In her article published in Foreign Affairs, Vanda Philbab-Brown, an expert on organized crime and a distinguished scholar at the Brookings Institution's Center for Security and Twenty-first Century Intelligence, discusses the reasons for the Taliban's rapid victory, and how years of U.S. policies ill-advised on Afghanistan, And what is the fate of the movement after it reached the head of power in Kabul?
Ten days, that's how long it took the Taliban after US forces left to topple the Afghan government, and what a surprisingly short time at the end! Last Friday and Saturday, as hour after hour passed, the major provinces of Afghanistan surrendered to the Taliban movement, as the Islamic militia crawled, carrying out its terrifying attacks, until finally it entered Kabul on Sunday, and the US-backed government fled, leaving the entire country in the hands of the Taliban.
No one likely expected the rapid disintegration of the Afghan National Security and Defense Forces, but signs of the Taliban's military ascendancy, and critical dysfunctions of Afghan forces that the government has ignored and even exacerbated by itself, have surfaced over the past few years. All the problems that allowed the Taliban to defeat the Afghan army so quickly in 2021 became apparent since 2015, when the movement briefly seized the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, exploiting the fragile morale of Afghan forces, fleeing the battle, attrition, corruption and ethnic divisions. Its ranks, its meager logistical support, and its over-reliance on special forces.
For years, it was not hidden from anyone that the Afghan forces units began to conclude deals with their enemy (as it is supposed). They warned the Taliban before launching their attacks on them at times, and they refused to fight them at times, rather they sold them weapons and equipment on others.
The dramatic fall of the Afghan army only exposed the accumulated rot in the corridors of power in Kabul. No wonder the Afghan people did not trust their government for years. No wonder Afghan cities surrendered one after another to the Taliban this week.
The United States and other countries made many mistakes in Afghanistan, and Pakistan enabled the movement with its dual policy.
However, the main responsibility for that tragic end to twenty years of trying to build a state in Afghanistan lies with the Afghan leadership itself, and the victory of the Taliban is only a harbinger of the difficulties surrounding attempts to establish stability. When Washington does not tighten the hands of its allies, it quickly finds the efforts of years It has gone unheeded.
Over the past decade, as Washington gradually withdraws its forces from Afghanistan and increasingly places the task of governing the country on the Afghan government, the ruling elite in Kabul has chosen not to reform the military or improve its tactics, and instead turn its eyes to the accumulation of power and money in its favour, and nepotism. For surrounding circles, it has constantly sought to create political crises and disrupt management to extract more nepotism and money from the central government.
Its delusional ideas have been part of the problem, as Afghan politicians have convinced themselves that the United States will never leave the country, and have ignored repeated signals from the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations that Washington does want to get out of Afghanistan. As their narratives of Afghanistan misled them as the country at the heart of a new "Great Game" between the United States, China, and Russia, Afghan leaders became convinced that they could entangle the United States further in Afghanistan until its commitment to the country was endless. Thus, they saw little benefit in reforming Afghan forces, or responding to the daily demands of Afghans, and in turn neither the United States nor the international community made it a priority to pressure the government in Kabul to do any of that, nor could it force Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban. Which was done with force and in many diverse ways, and therefore the strength of the armed men began to grow.
The fragility of the Afghan government has posed a dilemma for successive US administrations: if Washington sets a deadline to leave Afghanistan, the Taliban will simply wait until its departure and then launch a full-scale attack on the Afghan army. There was no guarantee that Afghan politicians would take that departure deadline seriously, as they believed in Afghanistan's geopolitical importance, and saw with their own eyes how more than one US administration held back. There was no guarantee, then, that the Afghan government would put its interests below the national interest, and that it would carry out reforms that were long overdue and could qualify it to secure the country without anyone's help. On the other hand, the United States did not set a specific date for withdrawal, but instead set conditions for withdrawal - as the Trump administration stated in 2016, although the president himself was not convinced by that idea at the time - and then in fact the motivation of the Afghan government to change its futile methods diminished.
The government refused to reduce its power in any way or accept a change in its political system, and did not want to negotiate with the Taliban, a situation that remained the same even after the Doha agreement, where the Taliban agreed, according to the agreement concluded in February 2020, to prevent the implementation of terrorist attacks against the states The United States and its allies in return for the withdrawal of American forces by May 2021. Kabul was stronger at that moment, as the Taliban controlled an area much less than it had this year, and the American forces in the country were still able to bomb the movement’s fighters and provide the necessary technical support to the Afghan forces. However, each day Kabul waited for negotiation gradually waned the age of US support and the weakening of Afghan forces, while Kabul believed it could persuade the Biden administration to get rid of the Doha agreement and keep US forces in the country as a long-term commitment.
At the same time, the Taliban did not want to negotiate with Kabul either, believing that their military strength, and thus their negotiating position, would only increase in strength in the wake of the withdrawal of US forces, which is exactly what happened, a moment when the Afghan government looked to the weakening of the Afghan government. Its forces severely reversed Washington's decision to leave. Many American analysts wanted the United States to remain in Afghanistan, and said that the presence of a limited force of 2500 to 5000 soldiers would be able to strengthen the Afghan government and its forces.
