By Shahid Farooq Abbasi LIPR Ambassador Of Peace based in Islamabad
Since the United States withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in an unprecedented hustle, the country is on the edge of collapse. Afghan Taliban couldn’t avert the lingering humanitarian crisis and the economic fallout of the country amidst the reluctance of the international community to provide the war raged country with due financial help. US’s decision to freeze more than 9.5 billion dollars in Afghan assets added more complexities to the situation and crumbled the Afghan economy completely.
After 20 long years of devastation, abandoning Afghanistan in such feeble circumstances brought severe reproach to the United States and its allies in the war against terrorism. The entire tenure of America and its NATO allies in Afghanistan will be recollected as the biggest fiasco in history.
Despite spending more than $ 3 trillion clasped from American tax payer’s money, the United States couldn’t even establish an army of Afghan soldiers that could prevent Kabul from falling into the hands of a few thousand Taliban fighters.
The Biden Administration has been harshly disparaged for pouring billions of dollars into the training and building of defence infrastructure for the Afghan army which turned out to be flawed and futile against the most likely Taliban’s incursion.
Moreover, despite having a clear insight into the defects and incompetence of the Afghan army and its defence staff, American withdrawal proved to be the biggest factor in the rapid collapse of the Ghani regime against the Afghan Taliban.
Recently a US watchdog “Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)” has published its interim report titled “Collapse of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces: An Assessment of the Factors That Led to Its Demise.”
The report examined the central cause of the downfall of the Kabul government and the Afghan army at the end of the longest ever American war by digging into the well-established facts holding the previous Afghan government and both the Trump and Biden administrations responsible for the catastrophic finale of the conflict.
The report revealed that former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had suspected an American intrigue against him and feared that his own military may turn against him. It further adds that citing the US conspiracy to oust him from the power Ashraf Ghani had also fired many of his senior security officials and replaced them with old companions who he felt were trustworthy. This decision of Ashraf Ghani resulted in the disheartenment of the Afghan National Defence Forces and spread incertitude among ruling circles.
SIGAR further concludes that the communication gap and misgivings between the Ghani government and the US establishment also played a vital role in the Taliban’s abrupt triumph. Ghani’s government was completely overlooked by Trump Administration during the Doha negotiations in 2020. Ground accomplishments also emboldened Taliban forces and made them the most relevant stakeholder to be negotiated with from the United States’ perspective.
The report also points out a suspected deal between the Taliban leadership and America months before the withdrawal of foreign troops. Taliban were perhaps able to secure a negotiated surrender that cleared all the hurdles on their way to Kabul enabling them smoothly take over the capital.
The report briefly pinpointed that collapse of Afghanistan was a direct consequence of America’s decision to pull out its troops under the 2020 agreement with the Taliban regime by the Trump Administration which was later accomplished by the subsequent Biden government without establishing a solid political and defence structure in Afghanistan.
The faulty agreement between the Taliban and the United States in 2020 and Biden’s call to follow the Trump’s lead despite precepting that the Taliban have their bonhomie with the Al-Qaeda and are not serious to fulfill their assurances further deteriorated the confidence of the Afghan Defence Forces and caused their swift disintegration.
The Afghan former government officials now in exile and the Biden Administration have since been levelling the accusations against each other for the Afghan upheaval that led to the worst ever humanitarian and economic crisis in the country.
Recently while speaking to a debating society of Oxford University, Ghani’s National Security Advisor, Hamdullah Mohib who fled the country along with the Ashraf Ghani alleged that excluding the government support from the western allies declined the confidence among the ANDSF ranks and caused the collapse of Afghan forces against the Taliban.
White House Spokesperson Jen Psaki accused the former Afghan government of failure and underlined that the Ghani government lacked a political will to fight back. Meanwhile, SIGAR further suggested that Afghan forces could not survive the Taliban gains without the backing of the US and allied forces, citing these circumstances many civil militias that were fighting alongside the ANDSF also surrendered or fled the Taliban intrusions.
Although it seems that none of the parties is willing to admit the blame for the Afghan cataclysm, the Afghans are exposed to a devastating humanitarian crisis. Acute malnutrition and a dearth of medical supplies are hounding the vulnerable Afghans living under the barricades of a ruthless war for decades.
The world should put the blame game aside and consider concrete steps to uplift wrecked Afghan society by inviting the Afghan regime into the global mainstream by establishing formal diplomatic and economic ties and reducing the trust deficit. If dealt with otherwise, Afghanistan could become an inevitable peril not for the region but for the entire world.
