Americans repeat the history they never studied and it’s too bad nobody in Washington knew much about Britain’s greatest military disaster in the 19th century. The Retreat from Kabul involved 4,500 troops and 12,000 civilians who were granted safe passage by the Afghan Emir to leave Kabul via the Khyber Pass to a village just 90 miles away. It was winter and they were slowed by snow and ice. But they were viciously attacked by Afghan warriors along the route and, seven days later, only one British medic and three Indian soldiers survived.
The massacre and humiliation led to Britain’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, a strategically important country to its Imperial ambitions as a buffer between Russia and India. Britain wasn’t the only empire that had designs on Afghanistan. For centuries, invaders have come and mostly gone, including Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the Mughal Empire, Persian Empire, the Sikh Empire, and in the 20th century the Soviet Union and in the 21st Century America. That’s why Afghanistan is known as the “graveyard of empires” and America, pulling its military out after 20 years there, is simply its latest casualty.
Now Afghan’s 32 million people will return to their perpetual state of poverty and civil war. Some Afghans prosper, notably warlords and drug barons, who have thrived in spite of constant strife. Since 2001, Afghanistan has been the world’s leading narco-state, producing 90 percent of the world’s illicit heroin globally; tons of hashish, and more opiates (93 percent) than anywhere else. There is also mining potential, orchards, and some oil and natural gas, but its biggest industry has always been war and the care and feeding of troops, enemy or otherwise.
Once the Americans leave it will revert to being another failed state and taken over by the Taliban extremists who controlled it for years before the Americans arrived in 2001. They already have snapped up half the territory since America announced its departure a few months ago.
Despite that worrisome development, President Joe Biden’s decision to pull out is correct. The public agrees too, but former President George W. Bush publicly called the withdrawal a “mistake” — but so was Bush’s decision to invade it in the first place in 2001 then dig in for years. The cost of this 20-year catastrophe, in American blood, treasure, and reputation, is incalculable. Incompetence by Bush and subsequent administrations have rung up a price tag of $2.21 trillion — more than Bush’s other boondoggle, the invasion, and occupation of Iraq, which has cost $2 trillion thus far.
Then there is the human cost. Department of Defense figures show that 2,442 U.S. troops were killed and 20,666 wounded. Another 3,800 U.S. private security contractors died and 1,144 NATO coalition troops lost their lives. Now all remaining forces will withdraw on this year’s 20th anniversary of 9/11.
Afghanistan was invaded in 2001 because Osama bin Laden was there and the Taliban refused to give him up. The U.S. landed, deposed the Taliban, searched for bin Laden but didn’t find him for ten more years in Pakistan. But having arrived, Washington decided to nation-build there anyway. Billions were invested in creating, bolstering, and training the Afghan military, police, democratic institutions, leaders, judges, and technocrats.
But it has been all for naught: American oversight was insufficient and Afghani corruption was rampant. Now that U.S. troops are leaving, the Taliban has quickly recaptured territory because the government remains weak and thousands of members of Afghani security forces are standing down or deserting. People are fleeing to neighboring countries or lining up for hours to get out before the West’s departure. Translators and suppliers who worked for the U.S. and NATO militaries are notably vulnerable and desperate to leave.
Despite 20 years of human and financial carnage, America got off more lightly than did the previous occupier, the Soviets. The Brits left in the 19th century, then civil war ensued and a monarchy took hold in 1923. But in 1973, Moscow made its move and orchestrated a coup and replaced the Emir with a Marxist regime.
That brought about more civil war which morphed into one of the Cold War’s “proxy wars” like Vietnam. The Soviet Union backed the Marxist puppet government and the United States backed mujahedeen, or Islamic insurgents, who wanted to depose the communists. To do so, the CIA armed the newly incarnated extremist cult known as the Taliban, out of Pakistan, as well as Osama bin Laden and his crew from Saudi Arabia.
In 1992, the Soviets walked away from their misadventure after enormous costs. Roughly two million Afghans died, six million were displaced, 15,000 Soviet soldiers died, 35,000 were wounded, and tens of thousands returned home as demoralized drug addicts. That debacle contributed to the demise of the Soviet Union also in 1992.
The Taliban filled the vacuum and imposed their extremist interpretation of the Koran on Afghanis, along with a toxic culture of misogyny. Women were imprisoned in burkas and their homes, unable to attend school, work, play music, or do much of anything except to produce more mujahedeen.
The lesson to be drawn here is that the White House and Pentagon should have done their homework. It would also have helped if they hadn’t backed and trained terrorists to fight the Soviets, or had known that Afghanistan was virtually unconquerable, given its history, topography, patchwork quilt of warring ethnic groups, and the fact that it’s in the middle of the world’s most dangerous neighborhood.
Left behind are 32 million people who have never gotten their act together, or been united, in part because they have never been left alone. Washington hopes to negotiate a peace agreement between what’s left of the existing government and the Taliban, but with Afghan security forces heading for the hills and the deadline looming, the fanatical sect isn’t rushing to sit down and hammer out a deal. To complicate matters further, the Russians are back, sabotaging the withdrawal process by providing the Taliban with advice and weapons.
The odds are that the current Afghan regime will collapse by year’s end and the Taliban will drag society and women back to the Dark Ages. It’s unlikely that Afghans will cobble together a new nation, given that their leaders squandered the assistance they were given to do so. Now they will pay a hefty, and tragic, price once more.
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It is a sign of incompetence when a military organization like NATO is unable to free a country like Afghanistan from radical & fanatic Moslem. Compare this when Europe was cleared from Nazi's during the 2 world war. I really don't care at all about the Moslem fanatic man but my heart breaks when I think about the children, girls and woman left behind when the fanatic Moslem take over. For many, facing suicide will be the lesser of their available options they have to escape terror of their forced marriage as slavery.
its too bad that making the world safe for democracy has cost so many lives and only seems to work in the West. Yes the US should get out of Afghanistan and concentrate on the Western hemisphere. Cuba and Venezuala are not exactly models of democracy either.