"Defeat, not victory"... Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan remains a mystery baffling Americans

Washington

- A year has passed since the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan when the world was surprised by the broadcast of live footage of the movement's representatives roaming inside the presidential palace after former President Ashraf Ghani fled and its forces were deployed in the capital, Kabul.

On the first anniversary of the event, many Americans, especially, believe that the involvement of their successive administrations in a war that lasted for two decades did not serve any of Washington's interests in the region, but rather ended in its defeat and its allies, which drained the American desire for any participation in governance in Afghanistan after the Taliban's control. .

Afghans protest against a US decision to free Afghan financial assets in favor of compensation for victims of the September 11 attacks (AP)

Did America betray the Afghans?

In 1961, after a planned CIA invasion of Cuba failed miserably, President John F. Kennedy said, "Victory has 100 fathers, defeat is orphan."

Two weeks ago, President Biden scored an important victory when he announced that the United States had tracked down and killed its most wanted al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was living in a house in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

No one in Washington expects to celebrate at the end of the month the first anniversary of the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, which ended the longest war in American history.

Any realistic assessment of this measure shows that it will for a long time be seen as a defeat rather than a victory, and it is likely that no one will be held responsible for the decision.

The United States launched a war against Afghanistan in 2001 after the Taliban regime harbored Osama bin Laden, giving him the ability to plan and carry out the attacks of September 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 Americans.

While the US and NATO forces were fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces, Washington and Western capitals supported Afghan governments that failed a lot, but they succeeded little in two decades in improving some areas, especially with regard to reducing child mortality and increasing the average lifespan of citizens, and provided job opportunities for women and education for millions of girls.

But this reality began to change when Washington began to withdraw and the Taliban took over the entire country on August 15, 2021.

Many former Afghan leaders believe that America's abandonment of them began more than a year before the completion of the withdrawal of its forces by the end of August 2021, when the Taliban was legitimized through the Doha agreement.

A year after the withdrawal, there is an American sense of loss in Afghanistan, especially with the Taliban establishing itself in power.

Many Americans accuse the two presidents, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, of abandoning Afghanistan.

how did that happen?

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan a year ago was the product of a succession of decisions made by Trump and completed by his successor, and implemented by his chief negotiator, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad with the Taliban.

It is unlikely that any of them will fully admit their responsibility for the reality that unfolded in Afghanistan, which followed what some consider the “worst” diplomatic agreement in US history, as it enabled the Taliban to win at the negotiating table in Doha, and the Americans were unable to win militarily in the arena battle.

Khalilzad defended the agreement, saying, "The negotiations were based on the judgment that we were not winning the war, so time was not on our side and it was better to make a deal sooner rather than later."

By the end of the Trump administration, the Afghan government was backed by only about 2,500 US troops, several thousand NATO troops and an army of 18,000 contractors.

This small Western force was enough to enable the Afghan army to repel the Taliban, which was never able to capture and control any of the capitals of the 34 Afghan states before Biden announced the start of a full withdrawal in April 2021.

Some Washington circles wonder: Why did Biden go ahead with the withdrawal plan that he inherited from Trump?

It remains a mystery that there are no big, vociferous calls in the Democratic Party for a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, while Biden's top military advisers have clearly warned of the dangers of doing so.

In public testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and then-Central Command chief Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said they advised the Biden administration that unless the United States kept about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, the Afghan army would collapse.

Afghanistan suffers economically after the Taliban's control and the world's lack of recognition (Anatolia)

The Taliban's "failure" and Washington's responsibility

So far, the Americans believe that the Taliban has failed the basic tests of governance, and US officials who have worked in Afghanistan also believe that the movement has taken over sophisticated modern systems of accountability throughout Kabul, but it did not have the ability to manage them.

If we take one of the indicators of public health, maternal and child mortality has risen again, with the health system deprived of liquidity.

The World Health Organization warns that "all progress made in the health sector could be lost".

Experts around the world estimate that Afghanistan's economy is collapsing at a time when foreign investment is lacking.

More than half of the population of about 40 million people now live under what the World Food Program calls "acute food insecurity".

Meanwhile, US assistance has focused primarily on emergency humanitarian conditions, providing food and essential medicines, but this has left other major needs exposed.

International donors, especially the United Nations and the World Bank, face a dilemma in dealing with the Taliban government, not only because it is not recognized as a legitimate government, but because the movement and many of its leaders are subject to international sanctions.

The discovery that al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was hiding in a house under the control of the Taliban's interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, made it less likely that sanctions would be lifted anytime soon.

At the same time, there is little willingness among Americans to support any opposition to the Taliban, despite it being accused of violating constitutional and humanitarian standards and of publicly harboring American-wanted "terrorists".