Afghanistan defeated imperialism?

Let's get something clear about the success of the Taliban - as though it is achieving some kind of heroic anti-imperialism in Afghanistan. Sadly, some left currents in the UK are lining up with Trump/Biden (for different reasons) on the withdrawal of the retreat of the US (and UK and German forces.) These left groups are offering a (very doubtful) 'hurrah' about the end of imperialism in Afghanistan. Meanwhile the US Presidents were both determined to stop another $2.26 trillion (Brown University Cost of War). They both added the costs in injury and death involved. (There were 2312 US deaths, compared with 69,000 Afghan security and 51,000 Afghan civilians from 2002 to now - again analysed by Brown University.) The US figures provided the front cover at least for the US's more sentimental losses for the American voters. Biden now does not think so much of his would be Afghan comrades and avoids their 98% losses. 

More facts have arisen regarding the Taliban, now mooching round the streets of Kabul and the other 33 provinces, often carrying out exactly what is denied on the media by their leader Abdul Ghani Barada. The nine day 'battle' to win the 34 provinces overwhelmingly amounted to a huge, well trained and long expected kleptocracy. The provincial 'leaders' of the provinces were either living off the $2.26 trillion, spread out from the ex President's Ashraf Ghani's largess, or from the financial bypasses provided by Trump's 'deal' in Doha, who wanted the US money to go over the heads of the money-grabbing government in favour of the money-grubbing war lords. 

Despite the $2.26 trillion since 2002, Afghanistan's poverty line is below 54.5% of the population. Afghanistan is one of the least developed countries in the world. On the 2018 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, Afghanistan ranked 172 out of 180 countries. Al Jazeera put it this way. ' Some are that poor management of the countries wealth, coupled with armed groups and local strongmen (to) illegally extract resources and sell them on the black market to neighbouring countries and beyond.' 'The Taliban earn between $2.5m and $10m a year from mining talc alone, which has become, next to opium, their main source of revenue.' Mining is the future of Afghanistan's development according to local experts. But the effective pact between the local war lords/Taliban and US funds, the country has been bought. In that sense the Taliban have simply pushed its power of what was the board of Afghanistan/USA. There was, and now is, no revolution for a real Afghanistan's development. The Taliban, from that perspective, is yet but another bandit that has stolen the country. It is a form of domination that acts as an imperialism. And in a more violent, and more backward way than before except that they live in the same country - sometimes. 

US imperialism has set up both its own failure in Afghanistan and the creation of another regime that is worse. Fundamentally, it is a further decline of US imperialism, but it is completely false to imagine that some advance has occurred for the Afghanistan people. What they have is more difficult and more dangerous. 

Today (18 August) at least two people have been killed after gunmen fired into into a crowd who had taken down a Taliban flag in the city of Jalalabad. There are now further eruptions. ' Reporting from Kabul, Al Jazeera said that the protests have expanded beyond Jalalabad to several other provinces.