David zucchino
08/18/2021 10:46 AM
Clarín.com
The New York Times International Weekly
Updated 08/18/2021 10:50 AM
After nearly two decades of war in Afghanistan and just weeks before the scheduled withdrawal of US forces, the Taliban regained power in the capital Kabul on Sunday, overthrowing the government and sending thousands of people into a desperate race to escape. from the country.
The fall of Kabul erased the
last vestige of government control
after a fierce Taliban offensive that took one major city after another in a matter of days.
President
Ashraf Ghani
fled the country on Sunday.
People greet Taliban fighters arriving in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 15, 2021. Photo Jim Huylebroek / The New York Times.
Hours later, the Taliban leaders took their place in the presidential palace.
The Taliban's military campaign, which has lasted all summer, has forced the surrender of the Afghan government forces and the beginning of a general withdrawal.
Government troops abandoned dozens of outposts and bases, often abandoning weapons and equipment.
In many cases,
they surrendered without a fight
, sometimes at the intercession of village elders sent by the Taliban.
Thousands of Afghans, fearful of retaliatory killings, tried to flee the country on Monday and sought refuge at Kabul International Airport, which was in the hands of foreign military forces trying to help with evacuations.
The
collapse
of the Afghan government, after the United States invested billions of dollars to support the Afghan security forces, gave a
violent climax
to the US military mission in its longest war.
It is a combat mission that has hunted down four presidents, which resulted in multiple American casualties, clashes with a ruthless enemy, and deals with an Afghan government partner who used to be corrupt and confused.
The planned US withdrawal
In mid-April, US President
Joe Biden
announced that all US troops would leave the country before 9/11 and declared that his country had long
fulfilled
its mission of denying terrorists a safe haven in Afghanistan.
Biden acknowledged that after nearly 20 years of war - America's
longest
abroad - it was clear that the US military could not transform Afghanistan into a modern, stable democracy.
Responding in July to critics of the pullout, the president said: “Let me ask those who wanted us to stay:
How many more?
How many thousands more daughters and sons in the United States are willing to risk?
The US government plans to leave some
650 soldiers
to guard the US embassy in Kabul.
On Sunday night, the State Department said all embassy staff had been evacuated to the airport.
On Monday, US forces guarded Kabul airport as panic and terror gripped the Taliban-controlled city.
Residents began to
cover up
advertisements and posters of women in beauty salons with paint.
Taliban fighters detained some police officers.
In
Kunduz
, which fell on August 8, the Taliban set up checkpoints and went door to door in search of public officials, threatening to punish those who did not go to work.
And across the country, Afghan officials were filmed
handing over power
to Taliban leaders.
Former President
Hamid Karzai
said he had formed a council with other political leaders to coordinate a
peaceful transition
to a new Taliban government.
"This unfolded
more quickly
than we had anticipated," Biden said in a speech Monday, adding that he stands by his decision to end US military involvement in Afghanistan.
Why did the United States invade Afghanistan?
Weeks after
al Qaeda
attacked the United States on September 11, President
George W. Bush
announced that US forces had launched attacks against the terrorist group and Taliban targets in Afghanistan.
Bush warned that the Taliban, who then ruled most of Afghanistan, had
rejected
his demand to hand over al Qaeda leaders who planned the attacks from bases inside Afghanistan.
He said he intended to bring al Qaeda leaders to justice, adding:
"And now the Taliban
will pay the price
."
"These carefully directed actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a base of operations for terrorists, and to attack the military capabilities of the Taliban regime," the president said.
Already then, the US president warned that
Operation Enduring Freedom
would mean "a long campaign like we have never seen before."
In December 2001, the leader of Qaeda,
Osama bin Laden
, and other top brass had fled to safety in Pakistan, a
nominal ally
of the United States.
They were not pursued by US forces, and Pakistan eventually became a safe haven for Taliban commanders and fighters, who in the following years crossed the border to attack US and Afghan forces.
Inside Afghanistan, US troops quickly toppled the Taliban government and crushed its fighting forces.
In December 2001, the Taliban spokesman offered to surrender unconditionally, an act that was rejected by the United States.
In May 2003, then-Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld
announced the end of major combat operations in the country.
How has the mission in Afghanistan evolved?
After defeating the Taliban, the United States and NATO set about
rebuilding
a failed state and establishing a Western-style democracy, spending billions trying to rebuild a desperately poor country that had already been devastated by two decades of war. first during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and then during the civil war.
There were some initial successes.
A pro-Western government was installed.
New schools, hospitals and public facilities were built.
Thousands of girls, excluded from education under the Taliban regime, attended school.
