from Washington, DC
“There will be no circumstances where you will see people taking off from the roof of the US embassy in Afghanistan,” said Joe Biden on July 8 from the White House. The promise lasted just over a month. On Sunday, images that arrived from Kabul showed a helicopter that transported personnel of the US country from the diplomatic headquarters to the airport. For the United States, the image of a helicopter flight is synonymous with the evacuation of Saigon in 1975, when the North Vietnamese army took the city. It is synonymous with military failure.
after twenty years
After 20 years and more than two trillion dollars spent, the United States is leaving Afghanistan in a way it could never have predicted. The collapse of the Afghan government and the return of the Taliban, which Biden called “highly unlikely” a month ago, came in record time. In less than a week, the radical Islamic group conquered province after province to reach the capital.
abuse and torture
Just a month ago, US troops had quietly left Bagram Air Base, a facility that doubled as a prison and where cases of abuse and torture were documented in the early years of the war. This Sunday, the Associated Press listed Bagram among buildings already under Taliban control.
Biden inherited Donald Trump’s full withdrawal agreement. Upon taking office, he extended the deadline for this and approved, until August 31, what was originally supposed to end in May this year. Although there are still two weeks to go before that date, it is already known that the return of the troops will not happen as expected.
Chaos and Criticism
Since you announced your intention to continue with the withdrawal, Biden faced criticism from those who pointed out that there was a danger of the Taliban returning.. Four presidents, two from each of the two main US parties, have been in charge of the war in Afghanistan since 2001. Upon taking office, Biden was blunt: “I’m not going to hand over that responsibility to a fifth.”
Over the past week, when the return of the radical Islamic group became clear, the US government stood its ground. “Another or five years of US military presence would have made no difference if the Afghan military could not or would not control its own country,” Biden said in a statement. Despite that, authorized the deployment of about 6,000 soldiers amidst the chaos to ensure “an orderly and safe withdrawal of personnel” from the US country and its allies.
But if Washington planned a smooth evacuation of the embassy, that was ruled out once it became clear that Ashraf Ghani’s government would not hold out much longer. This Sunday, the diplomatic headquarters suspended consular operations and issued an alert. “The security situation in Kabul is changing rapidly, including the airport. There are reports that the airport is under fire. Therefore, we instruct US citizens to seek refuge wherever they are,” says the notice.
As news from Kabul confirmed the Taliban’s entry into the capital, the White House was virtually silent. Biden spent the weekend at Camp David, a residence outside Washington where American presidents often rest. Your schedule doesn’t show public activities until next Wednesday.
The government barely displayed the picture of the president receiving a videoconference report. “The president and vice president met with their national security team and senior officials to hear reports on the withdrawal of our civilian personnel from Afghanistan, the evacuation of those who applied for special visas and other Afghan allies,” reads the official tweet.
Who came out to speak was Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Its main mission was to try to stop, without success, comparisons with the end of the Vietnam War. “We entered Afghanistan 20 years ago with a mission and that mission was to confront those who attacked us on 9/11. That mission was successful, “he insisted. But both the result and the extent of the comparisons with the fuel of war.
an endless war
The United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, following Republican George W. Bush’s decision to wage a war on terrorism and al Qaeda following the attack on the Twin Towers.
A year later, the president pledged “to help rebuild an Afghanistan free of this evil and a better place to live.” By 2009, the United States Congress had authorized $38 billion to do so, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. In between, the Asian country signed a constitution, elected president and members of the two chambers of its parliament.
The arrival of Democrat Barack Obama at the White House in 2009 meant a new military deployment to Afghanistan. During his presidency, The United States assassinated Osama bin Laden, leader of al Qaeda, in Pakistan, but troops also remained during his two terms.
In 2013, the Afghan army took over the country’s security. Since then, the official report of the US-NATO coalition was that it was training Afghans to sustain itself. But two years ago, a Washington Post report showed how the United States was hiding evidence that it was in a war it could not win.. “If the American people saw the magnitude of this dysfunction… 2,400 lives lost,” read one of the statements collected by the newspaper. The number refers only to the lives of US military personnel. The Associated Press estimates that 66,000 members of the Afghan army and police and 47,245 civilians were killed. On the Taliban side, the number is 51,191.
In 2017, Trump took up the idea of leaving Afghanistan and ending what he considered eternal wars in which the United States had gone through a lot while its allies were enjoying themselves. In February 2020, he announced a deal with the Taliban: the United States would withdraw and the Asian country would not be used in terrorist activities. Last November, after the Republican’s defeat in the elections, the Defense Department said that as of January this year there would be only 2,500 soldiers in Afghan territory, in line with what was proposed in the agreement.
After taking over, Biden kept him. While collapse was possible, no intelligence or security report told him it was that close.
.
