Will Kabul Fall?
As the US and NATO forces leave Afghanistan they leave behind the Afghan people in a state of profound uncertainty as the Taliban moves forward capturing more territory.
End of the Forever Wars
First published on 10th July 2021
On the night of 6th July, at the Bagram Airbase of Afghanistan, the largest of all such installments, US troops turned off the lights and slipped away in silence without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander.
As the Taliban is capturing more and more territory and the Afghan security forces are fleeing to Tajikistan, the US is eager to leave before the negotiated date of September 11, with president Joe Biden defending his decision by saying, “I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome.”
Biden also said that nation building - the process of formation of a sovereign nation-state with a common national identity and institutions such as an army, a bureaucracy, a legal system, and civil society - was never the goal of US intervention in Afghanistan. The US intervention in Afghanistan started in the 1980s when it armed the mujaheddin to fight a proxy war with the Soviets during the Cold War. Then in late 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, the US sent its military to help its allies overthrow the Taliban government to prevent further terrorist attacks on the homeland.
As the US prepares to confront an aggressive China and given the reduced threat from terrorism, the Trump and Biden administrations have been insistent on troop withdrawal. Though the Americans missed major opportunities of rebuilding Afghanistan, and now in their absence a civil war seems imminent, at the end of the day it’s up to the Afghan government and the Taliban to negotiate a power-sharing agreement amongst themselves and ensure peace for the citizens.