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      The Guardian view on Afghanistan withdrawal: a retreat into uncertainty | Editorial

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      OpinionAfghanistanThe Guardian view on Afghanistan withdrawal: a retreat into uncertaintyEditorialJoe Biden’s actions will be felt most keenly in Kabul, but they pose a broader question for an army-dominated Pakistan Mon 5 Jul 2021 14.20 EDTLast modified on Mon 5 Jul 2021 16.10 EDTBy bringing home US troops from Afghanistan, and leading Nato and allied forces out of the country, the US president, Joe Biden, is acting on his campaign trail argument that American “forever wars” distract from more pressing issues at home. While the effect of the withdrawal will be felt most keenly in Afghanistan, where there are justifiable fears that the Taliban are poised to reclaim power, the broader question Mr Biden poses is for neighbouring nuclear-armed Pakistan and the role that it wants to play in the region.Bluntly, there is little trust between Washington and Islamabad despite Pakistan being a frontline state in America’s longest war. Mr Biden served as vice-president to Barack Obama, who in his memoir, A Promised Land, wrote that he had preferred not to involve Pakistan in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in 2011 because it was an “open secret” that elements inside Pakistan’s military, and especially its intelligence services, “maintained links to the Taliban and perhaps even al-Qaida, sometimes using them as strategic assets to ensure that the Afghan government remained weak and unable to align itself with Pakistan’s number one rival, India”.In Pakistan’s defence, it might be said that the past is another country. It says that it no longer provides any haven for terrorists or seeks to radicalise Muslim opinion with which it has influence. Pakistan has undoubtedly been the victim of terror attacks and shelters millions of refugees. Yet there was no disguising the anger of the Biden administration when, after eight days in office, Pakistan’s supreme court ordered the release of the man convicted in 2002 of orchestrating the abduction and killing of Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter.Pakistan is an army with a country attached. Imran Khan serves as prime minister. But it is the chief of army staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who calls most of the shots. The general has had a phone call from Mr Biden’s secretary of defence. After it, the army chief pledged to “bury the past” with India. Mr Khan has yet to be rung up by the White House. That may be because Washington had wanted to pressurise Pakistan into granting the CIA a base in the country to launch drone strikes against the Taliban. The US was kicked out of its last Pakistani facility in 2011. Last month, Mr Khan wrote an op-ed quashing the idea that the US could regain a military foothold in the country.The ever-growing risks of a Taliban takeover will shape the region’s dynamics. Not least because decades ago they subjected the country to a reign of pious Sunni terror. Adjoining Iran sponsored an armed resistance. A Taliban regime in Kabul gave Pakistan the idea that it could control Afghanistan and acquire the “strategic depth” needed to challenge India. Since then, China has drawn closer to Islamabad. New Delhi, faced with a hostile Beijing, has attempted to improve relations with Pakistan. Mr Biden knows that Afghanistan is known as a “graveyard of empires” for good reason. He wants his foreign policy to mark a break with the past and face the challenges of the future. But turning points only work out if one knows where to turn.TopicsAfghanistanOpinionJoe BidenAl-QaidaBarack ObamaUS foreign policyNatoPakistaneditorialsReuse this content More

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      Joe Biden Meets Afghanistan’s Leaders as the Country Faces Collapse

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      The security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating dramatically. The Taliban have captured the country’s border crossing to Tajikistan. Prospects of civil war have risen.

      Even as the US withdrawal gains momentum, Afghan leaders are visiting Washington to meet President Joe Biden on June 25. This includes President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, the chairperson of the High Peace Council for Reconciliation.

      The Hazara Minority’s Precarious Existence in Afghanistan

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      The Taliban are filling the vacuum that Americans are leaving behind. Violence has surged across Afghanistan and the government is losing territory by the day. As September 11, the deadline for the departure of American troops, draws nigh, the Taliban are becoming increasingly emboldened.

      The government in Kabul has a reputation for corruption and is proving to be ineffective. People are dying every day in cities, towns and villages from terror, crime and hunger. The US is leaving behind a royal mess. If its presence in Afghanistan was problematic, its withdrawal promises to be doubly so.

      Ghani Is Running Out of Time

      Stakes are high in Biden’s first meeting with the Afghan leaders even if expectations are low. Ghani is not an ideal interlocutor. He has presided over a notoriously corrupt administration of a failing state. Kabul’s writ does not even run in the city. Even if Biden and Ghani do a dream deal, the latter is highly unlikely to be able to uphold his part of the bargain.

      Biden wants to bring back American troops and minimize the instability that will inevitably follow in Afghanistan. He needs a good partner to work with. Once, Ghani was the blue-eyed boy of Washington. His academic credentials and bureaucratic experience gave him a halo that few Afghans possessed. Ghani has squandered all the resources that the US provided him. He has few, if any, opportunities left. Ghani’s government is on the verge of total collapse.

      Embed from Getty Images

      According to a new assessment of the US intelligence community, Ghani’s government could collapse within six months of the American military withdrawal from Afghanistan. The government has lost credibility because it has failed to provide basic public services to the people. Consequently, the people have lost hope. Yet again, Afghans are voting with their feet and leaving the country in droves.

      Like many African strongmen, Ghani has surrounded himself with sycophantic cronies. He sees himself as the savior and messiah of Afghanistan. The president has no idea that he has lost all credibility in his second term. His lofty rhetoric fails to reflect Afghanistan’s grim realities.

      Ghani is not entirely delusional, though. He realized fully well that he occupies his fancy palace in Kabul thanks to the barrels of American guns. Once the Americans leave, he is toast. Therefore, he has opposed Biden’s peace plan that calls for a political settlement between warring parties, including the Taliban. Unsurprisingly, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has lauded Biden’s plan. 

      What Joe Biden Must Do

      Afghans fear that the US might be leaving their country to the mercy of the Pakistani generals. After the last Soviet troops departed from Afghanistan in 1989, the Pakistan-trained Taliban took over. This provided Pakistan with strategic depth, jihadis to send to India and a bargaining chip vis-à-vis Washington. History might be about to repeat itself and Afghans are terrified of another tragedy.

