OPINION - From the smokescreen of ‘counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan’ emerges a massive new crisis

By Mehmet A. Kanci

- The writer is a seasoned journalist who writes analyses on Turkish foreign policy.

ISTANBUL (AA) - With US President Joe Biden announcing on April 14, 2021, that his country and NATO members would withdraw their troops from Afghanistan, a new chapter in the history of the country was opened. What happened in the four months that followed, on the other hand, created nightmare scenarios for the international community. With the departure of US troops from the country, the Taliban, which controlled only the country’s rural areas as of early 2021, began to take control of the border areas along with Iran, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. In the first week of August, the organization captured five provincial centers in 72 hours. The Taliban are marching to power without repeating the mistakes of their first takeover in 1996, and they are not allowing the formation of a coalition capable of resisting them, such as the Northern Alliance. As of August 10, the Taliban had taken control of 85% of the country’s territory. But, how come US political and military decision-makers failed to anticipate the Taliban’s ability to upend the Afghan national government in such a short period of time? At what point did the calculations of the US, a superpower that experienced the failure to prevent communist North Vietnamese forces from capturing Saigon in 1975, go awry about the Taliban? Or did the US planning about the organization really go awry in the first place?

Could we truly describe the situation in Afghanistan that the US has created as “incompetence and lack of foresight”? Or has the US deliberately placed a Trojan horse on the doorsteps of Central Asia, South Asia, the Asia-Pacific region, and the Middle East? How did the international community suddenly inherit this ball of chaos of so many intertwined problems when they thought that peace would return to the region with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan?

- A sudden change in discourse

Let’s take a quick look at the statements made and the actions taken by the US Department of Defense and American diplomats between August 6-9 to get an idea of the answers to these questions. As the situation on the ground began to contradict their messages to the world, the US, which had previously believed (until August) that the Afghan national government could maintain the military balance on the ground with the air support provided by the US and persuade the Taliban to come to the negotiating table, has now completely changed the language it uses.

At a press conference on August 9, US Department of Defense Press Secretary John F. Kirby stated that the Taliban made some gains on the ground during former President Donald Trump’s administration as well, implying that the organization’s progress was not directly related to the Biden administration’s decisions. Contrary to US officials’ claims until ten days ago that the Taliban would not be able to take control of the provincial centers, Kirby stated that it is alarming that five provincial centers fell into the hands of the Taliban in 72 hours, and he placed the responsibility of protecting the cities on the Afghan people and the administration. Another significant statement made by the US Department of Defense representative concerned whether or not the US would continue to provide air support to the Afghan National Army after August 31. Kirby stated that answering this question in advance would be controversial, giving the impression that this support may also be limited. Although the US initiated air support using B-52 heavy bombers inflicted heavy losses on the Taliban, the operation’s cost makes it unsustainable in the long run. The US had used the destructive power of B-52 bombers in Vietnam as well, but all it had accomplished was to bring North Vietnam to the negotiating table. The likelihood of the same weapon having a similar effect on the Taliban is merely speculative. In fact, on August 8, the US administration dispatched Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad to Doha, Qatar’s capital, to assess the effects of the B-52 bombers on the Taliban and to stop the occupation of the provincial capitals. However, past experience suggests that the Taliban’s “Political Bureau” and its parent branch, the “Taliban Political Commission,” which held peace talks with Khalilzad in Doha, have limited clout. There is no concrete evidence that Taliban representatives in Doha influenced the “Taliban Military Commission” on the ground.

During the negotiations, the US has not had the opportunity to meet directly with Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s leader since 2016, or his Deputy for Political Affairs, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Likewise, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, who is in charge of the Taliban’s military operations, is a figure with whom the US has also been unable to directly contact. The US and the countries in the region have failed to establish a dialogue that extends beyond the fourth tier of the organization’s management structure. This situation creates a process in which the developments on the ground and the contents of the talks in Moscow, Tehran, and Doha move in completely different directions.

While countries such as the UK and China expect the Taliban to adopt more moderate policies in the hope of gaining international recognition, the organization is taking steps that are not so out of line with those taken in 1996 in order to establish their dominance in the country. Officials of the national government, members of the media, and teachers are targeted and assassinated, for example. Yet another example of the changing discourse of the US administration on Afghanistan was observed at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Friday, August 6. Deborah Lyons, the UN Secretary-Special General’s Representative for Afghanistan, declared that Afghanistan had reached a tipping point, as if they had only recently become aware of the Taliban’s human rights violations, with the group seizing control of more provincial centers.

The developments confirm that the US discourse on Afghanistan shifted dramatically in August. But, are these radical shifts in rhetoric sufficient to restore the rising levels of risk to where they were before April 14? Or is this just a desperate attempt to get the toothpaste, as it were, back into the tube?

- Geopolitical risks US is creating by withdrawing from Afghanistan

For the last 40 years, Afghanistan has been under constant occupation, conflict, and civil war, which has resulted in an endless migration movement. Afghanistan has a population of nearly 40 million people, with 2.8 million registered and unregistered Afghan citizens living in Pakistan. According to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of Afghans in Iran, which has received the second largest number of Afghan immigrants, is around 800,000. Unofficial data, however, suggests that this figure is actually close to 3 million. According to the UNHCR, there are over 200,000 Afghan citizens in Turkey. But the number of registered irregular Afghan migrants who arrived in Turkey between 2014 and 2021 is over 500,000. If the Taliban gains control of the entire country, it is considered inevitable that a large wave of migration from Afghanistan to Australia, Europe, and Central Asian republics will occur.

