Past is Prologue

The Fall of Kabul is shaping up a lot like the Fall of Saigon, with US and NATO forces scrambling to evacuate their personnel from the capital city.  I suppose American forces didn't expect the Taliban to retake the country so quickly, but Afghan forces are putting up little resistance to the onslaught that sees Afghan cities taken on almost a daily basis.  This past week, three cities fell into Taliban control including Kandahar, with an assault on Kabul expected within the next 30 days.

I suppose this was inevitable as the US never had any real commitment to Afghanistan.  All those talks of a detente or loya jirga with the Taliban, never materialized into a lasting peace.  The Taliban simply bided their time, getting support from Pakistan and Russia, among other countries.  Just last year, it was reported that Russia was offering bounties on US soldiers' heads and now the Kremlin seeks to create ties with the Taliban in the wake of the massive pullout.  

An interesting irony here, as the Soviet Union was forced to evacuate Kabul under similar circumstances back in 1989, although then it was seen as a victory by the Mujihadeen.  This was one of the signal events that led to the collapse of the USSR.

Our involvement in Afghanistan was doomed from the start, as there was little way the US and its Allied Forces were going to convince the Taliban to cease and desist short of wide scale extermination.  But, how to do this without killing off half the population, as much if not most of the country appears to accept the Sharia view of the Taliban.  Only in Kabul, were the Allied Forces were able to create some sense of a modern country, extending a tenuous hold into outlying cities, but never really capturing the "hearts and mind" of the people.  As a result, the Taliban just waited until the Allied Forces gave up.

It was surprising that Biden would do so as quickly as he did, essentially carrying through on the withdrawal Trump had announced at the end of his administration.  The Afghan government was in no position to defend its country.  You can say they are largely to blame for this after 20 years of joint cooperation with NATO, but then one would think the US and NATO would opt for a more gradual pullout, rather than signaling to the Taliban they had given up, and essentially opening the door for this massive assault.

The big question is where has the Taliban gotten all their weapons.  Much of it is seized from Afghan forces, presumably in battle, but they are also being supplied covertly from outside the country.  Pakistan and Russia are the two prime suppliers.  These neighboring countries also supply logistics in the janus-faced game they play with NATO.  Whatever the case, the Taliban is well armed and has plotted a remorseless assault that has left many dead and wounded throughout the country.

The saddest part is that it didn't have to be this way.  We never had to go into Afghanistan in the first place.  The Taliban had said they were willing to turn over Osama bin Laden, but the Bush administration wanted more than just one head, they wanted to exact their revenge on a nation that had harbored bin Laden and al-Qaeda for several years.  Mostly, Dick and Rummy wanted a protracted war to justify the massive military-industrial complex they had helped forge over successive Republican administrations.  When Afghanistan didn't offer enough targets, they turned their attention to Iraq.

Our presence there was always tenuous.  The military had to create a green zone within Kabul to offer some measure of safety for the newly installed embassy and other international agencies that set themselves up in the capital after the fall of the Taliban.  This safe zone was under constant attack from suicide bombers, which became a sad litany of death counts on nightly news.  Attempts to reach out to other cities and townships was even more tenuous, with foreign workers needing bodyguards pretty much everywhere they went.  Yet, successive American governments kept reporting the successes they had made, especially among women who were once again seen as a vital part of society, at least in Kabul.

Past is prologue, as Antonio once said, and we should have learned from Vietnam, but we didn't.  Now we face every bit an ignominious end to our 20-year presence in Afghanistan as we did in Vietnam.  One can only hope that the US and Allied Forces are able to get all their personnel out of the country before the Taliban comes crashing through Kabul, otherwise it will get really ugly.  Biden will take the blame for any US citizens lost to the Taliban.  It doesn't matter who started the war, the shame will be all his.

It's too bad because there were glimmers of hope, but it now seems that by the end of the year the Taliban will once again claim Afghanistan as their own, forcing its people to live under feudal Islamic law with women relegated to chattel.  There will be little room for compromise.  We will simply shut off Afghanistan from the rest of the world as we did before, as if the last 20 years were a bittersweet dream.