      Biden is meeting Ghani to reassure Afghans that he is not leaving them to the Taliban wolves. The official American line is that the US will continue to support the legitimately elected government in Kabul. Yet the Americans are infamous for short attention spans and Afghans fear they will be forgotten again. After all, Charlie Wilson could raise a ton of money to fight the Soviets but very little for schools or hospitals afterward. As the iconic American movie on the late congressman records, no one cared.

      There is another historical parallel. When US troops left Saigon in 1975, the Viet Cong overran Vietnam. As the last American planes fly back from Bagram, the Taliban could do the same in Afghanistan. Washington must act differently this time around. The US has to back Afghan security forces, put its weight behind a people-centered peace process and uphold Biden’s much-touted democracy agenda.

      If the US fails, the Taliban will be in charge. Pakistan will make Afghanistan a puppet state. Bagram, the closest American airbase to China’s western borders, might well fall to Beijing. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) might expand into Afghanistan too. The risks for Afghanistan, the region and the US are only too real.

      In an article for The Washington Post, David Ignatius argues that “a summer of pain awaits” Afghanistan. Over the years, American leaders have found themselves in a Catch-22 regarding Afghanistan. They cannot tell the public that Afghanistan deserves American blood and treasure forever. Nearly 20 years have passed since the tragic 9/11 attacks in the United States. American troops have patrolled Afghanistan’s dusty roads, fighter jets have flown endless sorties and drones have liquidated fearsome foes. Yet peace is nowhere in sight. At the same time, packing up and leaving only fuels the raging violence further, leaves behind a geopolitical vacuum and allows rival powers leverage against American interests.

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      Donald Trump promised American troops would come home when he was president. Biden has set a date for the final withdrawal. By doing so, he has tied his hands. The Taliban now know that American troops are preparing to leave and will soon be gone. In their worldview, the Taliban have made history. After humbling the Soviets, they have defeated the evil Uncle Sam. They see themselves as superiors of super powers in their own backyard. With morale sky high, they have launched bold military operations to take over Afghanistan. It seems the US can do little to prevent the Taliban from taking over.

      Yet things are never as dire or as rosy as they seem. Many Afghans have fought the Taliban and are willing to fight them again. The Ghani government may be incorrigibly corrupt, but its officials want to avoid the fate of the Soviet-backed leader Mohammad Najibullah whose corpse was strung for public display. Crises tend to focus minds and this might be the best time to deal with Afghanistan’s manifestly flawed leaders.

      Even as American troops are leaving, Biden must support Afghan leaders against the Taliban. He must make that support conditional on Ghani and his cronies leaving office by a certain date. They must put in place a more credible Afghan leadership to take on the Taliban. After all, the British replaced Neville Chamberlain with Winston Churchill during World War II. For Afghanistan, this is a time of national crisis.

      The Taliban could take over much of the country but will struggle to hold it together. A civil war might break out. The disintegration of Afghanistan might move from the realm of possibility to reality. Ambitious powers in the near neighborhood will take advantage of the ensuing chaos. Unlike Vietnam, Afghanistan will not become a nation of high literacy, low infant mortality and better nutrition. It will yet again become an impoverished land where fanatics and terrorists will find refuge and a base for their global jihadist operations.

      President Biden has long declared that “America is back.” Afghanistan could smash that assertion to smithereens and demonstrate that America is just going back home. If he is serious about American leadership and holding aloft the torch for democracy, Biden cannot throw Afghanistan to the dogs of war. He has to build an international coalition that pushes through a peace process, backs credible leaders in Afghanistan and provides aerial, if not ground assistance to those putting their lives on the line against the Taliban.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Guardian view on the Afghanistan withdrawal: an unwinnable war | Editorial

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      Britain’s former prime minister Harold Macmillan is said to have told colleagues that the first law of politics should be “never invade Afghanistan”. It was a lesson that imperial Britain had learned the hard way, following three separate casualty-strewn incursions in the 19th and 20th centuries. After 11 September 2001, when al-Qaida radicals, based in Afghanistan and protected by the Taliban government, successfully attacked New York and Washington, the lesson was quickly forgotten.Instead, the United States, backed by Britain and Nato, launched a retaliatory campaign to destroy al-Qaida and overthrow the Taliban. After spectacular initial success, marked by the unexpected collapse of Kabul and massive bombing of the al-Qaida presence in the eastern mountains, the military campaign became overcommitted and, in the end, even faced defeat. Western ambitions were long on idealised visions of the postwar order, but short on a grasp of regional realities and military capabilities. The Taliban regrouped and rearmed. Long attritional years of civil conflict followed. This week, almost 20 years in, Joe Biden has decided America has at last had enough of an unwon and unwinnable war. He is bringing the troops home. America’s allies, including Britain, will now follow the US through the exit door.In his televised address this week, Mr Biden announced that nearly 10,000 US and Nato troops – including 750 from the UK – will start pulling out within weeks. All of them will be gone in time for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks later this year. The president’s words were a valediction over what, in the end and in spite of its achievements, has been a failed campaign. “We cannot continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan, hoping to create ideal conditions for the withdrawal and expecting a different result,” the president said. He is surely right. Donald Trump had reached a similar conclusion from a different, more isolationist standpoint, although, unlike Mr Biden, without consulting his allies first. None of that will stop congressional Republicans denouncing Mr Biden’s decision as reckless.The US president’s announcement exposes some of the limits of 21st-century American power. It is true that, while the US has been engaged in Afghanistan, education has blossomed across much of the country, including for girls, who were largely excluded by the Taliban. Life expectancy, now at 65, has risen each year. But these gains remain fragile and their future is highly uncertain. When the Russian-backed Afghan regime collapsed in the early 1990s, the Taliban were able to take back control quickly. The same thing may happen after America’s departure 30 years later. Peace talks are continuing, but the Taliban will now have less reason to treat them seriously.Mr Biden’s decision marks the death of a particular kind of American hubris. New forms of warfare, increasingly technologically ambitious and involving fewer ground troops than in earlier wars such as Vietnam, were championed two decades ago by the former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. They have not achieved the goals that he claimed. Winning this kind of war without major troop commitments has not worked. Afghan opinion has been more divided and is marked by greater hostility to the US than the simplistic western assumptions of 2001 ever allowed. Regional hostilities have not been overcome. American public opinion has also become increasingly hostile towards committing to the conflicts. The nation-building claims that were made about Afghanistan and, later, Iraq have been exposed as unachievable. A lot of this was predicted and predictable when the conflict was launched. But there is very little satisfaction to be drawn from seeing it come to pass amid continuing uncertainty and insecurity for so many Afghan men and women. More