About 60% of the Afghan population today is made up of groups with ethnic and religious identities that would inevitably be in conflict with the Taliban’s government mentality. Afghanistan, where 43% of the population is under the age of 15, also has a high potential for migration in this regard. It would be useful to remember a plane hijacking incident that took place on February 6, 2000, in order to truly comprehend the risks that those seeking to flee the Taliban regime may be willing to take. During a domestic flight from Kabul to Mazar-i-Sharif, a Boeing 727 passenger jet operated by Ariana Afghan Airlines was hijacked and flown to the UK with its crew and 180 passengers by nine Afghan citizens trying to flee the Taliban regime. Under the current circumstances, it is not difficult to imagine Afghan citizens making far more dramatic attempts. It should also be noted that the irregular Afghan migrants currently arriving in Turkey from Iran are not part of the anticipated main migration wave. The majority of these people are attempting to reach Europe by taking advantage of the favorable weather and sea conditions of the summer before the great migration begins, not least in order to escape the economic crisis and the unmanageable COVID-19 situation in Iran as soon as possible. It is not hard to see that, if the main migration wave were to begin, the number of Afghan migrants would far outnumber those from Syria. The potential migration wave moving towards Europe, Australia, and the Central Asian republics would bring many deaths and hard-to-cover costs for the countries along the way. A migration wave estimated to reach millions would further complicate the balances for the Tehran administration, while there is already the possibility of new sanctions and conflicts against Iran due to allegations that the country has enough material to produce nuclear weapons within ten weeks.

With the Taliban’s advance, the uncontrolled movement of not only people but also large quantities of conventional weapons is on the agenda. As its unstoppable advance continues, the Taliban has captured large quantities of light and heavy weapons and vehicles supplied by Western countries to Afghan national security forces. British news outlets aired footage of mortar shell containers falling into the hands of the Taliban at the bases abandoned by the US. We can be certain that these weapons and ammunition, which are far in excess of the Taliban’s requirements, will be transferred to DAESH-linked groups and other terrorist organizations in the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Africa, and the Middle East in a short period of time. The proliferation of weapons emanating from Afghanistan will also feed groups that pose a direct threat to Russia and China.

The US argued that the operation launched in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was not technically an invasion, that they did not intend to build a nation, and that their sole goal was to eliminate al-Qaeda as a threat. And, in justifying their withdrawal decision, they stated that Afghanistan no longer posed a terrorist threat to the United States. Will, however, Afghanistan, which the Taliban and other DAESH-linked groups now see as a safe haven, not continue to pose a terrorist threat to Asia and the Middle East? The US appears to have decided that the over 1 trillion dollars it has spent in the last 20 years to keep Afghanistan under control is now the problem of the region’s countries, particularly Russia and China. By imposing this financial burden on its rivals, Washington is putting a Trojan horse on their doorsteps, one that will keep them busy both financially and in terms of security.

If the migration from Afghanistan continues in the direction of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, the instabilities in these countries, which are currently in conflict with each other over water resources, will worsen. As the food and water security of these countries would be threatened, the terrorist risk would increase along the southern and middle corridors of the Iron Silk Road of China, which extends all the way to Europe. The military drills carried out by Russia in order to meet the approaching threat at the borders of the Central Asian republics have already begun to impose new burdens on the defense budgets of the countries in the region as well as Russia.

- A 'gift' from US

The current picture, which has emerged in the last four months following US President Biden’s announcement that the US would withdraw from Afghanistan on April 14, hints at US efforts to present countries that it considers adversaries with “gifts” in the form of crises of various shapes and sizes disguised as “a lack of vision and incompetence” on the part of the US. The US will point to Turkey, Iran, Tajikistan, and Pakistan as targets for the migration of Afghan civilians in the first stage of the plan, while Russia and China will be tested with potential terrorist threats. Over the next two years, the threats will diversify, with their geographical spread gradually expanding. The socioeconomic and security issues that will be triggered by Afghan immigration and terrorism will create new political, economic, and ethnic problems in regions ranging from North Africa to Asia’s Pacific coasts.

While the US conducts the new two-front Cold War it has designed, Asian, Middle Eastern, and African countries will deplete their resources combatting the effects of the chaos unfolding before our eyes. There is still some time, albeit very little, to deal with the unpredictable consequences of the Afghanistan crisis for the countries that would be affected the most. The only way out is to form a coalition in order to fill the void left by the US and NATO’s withdrawal, not only militarily but also economically and in a humanitarian perspective, while the problem is still primarily in Afghan territory. Given that the US is deliberately confronting the international community with a crisis at a time when the UN is utterly incapable of meeting any of its goals, the conditions are ripe for Turkey to reach out to Afghanistan -- beyond just controlling the Kabul Airport -- to bring together countries from all over the world, from Australia to the European Union, and from China to India, around a common mission that goes beyond just contingency planning. Any interventions arranged after the Taliban takes over entire Afghanistan will be too late, and the resulting repercussions will knock on the doors of more than 100 countries, like a wild forest fire spreading from continent to continent simply because it was not put out where it started.

Translated from Turkish by Can Atalay

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency.