There’s a lot of hand wringing over Kunduz being done by people who don’t know any better and therefore get a deserved pass. If this week is the first time you’re checking in on the war in Afghanistan, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the country’s just days away from falling into the hands of the former regime, and the Americans are going out of their way to level a hospital or two. But when you’re ready to go full Greenwald in your comparisons of US airstrikes with the Taliban and you follow that up with an interview with people who do know better, well sir, you have my attention.

It’s been a while since I checked into the Huffington Post other than to figure out what shenanigans Miley got up to at the VMAs, so a headline like this? “Why Afghanistan Is Going To Fall To The Taliban Again. And It’s Not Why You Think,” kind of draws the eye. And since I’ve been under the impression that there’s a lot of Afghans who would be somewhat opposed to that idea, my interest was piqued. And seeing Sarah Chayes’ name attached to the article just sucked me right in. Just because it’s clickbait doesn’t mean it can’t be a good read.

And Chayes knows her stuff: there are only a handful of Westerners with the kind of on-the-ground credentials in places like Kandahar. So if someone like Chayes is saying something about the future of the country, we’d do well to listen to her. Except that the premise of the article, that the Taliban are on the way to taking the country back, is only borne out by the briefest of statements by Chayes in the interview.

The majority of the questions that are published focus on what’s been happening in Kunduz. As Chayes points out, this is a situation that’s been a long time coming: the Taliban have been prepping for a major offensive on Kunduz for quite some time, and as the 2015 fighting season starts to wind down, with the National Unity Government (NUG) on the ropes after a year in office, they opted to make a point about how things were going under the current management. So while folks at some outlets are just learning that there’s still a war on in Afghanistan, nothing about what’s happened in Kunduz is all that surprising.

The key question/answer series in the article happens here, when Chayes is asked, “If the status quo prevails, will the Taliban takeover continue?” To which she responds, “I don’t see why it wouldn’t.”

There’s a pattern that I wouldn’t be surprised to see repeated. In the south, where I lived, what would often happen is a dramatic Taliban offensive, capture of a key site, followed by a government/ISAF recapture. But when you looked closely, you found that the Taliban had in fact executed a “strategic withdrawal.” That is, they had faded away in the face of the counter-attack. This would usually happen in the summer or fall. Then, during the winter, they’d filter back into the area, start intimidating and assassinating people, and work their way back in. So, by the next year, they actually controlled all the territory they had gained briefly in that initial attack, but had regained it almost invisibly. The first dramatic military assault was really aimed at sending a message to the local population. It was psychological warfare.

Except that controlling a piece of real estate no one’s paying attention to in Kandahar doesn’t mean you’re ready (or able) to control an entire country again. Or that you’re lurking in the shadows in the streets of Kabul, where the population’s just waiting to welcome you back with open arms because everyone hates soccer and they’re super duper ready to get back to using Ghazi Stadium for some more public executions.

Chayes does hit on a key concern around government corruption in Afghanistan, and she’s spot on when ot comes to some of the counter-productive initiatives undertaken by Ghani and Abdullah in year one of an American-made democracy that’s proving to be terribly ineffective at anything but hitting the malls. And she’s right that it looks less and less like there’s anything the US can do to right Afghanistan’s course at this point. Beyond that, the assertion that all the Taliban have to do is repeat Kunduz a few more times is based on that corruption argument, and ignores a few other realities in the country. For the Taliban to take Afghanistan back, here’s what would have to happen.

1. All the warlords decamp to Dubai

As reprehensible as their actions were post-2001, it’s not like the past members of the former Northern Alliance haven’t been solidifying their own individual positions of power in various parts of Afghanistan since the American invasion. People like Raziq in the south, Khan in the west, Atta in the north, and Dostum in Dostumland all represent singular threats on their own to the return of the Taliban to the throne.

Some of that’s ideology, but a lot more of that has to do with folks who’ve had a real shot at power not being too keen on letting go of that. It’s not like any of those gentlemen are pro gun control, and each of them have enough of a personal following that if it came to it, there would be blood. And a lot of it would be the Taliban’s.

Unless they all opt for the black turban and a sudden interest in getting their beard on, they represent a formidable obstacle to the return of Taliban supremacy. An obstacle with a lot of guns. And that would mean the return of civil war, which isn’t something anyone in Afghanistan wants to see ever again.

