The Degrading Downfall of Afghan Hopes

"He said the Taliban are hiding around these houses, they will open fire, you need to leave."

"I was thinking that the regime has changed. Everywhere I saw the white Taliban flag and armed fighters."

"I asked my husband has the government collapsed and we weren't told?"

Habiba, from Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, Kabul refugee

"The Taliban have recognized that all they need to do is keep the pressure on, wait us out, and launch simultaneous offensives around the country."

"They have broadly achieved their objective without the U.S. getting meaningful concessions in return. 

[The situation is] increasingly dire with each passing week."

"I fear we will look back and regret the decision to withdraw.The onset of what is going to be quite a brutal civil war, considerable ethnic and sectarian displacement, assassination of government officials, millions of refugees flooding into other countries, particularly Pakistan."

"We will see the return of al-Qaida and the Islamic State, though I don't see an immediate, domestic security threat for the U.S. in that regard."

David Petraeus, former U.S. Afghanistan commander, former head, CIA

"There is us and only us to fight the Taliban. That acknowledgement and realization was important."

"It is far from reality that the Taliban will be in a position to force the government to surrender. They may win the battles, but it's impossible to win the war."

Afghanistan government official

Before and after maps of Afghanistan; left Taliban controlled areas in April, right Taliban controlled areas in July ... Council on Foreign Relations

 

Close to 300,000 people have now fled their homes as a result of the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan that gave the Islamist fanatic Taliban the opportunity they have long waited for. Not that they were ever quiescent; they kept the memory of their presence alive and well, from forcing farmers in areas they continued to control in Afghanistan to grow salable poppy instead of edible crops, to threatening the rural population and destroying Western-built schools while launching suicide attacks.

The presence of U.S. and NATO-member troops kept the Taliban from fulfilling their ultimate goal, but now that all are leaving after committing to a two-decade stay resulting in a stalemate, their time has come. Ongoing, relentless attacks are being launched across the country with greater vigour and determination. For that matter, with the certainty of a U.S. withdrawal even while negotiations were taking place in Doha between U.S. special representative to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban delegation leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Taliban attacks on Afghan government installations were rife.

Signals, if any were needed of the pretense of negotiations, illustrated by the Taliban refusal to negotiate directly with the government of President Ashraf Ghani until the U.S. committed to its promised withdrawal, a promise that the Taliban decorated with its pledge to honour the U.S. demand that Afghanistan never again become a springboard for Islamist terrorists to launch attacks against the U.S. Now the Taliban gloat and praise themselves for having vanquished the U.S. to enable them to step up their relentless attacks.

An Afghan policeman keeps watch at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kabul.   Reuters

 

Only the overwhelmingly anxious intention of the U.S. to decamp finally and forever from Afghanistan, the war that would not end, deadened them to the absurdity of 'negotiating for peace' with the fundamentalist terrorists that call them selves the Taliban scholars. The U.S. was so anxious to escape the Kandahar air base without attacks on its personnel in the process, that it failed to alert the Afghan military until the base was emptied of its American personnel.

In the process, leaving armoured vehicles and all manner of other military equipment as a gift to the Afghan military, which not having been alerted, was unable to mount a guard over the base which was then ransacked upon the withdrawal, and tools of war ostensibly meant to benefit the government of Afghanistan fell into the possession of its enemies. An inexcusably botched operation from start to finish, despite American avowals of continued financial assistance to the Ghani government.

A country embattled by the global pandemic, by a crop and food and medicine shortage, which has been placed on siege notice. The residents of Kabul have seen foreign embassies withdraw personnel while others take stock of supplies and try to secure sources of both food and gas, even as streams of Afghan refugees are flooding the city in search of sanctuary from the ravages of conflict pitting the military against the Taliban terrorists.  Severe drought stalks the land adding to food shortages.

The Islamist terrorists take no prisoners; execution is far more efficient and any military who fall into their hands know their abrupt fate. A resistance from the country's warlords against the Taliban ascendancy once again is in the works, a replay of a two-decade-old drama re-enacted. The warlords' reputation is one of greed of possessions, motivated by power and influence and riches, as opposed to the Talibans' single-focus power-grab with influence and financial assets following.

The country's border crossings are in their crosshairs, cutting off the government's source of income through customs revenues. Taliban control is consolidating in spheres previously held by NATO allies in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. The Taliban bombed the home of the acting defence minister on Tuesday at a guarded upscale Kabul neighbourhood, missing the minister but killing and wounding many others. More recently the director of the government's media centre in Kabul was ambushed and killed.

The pretense of peace negotiations that the U.S. and the West uses as a screen to mask their desertion of Afghanistan is laughable. The Taliban is growing its territory and power base in leaps and bounds of military success. They have no reason whatever to negotiate for a shared peace agreement leading to a co-governing solution to the conflict roiling the country. It has always been nothing but a transparent sham, aided and abetted by the Pakistan Interagency Intelligence unit intent on fully destabilizing its neighbour.

The Taliban which swore it was committed to the peace process, assuring the Americans by telling them what they knew was wanted to salve their conscience and enable them to hold up a banner to the world of a promise to power-share, to honour the human rights of Afghans, to ensure the country would never again be used as a base from which to plot and attack the West, is set to reverse that pledge at the earliest opportunity.

The West has been warned time again to remove its blinders and deliberately fails to. Wherever the Taliban has taken control it has restored its medieval theocracy, women have been banned from school and work and public representation. Islamic State and al Qaeda, both firmly ensconced in the country now have an assured place of honour until such time that they too begin to turn against the Taliban with intention of replacing them as marginally more human rights-abusive tyrants and threats against Western interests.

Taliban fighters attend a gathering to celebrate the U.S.-Taliban deal in March 2020. Wali Sabawoon/NurPhoto/Getty Images