Afghanistan war drags out further

In 2010, Barack Obama’s vicepresident, Joe Biden, vowed that the United States would be ‘‘totally out’’ of Afghanistan ‘‘come hell or high water, by 2014’’.

In 2014, Obama said that he would leave about 8000 US troops there after all, and made an agreement with the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, that extended their stay ‘‘until the end of 2024 and beyond’’.

Donald Trump wasn’t having any of that. Back in 2013 he tweeted ‘‘Our troops are being killed by the Afghanis we train and we waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the USA.’’ But it looks like the generals have now got to him with what passes for military wisdom. of Afghan nationalists because it depends on foreign troops and foreign money.

Since those foreign troops dwindled from 140,000 in 2011 (including non-American troops from a dozen other Western countries) to only 13,400 now, the Afghan government has lost control of about 40 per cent of the country. And the process is accelerating: one-third of that territory was lost in just the past year.

Helmand province, which Western troops took from from the Taliban in 2006-2010 at the cost of almost 600 deaths, is almost entirely back under Taliban control, and Uruzgan and Kandahar provinces are next. Even the capital, Kabul, for so long a bubble of safety, is now regularly targeted by suicide bombers: at least 150 killed in a massive blast in May, 20 more at a funeral in June, 35 more in a bus bombing in July.

So what would happen if the foreign troops all left and the Taliban became the government again, as they were in 1996-2001? Would the country become a breeding ground for terrorism? Would more plots like the 9/11 attacks be hatched there? Probably not.

The Taliban are essentially a nationalist group. Their extremely

Despite making promises, America’s war in Afghanistan keeps going on and on.