‘Forever war’ has end date
Afghanistan left broken and with questionable future
After 20 years, America is ending its “forever war” in Afghanistan. Announcing a firm withdrawal deadline, President Joe Biden cut through the long debate, even within the US military, over whether the time was right. Starting yesterday, the last remaining 2500 to 3500 American troops have begun leaving, to be fully out by September 11 at the latest.
Another debate will likely go on far longer: Was it worth it?
Since 2001, tens of thousands of Afghans and 2442 American soldiers have been killed, millions of Afghans driven from their homes, and billions of dollars spent on war and reconstruction.
Fighting terror
In the early days after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the US, the mission seemed clear: hunt down and punish the perpetrators.
The US determined that al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, had plotted the attack from the safety of Afghanistan, protected by its radical Taliban rulers.
At the time the Taliban were a pariah government, under UN sanctions and vilified in the West for their rule by a harsh interpretation of Islamic law.
Until 9/11, the US had watched Afghanistan from a distance, occasionally requesting the Taliban to hand over bin Laden.
Now America was leading an invasion, dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom, with the mission of removing the Taliban and destroying al Qaeda.
Washington turned to the only allies in Afghanistan it could — a collection of warlords, most of whom were former mujahedeen backed by the US in the 1980s in the fight against the invading Soviet Union.
The hunt for bin Laden took 10 years. Finally, he was tracked to his hideout in Pakistan, barely 100km from Islamabad. A US Navy Seals team went in under cover of darkness and killed him.
When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, it took its eye off Afghanistan. It left it to the former warlords, preoccupied with wealth and power. The first post-Taliban president, Hamid Karzai, raised the idea of talks with the Taliban to work out a peace, and the crushed militants put out signals they wanted to reach an accommodation.
But American officials blocked any negotiations with the Taliban, convinced the insurgents could be militarily destroyed.
Instead, the militants re-emerged in a long insurgency, and the US found itself pouring in money and manpower to help the Afghan government fight and to rebuild the warshattered nation. With the flood of billions of dollars, corruption grew in the US-backed government, only growing worse as the years went on.
“Bin Laden is dead, and al Qaeda is degraded in Iraq — in Afghanistan,” Biden has said, arguing that the terror threat has “metastasized” into a global phenomenon, not to be fought with thousands of troops on the ground in one country but with new technology. The US, he said, must be freed to fight the 21st century’s more sophisticated challenges, including competition from Russia and China.
For the situation in Afghanistan, he said he didn’t see how continued American military presence would bring a turnaround.
“When will it be the right moment to leave? One more year, two more years, ten more years?” he said.
What now for Afghanistan?
The US and N leave behind an Afghanistan that is at least half-run directly or indirectly by the Taliban — despite billions poured into training and arming Afghan forces to fight them. Riddled with corruption and tied to regional warlords, the USbacked government is widely distrusted by many Afghans.
Washington and its international allies are putting heavy pressure on the government and the Taliban to reach a peace deal. The hope is that both sides realise military victory is impossible and that peace together is the only way forward.
The best-case scenario is some sort of government including the Taliban that can pave the way for a drawing up a new constitutional system for the future, including some form of elections.
The very possible worst case scenario is that peace talks fail, and Afghanistan is plunged into a new chapter of its decades of civil war. That new phase could be more brutal than ever, with not only the Taliban but the country’s other, multiple warlords and armed factions battling it out for power.
The past 20 years since the Taliban were ousted have unquestionably seen gains for the Afghans. But they are fragile and risk being wiped away as the Americans step away — whether frittered away under a new government or crushed by continued war.
Girls are allowed an education, which had been banned under the Taliban. Still, at least 3.6 million children, the majority of them girls, are not in school, according to Unicef.
Women are working and are in Parliament. Their voices are strong yet still Afghanistan’s Parliament has been unable to pass The Violence Against Women bill because religious conservatives dominate. The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security has consistently ranked Afghanistan as one of the worst countries in the world to be a woman.
Before the war in 2001, the Taliban had eradicated opium production in Afghanistan. Today, it produces more opium than every other opiumproducing country combined, despite the US spending millions to eradicate drug production.
The opium industry in 2019 outstripped the value of the country’s legal exports, according to the US government’s watchdog on Afghan reconstruction. More than $25 million of that went into the coffers of the Taliban, who tax drug movement throughout the country.
Despite billions in US humanitarian and reconstruction aid, more than half the population of 36 million lives under the World Bank-set poverty line — and millions more live not much above that level. Unemployment is at 40 per cent. The UN and Red Cross say nearly half of all Afghan children face the danger of hunger.
The majority of Afghans hold out little hope for their future.
“Afghanistan is bordering a failed state status and is sure to enter the category immediately after the withdrawal of the foreign forces absent a better political arrangement,” said Torek Farhadi, a political analyst and former government adviser. “That is the reality of Afghanistan.”
When will it be the right moment to leave? One more year, two more years, ten more
years? US President Joe Biden