Biden’s withdrawal of troops ending 20 yrs. long ‘forever’ war in Afghanistan.
By: Neha Gajbhiye
On sept 11, 2001 a phone rang in GTC, the company providing telephone service on United airlines flights. Lisa Jefferson who took over the call talked with a calm, soft-spoken man for almost 13 mins during which they recited together lord’s prayer, psalm23 ‘‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me’’.
Al Qaeda suicide operatives hijacked and crashed united airlines flight 175 and American airlines flight 11 in the twin towers of world trade center and crashed American airlines flight 77 into the pentagon killing almost 3000 people including citizens of 78 countries.
Todd Beamer, who rang GTC as he didn’t want to worry his pregnant wife who was one of 38 passengers of United flight 93, the only flight which didn’t crash into the planned destination. Instead, all the passengers aboard fought the hijackers saving many lives but dying themselves in the process.
After 27 days President Bush along with UK and NATO forces soon joining in announced the military action on Oct. 7, 2001, he described “strikes against Al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.” Operation Enduring Freedom commenced.
America’s failing war
In the months following 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration thought they had bombed their way into a swift and brilliant victory into Afghanistan. The truth was, the Taliban hadn’t been defeated. After the key resources were diverted to the Iraq war, they again rose to full intensity. The situation was far more calamitous and America’s ambitions far more ambitious than they thought.
Since the British had first entered Helmand, one of the power bases of Taliban in 2006, every year had been bloodier and by every indicator worse than the previous. The British army was at its breaking point regularly describing its experience in Helmand as being the most intense fighting it had ever seen. Oct 2009 was the deadliest month of the war. Talk of liberating women and creating a democracy had evaporated. The new policy approved by President Obama had three far more modest objectives: deny Al- Qaeda safe haven, reverse Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government; and strengthen afghan security forces and government so that they could take responsibility for the country's future. But the question is billions of dollars were being spent. Brilliant minds were dedicated to the project, credibility of a superpower and NATO hung in balance. Such an effort with such high stakes couldn’t possibly result in so little.
Why the Afghanistan’s war is unwinnable
“To begin to understand how hard it was for the British / American to attempt to carry out this policy, imagine an Indian dropped in Chicago or a Brazilian dropped in Islamabad. Imagine asking them without speaking the language or having any idea who to trust, to create. To staff and monitor an entirely new system of government. What’s more, imagine asking them to do all this within six months while fighting war and having killed hundreds of civilians by mistake. This task was fallen upon soldiers, untrained for many of the roles. This surely guaranteed it could never succeed. It could only if led by right Afghans which it certainly was not.” – Ben Anderson, No worse enemy.
Afghanistan’s civil war and civilian support to Taliban.
Afghanistan’s political order began to break down with the overthrow of king Zahir khan by his cousin Mohammed Daoud khan in a bloodless 1973 coup. In mid-1970 Pakistan PM began to encourage afghan Islamic leaders to fight against the regime. In 1978, Daoud khan was killed in a coup of afghan’s communist party (PDPA). PDPA then pushed for socialist transformation by abolishing arranged marriages, promoting mass literacy and reforming land ownership. This undermined the traditional tribal order and provoked opposition from Islamic leaders across rural areas. The PDPA was beset by internal leadership differences and was weakened by an internal coup on sept 11, 1979. The Soviet Union sensing PDPA weakness intervened 3 months later. The entry of Soviet Union in Afghanistan prompted its cold war rivals to support the rebels fighting against the soviet backed democratic republic of Afghanistan. In contrast to the secular and socialist government which controlled the cities, the religiously motivated Mujahedin held sway in much of the countryside. The CIA worked closely with Pakistan’s inter service intelligence to funnel foreign support to Mujaheddin. The war also attracted Arab volunteers including Osama bin laden.
