Deep Roots: Understanding Afghanistan and Her Centuries of War – Part IV
In their final years, the Trump administration made efforts to create peace between the Taliban and Afghanistan. But, an unwilling Taliban made agreements between the Taliban, the U.S. and Afghanistan nearly impossible. Violence against Afghan citizens increased and Afghanistan was resistant to releasing Taliban prisoners as part of a deal in the works. Despite difficulty in making peace, one thing was for certain, Trump wanted out.
By late 2020, however, Trump understood a complete and total pullout wouldn’t be possible, just as his successor came to realize. To prevent a total collapse of Afghanistan and a “Saigon-type of situation,” as described as by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Nov. 17, 2020, the administration announced a standing force of 2,500 troops would remain in the country to stabilize Afghanistan and support its military. They said the reduction in troops would occur by Jan. 15, 2021, just days before the recently-elected former vice president, Joe Biden, would be inaugurated as the 46th president of the U.S.
After Biden had held office for less than a month, the Afghanistan Study Group, a congressional group formed in 2019 that aimed to research potential policy modifications regarding the handling of the Taliban and peace-building in Afghanistan, released a report containing several suggestions for how to modify the remaining elements of the Trump-era peace deal.
In short, the report recommended, “a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops (based) not on an inflexible timeline but on all parties fulfilling their commitments, including the Taliban making good on its promises to contain terrorist groups and reduce violence against the Afghan people and making compromises to achieve a political settlement.”
Later in the report, it suggested “a sustainable peace agreement will be the responsibility of the Afghan parties to the ongoing negotiations, but the United States can play a key role in determining if this opportunity is taken. A responsible, predictable, and coherent set of U.S. actions could greatly increase the chances of a peaceful resolution to forty years of conflict; a rash and rushed approach could increase the chances of a breakdown of order in Afghanistan that threatens the security and interests of the United States and its allies.”
Just a couple weeks later, Biden picked up his campaign promise to end the war in Afghanistan once and for all.
“My administration strongly supports the diplomatic process that’s underway and to bring an end to this war that is closing out 20 years,” Biden said. “We remain committed to ensuring that Afghanistan never again provides a base for terrorist attacks against the United States and our partners and our interests.”
This indicated his desire to conduct a complete withdrawal. But despite concerns from his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who expressed concern that “the security situation will worsen and the Taliban could make rapid territorial gains,” Biden committed to a complete pullout in his speech on April 14, declaring that it was “time to end the forever war.”
Biden promised a complete and total retreat to be conducted by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In his speech, Biden said, “More and endless American military force could not create or sustain a durable Afghan government.”
After expressing concern about the original May 1 withdrawal date proposed by the Trump administration, Biden said, “We will not conduct a hasty rush to the exit. We’ll do it responsibly, deliberately and safely.”
Upset by the change of plans to extend the withdrawal from May 1 to Sept. 11, the Taliban released a statement threatening the U.S. to stay on course with the original pullout date or risk the Taliban taking “every necessary countermeasure, hence the American side will be held responsible for all future consequences.”
Without hesitation, the Taliban held true to their words, increasing their attacks on Afghanistan government entities and other anti-West groups by upwards of 37%. They also prepared for large-scale offensives against population centers, according to a Department of Defense report released just a few months after Biden’s announcement.
In the face of Taliban forces growing as the U.S. prepared to leave, Zalmay Khalilzad, appointed to help resolve U.S.-Afghanistan foreign policy issues, insisted the Taliban would not be a force capable of taking over Afghanistan if U.S. troops protecting the government were to leave.
Explaining the Taliban’s lack of military capability, Khalilzad said if the Taliban were to make a push against the Afghan government it would “result in a long war because Afghan security forces (would) fight, other Afghans (would) fight, neighbors (would) come to support.”
Saying Afghanistan’s military would hold and easily resist Taliban efforts, he continued by explaining that “the statements that the [Afghan] forces will disintegrate, and the Talibs will take over in short order are mistaken. The real choices that the Afghans will face is between a long war and negotiated settlement.”
Khalilzad’s sentiments were later countered, though, by the appointed spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, who declared a continued jihad against Western forces and influences to achieve their goal of forming an Islamic government in Afghanistan.
Continuing to try and fulfill the promise of a total withdrawal while facing significant pressures from Taliban forces, the U.S. military quietly withdrew from Bagram Airfield, America’s largest stronghold in the country, without informing the new Afghan post command, signaling a lack of coordination between the two country’s leadership.
Walking back on Khalilzad and other Biden administration military official’s statements on the Taliban’s inability to usurp control over Afghanistan, Biden changed the deadline to be withdrawn from Sept. 11 to Aug. 31, citing that “speed is safety” and a Taliban now “at its strongest militarily since 2001,” would pose an imminent threat to U.S. troops if they stayed longer than necessary.
Biden still reassured Americans, however, an Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban is not inevitable and there would not be a collapse of the fragile Afghan government once the U.S. had ended their presence.
