The United States ended its mission in Afghanistan at dawn on August 31 with the departure from Kabul of the last planes and troops that it was keeping in the country at the limit that they had set with the Taliban.
Their withdrawal has ended the twenty-year war that began after the September 11 attacks under the operation they called
Enduring Freedom
with the promise of bringing peace and democracy to the Afghan people.
But the system it promised has collapsed in a matter of days, and the United States has left behind
internal conflicts and the same impoverished population now under a Taliban regime, a relentless theocracy in which the
Sharia
, the most extreme interpretation of the Koran,
rules
.
No one expected the Taliban to take power so quickly.
Just five days before his entry into Kabul, the Afghan government's ambassador himself was confident that "the national forces were working very hard on the front line, committed to defending their people."
How did we get here?
The United States played an important role in the origin of the Taliban.
They fought alongside them, then local guerrillas who resisted the Soviet invasion for years, and provided them with weapons and money.
Thus they managed to conquer Kabul in 1996, imposing an Islamic fundamentalist regime in the country.
In the last twenty years the Taliban have gone through various phases, as explained by Lluis Miquel Hurtado, the journalist who has been reporting on the Taliban reconquest on Cadena SER.
Before being overthrown, in 2001 they asked for a surrender pact to share the power that was denied them by the US.
Then they almost disappeared from Afghanistan, but
they became strong in neighboring Pakistan, "their true sponsor all these years
.
"
The Taliban spent years established in rural areas thanks to their agreements with the clans present.
"Support of international terrorist groups"
In an interview for Punto de Fuga from his official residence, Humayoon Rasaw, Afghanistan's ambassador to Spain, accuses "foreign countries" of supporting the Taliban in the "brutal and barbarous attacks against Afghan cities" that began after the announcement of the withdrawal of international troops.
“Unfortunately some of our neighboring countries have been supporting the Taliban. I think of Pakistan, a country to which we thank its people for hosting Afghan refugees, but unfortunately
there are people within the Government of Pakistan who help the Taliban, and now they are committing their crimes,
”criticizes Rasaw.
The ambassador has denounced the killings of innocents and violations of the human rights of the Taliban, especially against women, in the territories they have occupied. “There are some fundamentalist factions in Pakistan that are fighting side by side with the Taliban, they destroy the infrastructure that we have built with the taxes of the Afghans and the money of the international forces, but the Government of Pakistan continues to openly support the Taliban and never it has severed ties with terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, so
we are actually fighting the Taliban, but with the backing of many international terrorist groups
. "
On the preparation of the Afghan troops to fight them, Rasaw assures that the only thing that has failed them has been the "insufficient air support for the troops by the international forces during their withdrawal."
At that time, he says, 10,000 terrorists entered Afghanistan and another 15,000 are on the way.
Humayoon Rasaw explains that
the Taliban use the civilian population as human shields, limiting the options for government troops
, who "cannot stand up to them and kill their own people."
This explains why the troops have left some areas to focus on defending large cities and main trade routes.
In spite of everything, he appreciates the strategic alliance that the United States represents for Afghanistan and its financial support.
The "infidels" collaborators of the western troops
2021 has become the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since there are records, according to the United Nations, and it is still expected to worsen with the Taliban repression that the mujahideen are beginning to show in the public executions carried out by people like Mustafa who collaborated with the foreign troops.
They were fully integrated into the missions.
"We were like soldiers without weapons," explains Mustafa, an interpreter for Spanish troops for almost a decade.
And that is why,
in the opinion of the insurgents, "we are all the same, worse than foreign troops, because they say we are unfaithful
.
"
With the withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan, collaborators like Mustafa have found themselves in a critical situation.
Mustafa says that the NATO countries took the fifty interpreters who worked with them because
"they know they are going to kill them and their families
.
"
That is why he does not understand that it was so difficult for them to be evacuated to Spain.
Mustafa claims that the Taliban have an intelligence service, which allowed them to kill two hundred people as soon as they entered Kandahar.
They had a list with the names of those people from the Government and collaborators abroad.
The interpreter fears being on those lists and has tried since 2014 to apply for asylum in Spain, but is still waiting for an answer.
Mustafa was eventually evacuated to Spain by Spanish troops during the withdrawal process from Afghanistan.
Widespread corruption
Journalists who have covered the war in Afghanistan for years were convinced that the Afghan army would not be able to contain the Taliban offensive.
Among other reasons, Gervasio Sánchez believes, due to the widespread corruption allowed by the international community.
In the words of Amador Guallar,
corruption has come to create a parallel administration in the country
.
But the "bad leaders have also failed, letting the 2004 Constitution be a dead letter and the failures in the implementation of strategies on education and equality."
The Afghan democratic system, although young and weak, explains Guallar, is the only possibility to build the defense of the freedoms of the Afghan population that will die “under a theocracy that is not afraid to kill and enslave all those who do not believe in she".
In spite of everything, the last twenty years have made a lot of progress in Afghanistan.
The ambassador to Spain, Humayoon Rasaw, recalls that in 2001 "there were less than a million students in schools and they were all boys", while currently more than 7 million boys are in school and 40% are girls.
In addition,
25% of the Afghan Parliament is represented by women, who have gained visibility in civil society
.
Humanitarian aid and the yoke of women
Rasaw regrets, however, that after the last months of fighting there are some 240,000 displaced people and the crisis has worsened with the pandemic, making humanitarian aid more necessary.
Rasaw acknowledges that the situation is "especially dangerous for women" and calls for support from feminist movements around the world.
In the experience of Alberto Cairo, a Red Cross aid worker, the situation as of 2006 began to complicate humanitarian work, which had
less money and faced growing insecurity and corruption
. Thus, rural areas stopped receiving assistance. And in recent years the situation has continued to worsen, with many organizations coming under attack. Afghans, says Cairo, feel abandoned by the international community.
The fear of the future government focuses mainly on women.
The journalist Mónica Bernabé does not believe the messages that the Taliban have launched promising to guarantee her rights.
He believes that "they have learned the benefits of using the media to their advantage", trying to cast an image of moderation, but he assumes that they
will let the girls study until a certain age and then "they will have to stay locked up at home" as the rest of women, unable to work
.
Bernabé criticizes the hypocrisy of the international community, which has demonstrated its limited capacity to build a nation and recover it from conflict, says Félix Arteaga, Principal Investigator at the Elcano Royal Institute.
For Arteaga, there needs to be "a notion of the State, a certain submission to a power and rules that must be respected" for these efforts to prosper.
That is why in Afghanistan the implementation of public services has not been enough for the Government to function, because
"an external dependency has been created without the population assuming the leading role
.
"
Twenty years later, the future of Afghanistan is once again darkened.
It is still too early to know what consequences the return of the Taliban to control of the country will have.
Perhaps the first is an Afghan refugee crisis trying to save their lives to which the international community must now respond.