Last spring, US President Joe Biden announced that he would withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, and the withdrawal of 95% of the forces had already been implemented by the end of last July, and when it seemed clear that Washington had finished the war, and the resolve of the Afghan army had weakened even more. . However, there was no realistic scenario in which 2,500 to 5,000 US troops, even with an open commitment on the part of the United States, could moderate the destructive dynamics of an Afghan government and army that are both reluctant to reform with the growing rise of the Taliban.
Of course, the Taliban began attacking those remaining forces, forcing them to submit, just as happened with the Afghan army, and perhaps even motivating the United States to increase its forces so that it could face the attacks of the movement, and then Washington went back to waging an all-out war against the Taliban, including that Of casualties, with no end to the war in sight. In nearly five years, Washington faced the same horrific situation that it faced a few months ago, with no way to defeat the Taliban or even erase its victories on the ground.
The Biden administration could have set December instead of September as a deadline for withdrawal, to give the army and the government in Kabul more time to prepare, but the Afghan leadership did not in any case move a finger when it learned the date of the withdrawal in September, and it is not likely that it will She would have seized the opportunity if the withdrawal schedule had been extended until the end of the year. More time, however, may give Washington an opportunity to force the Afghan leadership to make changes in the state of the military, at least reform the areas of greatest importance, and allow Afghan civilians time to acclimatise, including giving them the option of exiting the country. An extra three months would not have cost the United States much, and the Taliban accepted it even reluctantly as long as the withdrawal schedule did not extend to 2022.
Over the course of twenty years, the United States and its allies have experimented with a number of strategies to defeat the Taliban. It relied on Afghan warlords from 2001 to 2005 to defeat the movement and quell its insurgency while Washington was preoccupied with Iraq at the time. As the Taliban grew in power, the Obama administration decided to increase the number of NATO forces to 150,000, and by 2014, the strategy had shifted to supporting Afghan militias and anti-Taliban uprisings as the way to defeat the movement. Washington and its allies in the country for a long enough period, the Taliban will make mistakes that will eventually defeat it.However, none of these avenues worked in the end, and Washington's survival beyond 2021 would plunge its forces and sensitive intelligence and reconnaissance systems into an Afghan quagmire that makes China, Iran and Russia happy to be involved in this way and take on the task of curbing terrorism on their behalf in the same time.
The highest priority is intense diplomacy and negotiation with the Taliban. Most likely, Washington has sent a clear and explicit message recently that civil society activists or former Afghan government officials should not be harassed, that Taliban fighters should not be able to carry out revenge killings, and that the Taliban should form a coalition government where possible, including ethnic minorities, technocrats, and women, while ensuring that Women’s continued access to education, health care, and the right to employment and leave the home without male supervision. These are recommendations that the Taliban seem to have adhered to in accordance with their first policies after entering the capital, and according to their official statements as well.
However, the euphoria of victory prevented the Taliban from complying with some other demands, most notably the formation of a consensus government, as the movement announced that it did not intend to form a transitional government, which was considered an indication of its unwillingness to share power with others, in addition to the series of assassinations it carried out against its opponents during its acquisition of Cities of Afghanistan last week. In any case, Washington now has limited leverage in the country, and one of its important cards lies in its ability to prevent or allow the flow of economic aid and direct access to international financial institutions, but they remain tools far from changing the reality on the ground.
Moreover, the openness of China, Iran and Russia to dealing with the Taliban has further undermined Washington’s influence, countries that will put pressure on the movement to curb terrorism, protect its economic interests, and share influence and natural resources with its proxies in Afghanistan, but of course will not pressure it to engage others. in power or control the abuses of its fighters against the Afghan citizens. Therefore, the behavior of the Taliban will depend primarily on the ability of Afghan societies to negotiate with the country's new leaders.
On the other hand, with regard to combating terrorism, the news coming from Kabul is not bad at all. Although the Taliban's severing of ties with Al-Qaeda is not likely, the movement will not allow terrorist attacks from Afghan territory in accordance with its pledges in the Doha agreement. This is not in any case an exclusively American demand, but rather a Chinese, Iranian and Russian demand as well. In addition, the Taliban has strong justifications for combating the Islamic State in Afghanistan in particular, which intersects with the objectives of the aforementioned four capitals.
The best that could emerge from the new Taliban's experience in power is the crystallization of a political and social system similar to the Iranian regime, in which the Taliban would form a Supreme Council that includes a number of its leaders, under whose command a layer of technocratic institutions would exercise the actual administration on the ground.
In a very optimistic scenario, the new Afghan leaders might allow a variety of legislative and executive elections, give technocrats some positions, and allocate ethnic minorities a stake in management and decision-making institutions.
After two decades, 2,400 American deaths, and a trillion dollars, this is not - at all - the outcome that the United States aspired to in Afghanistan, but it is an outcome that has been taking shape for years and years.
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This article has been translated from Foreign Affairs and does not necessarily reflect the website of Maidan.