My casual digging into it over the last week has shown there is / was a $Trillion opium operation running over the last 20 years via the C_A and US MIL. That the Taliban have been in control of the rural parts of the country since '96, which amounts to about 75% of the land. That they have been in opposition to the C_A operation because of their fundamentalists Shia views. Not saying i'm right, just what I've learned in the last week.
That would paint the Taliban as freedom fighters, which is very much the opposite of muh-Terror the rest of the world is trying to convey. My difficulty ATM is in squaring the accounts of US troops who have fought and died there, who were "protecting people from the Taliban". So there is two sides to this story that do not add up, at the moment.
Of particular concern is the border with Pakistan and the 160 nuclear warheads there. Also, the BORDER WITH CHINA which no one is talking about. So easy for China to just swoop in there I would think, scoop up not only the minerals and the opium, but all the leftover equipment as well.
At the end of the day, my overall feeling for that part of the world is to just let them fight each other as they have been doing for thousands of years. Let the chips fall where they may. I don't see where our presence has accomplished anything of lasting significance, although it sure has stirred up a hornet nest and cost us trillions of dollars.