August 16, 2021
By Mehlaqa Samdani
For those who believe the U.S. should intervene militarily in other countries and bring about regime change, install puppet governments, and shape societies in its own image, America’s 20-year debacle in Afghanistan should serve as a stark warning. With little knowledge of local culture, politics, traditions, American neo-colonial experiments in nation-building do more harm than good.
Back in 2019, the Afghanistan Papers posted by the Washington Post had revealed the colossal failure of America’s nation-building efforts in Afghanistan. In a war where various U.S. government agencies were confused about their ultimate mission, more than 47,000 Afghan civilians died, 66,000 Afghan security forces were killed, and 2,448 American soldiers lost their lives. A 2017 Human Rights Watch report found that for two-thirds of Afghan girls, school continued to be inaccessible.
For those who believe everything the U.S. government tells them about its misadventures abroad, should know that governments, both Democrat and Republican, lie to their people--it is an obvious point, and yet, our gullibility and failure to hold our governments accountable result in the death and displacement of tens of thousands around the globe. It is now well-known that even though successive American administrations knew the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) were not ready to counter the Taliban, they perpetuated the lie that the ANSF were an independent and self-sufficient force. In the end, the ANSF were ill-equipped, ill-paid, ill-fed, and poorly supported by the Afghan government even as they tried to thwart Taliban advances.
There is enough blame to go around. Without Pakistan’s continued support to the Afghan Taliban, they probably would not have been able to survive all these years. However, the stunning speed with which the Taliban took over the entire country in a matter of weeks, demonstrates that local conditions were ripe for their return. Over the past few years, ordinary Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens, and Hazaras, traditionally opposed to the Taliban had begun to join their ranks, increasingly frustrated by corrupt government officials and the lack of basic services and governance. It was therefore relatively easy for the Taliban to take over these areas in the north which had previously put up stiff resistance.
For those in Pakistan gleefully welcoming the return of the Afghan Taliban, please know that the Pakistani Taliban currently in Afghanistan will feel further emboldened to attack Pakistan. Before they were dislodged by the Pakistani military in 2014 and fled to Afghanistan to fight alongside their Afghan counterparts, they succeeded in killing tens of thousands of Pakistanis.
Now that the Afghan Taliban are back in power, let’s hope Pakistan, Russia, and China use their limited leverage to curtail the group’s draconian excesses. It appears the Troika plus’s consensus earlier this year to not recognize any regime that violently seizes the seat of government, perhaps influenced the Taliban’s decision to negotiate a peaceful transfer of power after entering Kabul.