Deep Roots: Understanding Afghanistan and Her Centuries of War – Part III
Having risen to power with the approval of the Afghanistan population, the Taliban immediately began reverting the social and political change the country had been undergoing for the past two centuries. In transforming the nation from its once West-like democracy to a more traditionalist Muslim style of rule, the Taliban tore away at women’s rights, including rights to education, employment and instilled the religious token of wearing head coverings again; and banned drug production and strapped down on crime.
The United Nations also denied aid to Afghans. Homes and farms were burned or destroyed and their occupants murdered — which added to the squalid crop conditions drying up farmland and drove millions of Afghan citizens out of the country to neighboring states such as India, Iran and, primarily, Pakistan. Even media platforms like television, radio and music were outlawed for fear of Western influence. For those that didn’t want to abide by the government’s rules, they were instead maimed or executed as a lesson to other dissidents.
In a longstanding attempt to fight the Taliban’s efforts and rejuvenate Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance, an ethnic group led by Ahmad Shah Masoud out of Northern Afghanistan, worked with other groups to stand up against the Taliban’s oppressive reform. This anti-Taliban campaign was unsuccessful, though, as the Taliban began exuding their confidence in their power and might immediately assume authority in the region.
As one of their first acts and displays of anti-West sentiments, the Taliban kidnapped former Afghanistan President Mohammad Najibullah from UN protection in 1996. They tortured him extensively and then killed him, dragging his body behind a vehicle throughout the streets of Kabul.
It wasn’t long though before Al Qaeda and the Taliban were ready to extend outside of their borders to attack the West. In 1998, suicide bombers simultaneously attacked two American embassies in Africa, one in Nairobi, Kenya and the other in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The blasts killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans, and injured another 5,000. As a sharp response to the dramatic increase in violence against America, President Bill Clinton ordered missile launches against an Al Qaeda position in Afghanistan used for training recruits, but failed to breach the target.
Having stepped up their game and entering the world stage, the international community perked up their ears and lifted their eyebrows as they turned, again, towards Afghanistan. As a result of the unsuccessful retaliation, Clinton hopelessly demanded the extradition of bin Laden. The UN-added sanctions against Afghanistan weren’t much of an encouragement for the Taliban to start behaving. By 2000, bin Laden had trained thousands of terrorist allies in Afghanistan to carry out his jihad against America.
When asked about the Al Qaeda’s anti-West sentiments breaching Afghan borders, Austin Knuppe, a Utah State University political science professor, said, “With respect to Al Qaeda in particular, you have to keep in mind that during the 90’s as bin Laden is building out this network of former ideological allies that had fighting experience in battlefields like Afghanistan, he’s trying to build a cohesive movement and he tells the West — the U.S., Great Britain, Western Europe — this series of grievances that motivate Al Qaeda’s attacks against Western civilians.
“He is aggrieved by the U.S. support for the State of Israel as a Zionist occupier of the land of Palestine, in the opinion of bin Laden and his acolytes,” Knuppe continued. “He is opposing U.S. support for autocratic dictators in the Middle East, people like Mubarak in Egypt and the Saudi monarchy. You can [also] think about the Baathists, [like] Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Bashar Al Assad in Syria. That’s the second grievance.
“The third is the presence of U.S. troops in the holy cities in Saudi Arabia, which of course is the home to Mecca [and] Medina, two of the most holy cities for Islam,” Knuppe said. “So, bin Laden sees U.S. influence supporting autocratic states, supporting the State of Israel, [and] having a military presence in a really holy territory. He uses this set of three or four grievances to recruit and build solidarity within his group to strike U.S. and Western influences in the Middle East and then, obviously, in the early 2000s beyond the region as well.”
These recruits carried out their attacks against political and religious enemies into the 2000s, threatening to destroy religious sites, such as Buddhist statues, as well as kidnapping and imprisoning eight international aid workers after being accused of proselytizing Christian beliefs. The terrorist front had grown so rampantly that anti-Taliban efforts were diminishing from successive failures. After a long campaign against the Taliban, Masood, the leader of the Northern Alliance and the insurgent who led the battle against the invading Soviets back in the 1980s, was assassinated on Sept. 9, 2001.
Not two days after the harrowing death of one of Afghanistan’s heroes, the largest attack on America was deployed on her own soil. In the early hours of Sept. 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two struck the World Trade Center in New York City, one flew into the side of the Pentagon and the fourth was usurped by crew and passengers, crash landing in a field in rural Pennsylvania.
In all, the attacks killed nearly 3,000 people. While none of the hijackers were Afghan nationals, American officials declared bin Laden and his Al Qaeda partners to be the perpetrators of the attacks.
