OPINION - Strategic withdrawal: an Afghan tragedy

By Nursin A. Guney

- The author is a professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Nisantasi University.

ISTANBUL (AA) - The international community has recently witnessed a tragedy at the Kabul Airport. Many considered the Taliban’s rapid takeover of the country following the US’s withdrawal from Afghanistan as the beginning of the end. Panic caused by the US’s abrupt and unplanned withdrawal, as well as survival concerns, drove people to literally throw themselves on planes and helicopters in desperation. As a result, the list of Afghans who died in the Afghan war, which was effectively ended unilaterally when it became clear that it could not be won, has grown even longer.

- Done with nation-building

The fear emitted by the chaos at the Kabul Airport is quite understandable. The Taliban administration’s harsh practices in the 1990s, and where they led the country, are still fresh in people’s minds. In addition, those who were working for the Kabul government and collaborating with the Coalition Forces and the US to build a new Afghanistan, who also represented Afghanistan until recently, realized that they suddenly lost the support of the US and the Western world on the ground. In these recent times when no one knows what will happen to them, the people of Afghanistan know that the US has abandoned them, along with their dream of building a new country, a dream for which the US once needed the support and efforts of these very people. The people of the country are also aware that, during the open- and closed-door negotiations that the US holds or participates in, they occupy no place on the US’s list of concerns. They were not only deceived and abandoned but also ultimately ended up being blamed for the failure. In short, the elephants did not even have to fight for the grass in Kabul to suffer. A single elephant that turned around and left in accordance with its 2020 deal with the Taliban was enough to cause all this drama.

- Afghanistan is not only example

It is natural for the Biden administration to be chastised for these images and to struggle to find excuses to appease the American people. The Afghan people and the Trump administration made their way into Biden’s speeches as the usual suspects. What is unusual about the current state of affairs is that it came as a surprise, because while previous US administrations’ strategies of “bringing democracy” to various countries (including military interventions and occupation of these countries) were frequently staged with promises to the people of those countries, very few of these promises were kept. In fact, the US’s lack of credibility in its relations with its allies, as well as doubts about the usefulness of US military interventions, are far too serious to be explained away by the different identities of successive US presidents.

As we all know, since the beginning of the 20th century, when the United States first emerged as a global power, US presidents have made military interventions in a variety of lands outside the country’s borders for various reasons as part of the country’s foreign policy and national security strategy. Afghanistan is just one of many examples, including Vietnam, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Cuba, Nicaragua, Congo, and Cambodia, to name a few. Some of these interventions caused such havoc in terms of destruction, death, and the achievement of US objectives that Washington issued a slew of doctrines to ensure the political success of cross-border operations involving US military forces. While some of these doctrines advocated for a massive and destructive display of power, others advocated for regime change in order to create a new elite and bureaucratic class in the countries in question.

What currently distinguishes the Afghanistan example is not the suffering or the abandonment of allies/cooperative forces, but the US’s almost reckless refusal to acknowledge the true aims and means of this operation launched in 2001. According to President Biden, the United States has never intended to build a nation in Afghanistan. As a result, if the Afghans were not going to fight in their country’s ongoing war, allowing American soldiers to fight there was out of the question. We still have books in our libraries on nation building/state building pertaining to the US objectives in this most recent Afghanistan debacle. The stories that bureaucrats and technocrats who worked on Afghanistan’s construction have been telling us for the last 20 years are still fresh in our minds. The Biden administration is not only leaving those who believed in them empty-handed in the face of a power it declared “radical” on the ground until 2020, but it is also attempting to rewrite the political history of this failure. It expects everyone to forget about the past and remember things differently. And it is for this reason that the Afghanistan tragedy differs from other tragedies caused by interventionism. Why is the US placing at the center of Biden’s speech this impossible task of forgetting history? Because what happens in Afghanistan does not stay in Afghanistan. The credibility of the US is being severely harmed.

- US did not consult with its Western allies either

Of course, the Kabul government and the Afghan people are not the only ones who were abandoned, whose opinions were ignored, and who were not consulted. Western allies, from whom George W. Bush once sought support for himself -and thus the US- regarding his counter-terrorism strategy in Afghanistan, have also tasted the US’s “unilateral decision-making” method. We know that the Europeans disliked its flavor. Indeed, in the recent past, former US President Trump revealing his thoughts on NATO and European Union (EU) allies prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to declare that NATO was experiencing “brain death.” The fact that the US removed Thor and Jupiter missiles from NATO allies’ territories while competing with the USSR during the Cold War, and did so without informing these allies, is written in political history books, and it has made many European actors consider the importance of “strategic autonomy.” It is also known that the Biden administration made special efforts at the recent NATO Summit to dispel doubts and paint a family portrait. As a result, the crisis of confidence caused by this rapid operation to clean up Trump’s legacy and reduce US costs is not only more serious, but also more ironic.

In the meantime, after the US announced its plan to withdraw from Afghanistan, many European states seem to have jumped on board, pledging to leave Afghanistan as quickly as the US did. We read in the press about the allegations that various Western countries, which stand up for many liberal and global values such as European values, human and women’s rights, and employer responsibilities, evacuated their embassies, down to the last piece of furniture, without even giving notice to their Afghan employees. In short, those who were abandoned by the US in strategic planning are now abandoning whoever they can on the ground. We have not made an inch of progress since the Trump era, when the irresponsible strategies of the US became a Western problem. Certainly, some will see this new Western problem as an opportunity as well, because, after all, we are not in 2001 anymore. The New Cold War has now become visible on multiple fronts.

- Afghanistan of the new Cold War

The geopolitical rivalry between Russia, China, and the United States had begun in the Eastern Mediterranean, and a second front had been established in the Black Sea and the Caucasus. It would not be surprising to see the formation of a third front along the Central Asia-Afghanistan-South Asia axis following the withdrawal of the US. The Western world is already limping into this struggle due to the wounds suffered during the withdrawal. In addition, Europe continues to regard Afghanistan as a source of refugees and terrorism. The US and the EU will be unable to develop a policy that will bring stability to the region as long as they continue to base their calculations on the costs of terrorism, immigration, and failed nation-building efforts while ignoring the costs of failed Western strategies in Afghanistan.

It is highly likely that other rival powers, particularly the United States, will leave the fate of the Afghan people, who have been duped by the US, in the hands of the Taliban in the hope of reaping strategic benefits from this scheme today and in the future. In Afghanistan, even if the actors in the proxy – original power relationship change in this second Taliban era, which has already begun and will take place in the geopolitical struggle that will soon accelerate, the Afghan people will be the ones who suffer as a result of this rivalry. Ultimately, regardless of who wins the geopolitical battle, this is a story in which the loser has already been determined. Unfortunately, once the elephants do start to fight in Afghanistan, there will be no hope left for the already trampled grass.

The moral of the story is that all actors, both state and non-state, who are already acting as proxies for the US in other parts of the world should learn from the recent tragedy in Afghanistan.

*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.