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.
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 |
Labels: Abandoning Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, NATO, Pakistan Taliban Thriving Terrorist Ambitions, United States
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