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      The New York Times Predicts Our Future

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      The banner headline on the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times contained what can be interpreted as either a promise, a prophecy, a wild hope or a meaningless truism. It read: “Withdrawal of U.S. Troops in Afghanistan Will End Longest American War.” The headline linked to an article with a slightly less assertive title: “Biden to Withdraw All Combat Troops From Afghanistan by Sept. 11.” Nevertheless, it quickly returned to the prophetic tone, while adding one significant dramatic detail: “President Biden will withdraw American combat troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, declaring an end to the nation’s longest war and overruling warnings from his military advisers.” Instead of the traditional tactic of divide and rule, Biden will be applying a new one: withdraw and overrule.

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      How can The New York Times promise that an event “will” happen months before the date? Does The Times, as the “paper of record,” have the authority to report future events? Expressions of intention, even by a sitting president, are not predictions. Is The Times now in the business of publishing prophetic journalism? More likely its certainty about what will happen in the future should be branded a wild partisan hope. The Times has been willing to go overboard to give the Biden administration credit long before credit is due. It has become a pattern since the election in its reporting and even the opinions of its Republican editorialists.

      The Times’ initial affirmation can nevertheless be justified as a truism. Though it fails to refer to a real event, its meaning is undeniably true. The withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan at any time in the future — whether it’s September 2021 or even 2051 — will effectively end the longest war in US history, simply because in April 2021 it is already the nation’s longest war.

      To underline the very real seriousness of President Joe Biden’s resolution and to support the idea that the future will happen as reported, The Times cites a significant fact: “A senior Biden administration official said the president had come to believe that a ‘conditions-based approach’ would mean that American troops would never leave the country.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Conditions-based approach:

      A tactic that allows a government to promise to carry out an action and then, at the critical moment, announce that it is justified in refusing to carry out that action

      Contextual Note

      The resolution of any serious problem in the realm of geopolitics is subject to conditions on the ground. That is why negotiations are important. But the situation in Afghanistan has always been so complex and asymmetrical that even attempting to negotiate is doomed to failure. The current situation involves three parties: the US, which is seeking to withdraw after 20 years of failed military efforts; the Taliban, who control most of the territory of a country traditionally administered by local warlords; and the so-called legitimate Afghan government initially put in place and supported economically and militarily by the US.

      Barack Obama and Donald Trump both announced plans to withdraw from the conflict. But as soon as discussions began, the US insisted that certain conditions must be met. Those conditions were always framed as minimal criteria of political stability and a guaranteed role for the official government, even in a power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban. There was never any serious chance of realizing those objectives. Withdrawal dates could only be formulated as a target, not as a predefined moment. It also meant that those who opposed withdrawal simply needed to make sure that things on the ground remained suitably unstable.

      Embed from Getty Images

      President Biden has clearly, even shockingly, innovated by unilaterally canceling the criterion of conditions. It appears to be a move designed to counter not the actors in Afghanistan, but his political opponents in Washington and the Pentagon. He has done so because in every case from the past, Congress and the Pentagon have managed to declare that the sacrosanct conditions were not met. The US economy thrives on military engagement. The Afghan government has had a permanent incentive to maintain the presence of the US, which guarantees the billions of dollars funding of the government’s operations. Once the US leaves, even while promising to provide aid to a new composite regime, the Taliban will undoubtedly have the upper hand in a negotiated power-sharing arrangement.

      In other words, there are two actors in the drama who have used the idea of conditions to oppose withdrawal: the NATO-supported Afghan government and the Pentagon. Obama and Trump failed in their plans to withdraw because they placed all their trust in the Pentagon. That is why the Biden administration’s decision to abandon a conditions-based approach may not only be constructive but absolutely necessary to achieve a goal ardently desired by the American public but opposed by the military-industrial complex that includes the Pentagon, the defense industry and members of Congress who depend on the defense industry for funding their campaigns and providing jobs in their jurisdictions.

      How inevitable is The New York Times’ bold prophecy that withdrawal will effectively happen in September? Already, powerful senators who can stop it from happening, both Republican and Democrat, are beginning to speak up to condemn what they call a shameful and humiliating retreat from an engagement that began 20 years ago. The lobbyists are mobilizing to make sure the interests of the defense industry and the Pentagon continue to exercise effective control of US foreign policy.

      But on April 14, Biden himself made it clear that there actually is a condition. The Times reports that he warned the Taliban “that if American forces are attacked on the way out of the country, ‘we’re going to defend ourselves and our partners with all the tools at our disposal.’” That certainly sounds like a condition.

      Historical Note

      When running for president in 2000, George W. Bush asserted that he wanted the US to avoid any temptation of nation-building. Eight months into his presidency, using the pretext of the 9/11 attacks, Bush initiated a foreign policy that obliged the US to engage actively in nation-building, first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq.

      The foreign policy of the past three presidents has transformed both Afghanistan and Iraq into examples of what may be called “government-creating and defending” rather than “nation-building.” After toppling an existing regime and putting in its place a puppet government committed to Western liberal values, the game has consisted of ensuring the minimum required to keep such governments from collapsing as they take on the impossible burden of defeating America’s designated enemy.

      It is a recipe for geopolitical failure that worries presidents, who prefer being thought of as winners. But it comforts everyone else in a system with its own internal logic. Spending money on weapons, selling those weapons to a captive client government and deploying them operationally whenever necessary in real, non-simulated wartime situations constitute a major factor of motivation for all parties concerned.

