The Guardian view on the Taliban’s advance: not an American debacle but Afghans’ tragedy
“There’s going to be no circumstance where you’ll see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan,” Joe Biden declared earlier this year, referencing the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. The Taliban are not yet at the gates of Kabul. But two decades after the US toppled the Islamist militants, it is scrambling to evacuate its nationals, as are its allies. On Wednesday, US officials warned that Afghanistan’s government could fall in as little as 90 days. Since then the Taliban have seized Herat, Kandahar and Lashkar Gah; on Friday they took four more provincial capitals.
Such developments have a momentum of their own. The Taliban have captured more equipment as troops have surrendered, and as others turn tail, fewer see the point or hope in staying on and fighting. As resistance collapses, even the British defence secretary, Ben Wallace, is seeking to distance the UK from its great ally, describing the Trump-negotiated withdrawal agreement as a mistake and a “rotten deal” which Britain tried to resist. Members of the wealthy Afghan political elite, many of whom prospered by plundering the country, have already departed or will do so with ease. But Afghans have been betrayed not only by their military and politicians, but by the long-term mistakes of the US and its allies and the abrupt and ill-planned rush for the exit.
For all the costs of the US intervention, it allowed the emergence of a generation who hoped and strove for a better and freer future in their country – and who now face losing everything. While Taliban representatives in Doha attempt to rebrand themselves as more moderate, fighters on the ground are forcing girls into marriage and women from their jobs at gunpoint. A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding, with more than 3.5 million Afghans displaced, but the UN appeal is less than half funded.
Civil society activists, who are highly vulnerable to Taliban retaliation, must be given refuge abroad. Others, too, desperately need shelter but understand they are unlikely to find it. Shockingly, even as the Taliban sweep through Afghanistan, six EU nations have been seeking to force refugees back to the country.
The Taliban want international recognition as a government this time, not the pariah status of the 1990s. But even if they truly engage with the multiparty talks in Qatar, it is unclear whether forces in Afghanistan will comply with their negotiators in Doha. Countries that have enjoyed seeing the US chastened should ask themselves whether they really want chaos and a wave of refugees. There is grave fear of a return to the unrelenting civil war of the 1990s, with multiple players using the country as a proxy for other contests. The international community should do all it can to hold them back.
But even as American politicians talk about Afghanistan, they are talking past the country. The fall of Saigon – two years after US troops withdrew from South Vietnam – is invoked by the likes of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell as an image of a humbled America, rather than a betrayal of promises made. Even when remarks are purportedly directed to Afghans – as with Mr Biden’s ill-judged exhortation to “fight for themselves, fight for their nation”, which sounded at best like hollow encouragement and at worst a rebuke – they are really intended for the domestic audience. For the Biden administration, this is a credibility issue. There are long-term security implications for the US, as for Europe, if Afghanistan once more becomes a refuge for terrorism. But those who treat this as another parable of American status should remember that the Afghan people face not humiliation, but disaster.