Within days and for the coming weeks, the U.S. and Great Britain coordinated air attacks, including missile launches and bombings, against the Taliban and Al Qaeda positions in Afghanistan in an attempt to fragment the terrorist matrix. With the indirect fire support of the U.S. and Britain, the Northern Alliance reaffirmed its position in Afghanistan and took over Kabul in November, cornering the remaining Taliban forces into Kandahar where they would make their final stand. Just a couple days later, the Taliban finally surrendered all remaining territory, ending the terrorist rule in the country.
In a letter addressed to U.S. troops, President George W. Bush wrote, “You took out a brutal enemy and denied Al Qaeda a safe haven while building schools, sending supplies and providing medical care. You kept America safe from further terror attacks, provided two decades of security and opportunity for millions and made America proud.”
To set up the new government, Hamid Karzai, an exile from Pakistan who helped lead the Mujahideen and other anti-Taliban efforts, was appointed, with U.S. support, as interim president of Afghanistan until a full government would be restructured. In 2004, the Loya Jirga, a special legislative body, approved a new Afghan constitution that called for social reform for women and implemented a president and two vice presidents as head of state. Following the adoption of this constitution, presidential elections were held. Tens of millions of Afghans were able to vote and participate in the new government in which they chose to re-elect Karzai for another term and set up the Afghan Parliament, or the National Assembly.
Despite all of the good happening in Afghanistan’s new government, the Taliban and Al Qaeda were still trying to retain their presence in the region and had even spread to Pakistan to remain alive. NATO had promised its first security force outside of Europe to the southern part of Afghanistan, but terrorist attacks were on the rise and targeting the international security force’s troops. In an effort to encourage further development of the region, almost $20 billion was sent to the region as an aid package from Afghanistan’s Western allies.
As an extension of the peace building and democracy-spreading efforts of the U.S. in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama signed off on over 15,000 troops to be sent out with military and civilian contractors to train and help the Afghan government and military develop. In a great stride towards success in bolstering the region against terrorist threats, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in a raid by the famous U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six in his compound in Pakistan on May 2, 2011.
With terrorist influence on the decline and a more capable Afghan government and military trained and ready to handle their own operations, the Afghan army assumed security duties from NATO forces and considerations for U.S. withdrawal began. Especially after the tragic incident in which an American soldier murdered over a dozen Afghan civilians, President Karzai and President Obama were ready for American forces to leave Afghanistan.
In May 2014, President Obama announced his plan for withdrawal out of Afghanistan by 2016. In short, the plan aimed to reduce the U.S. force from 32,000 combat troops to just shy of 10,000 by the end of 2014. These remaining soldiers would continue to train and support the Afghan army in security and anti-terrorism operations, but would not serve in a combat role. By the end of 2016, the goal was to have fewer than 1,000 of these training and security forces still in place in Kabul and the U.S.’ main post in Afghanistan, Bagram Air Field.
While an honorable plan to try and bring troops home and to leave Afghanistan to its own capabilities, President Obama realized his desired full withdrawal would not be possible without setting the region up for collapse again. The new Afghan government and military would not be able to support itself, especially against the angered remnants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. While NATO forces fully withdrew in late 2014, Obama abandoned his pullout framework and decided to maintain a skeleton force of 6,000 troops to support the new government.
“It’s worth remembering especially the more than 2,200 American patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan,” President Obama said in an address to the nation after reversing his plan to withdraw by 2016. “While America’s combat mission in Afghanistan may be over, our commitment to Afghanistan and its people endures.
“As Commander-in-Chief, I will not allow Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again,” Obama continued. “Our forces therefore remain engaged in two narrow but critical missions — training Afghan forces, and supporting counterterrorism operations against the remnants of Al Qaeda.”
In 2017, President Donald Trump, coming to the same understanding of a necessary presence to maintain peace in the region, said pulling out of Afghanistan entirely as he and his predecessor had both initially desired would leave, “a vacuum for terrorists.” Still desiring a return of troops back to U.S. soil, though, President Trump vied for a peace deal between Afghanistan and the Taliban, but reneged when the Taliban killed an American soldier in late 2019. But, just after the November 2020 elections, the Trump Administration said they would reduce the standing military forces in Afghanistan down to just 2,500 troops by January.
While enough troops to continue the training and security mission with the Afghan military, 2,500 soldiers would soon become zero as President Joe Biden, on April 14, 2021, announced the full and complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. While President Obama and President Trump were both able to understand a complete withdrawal would be disastrous, President Biden’s sanctimonious attempt at ending the 20-year war would not come without its failures.
-Michael.Popa@usu.edu