Afghanistan is a graveyard for invaders. What’s going to happen after the us leaves?
afghanistan has once again lived up to its reputation as a political minefield and a military quagmire. In the last 200 years, Britain, the soviet union, and most recently the us (allied to Nato and a Western coalition) have all invaded. all have been forced to retire with little to show for their efforts.
When us ground troops entered the country in october 2001, the taliban controlled some 90% of afghanistan. then-president George W Bush was determined to remove them and hunt down the al-Qaeda perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on the states. By july 3, 2021, when the us military handed over its main Bagram airbase to afghan government forces, the taliban still controlled some 40% of the country, and was on the offensive. It had withstood the worst that the world’s greatest military power had been able to throw at it, and had emerged bloodied but unbowed.
early in the campaign, former coalition commander us Gen. dan mcNeill reportedly said, “to do this properly, I need 500,000 men.” Coalition forces never numbered more than 130,000.
so two decades spent by the coalition in intensive military action against the taliban, in converting afghan government forces into a disciplined and well-trained militia, and in establishing and supporting a democratic form of government based on free and fair elections – all have gone for nothing. It seems likely that a civil war will follow the final departure of the us military, a war the taliban stands every chance of winning.
the last few weeks have seen the taliban sweep across northern districts, leaving it in control of much of the border with tajikistan. It has seized dozens of rural district centers. In the south, most of helmand province is in its hands, and by early july it was at the gates of the provincial capital, lashkar Gah. Capturing a us base in Wardak province, an hour from the nation’s capital, Kabul, it amassed large quantities of weapons and military vehicles, many labeled “property of us government”.
Back in 2001, it was Bush and his secretary of defense donald rumsfeld who masterminded the us invasion of afghanistan. rumsfeld died on june 29, 2021. In writing about him, former us national policy advisor john Bolton maintained that rumsfeld believed it was never american strength that was provocative, but american weakness. Bolton holds that a total us military withdrawal from afghanistan is just such a weakness.
No one in the pentagon, he asserts, seriously contends that afghanistan’s civilian government will long survive the departure of the last allied forces.
“a worse fate will come,” he writes, “if, after the taliban resumes control across afghanistan, al-Qaeda, IsIs and other terrorist groups again take sanctuary there, threatening the resumption of significant, anti-Western terrorist operations.”
In fact IsIs, which emerged in afghanistan in 2015, has maintained its presence in the country, even though the caliphate it proclaimed in Iraq and syria has been swept away. It has built a stronghold in the northeastern provinces. the local populations have been beaten into cowed submission. Beheadings and public executions have become commonplace. on july 1, acting us special envoy john t Godfrey told reporters that the presence of IsIs in afghanistan remained a “serious threat”.
us presIdeNt joe Biden met afghan president ashraf Ghani on june 25 at the White house, where he asserted that despite the pullout, us support for afghanistan would be sustained. accounts of the meeting do not specify the nature of the continued support envisaged by Biden, but reports in the media have suggested that an internal debate is under way in the pentagon over what level of taliban resurgence would amount to a national security threat to the us, and therefore justify military action, and indeed, what sort of actions would be possible. airstrikes involving us aircraft or armed drones, launched from bases outside the country, may be justified.
From the moment donald trump took office in 2017, he pledged to put an end to the conflict and achieve ex-president Barack obama’s aim of bringing american forces back home. It took two years of secret back-channel negotiations before peace talks began in February 2019. taliban co-founder abdul Ghani Barada was at the table.
this extraordinary arrangement between the world’s leading power and a hard-line extremist Islamist movement was greeted with optimism by president trump.
“I really believe the taliban wants to do something to show we’re not all wasting time,” he said.
the deal that trump eventually reached with the taliban included, as the quid pro quo for the us withdrawal, an agreement by the taliban to enter serious peace negotiations with the afghan government, and a pledge that it would never allow the regions it controlled to be used as a refuge by extremist groups like al-Qaeda or IsIs.
evacuating all us forces from afghanistan was one of the few policies of his predecessor that Biden
adopted, albeit with an extended deadline. Now the us element of the trump-taliban deal is close to realization. Will the taliban adhere to its part? that depends entirely on the taliban’s end game.
a possible scenario would see the taliban continue its victorious campaign, regaining control of at least the 90% of the country it once held and dubbed the Islamic emirate of afghanistan, and then seeking talks with the afghan government aimed at stabilizing the situation.
on july 5, a spokesman for the taliban, Zabihullah mujahid, was reported as saying, “the peace talks and process will be accelerated in the coming days, and they are expected to enter an important stage. Naturally, it will be about peace plans. although we have the upper hand on the battlefield, we are very serious about talks and dialogue.”
on july 7, another taliban spokesman, suhail shaheen, is reported to have said the taliban plans to
present a written peace proposal to the afghan government very soon, possibly as early as august. on july 10, the London Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying, “We don’t want to fight. We want a political resolution through political negotiations.”
afghanistan’s future is truly in the balance. If the taliban honors its commitment to trump and negotiates a settlement with the afghan government, all might not be lost. If not, it looks as if the tragic loss of life over the past 20 years – nearly 7,000 american and Nato troops and contractors, and more than 47,000 civilians – and the vast expenditure by the us, estimated at more than $2 trillion, will have been expended in vain. the quagmire that is afghanistan will have swallowed another victim.
review. 2016-2020.