Without the United States, NATO is a paper tiger. Therefore, decisions made by U.S. presidents are crucial for the entire alliance.
After an initial surge of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, decided by President Trump in 2017, the Trump Administration reversed gear and opted for direct negociations with the Taliban in Doha, where the Afghan government was not allowed to sit on the table.
In other words, Donald Trump decided to negociate the future of Afghanistan with terrorists without the—corrupt, but democratically elected and internationally recognized—Afghan government having any say in this.
Under the Trump Administration, on February 29, 2020 the United States and the Taliban signed the Doha Agreement. The deal included the complete withrawal of all U.S. and allied NATO forces from Afghanistan. In return, the Taliban pledged to prevent the terror organization Al-Qaida from operating from Afghan territory under their control as well as to continue talks with the Afghan government.
President Biden continued on the path outlined by his precessor, announced to withdraw all U.S. troops and actually started to do so, which led all other NATO allies with troops in Afghanistan to withdraw their military forces to.
De facto, President Biden handed the democratic Afghanistan over to the Taliban terror organization. There was no talk about early, free and fair elections. With the help of the West, Afghanistan will go from democracy to dicatorship.
The idea that the Taliban will share power with the Afghan government, President Ashraf Ghani and the leader of the High Council of Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah, who was to lead talks with the Taliban, was a fantasy from the start. The Taliban do not believe in democracy. As from 1996 until 2001, they want a religious regime governed by the Sharia, the religious law of the Islamic tradition.
As late as on July 8, 2021 Joe Biden said that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was highly unlikely. About one month later, he was proven terribly wrong but decided to stick with his decision. This further erodes the soft power of the United States, already weakened by: President George W. Bush’s lack of a plan for defeated post-war Iraq which led to chaos and war; President Barack Obama’s foreign and military disasters in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, creating a vacuum of power filled by terrorists, Russia, Iran and other forces; President Donald Trump’s unilateralism, isolationism, nationalism, populism and politics based on daily lies, which alienated allies and could not deter enemies.
Like his predecessors, Joe Biden has never tried to seriously tackle Afghanistan’s endemic corruption, with a 2019 SIGAR report stating that 40% of U.S. aid since 2001 had ended up in the hands of Afghan officials, gangsters, war and drug lords as well as insurgents (aka Taliban and others).
Afghanistan produces 90% of the world’s opium (heroin). In 2019, the BBC estimated that drug money contributed 60% to the finances of the Taliban. This problem will not go away.
Ethnic factionalism, nepotism, corruption, fueled by drug and U.S. aid money undermined the confidence of Afghans in their government, led to poor morale within the military and police, which partly explains why they did not resist the Taliban in 2021.
The Afghan government neither wanted to reform the country nor to seriously negociate with the Taliban. They hoped to continue to profit from U.S. aid and protection, enriching themselves, thinking the U.S. would not abandon them for strategic reasons.
In short, by walking away, pulling the plug not only on the corrupt political leaders of Afghanistan, but also on civil society, on vulnerable women and girls, Joe Biden and his Western partners are making a bad situation worse. A return to a perverted, medieval interpretation of Islam by the Taliban is not in the interest of the majority of Afghan people. And it will not help the West.
As during previous conflicts, too many of the Afghan middle class, the ones who should and could reform the country and form its backbone, will look for a new life abroad.
Amazon USA books on Afghanistan
Amazon United Kingdom books on Afghanistan
Photo on top: Official portrait of U.S. President Joe Biden, March 3, 2021. U.S. Navy photo courtesy of the White House by Adam Schultz. Public domain. Source: U.S. Navy: https://media.defense.gov/2021/Apr/07/2002616037/-1/-1/0/210303-N-NO101-150.JPG
Article added on August 19, 2021 at 13:46 German time. Updated at 13:55.