In may 1989, after the withdrawal of soviet military from Afghanistan, The PDPA regime under Najibullah weakened and eventually collapsed. With the political stage cleared of afghan socialists, the remaining Islamic warlords vied for power. By then, Osama left the country and foreign interest in the country also diminished. The mujahedeen armed to teeth now lacking a common enemy found an enemy in each other. The mujahideen were formed by collective participants of different ethnic groups of Muslims. The Tajiks, a minority; Hazaras, a sidelined minority; Pashtuns Muslims, the majority in Afghanistan and the Uzbek Muslims.
Rockets began to rain down on Kabul. In June 1992, there was heavy fighting in west Kabul among Pashtun forces and Hazaras. The shelling knocked down power lines, pulverized entire blocks of shops and homes. Pashtun militiamen were attacking hazara households breaking in shooting entire families and hazaras were retaliating by abducting Pashtun civilians, raping Pashtun girls, shelling Pashtun neighborhoods killing indiscriminately. In Jan 1994, Dostum the Uzbek commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar joined. Together, they fired on Masoud and Rabbani forces at the ministry of defense and presidential palace. The streets became littered with bodies, glass and crumpled chunks of metal. There was looting, murder and increasingly rape which was used to reward militiamen and intimidate civilians. Women were killing themselves and men in the name of honor were killing their wives and daughters if they had been raped by militia.
In 1994, Mullah Omar, a Pashtun mujahideen who taught a Pakistani madrassa returned to Afghanistan and founded the Taliban. His followers were religious students known as Talib and they sought to end warlordism through strict adherence to Islamic law. In October 1994, when Taliban arrived people of Afghanistan literally celebrated thinking The Taliban were pure and incorruptible unlike greedy mujahideen commanders. They’ll bring peace and order, afghan civilians thought. Soon Najibullah was executed and Afghanistan was declared the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan.
The main motive of all British, American and NATO forces was to defeat the Taliban and the only way to do that was by gaining the support and trust of afghan civilians. If the people of Afghanistan abandoned the Taliban completely, the Taliban would have no sea to swim in. The Taliban forced their sharia rule on civilians and anyone who failed to comply or worse revolted was publicly executed or stoned to death.
A major factor in losing this war was the inability of international troops to liberate civilians from fear and influence of Taliban and gain trust of local people.
Following are some reasons for this inability-
Air strikes and civilian casualties- 25 civilians had been killed by a 500lb bomb dropped on a building where Taliban had been hiding and firing. The Taliban rounded the family and led them into a building and started firing knowing that the troops would respond. President Karzai denounced the incident saying, Afghan life is not cheap and should not be treated as such. The deaths took toll to almost 250 in 2007.The family of civilians were then given compensation but when asked by a civilian how this compensation helps, he said “I lost 20 people and was given 2 million Afghanis (46000$). It was before 12:30 at night when forces came to our area. When the fighting was over, I had put all family and children to sleep. Later a jet came and dropped bombs on our house. I moved the children away and came back to rescue those under the debris. The children outside were so frightened they started running away. The plane shot them one by one. All I want is security, whether troops bring it or Taliban. We are not supporting war; we support peace and security. If troops bring it, they are my king. I was given this money but it means nothing to me. I am grateful that president Bush paid attention to us but if You gave someone the whole world it won’t bring back a lost life.
Arming of the wrong Afghan representative by International troops- Early on, there was a realistic hope that international intervention would put an end to civil war. Instead, desperate for local support and lack of proper knowledge about Afghanistan’s civil war, American and British troops handed the control to the police, army and intelligence services of Northern alliance commanders. The people of Afghanistan watched aghast as the same old warlords and corrupt officials appeared again.
Corruption in Afghan local police- Hundreds and millions of dollars in reconstruction and investment money was stolen or misappropriated. There were more police on the payroll than actually existed. Some of those had been found setting up unofficial checkpoints where they taxed locals until they had enough money to get high. Ninety percent crime in Helmand province was committed by the Afghan national police.