The
women
, largely confined to their homes by the Taliban, went to university, entered the workforce, and joined Parliament and the government.
Vigorous
and independent
media
emerged
.
Yet
corruption was rampant,
with hundreds of millions of dollars in rebuilding and investment money stolen or embezzled.
The government proved incapable of satisfying the most basic needs of its citizens.
Often his tenure hardly extended beyond the capital, Kabul, and other major cities.
In 2003, with
8,000
US
troops
in Afghanistan, the United States began shifting combat resources to the Iraq war, which began in March of that year.
What happened on the battlefield?
The Taliban
rebuilt their combat capabilities,
despite the steady flow of US and NATO troops.
In 2009, President
Barack Obama
deployed thousands more troops to Afghanistan as part of a "surge," reaching nearly 100,000 by mid-2010.
But the Taliban continued to grow stronger, inflicting
significant casualties
on the Afghan security forces despite US combat power and air strikes.
In May 2011,
Osama bin Laden was killed by a US Navy
SEAL team
at a compound in
Abbottabad, Pakistan,
where he had lived for years near a Pakistani military training academy.
In June, Obama announced that he would begin withdrawing US forces and that he would hand over responsibility for security to Afghans in 2014.
By then, the Pentagon had concluded that the war could not be won militarily and that only a negotiated agreement could end the conflict, the third in three centuries in which a world power has been involved.
Afghan fighters
defeated the British army in the 19th century and the Russian in the 20th century.
With the war at a
standstill
, Obama ended major combat operations on December 31, 2014 and went on to train and assist Afghan security forces.
Almost three years later, President
Donald Trump
said that although his first instinct had been to withdraw all troops, he would nonetheless continue the war.
He stressed that any troop withdrawal would be based on combat conditions
, not on predetermined time frames.
But the Trump administration had also been talking to the Taliban since 2018, leading to formal negotiations that excluded the Afghan government, led by President
Ashraf Ghani.
What is the status of the peace talks?
In February 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement with the Taliban calling for the departure of all US forces from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, however, Biden extended that deadline.
In return, the Taliban pledged to
cut ties
with terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and the
Islamic State
affiliate
in Afghanistan, reduce violence, and negotiate with the US-backed Afghan government.
But the agreement did not include enforcement measures to force the Taliban to honor their promises.
And with the Afghan government excluded from the agreement between the United States and the Taliban, relations with the United States became
strained.
After the agreement was signed, the Taliban stopped attacking US troops and refrained from committing major terrorist attacks in Afghan cities.
The United States reduced air support to government forces, generally limiting it to cases where Afghan troops were in danger of being overwhelmed.
The main goals of the 2020 deal were for Afghan leaders and the Taliban to negotiate a political roadmap for a new government and a new constitution, reduce violence, and ultimately forge a lasting ceasefire.
But the government accused the Taliban of
murdering
government officials and members of the security forces, civil society defenders, journalists and human rights workers, including several women who were shot in broad daylight.
Due to their strong position on the battlefield and the withdrawal of US troops, the Taliban have maintained the upper hand in talks with the Afghan government, which began in September in Doha, Qatar, but have stalled ever since.
The
Pentagon
has said the militants have failed to deliver on promises to reduce violence or cut ties with terrorist groups.
Can the Afghan security forces control the Taliban without US troops?
Military and police units have been hampered by desertions, low recruitment rates, poor morale and leadership, and theft of pay and material by commanders.
They have suffered a high
rate of casualties
, which US commanders have said is not sustainable.
Although the United States has spent at least $ 4 billion a year on the Afghan military, a classified intelligence services report that was presented to the Biden government this spring said Afghanistan could fall largely under the control of the Taliban in a
period of two to three years
after the departure of the international forces.
But the fall was much faster.
"Afghan political leaders surrendered and fled the country," Biden said Monday, accusing the military of laying down its arms after two decades of American training.
"If anything, the events of the past week
reinforce
that ending US military involvement in Afghanistan was the right decision."
When Taliban fighters seized provincial capitals last week, government counterattacks struggled to retake a handful of bases and districts.
Some former Afghan warlords mobilized private militias while many joined voluntary militias, many of them armed and financed by the government.
But the Taliban managed to seize a number of provincial capitals before reaching Kabul on Sunday, a frightening event for many who thought they could build a life under the protection of their American allies.
The Taliban said their forces were there to
ensure public order and safety
, and that they were seeking to engage with other world powers, including Russia and China, in part for financial support.
Jacey Fortin, Carlotta Gall and Alan Yuhas contributed to this report.
Taliban lining up at the Bagram military base before being released in May last year.
(Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times)
c.2021 The New York Times Company
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