistan war for years.
......
The central feature of the past several weeks in Afghanistan has not been fighting. It has been negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan forces, sometimes brokered by local elders. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported “a breathtaking series of negotiated surrenders by government forces” that resulted from more than a year of deal-making between the Taliban and rural leaders. In Afghanistan, kinship and tribal connections often take precedence over formal political loyalties, or at least create neutral spaces where people from opposite sides can meet and talk. Over the years, I have spoken with tribal leaders from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region who have regularly presided over meetings of tribal notables, including commanders on opposite sides.
One of the key things discussed at such meetings is business, and the business very often involves heroin. When I was traveling in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, it was an open secret that local mujahedeen groups and government units had deals to share the local heroin trade. By all accounts, the same has held between Taliban and government forces since 2001.

[dallysingh101]

No one see this in relation to the question being asked in the OP?

 

[Ranjeet01]

It's pretty difficult to sustain a movement in a homeland where 40 per cent of the population are non Sikh and do not want to secede from India.

Unless of course, you want a civil war and can ethnically cleanse the 40 per cent

[dallysingh101]

1 minute ago, Ranjeet01 said:

It's pretty difficult to sustain a movement in a homeland where 40 per cent of the population are non Sikh and do not want to secede from India.

Unless of course, you want a civil war and can ethnically cleanse the 40 per cent

By a fair few independent accounts, the original Khalsa had a fair bit of support from nonSikhs in the past. So it has been done before. I think it's about having a unified apprehension of government. That's why you get mention of nonSikh zamindaars covertly supporting Khalsas against the government (notably in Banda's Singh's time). 

Plus, it appears as if you're assuming (??) that almost all Sikhs wanted to secede or supported the K'stan lehar; but the reality was that plenty didn't.    

 

[PuzzledToo]

1 minute ago, dallysingh101 said:

Plus, it appears as if you're assuming (??) that almost all Sikhs wanted to secede or supported the K'stan lehar; but the reality was that plenty didn't.    

Why? Afraid that power could end up in the hands of other Sikhs and not them or their families??

[PuzzledToo]

14 minutes ago, Ranjeet01 said:

 

Unless of course, you want a civil war and can ethnically cleanse the 40 per cent

No need for that, just like 47, they too can walk back to delhi or wherever they want.Without carrying any loot of course.

[Ranjeet01]

2 minutes ago, dallysingh101 said:

By a fair few independent accounts, the original Khalsa had a fair bit of support from nonSikhs in the past. So it has been done before. I think it's about having a unified apprehension of government. That's why you get mention of nonSikh zamindaars covertly supporting Khalsas against the government (notably in Banda's Singh's time). 

Plus, it appears as if you're assuming (??) that almost all Sikhs wanted to secede or supported the K'stan lehar; but the reality was that plenty didn't.    

 

The original Khalsa had slightly different circumstances as there was a power vacuum at the time with the decline in the Mughals and the raids and pillaging that was taking place.

The assumption I am making here about the 60 per cent potentially wanting freedom was not to upset some of the posters here because they would take great offence that there are Sikhs who do not want to break away from India.

But the elephant in the room here is the 40 per cent plus Sikhs who don't want independence would mean more than half the population would not want independence.

If there was a referendum, there pro independance party would lose

[dallysingh101]

1 hour ago, PuzzledToo said:

Why? Afraid that power could end up in the hands of other Sikhs and not them or their families??

That'd be a big reason. People rarely like the status quo to be changed. Vested interests. 

Some of them may well have been patriotic Indians. Others, like apnay who participated in 'disappearances' probably couldn't give a toss either way, as long as they got paid and an opportunity to express their psychopathic nature without consequences. We have a lot of mercenary types (especially in the rural community), who are loyal to paychecks not their 'co-religionist brethren or sisters' and they can usually be bought off for cheap too. Brits used this, this is what we need to remedy, and idiots thinking that simply throwing money at them is a long term solution are dangerous, they don't realise that such types will then naturally start to negotiate higher rates from the other side, or start being paid informants to supplement the income. They have no loyalty other than to themselves and sniff out opportunities for their own gains. 

Think about it, there are 'Sikh' families who thrived off suppressing the K'stan lehar. 

[dallysingh101]

18 minutes ago, Ranjeet01 said:

The original Khalsa had slightly different circumstances as there was a power vacuum at the time with the decline in the Mughals and the raids and pillaging that was taking place.

The assumption I am making here about the 60 per cent potentially wanting freedom was not to upset some of the posters here because they would take great offence that there are Sikhs who do not want to break away from India.

But the elephant in the room here is the 40 per cent plus Sikhs who don't want independence would mean more than half the population would not want independence.

If there was a referendum, there pro independance party would lose

 That was another foolish move, not factoring in the Sikhs who were anti, and thinking they could just pretty much ignore them.

[dallysingh101]

Incidentally, I watched a film recently called: Judas and the black messiah - I recommend to everyone, it was about the Black Panther movement in the US and how an informant got the leader killed. Very poignant and relevant to Sikhs in my opinion.