Opium drugs – The Taliban had successfully banned opium farming when they were in power yet now, they earn significant amounts from it. They curried favor with the local people by protecting their crops, helping smugglers and offering poor farmers loans. Helmand’s 2006 harvest was the world’s largest single producer of illicit drugs outdoing entire countries like Colombia and Burma.
President Joe Biden said on 14 April that he will withdraw remaining U.S. troops from the “forever war” in Afghanistan, declaring that the Sept. 11 attacks cannot justify American forces still being there 20 years after the deadliest terror assault on the United States. The drawdown would begin rather than conclude by May 1, which has been the deadline for full withdrawal under a peace agreement the Trump administration reached with the Taliban last year. While Mr. Biden’s decision keeps U.S. forces in Afghanistan four months longer than initially planned, it sets a firm end to two decades of war that killed more than 2,200 U.S. troops, wounded 20,000, and cost as much as $1 trillion
The Peace Agreement and it’s serious problems
On February 29, 2020, in Doha, Qatar the United States and the Afghan Taliban signed a peace agreement designed to end the long war in Afghanistan. The agreement, officially titled “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan'', is barely over 3 pages long and written in three languages; Dari, Pashto, and English. It has two parts; the Taliban agree that “ Afghan soil will not be used against the security of the United States and its allies' ' and the united states agree to the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan. The signing of the agreement was procceded by a 7 day “reduction in violence”, a term used instead of a “ceasefire”, a term the Taliban objected to, in part because a “ceasefire” suggested an end of hostilities to which the Taliban were not ready to commit. Specifically, the agreement states that the United States and the Coalition forces will withdraw all military personnel, including both military and “non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel'' within fourteen months following the signing of the agreement. The agreement further specifies that the United States forces in Afghanistan be reduced to 8,600 within the first 135 days after the signing of the agreement and that the United States and the Coalition will withdraw all forces from 5 military bases, also within the first 135 days after the agreement is signed. In addition, the United States and the Coalition forces must, according to the agreement, vacate all military bases and withdraw the remaining military personnel within nine and a half months after the signing of the agreement, which is by the middle of November 2020.
The agreement also specifies that the Taliban and the Afghan government will begin a “dialogue and negotiation” on March 10, 2020, a date which has already passed. The specific topics of this “dialogue and negotiation” is not specified, but it is assumed to include at a minimum the role of the Taliban in a future Afghan government, the role of Islamic law in the Afghan constitution, the protection and rights of women and other minorities, and, ultimately, the leadership of the country. As a precursor to the intra-Afghan negotiations the agreement states the United States agrees to “work with all relevant sides” on the release of combat and political prisoners. The agreement specified that by March 10, 2020, the Afghan government would release 5000 Taliban prisoners and that the Taliban would release 1000 Afghan prisoners. The prisoner release is described as a “confidence builder” to jumpstart discussions between the Taliban and the Afghan government.
Finally, the agreement states that the United States will start diplomatic discussions with the United Nations to remove members of the Taliban from the “sanctions list”.
No inclusion and participation of Afghan government in the peace agreement.
There are a number of snags that may keep the agreement from being fully implemented. For one, the Afghan government was not a party to the negotiations because of the insistence of Taliban that the government is not legitimate. Afghan president Ashraf Ghani does not support many of the parts of the agreement and has objected to taking the next steps necessary to move the peace process ahead. This includes the release of Taliban prisoners, which he has to date not done, although he has proposed a more modest release which The Taliban has not accepted.
Afghan presidential elections
The last Afghan presidential election has been contested and resulted in a split and dysfunctional government in Kabul. With two opposing candidates declaring themselves winners, no one is in charge in Kabul. Since the next stage of the peace agreement is for talks to take place between the Taliban and the Afghan government, a split and fractured government in Kabul makes that next step difficult.
