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IN one of his earliest published works, the World War I poet Wilfred Owen describes a trainload of young Englishmen unceremoniously being dispatched to the front. A line from that poem came to mind when the news broke about American forces abandoning their Bagram airbase in the dead of night: “So secretly, like wrongs hushed up, they went.”
It was a few hours before the Afghan commander expected to take charge of Bagram realised that his allies had pulled the plug. The ensuing blackout served as a signal to would-be looters on the periphery of the base, who plundered it before the local troops woke up.
US military spokesmen have cited ‘security reasons’ as an explanation for the manner of their exit, although it’s highly unlikely the Taliban would have sought to interfere with what for them is a dream come true. Others may see it as the preamble to a recurring nightmare.
At a rather more carefully choreographed event two days ago, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Gen Austin Miller, stepped down, signalling the end is nigh for what 20 years ago was initially dubbed Operation Infinite Justice. Once it dawned on the folks in Washington that Muslims might not take kindly to the appropriation of what they see as a divine attribute, it became Operation Enduring Freedom.
Afghanistan’s ordeal isn’t over yet.
Inevitably, it turned out to be neither one nor the other. And it’s not yet completely clear whether what has been the longest continuous military engagement for the US and many of its allies is in fact over. At the ceremony in Kabul, Gen Kenneth McKenzie, who took over from Miller, ominously declared: “It’s not the end of the story. It’s the end of a chapter.”
That comment is open to interpretation, but there’s been talk of leaving behind a residual force, and leaving open the prospect of air strikes.
President Joe Biden, once an enthusiastic proponent of the mission — “I can’t think of any war since World War II more justified,” he declared in 2006 — has lately been resisting pressure to prolong it. Whether he will be able to maintain that stance if the Taliban appear to be on the verge of recapturing Kabul — which could occur within months — remains to be seen.
The Taliban’s claim of controlling 85 per cent of Afghanistan may be an exaggeration, but in recent months their advances, often in the face of little or no resistance, have been decidedly more numerous than their setbacks. Their restoration to the helm of affairs in the Afghan capital is widely seen as not just plausible but merely a matter of time.
The Taliban have of late also mounted a diplomatic offensive, seeking to convince Afghanistan’s key neighbours that their ascendancy would not pose any cross-border risks, and that they would not permit Afghan territory to be used for attacks on any other nation. Even if that commitment is taken at face value, it’s hard to tell whether it applies to what is effectively their birthplace and second home, Pakistan.
Russia and Iran are wary, but also hoping that engagement with the Taliban will forestall any hostile actions. China and India also have cause for concern. And it is unlikely that the powers that be in Islamabad perceive the Taliban quite as kindly as they did a quarter-century ago, when they were seen as a means of propelling Pakistan’s ‘strategic depth’.
Reports about the recrudescence of rampant misogyny in regions the Taliban have recaptured point to the limits of their evolution in the two decades since they were evicted from Kabul. But then, the list of lessons that the Americans ignored when they decided to invade Afghanistan is too lengthy to accommodate.
Suffice it to say that it covers not just the Afghan tradition of armed resistance against a range of foreign invaders, notably the British in the 19th century, but also the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, from their monumentally mistaken invasion in 1979 to their ignominious exit a decade later — as well as the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia’s irresponsibility, in their anti-communist zeal, in feeding the monster of religious fanaticism that, in various ways, came back to bite them. And one can hardly overlook the sprawling record of maliciously misguided American interventions from Central America to Indochina.
It should have been obvious 20 years ago that any attempt to remake Afghanistan was a doomed enterprise. Two decades and thousands of deaths later, it’s far from clear that very many lessons have been learned. And there’s reason to doubt whether any that might have been learned in passing will long be remembered.
There’s plenty of blame to be shared for the horrors Afghans have endured in the past half century. And, sadly, so far little hope of recompense. But prolonging the Western intervention wouldn’t help anyone in the long run, except perhaps the Taliban.
Published in Dawn, July 14th, 2021
