A Trillion Dollar Blunder

The purpose of US occupation in Afghanistan was to remove the Taliban regime and eliminate Al Qaeda. The American retreat from Afghanistan has given a opportunity for the Taliban to seize the power again, after 20 years of occupation, at the expense of pumping 2 trillion dollars and losing hundreds of your soldiers, Afghanistan is back to square one, you have given false hope of democracy and human rights to the Afghan people and achieved nothing.

The proposal to leave Afghanistan was led out by the former President Obama administration in 2014, when the plan was to evacuate all the troops from Afghanistan and the idea then was further emphasized by the Ex-president Donald Trump which then took a turn into a domestic politics issue, the decision has been finally taken by the incumbent president Joe Biden. Without taking the ramifications it will have into account, and ignored them altogether.

The kind of visuals that are coming from Kabul are devastating, citizens want to somehow leave the country, people are trying to catch a departing plane and want to leave the country somehow.

The Biden administration and think-tanks in the US had anticipated the consequences.  The chaos wasn’t unexpected, Rep. Gregory Meeks who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee said the chaos was “Ultimately Inevitable.” Which makes it an error of Commission by the administration and the onus lies on American President Joe Biden.

Micah Jones a US Veteran who was stationed in Afghanistan wrote an article in Newsweek in which he said “The feeling of disgust that I have in the United States withdrawal in Afghanistan will never go away”

Due to this upheaval, Kabul has fallen prey to the Taliban, the presidential palace and other government buildings have been subjugated by the Taliban. Taliban will take control of power in Kabul as the withdrawal of US and NATO troops is nearly completed. Ex-president Ashraf Ghani has fled to Oman and other office bearers have fled to Delhi among other places.

The thing that has amazed everyone is how the Afghan forces were unable and unwilling to retaliate against Taliban. Taliban marched from Mazar I Sharif to Kandahar to Kabul within a week or so, this happened without much bloodshed. The US had trained the Afghan forces but the Afghan forces were incapable or incompetent of giving any fight back, instead they ran abandoning their tanks and artillery and so on.

This is not the first time a country has retreated from Afghanistan, the Soviets in 1989 relinquished their occupation of Afghanistan, but the retreat was well planned. The Soviets gave the Afghan army all kinds of support. Even after the withdrawal, they provided the Afghan forces with military assistance, which kept the Mujahideen away from Kabul for three year until Najibullah’s downfall started in 1992 after the Soviet collapse. Mujahideen finally started to take over again in 1994. Both countries lost the war, but the kind of hastiness Joe Biden has shown is immature-ish and depicts lack of comprehension ability.

It is said that Pakistan was behind the Taliban’s offensive, they had full support of Pakistan military and ISI, So to solve these problems you have to nip the problem at the bud, which is Pakistan.

The sine qua non was to sanction Pakistan, as President Bush said “a war against those governments that support or shelter them”, it was pretty conspicuous and evident that Pakistan was fostering terrorism in the subcontinent, but US did very little to corner Pakistan on these issues, and kept feeding Pakistan with all types of aids and support, until Ex-president Trump withheld these fundings.

The USA has failed to accomplish what it had promised to the Afghan people, they had promised hope to the civilians, a hope for a better tomorrow. President Biden in his remarks said “Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy.”. Completely antithetical to what the US had promised initially, erstwhile President George Bush in 2001 at the United Nations said “when that regime [the Taliban] is gone … America will join the world in helping the people of Afghanistan rebuild their country.” Similarly in October 2002 President Bush had pledged “full commitment to a future of progress and stability for the Afghan people.” cited from Brooking Institution. This duplicitous behavior of the USA is building a sense of skepticism, a trust deficit in the allies.

American foreign policy or the credibility of the US as a superpower has been dwindled by these incident, the US had failed to do anything when the autonomy of Hong Kong was removed by china and when there were large human rights violations happening there, this incident has presented America as a weak superpower. Having said that, China has gained some confidence now looking at how weak the USA seems to be. It will try and pitch an effort in annexing Taiwan, which if happened will be irreversible. The world wouldn’t make any noise as we know China’s ability to control or suppress the narrative, we saw it in the pandemic whoever tried to associate the virus with china or tried to call it a Chinese virus was shunned by China

After Britain, USSR, America, the thing to look out for will be, who will fill the void in the “Empire of Graveyards”. China is ready to have “friendly relations” with the Taliban.  China can afford to get embroiled in Afghanistan and with its expansionist attitude they will surely desire to get hold of Afghanistan, as they have interest in the country as well it will give them a strategic stranglehold on the subcontinent.

For the time being President Biden should give immediate refuge to the people fleeing out of Afghanistan. It’s America’s moral obligation to give them shelter until the crisis is over. Which is again highly unlikely to happen. India on the other hand has provided humanitarian assistance to over 4000 people.