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      The beauty of it is that they can count on the US taxpayer to foot the bill. In the parlance of sports, the Middle East and now parts of Africa have become the equivalent of the expensive training facilities of a professional sports franchise motivated to push competition to its extreme and emerge as uncontested champions. Training can be carried on at all times and can endure decades, but when things get hot, these exotic locations also serve as the stadium itself, where the games are played and the scores tabulated.

      It took decades after World War II to build such a coherent system. For multiple reasons, however, this system is incompatible with the idea of democracy and the morality of a civilized society dedicated to the idea of human rights and responding to human needs. It is coherent to the extent that those who exercise power — in government, industry, the media and academe — share a common interest. The system provides them with the lifeline they need to maintain their activities. The problem is that the only parties left out and left holding the bag are… the people.

      Today’s economico-political situation reflects a “conditions-based approach.” The condition is that the interests that control the machine must never be forced to lose their control, because the result would be anarchy. And no civilized person — apart from the late anthropologist David Graeber — can seriously defend the idea of anarchy.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Is the Long War Finally Ending?

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      In October 1944, with the end of World War II in sight, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin passed a note back and forth to each other at a conference in Moscow. On the piece of paper, Churchill had assigned percentages to several Eastern European countries. Stalin amended the numbers and Churchill agreed. The deal remained secret for nearly a decade.

      The percentages on the piece of paper referred to the amount of influence that the Soviet Union and the West would wield in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece, with the first three countries falling in the Soviet sphere, control divided evenly in Yugoslavia, and Greece staying in the Western camp. It was the first major articulation of the geopolitical “spheres of influence” that would characterize the Cold War era.

      What an Afghan Peace Deal Could Look Like

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      During the first post-war elections in Eastern Europe, communist and non-communist parties vied for power, eventually cobbling together different versions of coalition governments. Ultimately, however, the communist parties seized control, except in Greece, where the West intervened in a civil war to help defeat leftist insurgents. By 1948, the region looked very much like the agreement that Churchill and Stalin had drawn up.

      The Long War

      Today, the end of a much longer war appears to be approaching. The fighting in Afghanistan has lasted nearly two decades, the most protracted conflict the United States has ever endured. This war is, in turn, part of a much larger battle that has been variously described as “America’s endless wars,” the “war on terror” or simply the “long war” that began in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, though earlier skirmishes took place during the 1990s.

      The Biden administration is currently trying to negotiate a spheres-of-influence arrangement in Afghanistan that resembles what Churchill laid out in 1944. The American-backed government in Kabul, according to this proposal, would share power with the insurgent Taliban forces as an interim step until elections can be held under a new constitution.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Such a deal would make it easier for the United States to withdraw all of its 3,500 soldiers from Afghanistan by May 1, as laid out in a peace deal signed in 2020. Even if that withdrawal goes through, however, the institutional apparatus of the larger “long war” will still be operational. US forces remain in Iraq and Syria, and the Pentagon eyes the civil war in Libya with concern.

      In all, after drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq, about 50,000 US troops are stationed in the greater Middle East, with 7,000 mostly naval personnel in Bahrain, 13,000 soldiers in Kuwait and a roughly equal number in Qatar, 5,000 in the United Arab Emirates and several thousand in Saudi Arabia. US Special Forces are also scattered across Africa, while the United States is still conducting air operations throughout the region.

      But, as in 1944, the preliminary discussion of a power-sharing arrangement in Afghanistan suggests that the active phase of the “long war” is coming to an end. The specific US adversaries — al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and various smaller global actors — have more or less been defeated. Local groups that have battled US forces, like the Taliban, remain powerful, as do adversarial governments like Bashar al-Assad’s in Syria, but they don’t pose a threat to the US homeland. Larger geopolitical rivalries, with Russia and Iran in particular, continue to shape the conflicts in the region, but the US has already established an uneven pattern of engagement and containment with these actors.

      If history is to be replayed, the United States will wind down direct combat in favor of a tense cold war and intermittent “out-of-area” operations. The end of this “long war” against the architects of the 9/11 attacks and their supporters is long overdue. The Biden administration is eager to focus on “building back better” at home, enjoy a post-war economic expansion and beef up the US capacity to challenge China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. The administration is reassessing its military capabilities to reflect these priorities.

      All of this begs the question: Will it be possible to avoid repeating the 1945 scenario by ending the “long war” and not replacing it with a cold war?

      After promising to end the forever wars during the 2020 election campaign, President Joe Biden is eager to enjoy his own “mission accomplished” moment in Afghanistan. But that pledge comes with a couple asterisks.

      For one, Biden would like to maintain a “counterterrorism” force in Afghanistan with the permission of the Taliban. Such an agreement would parallel the arrangement in Iraq, where the government allows around 2,500 US troops to focus on suppressing any remnants of the Islamic State (as well as reining in Iran-backed paramilitaries). Second, Biden has in the past broached the possibility of moving US military bases from Afghanistan to Pakistan, where they would continue to serve their counterterrorism function. It’s not at all clear whether the Taliban or Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan would be enthusiastic about these options.

      At the moment, the United States is paying a relatively low price for its continued presence in Afghanistan. After last year’s peace deal, there haven’t been any US combat deaths in the country, which means that Afghanistan is basically absent from the hearts and minds of Americans. The US foreign policy community would like to preserve that status quo as long as possible, particularly given the post-withdrawal prospects of “ethnic cleansing, mass slaughter and the ultimate dismemberment of the country,” as Madiha Afzal and Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings have written. Similar arguments were made around the proposed withdrawal of the bulk of US troops from Iraq, and yet those worst-case scenarios haven’t come to pass.

      In recent days, the warnings about Afghanistan have increased. According to The New York Times:

      “American intelligence agencies have told the Biden administration that if U.S. troops leave before a power-sharing settlement is reached between the Taliban and the Afghan government, the country could fall largely under the control of the Taliban within two or three years after the withdrawal of international forces. That could potentially open the door for Al Qaeda to rebuild its strength within the country, according to American officials.”

