P Kharel

A breach against a normal course makes many errors. Desire and decision to plug it require foresight and matching measures. The Joe Biden administration in the United States last week announced that the remaining 10,000 American troops in Afghanistan would be recalled home by September 11. This came two months ahead of the May deadline set by President Donald Trump during his 2020 election campaign.
Biden seized the opportunity to peg his strategy to his predecessor’s pledge but with a very convincing tone, even if the deadline has been extended by four months. The new administration’s declaration has impressed the American press and public that this time the promise is for real. But some quarters are worried that withdrawal without ensuring the necessary security environment in that poverty-stricken, landlocked, war-ravaged but strategically placed South Asian country could push back the “gains” made these past two decades.
However, going by the reactions of the US press and public in general, the decision to quit has no better alternative. When the US-led foreign troops, in 2001, invaded that non-aligned country while and the Taliban regime fled Kabul to wage a guerrilla war against the “foreign devils”, the US and more than 40 other countries that joined the “War on Terror” did not expect the Taliban to withstand the onslaught for more than a few years. They turned out to be wrong in their arrogant calculations.

High price
The invading forces had forgotten the Afghan history of having rejected, repelled and defeated all foreign forces wanting to govern the highly nationalist population. The consequence for choosing to overlook the catalogue of such instances made especially the US pay a high price in terms of casualties, money and credibility.
Blatant ignorance of the fate that eventually became clear within the first decade of the war showed how they foolishly brushed aside the warnings they issued against the Soviet Union that sent its troops in Afghanistan in 1979 to install Moscow’s puppet government in Kabul. The long guerrilla war unleashed by the Mujahedeen guerrillas having inflicted a bitter lesson on the communist superpower, Moscow pulled back a decade later. It was the height of irony that history repeated itself 12 years later, when the Americans suffered a bleeding wound for not a decade but twice that duration.
Hence, Washington should not opt for financing proxy wars, as it did in the 1980s by aiding the various guerrilla groups to harass, hurt and embarrass the Soviet communists; it will only fuel animosity against not only the US but all its allies that took part in the initial period of invasion. The US withdrawal deadline for September 11 coincides with the Al-Qaeda attacks on American installations in 2001. It will go down as an appropriate decision, whatever the aftermath. It is none of American - or any other country’s - business to invade and interfere in another independent country.
Obama, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for reasons not exactly matching the prestige attached to it, could not live up to the far less arduous task of calling it quits in the protracted war seven seas away. That might be the reason why Americans do not make much ado about the award conferred on him. Known for referring to the pages of history when it suits them, the next course of stand and moves originating in Washington and other capitals that sent troops to Afghanistan should exercise restraint regarding their desire to impose their definitions and interpretations of what is best for the Afghan people.
Twenty years of fighting cost more than one trillion dollars to the US war chest and erosion in its international image for once again returning home without the success it intended. The invasion started as “Operation Enduring Freedom” until 2014, only to be recoded “Operation Freedom’s Sentinel” since 2015. Before another “Freedom” sequel could prolong the conflict, the 78-year-old Biden in his first 90 days in office sought a space in history for at least ending the war in which he, in the first place, had no hand in initiating it. He is the fourth president in office in the course of what has come to be known as the “never-ending war”.
Trump missed the opportunity to end the war, just as his two predecessors Obama and George W. Bush had frittered away opportunities to leave Afghanistan with a measure of dignity. After tracking down Osama bin Laden’s precise whereabouts in Pakistan’s Abbottabad, Obama gave the order to kill the Al Qaeda head. In fact, he watched live, on a visual screen in Washington in May 2011, the raid in which the Al Qaeda leader was killed. Had Obama ordered his troops to wind up in Afghanistan shortly after Bin Laden’s end, he would have found a more shining space on this score, and American people would have appreciated it and ensured a pride of place in their memory.
Known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan during the Taliban rule in 1996-2001, Afghanistan might at long last witness the foreign troops off their land. Now, what next? The course should be in keeping with what all concerned parties have learnt from the war that claimed at least 150,000 lives, mostly civilians’.

Don’t wreck it now
Although the latest declaration from Washington does not guarantee complete normalcy, there is a sense of relief in the US, the 40-plus countries that joined the war in earlier phase, and the Afghans in general. Rather than to suffer continued stalemate which only drained American taxpayers’ money for so long and incur a running embarrassment on the international stage, the No. 1 superpower by autumn will at least have its bleeding wound stop.
Whatever the temptation to notch up political points as justification for the horrendous armed conflict, it would be futile to make lofty sounds of America’s international obligation as pretext for supporting a proxy war if and when the Taliban returns to Kabul’s seat of power.
Shortly after Donald Trump was declared winner in the 2016 presidential elections, The New York Times carried an analysis: “The United States is trying to extricate itself from Afghanistan. Afghans are being left to fight their own fight.” So be it. Let the United Nations take care of it, that is, if need be.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)