Washington

- The completion of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was the most prominent external event during President Joe Biden's first year in office.

Commentators described the "fall of Kabul" as a historic event similar to the "Saigon moment" and the humiliating withdrawal from Vietnam for the administration of US President Joe Biden.

Some saw it as resembling the “moment of the nationalization of the Suez Canal” in 1956, a crisis that was linked to the beginning of the decline of Britain’s global power, and compared it to what could result in Washington’s relationship with its allies in Western Europe and East Asia.

With the second anniversary of the signing of the Doha Agreement (February 29, 2020), which paved the way for the American withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years, some blame the role of the agreement and the consequences of the chaotic withdrawal, and how this encouraged Russian President Vladimir Putin to make his decision to war on Ukraine.

Agreement in Doha after a 20-year war in Afghanistan (Al-Jazeera)

US withdrawal and Taliban control

At a time when many American commentators considered that the withdrawal of their country’s forces in agreement with the Taliban represented a major defeat for Washington after failing to achieve the goals of their presence there, American circles did not welcome the results of the complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, especially after the Taliban movement took control of all Afghan soil.

A study issued by the "Cost of War" initiative - a joint research project between the American "Brown" and "Boston" universities - indicates that the cost of the war in Afghanistan exceeded one trillion dollars, in addition to the killing of more than 2,400 American soldiers and 3,943 government contractors, since the start of the fighting. The end of 2001 until the signing of the peace agreement between the Taliban and the Trump administration at the end of February 2020.

And the White House published the document of the Interim Strategic Guide to National Security last March, and it stated that the United States “should not, and will not, participate in wars forever, which have cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. We will work to end America’s longest war in Afghanistan on the responsible, while ensuring that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for terrorist attacks against the United States.”

This paved the way for President Biden to complete what Trump had begun to negotiate for the purpose of a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Washington says that it aimed to eliminate al-Qaeda, and that it achieved that to a large extent, as it realized - after all these years of war - that the Taliban movement is part of Afghan society and cannot be eliminated militarily.


Trump Deal and Blame Biden

Former President Trump reiterated that he wants to get out of armed military conflicts, in an effort to appear that he has succeeded in a case in which former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama failed.

Indeed, after more than a year of hard negotiations in the Qatari capital, the Trump administration and the Taliban reached the Doha Agreement, from which the government of former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was excluded.

After Trump was defeated in the 2020 election, Biden inherited the withdrawal agreement his predecessor reached with the Taliban in Doha.

Biden announced last April his commitment to withdraw his remaining 2,500 troops and return them to American soil by August 31, 2021, after the Taliban agreed to extend the withdrawal date.

Biden reiterated that he refuses to bequeath the war in Afghanistan to a fifth president, and expressed his belief that the war should not have passed to him nearly 20 years after it began.

After completing the US withdrawal last August, Washington disputed 3 opinions regarding its future dealings with Afghanistan;

A group believes that Washington should turn the page on Afghanistan and leave it alone in the absence of any vital American interests there.

On the other hand, others reject this proposition, and demand delay and not decide on the option of dealing with the new regime in Kabul.

The third group believes that Afghanistan should not be left up for grabs in the hands of America's competitors, such as Russia, China or Iran.

Because the Taliban has not formed an expanded government that constitutes all colors of the Afghan political spectrum, the Biden administration refuses to recognize the new regime in Kabul and deal directly with it.

Withdrawal of US forces and their collaborators from Kabul Airport at the end of August 2021 (Reuters)

Biden's responsibility

The US President explained that the war in Afghanistan cost his country about $300 million a day over two decades, or nearly $2.2 trillion in total.

Biden repeats that he alone is responsible for the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan after staying there for 20 years.

No one in Washington predicted the rapid and shocking collapse of the Afghan state and army, although Biden received - during the early days of his rule - estimates from the national security team confirming that the withdrawal of all forces could lead to the eventual collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban's seizure of power.

In his repeated speeches, former President Trump asserts that if he had remained president, we would not have witnessed the chaos and humiliation of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

More than a year into the Biden administration, and six months after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the White House has yet to provide an answer to a key question;

Which is why Biden and his aides fail so spectacularly to appreciate the fragility of the Afghan government and military?

Six months after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, the movement is bound by the terms of the Doha Agreement, especially with regard to taking -unspecified-measures to prevent other groups (including Al-Qaeda) from using Afghan soil to threaten the United States.

Since the United States completed its withdrawal, the presence of any American military or diplomat in Afghanistan will be absent until February 2022.

Days before the second anniversary of the Doha agreement, Biden signed an executive order to transfer $7 billion of frozen funds to the Afghan Central Bank in American banks to humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, and to compensation for those affected by the "September 11" attacks.

On the other hand, the Taliban's takeover of power received intense attention from Congress, and many members described the August 2021 withdrawal as chaotic and damaged US interests and global standing, and some said they supported the withdrawal, but not in the way it was.

The Biden administration defends the withdrawal as helping to prepare the United States to confront other, ostensibly more strategically important challenges, such as those posed by Russia and China.

However, the Russian war on Ukraine indicates the opposite of the outcome of the Biden administration.