      It doesn’t take an intelligence agency to predict that the Taliban will play a major role in any future Afghanistan, with or without a power-sharing settlement. The Taliban control about 20% of the country with as much as 85,000 full-time soldiers (though the areas under Taliban control are relatively underpopulated). At the same time, the insurgents are active over a much larger stretch — as much as 70% of the country — and are putting pressure on a number of key cities, including Kunduz in the north and Kandahar in the south.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In other words, there’s a good possibility that regardless of power-sharing arrangements, the Taliban will simply take over the country, much as the communists did throughout Eastern Europe in the late 1940s. Given the record of the Taliban’s last sojourn in power, the prospect of a reestablishment of their rule is very sobering.

      But the US has failed in two decades to defeat the Taliban with the full force of its military. Keeping a few thousand soldiers in the country is not going to change the balance of power on the ground. “The hawks argue that to leave Afghanistan is simply unthinkable until someday when they have finished winning the war,” writes Scott Horton in his new book, “Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism.” “But they lost the war more than a decade ago, and no one who protested against Trump’s drawdown had a single coherent thing to say about how staying there is supposed to somehow change the reality of Taliban power in that country.”

      Won’t Afghanistan again become a safe haven for international terrorists once the US troops withdraw along with their NATO partners? For all their immersion in Islamic religion and culture, the Taliban are Pashtun nationalists interested above all in kicking out the foreigners. They’re not big fans of the Islamic State group, but they do maintain a close relationship at the moment with the 200-250 al-Qaeda militants in the country. Take NATO out of the equation, however, and that relationship will likely fray at the seams, particularly if international recognition, access to the global economy and the support of powerful neighbors like Russia and Iran depend on a verifiable divorce.

      When he proposed the two spheres of influence, Churchill was not relying on the goodwill of the Soviet state. The British leader hated Stalin and communism. He was taking a clear-eyed look at the balance of power at the time and striking what he thought was the best deal he could, even if that meant “losing” most of Eastern Europe. A power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban that “loses” Afghanistan is comparably pragmatic. But will it be accompanied by other, equally pragmatic policies to bring the long war to an end?

      The Rest of the War

      The “endless wars” are obviously not just being fought by the 3,500 troops in Afghanistan and 2,500 soldiers in Iraq. As the Bush administration transitioned to the Obama era and war fatigue began to set in, the United States shifted its focus from ground operations to an air war. In Afghanistan for instance, as the number of troops declined from a high of 100,000 in 2011, the number of airstrikes steadily increased, with a peak in terms of bombs dropped in 2018 and 2019 and a consequent rise in casualties. “The number of civilians killed by international airstrikes increased about 330 percent from 2016, the last full year of the Obama Administration, to 2019, the most recent year for which there is complete data from the United Nations,” reports Neta Crawford of the Costs of War project. Throughout the greater Middle East, the United States has launched in excess of 14,000 drone strikes, which have killed as many as 16,000 people, including several hundred children.

      Since taking office, as I note in my recent study of Biden’s take on multilateralism, the new administration has launched two airstrikes, one against Iranian targets in Syria on February 25 and the other in Iraq on February 9 against the Islamic State. The Syrian attack, in particular, has prompted a bipartisan effort in Congress to repeal the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (passed in 1991 and 2002) in order to narrow the presidential ability to launch future airstrikes.

      Meanwhile, the administration has yet to report any drone strikes. This is in marked contrast to the strikes that Barack Obama and Donald Trump ordered almost immediately upon taking office as well as the escalation in attacks that took place in Trump’s final months. In one of its first orders, the Biden administration issued a temporary halt to any drone strikes outside of combat areas such as Afghanistan and Syria. As Charli Carpenter, an expert in the laws of war, points out:

      “Essentially what Biden is doing is he’s moving the barometer back to where it was before Trump devolved authority for drone strikes away from the executive branch and into the hands of commanders. What that means is that anytime a drone strike is envisioned, it needs to be approved by the White House. There’s going to be a much higher level of oversight and much more concern over the legal nuances of each strike. It will just make drones harder to use, and you can imagine the weaponized drones will only be used in the most extreme cases.”

      In addition to initiating a review of drone strikes, the administration has launched a probe into Special Forces operations to ascertain whether they have adhered to the Pentagon’s “law of war” requirements. In effect, the Biden administration is applying greater oversight across the range of military operations to bring them into closer compliance with international rules and regulations. Such oversight, however, does not imply the end of the endless wars.

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      For that to happen, the United States would have to dramatically shrink its global military footprint, the constellation of US bases around the world that serve as the launching pad for myriad operations. About 220,000 military and civilian personnel operate in more than 150 countries and over 800 overseas military bases. A significant chunk of the Pentagon’s $700 billion-plus budget goes toward maintaining this immense archipelago of force.

      In early February, the Biden administration also announced a Global Posture Review to assess the US. footprint. Such a review is much needed. After all, did this massive apparatus save a single one of the more than half a million Americans who have died from COVID-19? Is the Pentagon protecting the United States from climate change (or merely contributing to the problem with its own carbon emissions and its protection of overseas fossil fuel production and distribution)? And all that “forward-based defense” has done absolutely nothing to safeguard US infrastructure from cyberattacks like the SolarWinds hack (that, by the way, gained access to the emails of Trump’s cybersecurity team at the Department of Homeland Security).

      For the time being, the architects of the Global Posture Review are thinking primarily of refocusing “strategic capabilities” against China in the Far East and Russia in the Arctic. But that just replaces one set of threats with another, which will adjust the footprint without actually reducing it.

      So, let’s remember that the 3,500 American troops in Afghanistan are just the tip of the iceberg. For the United States to avoid the fate of the Titanic — also famous at one time for being immense and impregnable — it had better address the rest of the icy hazard of war.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      The US Joins the “Rules-Based World” on Afghanistan

      by

      On March 18, the world was treated to the spectacle of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sternly lecturing senior Chinese officials about the need for China to respect a “rules-based order.” The alternative, Blinken warned, is a world in which might makes right, and “that would be a far more violent and unstable world for all of us.”