Feeling the lingering sense of doom as appearances of the administration’s control over the situation disappeared, many politicians and news agencies like The Guardian and BBC likened the recklessness of the withdrawal to the fall of Saigon.
At the end of the unpopular Vietnam War, the Viet Cong, communist North Vietnam’s army, descended on the capital of South Vietnam, Saigon, forcing the U.S. troops and CIA officials to hastily withdraw via helicopters from the rooftops of government buildings and forcing South Korean troops to surrender.
Biden, when asked if he thought the pullout from Afghanistan mirrored what happened in Vietnam nearly 50 years earlier, said, “None whatsoever. Zero. The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”
In what would later become a highly criticized statement for its lack of truth, Biden said, “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”
Just weeks later and against their deal with the U.S., the Taliban seized control of Zaranj, the capital of Nimroz province in southwestern Afghanistan.
This was quickly followed by Taliban forces entering and consuming Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, on Aug. 15 without meeting any resistance from the remaining U.S. troops and a disintegrated Afghan army. Without the ability to defend from the invasion, the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country and the U.S. evacuated diplomats and American officials from its embassy by helicopter.
Almost exactly mirroring the events of the Fall of Saigon, what has been dubbed the “Fall of Kabul,” confirmed to American politicians and those closely watching the withdrawal that organization and control was lacking.
Trying to shroud their true plans, Taliban officials publicly announced they would hold discussions with the remaining Afghan officials to peacefully form an inclusive Islamic government. In an attempt to maintain peace during the transition, Afghan officials, such as former Afghan President Karzai and Chief Executive Abdullah, created a council to facilitate the transfer of power to a Taliban government.
By this point, the Taliban had consumed nearly the entire country of Afghanistan, including provincial capitals and border crossings. Some Afghan forces were without enough military capability to the point where surrenders were negotiated to avoid slaughter by the Taliban.
Not even out the door yet, the country of Afghanistan had already fallen back into the hands of combined Taliban-al-Qaeda forces, turning eyes to the Biden administration for any kind of explanation.
In face of a disastrous pullout process, Biden said in an address to the nation, “I do not regret my decision to end America’s war fighting in Afghanistan,” pushing blame from himself onto his fellow military officials, citing bad intelligence and ignoring the dishonesty his administration had pushed in the recent months.
Later in his speech, he admitted the pullout had been messy and reckless, but he continued to deny culpability and instead used the disintegrated Afghan security forces as his scapegoat.
From an earlier article I wrote concerning the growing Taliban capability in Afghanistan, I quoted U.S. Representative Jim Banks, R-Ind., a veteran Navy officer, saying “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. 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.”
Without the ability to counter Taliban pressure in Kabul while evacuating the remaining troops and allies in Afghanistan, the Department of Defense sent 3,000 troops from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and the U.S. Marine Corps’ 24th Marine Expedition Unit to aid in what remained of the evacuation process and to secure Kabul airport, a small, single-strip airfield (whereas the forfeited Bagram Airfield had two runways and was over 30 square kilometers in size, much more fit for an evacuation as sizeable as the one being conducted).
The troops were also needed to help stabilize the influx of evacuees trying to enter the airport. Videos of Afghan citizens clinging to the wheel wells of and falling hundreds of feet from departing C-17 military aircraft furthered public scrutiny of the hastiness of the evacuation process. While Biden said qualifications for refugee status would be widened to allow more people to safely return to the U.S., many Afghans and Americans alike were being left without assistance, partially due to the fact that records of Americans in-country are not kept, so Americans in Afghanistan were not necessarily being tracked down.
Just days before the deadline and still scrambling to complete the withdrawal process, a suicide bombing on Aug. 26 killed 13 U.S. soldiers and 170 Afghans and injured 18 just outside of Kabul airport.
These are the first U.S. deaths in Afghanistan in over a year and a half and the deadliest day for American forces since 2011. In a retaliation just as hasty as the pullout, the Pentagon launched air strikes against the suspected perpetrator of the attack, ISIS-K: ISIS’s sister group that references Afghanistan’s old name, Khorasan. The air strike killed 10 civilians, including seven children. The Department of Defense called it a mistake.
Without changing plans to completely depart from Afghanistan, Biden promised retaliation of some kind against the terrorist forces in the region and said, “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” But he didn’t offer any specific plans to do so.
With just a day before the Aug. 31 deadline, the U.S. military lifted its last soldiers from the airport in Kabul, officially ending America’s involvement in the region and ending the 20-year-long war in Afghanistan.
Although the Biden administration vowed to remove all soldiers and allies alike from the country, many Americans and Afghan allies remain in the country. They are told to use diplomatic channels to find means of escape. They have been virtually abandoned.
Months later, there are still hundreds of Americans unaccounted for in Afghanistan but, with U.S. troops gone, these Americans and the Afghanistan citizenry are left to defend themselves against the new, all-consuming Taliban government.
While we have some answers about how the Taliban plan to rule the country, waiting is all we can do. After centuries of conflict and a 20-year war with the U.S., Afghanistan remains a fragile state and will for the foreseeable future.
-Michael.Popa@usu.edu