The United States and Afghanistan: Back to square ’01
First anniversary is gold, third anniversary is pearl, 10th anniversary is diamond, 20th anniversary is … attack helicopters?
In the wake of this weekend’s observance of the 20th anniversary of the horrific events that transpired on Sept. 11, 2001, many questions are still in the air about what is going to happen to Afghanistan and how the United States and its allies plan on bringing home the thousands of U.S. civilians, green card-holders and Afghans who assisted us during the War in Afghanistan.
One of the biggest concerns arising from the South Asian country of 38 million is what the Taliban is going to do with their newly acquired military equipment (not so) graciously donated by the United States as a result of our hasty pullout.
“With little to no resistance, the Taliban were able to seize the military equipment left behind, including 75,000 vehicles, 200 airplanes and helicopters, and 600,000 small arms and light weapons,” said U.S. Representative Jim Banks (R-Ind.), a veteran Navy officer. “But they don’t just have weapons. They have night-vision goggles, body armor, medical supplies and, unbelievably … the Taliban now [have] biometric devices which have the fingerprints, eye scans and the biographical information of the Afghans who helped us over the last 20 years.”
Already the Taliban have demonstrated their use of their new equipment, such as flaunting their “air force” — including American UH-60 Blackhawks — above the buildings of Kandahar and mocking the much celebrated and widely known photograph from 1945 of six marines erecting an American flag on Japanese soil at Iwo Jima. In the photo, Taliban fighters are posed wearing United States military uniforms with M4A1 carbines and night vision goggles as they prop up the Taliban flag.
What’s more concerning, however, are the cultural shifts and infringement of human rights underway in the region as the Taliban quickly take it over. According to the Associated Press, Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, pledged the Taliban would defend women’s rights “within the norms of Islamic law.”
While the Taliban have publicly encouraged “women to return to work and have allowed girls to return to school,” eyes on the ground tell a different story. Women are being forced to wear head coverings, have been banned from playing sports and are being whipped for protesting the new government. To most of these women, this treatment is new and unfamiliar as most have only been alive long enough to remember U.S. occupation where attendance at schools and freedom from religious persecution was a wide occurrence.
Given the oppressive past and aggressively anti-Western beliefs of the extremist group, it is no surprise that the Taliban have committed these crimes that fly in the face of their promises, especially with the caveat “within the norms of Islamic law” attached to such pledges.
Just as quickly as the United States has withdrawn, the region has descended into a chaotic Taliban grip. After 20 years of working with the Afghan military to help support and defend their country and their people’s rights, the country has fallen back into the regional hotbed it once was two decades ago — an unfortunate commemoration of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Michael.popa@usu.edu