      Blinken was clearly speaking from experience. Since the United States dispensed with the UN Charter and the rule of international law to invade Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and has used military force and unilateral economic sanctions against many other countries, it has indeed made the world more deadly, violent and chaotic. When the UN Security Council refused to give its blessing to US aggression against Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush publicly said the UN would become “irrelevant.” He later appointed John Bolton as UN ambassador, a man who famously once said that, if the UN building in New York “lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” 

      What an Afghan Peace Deal Could Look Like

      READ MORE

      But after two decades of unilateral US foreign policy in which Washington has systematically ignored and violated international law, leaving widespread death, violence and chaos in its wake, US foreign policy may finally be coming full circle, at least in the case of Afghanistan. Secretary Blinken has taken the previously unthinkable step of calling on the United Nations to lead negotiations for a ceasefire and political transition in Afghanistan, relinquishing America’s monopoly as the sole mediator between the Kabul government and the Taliban.

      So, after 20 years of war and lawlessness, is Washington finally ready to give the “rules-based order” a chance to prevail over US unilateralism and “might makes right,” instead of just using it as a verbal cudgel to browbeat its enemies? President Joe Biden and Secretary Blinken seem to have chosen America’s endless war in Afghanistan as a test case, even as they resist rejoining Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran, jealously guard America’s openly-partisan role as the sole mediator between Israel and Palestine, maintain Donald Trump’s vicious economic sanctions, and continue the United States’ systematic violations of international law against many other countries. 

      What’s Going on in Afghanistan?

      In February 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement with the Taliban to fully withdraw US and NATO troops from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. The Taliban had refused to negotiate with the US-backed government in Kabul until the US and NATO withdrawal agreement was signed. But once that was done, the Afghans began peace talks in March 2020. Instead of agreeing to a full ceasefire during the talks, as the US government wanted, the Taliban only agreed to a one-week “reduction in violence.”

      Eleven days later, as fighting continued between the Taliban and the Afghan forces, the United States wrongly claimed that the Taliban were violating the agreement they signed with the United States and relaunched its bombing campaign. Despite the fighting, the Kabul government and the Taliban managed to exchange prisoners and continue negotiations in Qatar, mediated by US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who had negotiated the US withdrawal agreement with the Taliban. But the talks made slow progress and now seem to have reached an impasse.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The coming of spring in Afghanistan usually brings an escalation in the war. Without a new ceasefire, a spring offensive would probably lead to more territorial gains for the Taliban, who already control at least half of Afghanistan. This prospect, combined with the May 1 withdrawal deadline for the remaining 3,500 US and 7,000 other NATO troops, prompted Blinken’s invitation to the UN to lead a more inclusive international peace process that will also involve India, Pakistan and the United States’ traditional enemies: China, Russia and, most remarkably, Iran.

      This process began with a conference on Afghanistan in Moscow on March 18-19, which brought together a 16-member delegation from the Afghan government in Kabul and negotiators from the Taliban, along with Khalilzad and representatives from the other countries. The conference has laid the groundwork for a larger UN-led conference to be held in Istanbul in April to map out a framework for a ceasefire, a political transition and a power-sharing agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

      UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed Jean Arnault to lead the negotiations for the United Nations. Arnault previously negotiated the end to the Guatemalan Civil War in the 1990s and the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016. He was also the secretary-general’s representative in Bolivia from the 2019 coup until a new election was held in 2020. Arnault also knows Afghanistan, having served in the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006.

      If the Istanbul conference results in an agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban, US troops could be home sometime in the coming months. Trump, who belatedly tried to make good on his promise to end that endless war, deserves credit for beginning a full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. But a withdrawal without a comprehensive peace plan would not have ended the conflict. The UN-led peace process should give the people of Afghanistan a much better chance of a peaceful future than if US forces left with the two sides still at war, and reduce the chances that the gains made by women over these years will be lost.

      “Muddle Along”

      It took 17 years of war to bring the United States to the negotiating table and another two-and-a-half years before it was ready to step back and let the UN take the lead in peace negotiations. For most of this time, the US tried to maintain the illusion that it could eventually defeat the Taliban and “win” the war. But US internal documents published by WikiLeaks and a stream of reports and investigations revealed that US military and political leaders have known for a long time that they could not win. As General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, put it, the best that US forces could do in Afghanistan was to “muddle along.” 

      What that meant in practice was dropping tens of thousands of bombs, day after day, year after year, and conducting thousands of night raids that, more often than not, killed, maimed or unjustly detained innocent civilians. The death toll in Afghanistan is unknown. Most US airstrikes and night raids take place in remote, mountainous areas where people have no contact with the UN human rights office in Kabul that investigates reports of civilian casualties. Fiona Frazer, the UN’s human rights chief in Afghanistan, admitted to the BBC in 2019 that “more civilians are killed or injured in Afghanistan due to armed conflict than anywhere else on Earth. … the published figures almost certainly do not reflect the true scale of harm.” 

      No serious mortality study has been conducted since the US-led invasion in 2001. Initiating a full accounting for the human cost of this war should be an integral part of UN envoy Arnault’s job, and we should not be surprised if, like the Truth Commission he oversaw in Guatemala, it reveals a death toll that is 10 or 20 times what we have been told.

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      If Blinken’s diplomatic initiative succeeds in breaking this deadly cycle of “muddling along,” and brings even relative peace to Afghanistan, that will establish a precedent and an exemplary alternative to the seemingly endless violence and chaos of America’s post-9/11 wars in other countries. The United States has used military force and economic sanctions to destroy, isolate or punish an ever-growing list of countries around the world, but it no longer has the power to defeat, restabilize and integrate these countries into its neocolonial empire, as it did at the height of its power after the Second World War. America’s defeat in Vietnam was a historical turning point: the end of an age of Western military empires.  

      All the United States can achieve in the countries it is occupying or besieging today is to keep them in various states of poverty, violence and chaos — shattered fragments of empire adrift in the 21st-century world. US military power and economic sanctions can temporarily prevent bombed or impoverished countries from fully recovering their sovereignty or benefiting from Chinese-led development projects like the Belt and Road Initiative, but America’s leaders have no alternative development model to offer them. The people of Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela have only to look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Libya or Somalia to see where the pied piper of American regime change would lead them.