2. Ghani hands over the keys to Kabul

And the Afghanistan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) all pack it up and head for Dubai. Because as ineffective as the ANDSF are at clearing the Taliban out of an area and keeping them out, even in the scenarios Chayes describes, on the battlefield there’s not a single scenario where the ANDSF (with the exception of some unfortunate incidents involving the Afghan Local Police, or ALP) taking on the Taliban ends up with the Taliban walking off the field with the win.

It’s true that the ANDSF sucks at a lot of things: planning, supply, logistics, and keeping people on the job. What they don’t suck at is a gunfight. At least so far. So unless they’re all going to forget what the pointy end of their rifles can do, the Taliban are a long way from being able to take on Afghan forces in the field.

3. Taliban build a pet sematary

See, Stephen King wrote this book once, called Pet Sematary, where if you bury dead pets…or people…they come back to life. Which makes for a delightful read, and it’s about the only way the Taliban could manage to repopulate their forces with the people capable of taking the fight to Afghan forces in a way that would end in victory. Because thanks to the American capture/kill campaign, we got all the tough ones off the battlefield.

I know, to believe that means I have to buy into a whole lot of COINerific messaging, but there’s enough empirical evidence of Taliban battlefield-level fragmentation that it has the ring of truth. So unless the Taliban are going full King , or they’ve got a DeLorean stashed somewhere in Quetta and they’re going to head back to get all the able bodied fighters back, this isn’t a Taliban that’s able to take on Afghan forces like they once could.

Further evidence for their abilities? The recent (prior to the “oh, right…Omar’s been dead for a while” thing) overtures of peace being organized in coordination with the Chinese and the Pakistanis aren’t happening because the Taliban think they have a shot at winning. It’s because they know that the only way this ends well is through some kind of negotiated settlement, and maybe they end up in charge of something worthwhile in Afghanistan.

Kunduz does wonders for strengthening their position at the table, and it’s a clear sign that the Taliban are far from being done as a fighting force. Mansoor’s aware of how that’s going to play, not just for the Afghans he needs to negotiate with, but for his own constituency, that he’s ready to head to the table from a position of strength. Except that you don’t go to the table at all if you think you’ve got the winning hand.

4. America gives up

The United States is on board with a power sharing agreement negotiated with those-they-have-been-careful-to-not-call-terrorists, but they are not going to be enamored with an Afghanistan that’s back under Taliban control. At least this close to an American presidential election. And not with the rise of the Islamic State in Afghanistan and elsewhere being part of the calculus.

What the watching world fails to grasp is that at no point was the might of the American military unleased on Afghanistan on the scale it could be if a complete Taliban takeover was imminent. What happened in Kunduz and what’s been happening in Nangarhar with the increase in drone strikes underscores the fact that while combat operations are at an end, the US is a long way from being done dropping bombs over the graveyard of reasonable analysis.

5. MIB the shit out of the Afghans

What Chayes outlines is a plausible scenario. So long as Agents J and K are ready for Men in Black IV: We Promise We Didn’t Re-Animate Tommy Lee Jones For This One, and large chunks of the country are ready to get neuralized. Because that’s what it would take for a lot of Afghans to be OK with the return of the Taliban.

In places like Kunduz where the governor’s been a disaster, the Afghan Local Police (ALP) have made things worse not better, and the Taliban made it a point to take back the sight of their 2001 defeat, the people still weren’t falling over themselves to welcome back their Taliban overlords. Because despite all the really stupid things the Americans helped do this country over the last 14+ years, unless the Taliban are ready to do things a lot differently, it’s not a country that’s ready to give up its cell phones and its voting just yet.

There is sympathy for Taliban justice at the local level, but that’s also going to come with the price of the Taliban taking away a lot of the freedoms an entire generation of Afghans have grown up enjoying over the last several years. The country is a long way from where it could be, or even where it should have been after the foreign intervention, but it’s an even further away from where it was back when the Taliban were in charge. A population that’s better educated, more connected, and enjoying going to a soccer game and not an execution at their local stadium isn’t ready to go back a decade and more.

This isn’t Omar’s Taliban, and they’re not facing the kind of the same kind of forces they defeated when they were last in power. It’s true that corruption is still rife in the country, and it’s not impossible that said corruption could prove to be the undoing of Ghani’s government. Or that other parts of Afghanistan are going to fall to the Taliban for the same reasons. It’s just that we’re still a long way from the Second Coming of the Time of the Turban.