The Taliban are Afghans. And Trump set the stage for their return.
One thing we need to remember is that the Taliban are Afghans. Most media coverage I’ve seen paints them as some sort of invading force. The Taliban ran the country from 1996 through 2001. Since then, for the past 20 years, they’ve been hanging around in rural areas, fighting and killing Americans, allied forces, and especially their Afghan brethren, acting like local tough guys around the edges of the American footprint. And they’ve received help from all kinds of bad actors in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Their leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, was arrested in 2010 and imprisoned in Pakistan. Baradar was released in 2018 because the Trump administration thought he might come in handy for negotiating a peace agreement. He’s back in Afghanistan now, having spent the past few years in Qatar. And the Taliban have the country.
Another thing to remember is that the Afghan government we’ve been helping, and the military we’ve been supporting for 20 years, couldn’t have held the country last year if we pulled out. They couldn’t have held the country next year if we pulled out. They couldn’t have held the country 10 years ago or 10 years from now.
Trump recognized the Taliban, officially, last year by signing a withdrawal agreement with Baradar. This jaw-dropping move clearly signaled to the rest of Afghanistan—to its citizens, its government, and its military—just what was in store for them when the Americans pulled out. Trump wanted to pull out before Christmas. Conveniently, he landed on May 1 of this year.
Joe Biden inherited that date, but he wanted out, too, apparently. He pushed Trump’s May 1 date back to August 31. His people told him Afghan was going to fall. Might be a year, maybe two. Might be quicker.
The Afghans have had 20 years to prepare, on both sides. This is a civil war on simmer for two decades. And it’s a mess.
More could have been done to prepare for the evacuation of those who needed out. But Trump’s people made it extremely difficult for our Afghan friends to get the visas they needed to get out (think Stephen Miller, whose black-and-white photo would look right at home in a yearbook of Hitler’s senior staff). So, many of our Afghan friends waited years for visas that never came.
But the truth is, no Afghan is safe who lived under the Afghan government we supported. Hundreds of thousands, even millions, of Afghans who were friendly to us just by being good citizens under that government. And they can’t possibly all get out.
But Biden wanted America out, and he wanted it now. It’s easy to think it could have gone better. But after Trump’s 2020 withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, it’s hard to think exactly how Biden could have done that. Had he waited until next year to put some undefined system into place, the inevitably disastrous withdrawal would have occurred during the height of the midterm election season. Had he waited for two years, he might be facing a Republican majority in Congress and fallout that would affect the 2024 general election.
At this point, I’m just praying the Taliban has changed—that they let out those Afghans who helped us directly. And I’m throwing in some prayers for the millions who are stuck there. Especially the women.
Posted on August 28, 2021, in Afghanistan, Opinion, Politics, war and tagged Abdul Ghani Baradar, Baradar, Doha, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Taliban. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
OutLooking 
“And they can’t possibly all get out”
That’s true, but only because we bungled the withdrawal. I believe the desperation we’re seeing could have been prevented and essentially everyone who wanted out could have gotten out, just like the taliban offered.
“But after Trump’s 2020 withdrawal agreement with the Taliban”
Donald’s agreement set expectations, but Joe could have reversed course 180 degrees on a whim. His hands were not tied.
“it’s hard to think exactly how Biden could have done that”
He could have got people out, and then removed our troops, in that order. Instead, he seems to have gazed into a broken crystal ball left behind by Donald, and predicted that it would be fine to do it in the illogical inverse order because Afghanistan hopefully wouldn’t finish falling until after we finished getting people out. What the hell kind of plan is that?
We shouldn’t have been there in the first place and it made things more difficult for human rights there. The very least we could have done upon bailing out of a fight we started, was not betray our friends. I don’t know why that’s so much to ask for.
– Apparently we spent $2.261 trillion in total (inflation adjusted).
– So that’s well over 10 billion each year on average. Trending downwards, last year was 17 billion?
– There are about 100k Afghans eligible for a Special Immigrant Visa. Even though “eligible” is in question thanks to Donald, this gives a ballpark.
– So apparently, if we wanted to, we could afford to hand each one of them 100k a year, every year, for 20 years… or more. (We’re not leaving because we ran out of money.)
So obviously, even if more Afghans want to leave, we could easily afford their plane tickets, and buy them each a house and car for that matter. If that seems excessive, consider, we thought nothing of spending trillions of dollars on death and killing, but when it comes to spending the same on life and living…
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Joe Biden was determined to end the war in Afghanistan. He opposed Obama’s surge in 2011 and made withdrawal from Afghanistan part of his campaign promise during the 2020 presidential election campaign. Given these facts as well as the chance that he might have only one term as president, he could have done two things: 1) escalated the approval of SIV and P2 visas for Afghans who helped our war effort and begun their measured evacuation; and 2) delayed troop withdrawals to the winter, which is not considered an ideal fighting season.
He undoubtedly will have to answer for his decision to ignore these options and defend the decisions that he’s already made. In my opinion, however, the evacuation of Afghans with SIV or P2 visas would not go unnoticed by the Taliban, who would likely escalate their attacks no matter the season. And the escalated attacks likely would have killed more Americans and Afghans than we’re seeing now. And this does not even take into account the Taliban’s reaction to the extension of the withdrawal timetable beyond Trump’s May 1 deadline even if Biden had offered no withdrawal timetable at all. It would become obvious to the Taliban what Biden was doing, and they likely would be considerably unhappy about it.
Certainly, Biden could have ignored the wisdom of his heart as well as his campaign promise to the American people and reversed himself entirely. Trump’s former national security adviser H.R. McMaster advocates for that course: that is, maintaining an American military presence indefinitely. I do not support that approach, which corresponds to the belief of the majority of Americans (Republicans and Democrats) in recent polling.
I’m not here to argue whether we should have invaded Afghanistan in the first place. Or suggest actions we should have taken in the first 5 or 10 years after we were there. My point is that Trump’s recognition of the Taliban last year, and his withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, in a process that completely ignored the Afghan government that we ostensibly supported, set the table for a humiliating, deadly, and tragic withdrawal that was inevitable no matter when or how Biden implemented it.
And I am not going to argue that he shouldn’t have implemented it.
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Another factor about the SIV and P2 visas: President Ghani asked the Biden administration not to evacuate these people, as they would be needed to run the government and military after our withdrawal. That was before Ghani fled the country himself.
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