      What’s This All About?

      Humanity faces truly serious challenges in this century, from the mass extinction of the natural world to the destruction of the life-affirming climate that has been the vital backdrop of human history, while nuclear mushroom clouds still threaten us all with civilization-ending destruction. It is a sign of hope that Biden and Blinken are turning to legitimate, multilateral diplomacy in the case of Afghanistan, even if only because, after 20 years of war, they finally see diplomacy as a last resort. 

      But peace, diplomacy and international law should not be a last resort, to be tried only when Democrats and Republicans alike are finally forced to admit that no new form of force or coercion will work. Nor should they be a cynical way for American leaders to wash their hands of a thorny problem and offer it as a poisoned chalice for others to drink.

      If the UN-led peace process Secretary Blinken has initiated succeeds and US troops finally come home, Americans should not forget about Afghanistan in the coming months and years. We should pay attention to what happens there and learn from it. And we should support generous US contributions to the humanitarian and development aid that the people of Afghanistan will need for many years to come. This is how the international “rules-based system,” which US leaders love to talk about but routinely violate, is supposed to work, with the UN fulfilling its responsibility for peacemaking and individual countries overcoming their differences to support it.

      Maybe cooperation over Afghanistan can even be a first step toward broader US cooperation with China, Russia and Iran that will be essential if we are to solve the serious common challenges confronting us all.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Afghans dread the ‘danger hours’ as fragile gains of 20 years slip away

      by

      Ghazaal Habibyar’s trembling hand hovered over her mobile phone, unable to type the numbers. “I was afraid to hear bad news,” she recalls of that morning in Kabul when she heard there’d been an explosion close to her young son’s school.
      “Why should we have to choose between educating or protecting our children?” asks the 38-year-old mother of two – a former Afghan deputy minister of mines and petroleum. That day, her six-year-old son was sitting safely in class.
      This is how the day begins now in Kabul – the time of day in a time of war that is most worrying of all. Afghans call them “the danger hours”.
      “There’ve been blasts before me, and blasts behind me,” says 22-year-olduniversity student Sadeq Alakozai. “Every day we wonder whose turn it will be.”
      One morning, a magnetic “sticky” bomb slapped on a minibus took the life of a popular TV presenter at the same time Alakozai and his friends were driving to work on the same street. Another morning, a district security chief was assassinated in a blast so strong it flipped the police car upside down at a busy roundabout just before they reached the same corner.
      Afghanistan – map
      From 7.30am to 9.30am, when the diesel fume-soaked streets of the capital are choked with traffic as government employees go to work, is the time to avoid, if you can. Every day someone somewhere in Afghanistan is picked off: journalists and judges; civil servants and scholars; activists and academics.
      Many of the victims came of age in the two decades since the Taliban were toppled from power in the US-led invasion after the 9/11 attacks; their lives are being cut short as the last of the US-led Nato forces deliberate over a departure date and the Taliban boast of victory.
      The Taliban’s path back to power could either run through accelerating moves by President Joe Biden’s team to negotiate a political way out of war, or what many fear could be the most blistering of battles this summer in a country which has already lived through more than 40 years of pain.
      No one takes responsibility for this wave of assassinations. The Afghan government blames the Taliban. The Taliban accuse the Afghan government, which is also under fire for not being able to protect its people. And, in a time of rising insecurity and impunity, anyone with a gun and a grudge can exploit the moment.
      Many see a concerted campaign by Taliban supporters to kill off or frighten away what is described, in shorthand, as the “gains of the last 20 years”: educated, ambitious women; a vibrant media; an active civil society.
      “They claim these realities were created under the US military occupation and are like foam on top of water, which goes away as soon as you touch the waters underneath,” says Tamim Asey, a former deputy defence minister who now chairs the Institute of War and Peace Studies in Kabul. More

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      in World Politics

      What an Afghan Peace Deal Could Look Like

      by

      In a recent interview with the BBC, President Ashraf Ghani insisted that the condition for peace in Afghanistan depends on the condition of the war. First, according to him, Afghan security forces need international support due to intensifying violence by armed groups, including the Taliban. Second, without addressing Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, the situation with the conflict will not change. “My message is those who provide sanctuaries to the Taliban should be talked very straight,” he said. “There’s so many fears of collapse into civil war.”

      Will Iran Take Over the Ottoman Mantle in the Middle East?

      READ MORE

      His message is for the Biden administration to have serious talks with officials in Pakistan, the Taliban’s main supporter. Ghani added that the only way he would leave the office to compromise for peace is via an election, while the Taliban does not yet recognize elections as a legitimate political mechanism. The Taliban want Ghani to resign and for Afghanistan’s political system to change back to their Islamic emirate of the 1990s or something similar to it.

      The Doha Deal

      Since the first round of the intra-Afghan peace talks in September 2020, violence in Afghanistan has intensified, while the negotiations resumed just last week after a six-month delay. The Doha deal, signed by the Taliban and the Trump administration early last year in Qatar, has failed to stop the violence in the country. Shortly after his inauguration in January 2021, US President Joe Biden launched a review of the Doha deal to determine whether the Taliban have upheld their commitments to cut ties with other militant groups and engage in meaningful peace talks with the Afghan government.

      Pakistan has urged the Biden administration to “persevere” with the Doha agreement and not attempt to amend it. The deal gave the Taliban the upper hand and undermined the Afghan government. The agreement excluded the Afghan government and allowed the Taliban to gain legitimacy, while also mandating that US and NATO troops leave the country within 14 months if militants uphold their end of the bargain. For Pakistan, while this is a step in the “right direction” for peace talks, as per Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, it also enhanced the Taliban’s position and made regime change in Kabul a real possibility.  

      Embed from Getty Images

      Although the war has a complicated domestic dimension, it is effectively a proxy conflict that Pakistan has waged against the Afghan government amidst perceived Indian influence in Afghanistan. From Pakistan’s point of view, Afghanistan has changed into an Indian playground and the Taliban are the only force that can secure Pakistani interests. As a result, the Afghan peace process also has a complicated regional dimension.  