Taliban
While it is not clear who speaks for the Afghan government, it is also not clear who speaks for the Taliban. The Taliban is not a single united organization but is made up of various commanders and militia across Afghanistan, many with conflicting ideas about the war and now about the peace agreement. The Taliban leaders who negotiated the peace agreement are from the Taliban leadership group referred to as the Quetta Shura. This group operates out of Pakistan and is largely a political and economic organization. Although these leaders exert tremendous power within the Taliban, they have little or no military experience and are therefore distrusted by commanders on field. This tension between the Taliban leadership came to a head on February 29, 2020, when the political leadership called for a reduction in violence as a leadup to the signing of the agreement. Rather than observe the reduction in violence many commanders in the country continued to attack.
Serious threat to women progress
While in power the Taliban became notorious internationally for their sexism and violence against women. Their stated motive was to create a "secure environment where the chastity and dignity of women may once again be sacrosanct",
From the age of eight onward, girls in Afghanistan were not allowed to be in direct contact with males other than a close "blood relative", husband, or in-law Other restrictions for women were:
Women should not appear in the streets without a blood relative or wearing a burqa.
Women should not wear high-heeled shoes as no man should hear a woman's footsteps lest it excite him.
Women must not speak loudly in public as no stranger should hear a woman's voice.
All ground and first-floor residential windows should be painted over or screened to prevent women from being visible from the street.
Photographing, filming and displaying pictures of females in newspapers, books, shops or the home was banned.
The modification of any place names that included the word "women". For example, "women's garden" was renamed "spring garden".
Women were forbidden to appear on the balconies of their apartments or houses.
Ban on women's presence on radio, television or at public gatherings of any kind.
Similar cruel restrictions were laid on education, employment and mobility. The post-Taliban constitution in 2004 gave Afghan women all kinds of rights, and the post-Taliban political dispensation brought social and economic growth that significantly improved their socio-economic condition. From a collapsed health care system with essentially no medical services available to women during the Taliban years, the post-Taliban regime constructed 3,135 functional health facilities by 2018, giving 87 percent of Afghan people access to a medical facility within two hours distance—at least in theory, because intensifying Taliban, militia, and criminal violence has made travel on roads increasingly unsafe.3In 2003, fewer than 10 percent of girls were enrolled in primary schools; by 2017, that number had grown to 33 percent4—not enough, but progress still—while female enrollment in secondary education grew from six percent in 2003 to 39 percent in 2017.5 Thus, 3.5 million Afghan girls were in school with 100,000 studying in universities. However, ahead of US withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, women locals are fearing the worst.
Yet despite these potential issues, the main goal of the United States has been to remove its troops from Afghanistan. This goal has been achieved; What happens to Afghanistan is a question which nobody dares to answer.
Taliban’s definition of peace is very different from that of the US or the Afghan government. The Taliban believes that once their Islamic Emirate is restored, peace is restored,” said Haqqani, who currently is Director for South and Central Asia at Hudson Institution.
After reading the brutal tales of Afghanistan, one question constantly lingers in my mind-How could he, every possession lost every value destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, hourly expecting extermination how could he find life worth preserving? The answer is HOPE. The Taliban can take everything from a common man but not his attitude of life, The story of Afghanistan is of one invader after another, Macedonians, Sassanians, Arabs ,Mongols , Soviets and now Americans but they are like the walls of an age old fortress. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.
Citations -
[ The final call from flight 93] By CBS news
[1] [Why the US got involved in Afghanistan - and why it's been difficult to get out] By ABC News
[2] [Agreement between US and Taliban has no elements of peace,says haqqani] By Indian Express
[3][The Afghan Peace Agreement and Its Problems] By E-international relations
[4][Taliban treatment of women.] By Wikiwand
[5][The fate of women’s right in Afghanistan] By Brookings
[6][No worse enemy][hardcover book] By Ben Anderson
[7][A thousand splendid suns][hardcover book] By Khaled Hosseini