Was the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan inevitable? What is the roadmap to their final defeat?
Why the U.S. or the international forces couldn’t eradicate Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan? What is the way forward for the war-torn country?
“The Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped (soldiers) — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It [The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan] is not inevitable.”
Last month, Joe Biden said this about the global concerns regarding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. It was a gross and catastrophic understatement on the part of the President of the United States given the fact that the Intelligence agencies had warned in July 2021 that the Afghan military was unprepared for the Taliban attack.
“Intelligence agencies predicted that should the Taliban seize cities, a cascading collapse could happen rapidly and the Afghan security forces were at high risk of falling apart.” — New York Times
It was already predicted that the Afghan government would fall as a result of the U.S. withdrawal; the only bewildering turn of events was how rapidly it happened.
For the same reason, the US Defence could have devised countless other strategies for the pullout. But they went with only the most rudimentary and ill-advised plan; a strategy of evacuation or a lack thereof that turned out to benefit no one. Except for the Taliban, maybe. Or, the ISIS!
Ending the longest war in the U.S. history
In December 2009, Barack Obama became the first U.S. President to start the talks about the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. The administration withdrew 33,000 “surge” troops in 2012 with plans to hand over all security responsibilities to Afghanistan in 2014 and a full troop withdrawal by 2016.
Even when the Afghan military completely took over the security efforts of the nation in June 2013, the looming threat of the Taliban still at large made it impossible for the foreign forces to leave.
The motive behind the prolonged stay was more likely an imperative of the U.S. to win the Afghan war on terror they started one and a half decades ago than any humanitarian effort to “save Afghanistan” by building a peaceful democracy.
In 2017, the Trump administration surged the U.S troops and ramped up the counter-insurgency efforts in the country. But even with the increased enthusiasm displayed by Trump, the ultimate goal of wiping out the Taliban or Al-Qaeda remained an unfulfilled dream. And on February 29, 2020, Trump negotiated a deal with the Taliban for U.S. troop withdrawal by May 1, 2021, after multiple Peace talks.
What was bleaker about the imbroglio in Afghanistan was the constant accusation of corruption that prevailed in the elected governments of the country and the inefficiency of its troops to stand on their own.
It would have been better for America had it set the motive of war on terror in Afghanistan as the capture of all responsible for the Twin Tower attacks. That way, their exit would have been more swift and realistic, and a supposed military victory for the nation. Rather, they set an ambitious goal of the militarized rebuilding of a nation in Afghanistan with elections, development goals, and transition to constitutional rule. By doing that, they simply put themselves up for failure.
A failure we are now witnessing only with shock and horror!
The Muslim ideal of an Islamic state
In April 2002, former U.S. President George W. Bush likened the war effort in Afghanistan to the Marshall Plan, the ambitious reconstruction of Europe after World War I. The aim was “to rebuild Afghanistan and help Afghans learn to cooperate to feed, house and govern themselves.”
While it was optimistic of Bush to proclaim this arduous task as the war motive, one should have considered if the values and ideals of the European countries were also shared by their Muslim neighborhoods.
In a survey conducted by Pew Research Center in 2010, it was found out 99% of Afghans wanted Sharia law to be the law of the land.
Sharia is the divine law in the Islamic world, besides being Islam’s legal system. It is derived from the Quran, the Sunnah, and the Hadiths — the deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and the narrations of others at his time. Sharia pertains to the laws as to how a Muslim should conduct himself/herself, how to act, think, and worship Allah. It also states different punishments for both minor and major crimes in Islam.
In the research, it was found that 73% of Afghans believe that Sharia was the revealed word of Allah, 78% agreed that religious judges should adjudicate domestic or property disputes, 81% favored punishments for theft, robbery according to Sharia, 85% favored stoning as a punishment for adultery, 79% favored the death penalty for apostates and 61% believed that it should be imposed on Non-Muslims as well.
Most of the atrocities the Taliban commit in Afghanistan are but a fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia, adopted by many other Islamic nations across the world in varying proportions.
The Afghans could be terrified by such a repressive, violent and, punitive regime, but that doesn’t mean they want to choose democracy over the divine rule of Islam.
The Islamic world is still alien to any reformation or scrutiny of their religion that others like Christianity and Hinduism went through. Unless that happens, no amount of foreign military aid is going to make any Muslim country transition to democracy or constitutional rule.
More importantly, this transition cannot be made by imposing modern Western (or of any Hemisphere) ideologies into people’s minds. That is colonialism, something as damaging as militant Islamic rule!
The resistance from within
The ground reports from Afghanistan revealed a U.S.-trained military equipped with top weaponry surrendering to the Taliban; the soldiers either fleeing or jumping sides. The elected government, on which the world leaders had pinned their hopes, dismantled, with the leaders also fleeing the country. The Taliban took control of Kabul in just 11 days, a siege that the Intelligence agencies predicted to happen within a few months or years.
The determining factor became the abject lack of resistance from the Afghan government and military who simply gave their top weaponry into the hands of an anarchist Islamic militant group!
Consequently, we saw the educated and moderate citizens trying to flee the country.
The horrific images of young men clinging to the sides of a U.S. aircraft during take-off and their plummeting to death are testimony to the panic of losing everything they hold close to their hearts. But it also shows a terrified faction of young moderate Afghans unwilling to stay and fight for their rights and the constitution of the country.
Whatever the reasons may be, it’s safe to assume that the people who want a secular, democratic, and liberal Afghanistan are a minority in the country; a scared minority that just wants to escape while they can. They seem not to want to defend their constitution or their ideals in that land. If so, then what were the U.S., the U.N., and the others defending and rebuilding in Afghanistan for the last 20 years?
The resistance in Panjshir Valley is in stark contrast with the defeatist and submissive mentality of the rest of Afghanistan. They have maintained full control of the valley for the last four decades, despite the Soviet Union threats and the surge of militant Islam in the country. They continue to fight the resurgence of the Taliban today under the unified command of the National Resistance Force (NRF).
The battle of Mazar-i-Sharif in November 2001 witnessed the defeat of the Taliban at the hands of the Northern Alliance aided by the U.S. military. It became the catalyst for the decline of the terror regime in the next few years. It is a testimony of how the Afghans can rid themselves of the militant Islamic threat.
Given the modern fighting strategies and foreign support that the resistance can hope to get, toppling down the Taliban is not an impossible feat. But what we need to discuss is how to sustain the peace thus attained, that is determined by the will of the people to maintain it, fully knowing the value of that peace, liberty, democracy, and secularism.
So, the real question is, what does Afghanistan want to replace the militant fundamentalist Islamic rule with? What are the ideals and values Afghans hold important enough to defend and pursue?
As long as the majority of Afghans don’t have a motivation or reason to fight, something they find irreplaceable about their identity that they will defend with their life, they are not going to stand up against militant Islam. And these fundamentalist factions of Islamic ideology will continue to oppress them.