      At the same time, the Taliban’s ideological system has proved to be inflexible for a democratic process that upholds citizens’ rights, leading to concerns about the Taliban seeking to build a new regime based on discrimination. Considering the strategic nature of proxy war, the history of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Taliban’s ideology, the following four scenarios are conceivable if the Biden administration underestimates the situation.

      Scenario 1: A Civil War Without the Government

      The Taliban insurgency has reduced the government’s territorial control, limiting it to urban cities and district centers. This has increased the likelihood of Taliban attacks on large cities.

      In the first scenario, the Taliban would seek to conquer and control through violence, leading to the collapse of the government and a descent into all-out civil war. In such a situation, the ground is prepared for mass atrocities due to ethnic tension, poverty and the presence of other militias, such as the Islamic State-Khorasan, an affiliate of ISIS. Just imagine the war affecting cities like the capital Kabul with millions of people. Political crises are rife in Afghanistan, which would be exacerbated by the early withdrawal of NATO forces. Therefore, the pullout of foreign troops according to the Doha agreement’s timetable is a cause for alarm. Under the deal, all US and NATO troops are scheduled to leave the country by May 1.

      This scenario is more likely to happen if the government is dismantled in the absence of a comprehensive peace agreement between the Afghan officials and the Taliban. There are growing calls for Ghani to step down to pave the way for an interim government that includes the Taliban. However, an interim administration without the presence of a peace deal — one that includes mechanisms to ensure it is upheld — is risky. Such a scenario makes it hard to keep the Afghan security forces united if another round of violence erupts under an interim administration. This would be especially the case if the international community does not have a strategy for securing such a fragile peace arrangement.

      Scenario 2: A Civil War Despite the Government

      Another danger is that the withdrawal of US and NATO forces will take place without a peace agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban. In this scenario, the government would not completely collapse if it mobilizes anti-Taliban forces and receives foreign support, but violence would spread from rural areas to populated cities.

      As a result, government officials would retreat to an area outside Kabul and continue their fight against militants as long as they have international recognition and receive support from foreign powers — possibly India, Russia and Iran. This situation is similar to what President Burhanuddin Rabbani’s government faced in the 1990s amidst an insurgency by Taliban militants. That administration withdrew from Kabul but continued its role in the conflict and retained international backing.

      In the second scenario, the war takes on a local context, with violence in pockets around the country. In order to survive, the government would ally with local forces. The government would not have the ability to mount a viable challenge against the Taliban and other armed groups, and its role would largely be reduced to a symbolic one. At the same time, it would be extremely hard for the Taliban to conquer the whole country. Anti-Taliban forces — from the constituency of the old Northern Alliance — would still fight them.

      Scenario 3: Parallel Balance With the Government

      In the third scenario, the Taliban challenge the government through greater territorial control and contestation, but the government would not completely collapse. Instead, it would retain control of large cities and many other areas.

      An example of a parallel balance is Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the Shia organization has both political and military wings. In practice, however, the Taliban have already achieved this by controlling 75 of 405 districts in Afghanistan and contested another 189. As soon as a ceasefire is reached, as per this scenario, the political landscape of some districts under Taliban control and others under government authority would be officially recognized.

      Interestingly, both the government and the Taliban are not in favor of such a situation. The Taliban want complete control of Afghanistan, while the government wants the Taliban to be integrated into the current political system. Under this scenario, international assistance to the Afghan government could continue, but without Pakistan’s cooperation, nothing would change and the Taliban would push on with their insurgency. This scenario is likely if the US and other NATO members continue their support for the government.  

      Scenario 4: Maximum Balance From Within, But Without the Government

      In the final scenario, military and political pressure is exerted on the government to accept a fragile peace agreement that meets the Taliban’s demands. The Taliban impose their type of political system, which gives them religious legitimacy and allows them to influence other political and social forces. A peace deal under the Taliban’s terms would enable them to eventually take over — or have the upper hand in — the legislature and the judiciary system. Besides, the Taliban are estimated to have tens of thousands of fighters and, under such a peace deal, they would either join the security forces or remain armed as parallel forces ready to take action, if necessary.

      This scenario may seem like a soft conquest, but it could easily turn violent. The international community’s departure from Afghanistan and the unrealistic optimism about the Taliban’s ideological position and proxy relations may contribute to such a situation. Pakistan supports this version of a peace agreement to place the Taliban in Afghanistan’s polity to have a dominating position. This scenario is not acceptable for many people in Afghanistan and could create a fragile situation that would likely lead to violence at some point.

      Moving Forward for a Durable Peace

      A durable peace arrangement is only likely when both sides consider several key factors. These include what a possible peace agreement would look like, its implementation, what the future political system would involve and how citizens’ rights are ensured.

      First, there is a need to put pressure on Pakistan to take action against Taliban sanctuaries inside that country. At the very least, Pakistan must ensure there is a reduction in violence and that the Taliban are flexible when it negotiates with the Afghan government. Otherwise, it is hard to imagine a sustainable peace in the context of a proxy war. At the same time, Afghanistan should be neutral when it comes to regional politics, and its future should not depend on the rivalry between India and Pakistan.

      Second, a power-sharing process with the Taliban should be based on transparency. A peace agreement must be mutually agreed and include multiple stages of implementation and international monitoring. However, a power-sharing arrangement should be part of the peace agreement, not the other way around. The implementation of power-sharing before a peace agreement is highly risky and could lead to the collapse of the political order.

      Third, citizens’ and women’s rights and democratic legitimacy should be the basis of the future political system. Otherwise, in a country as diverse as Afghanistan, sustainable peace is not possible.

      Fourth, a political system that focuses on the separation of powers is necessary. Ensuring that political power is not concentrated in one party’s hands, such as the Taliban’s, would protect Afghanistan from the misuse of power.

      Therefore, to ensure peace in Afghanistan and the responsible withdrawal of foreign troops, it is crucial for the Biden administration to consider the implication of the war’s proxy dynamics on peacemaking efforts. When it comes to the domestic context, without considering the country’s sociopolitical diversity and citizens’ rights, it would be extremely hard to think about lasting peace.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More