US Retreat Pushes Afghanistan Back Into The Dark Ages
05 Sep 2021
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Not just that, the US and its allies have taken home enough of the lesser Talibans so that liberal democrats in those countries can nurture refugee-driven unrest, to challenge and destabilise governments there.
It took 20 years and a democrat President, Joe Biden, for the United States to own up the illegitimate child of the US-Pakistan alliance, Taliban. And, by abandoning the elected Afghan government and leaving a weak Afghan army to the mercy of the Pakistan-backed insurgents, the Afghan people have now been pushed back into the dark ages.
The American administration has partially succeeded in legitimising the Taliban’s authority over Afghanistan. Taliban also inherited billions of dollars worth US defence equipment and infrastructure that the US left behind.
Not just that, the US and its allies have taken home enough of the lesser Talibans so that liberal democrats in those countries can nurture refugee-driven unrest, to challenge and destabilise governments there.
Taliban has already grabbed most of the fire power of Afghan forces, including military bases, US-supplied combat aircraft, helicopters, guns, ammunition and other modern military equipment as they overran Afghan forces who failed to defend provincial capitals and even the national capital Kabul.
Pentagon, however, claims that all those military equipment that the US forces left behind in Afghanistan are without fir power.
The United States either failed in its strategy or deliberately created a puppet force in Afghanistan that often turned out to be corrupt as well, thereby helping Taliban to gain an upper hand.
Biden now has only to defend his action before the world – which he will be able to force on the onlookers with support from close Nato allies and Taliban backers like China, Pakistan and most of the Islamic world.
Biden’s defence that the United States does not want to fight a war in Afghanistan that the Afghan people do not want is itself testimony for the US desire to see the Taliban taking control of the country. What else would explain the hasty withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and Taliban's blitzkrieg in the war-torn region.
"If anything, the developments of the past week reinforce that ending US military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision," Biden said as US forces withdrew.
"American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves."
"How many more American lives is it worth?" asked the Democrat president.
And, despite the hasty pull-out, he said, "there was never a good time to withdraw US forces".
Biden also claimed to have inherited a deal negotiated with the Taliban under former President Donald Trump where the US had agreed to withdraw from Afghanistan by May of this year.
On Sunday, a day before the Taliban officially entered the Afghan capital Kabul and declared victory, President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.
The militants' return to power takes the region back to the dark ages where the people have to obey the diktats of the so-called guardians of Islamic culture.
A majority of the Afghan people who hoped that the involvement of the United States and its allies would help bring the Taliban nightmare to an end are now left to fend for themselves.
Many tried to escape and thronged the Kabul airport when it was under the control of the US forces. While hundreds of Afghans escaped to countries like Qatar, the United Kingdom, Germany and other western countries in military cargo flights, some who were desperate to escape the clutches of the Taliban hanged on to moving military transporter aircraft. Video footage showed at least two of them falling off a flight.
Images provided by `Defense One’ on 15 August 2021 showed hundreds of Afghans fleeing Kabul onboard an American C-17 cargo plane.
For several others finding an exit route itself is an arduous task in a land-locked region that is also mostly mountainous.
Perhaps, the United States underestimated the fact the will to win a war is more important than military equipment. The Taliban insurgents, with smaller numbers, less sophisticated weaponry and no air power, proved a superior force.
It is equally strange that even after President Joe Biden announced in April that he was withdrawing all US troops, the intelligence agencies did not foresee a Taliban offensive that would decimate Afghan forces that has no backing.
The only hope for Afghans is the popular resistance to the Taliban takeover building up across Afghanistan. Video footages share in social media showed hundreds protesting in the streets waving the national flag.
Reports said a majority of residents in Jalalabad were resisting the replacement of Afghanistan’s national flag in the city by the Taliban banner. At least two people have been reported killed and 12 injured in a shoot-out during the protests in Jalalabad.
Now it has taken more assertive form with the resistance group Northern Alliance giving a tough fight to Pak-Afghan Taliban in the Panjshir Valley on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
