David Pratt: US withdrawal from Afghanistan is a godsend for the Taliban

Whatever your view on the presence of US troops in Afghanistan, Joe Biden these past days has made the momentous decision to end one of America’s “forever wars,” by September 11.

Yes, exactly 20 years to the day after the attacks on the US that triggered the “war on terror” and the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, US troops will leave.

Regular readers of my journalism will know that I’ve devoted a huge part of my life reporting from this long-suffering country. I have no qualms in saying that Afghanistan and its wonderfully hospitable people are very close to my heart.

It’s perhaps no surprise then that since Biden’ announcement I’ve found many people asking me what I make of the US decision. Let me answer that straight off by saying that what matters here above all else is the fate of those war-weary Afghans many of whom have never experienced a single day of peace in the last 40 years.

For many of us outside Afghanistan looking on, we think of the county’s terrible suffering only in terms of the current war against the Taliban. We forget that before this in the 1990s the country was torn apart by a bitter factional civil war which itself brewed over from an even earlier conflict, one borne out of the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

By and large I’ve never been one for overseas military interventions whether by the US, UK, or anyone else for that matter. The wars in Iraq which I’ve also covered, proved to me the futility of such campaigns and the cynical motives of politicians for embarking on them.

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But I’ll admit that I welcomed – albeit warily – the intervention in Afghanistan, if only for the sole reason that it might give some respite to those ordinary Afghans suffering under the barbarism of Taliban rule and the pernicious presence of al-Qaeda on their land.

This of course was not to be and the Taliban far from being defeated, now pose an arguably bigger threat than they have done for decades, especially now given the US draw down.

When last in the Afghan capital Kabul just before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, I was to hear repeatedly from Afghans of how they feared what would result were the Americans to withdraw their military support.

“Three hours and they will be right here in Kabul, in fact many are already operating in covert groups in the city as you know,” one Afghan friend reminded me of the Taliban’s omnipresence. Many I talked with in the city were in little doubt that the country’s security forces would collapse without the support of the US-led coalition.

Should that nightmare scenario come to pass, then the likelihood of Afghanistan being pitched headlong into yet another civil war is very real indeed.

Hopefully, it might not yet come to that after Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani recently unveiled a new peace initiative and agreed to the formation of an interim government.

As observers at the Afghan Analysts Network (AAN) have rightly pointed out, by agreeing to an interim government, Ghani has effectively accepted a major demand of the US and his opponents in Afghanistan. Whether this though will be enough to narrow the gap with his main internal opponent, the Taliban, remains to be seen.

No-one though is holding their breath over the success of any new negotiated outcome or peace deal. Moreover, with the Taliban in their most assertive position for a long time and sensing a “victory” of sorts, it’s hard not see them as holding the trump card.

Even the US intelligence community’s own prediction, as outlined in its annual Threat Assessment published earlier this week concludes that peace talks are unlikely to succeed.

If that proves to be the case and the Taliban win out, then it goes without saying that the rights of Afghan women and other human rights will be massively set back.

And before anyone doubts the progress made on such fronts over these past years, the number of Afghan children in schools has gone from under a million to more than nine million, 40% of whom are girls. Life expectancy too has risen from 44 to 60. This is no mean feat in a country where conflict has constantly been an obstacle to such steps forward.

So, you ask me is the US decision to leave the right one? Well, when seen from Biden’s perspective he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. Personally, as a long time Afghanistan watcher, I believe Biden has set in motion a tragedy in the making. So much more could have been done to consolidate the progress made and stabilise the country.

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Quite frankly, it’s hard not to see the way now open for the Taliban to regain control or a new civil war erupting. Only this week I read in the Washington Post how this month is known as “Black April,” among South Vietnamese refugees. The epithet harks back to the 1973 peace deal made by then US President Richard M Nixon with North Vietnam that led to the US pulling out all its troops from South Vietnam. The result as we now know was a North Vietnamese offensive that brought about the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.

As Washington Post columnist Max Boot noted, back in those days Biden was already a young senator when America took that “fateful decision,” over Vietnam.

History then and the events of that time will not be lost on the current US president as he takes American forces out of one of its longest wars in modern times.

For many Afghans, just as with those South Vietnamese this month could well end up being remembered as ‘Black April.” The US pull out is a godsend for the Taliban, and I fear for the future of my many Afghan friends and their beautiful country. I sincerely hope I’m proven wrong.