Afghanistan: History Repeats
On April 14th, 2021, President Biden, keeping his campaign promise, announced a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. At the time, we had roughly 2,500 troops still in the country. What President Biden and the rest of the United States didn’t expect was that four months later the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, would fall to the Taliban. Later, after taking the Presidential Palace, the Taliban would claim victory over the war that has plagued the country for twenty years.
President Biden was not the first to promise a withdrawal of U.S. troops out of Afghanistan on the campaign trail. President Trump, following his campaign promise, lowered the amount of U.S. troops from 8,600 to 2,500 over a slow period. While President Trump promised a full withdrawal and failed to do so, President Biden finished the withdrawal his predecessor started. Even after the fall of Kabul, President Biden quickly defended his decision but admitted that “things went much faster than we anticipated.” President Biden also argued that with the finding of Osama Bin-Laden, our reason for the war in Afghanistan was accomplished a decade ago.
The United States and her allies invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 and toppled the Taliban government in the hope of dismantling al-Qaeda, whose founder was Bin-Laden. This has made our constant war with the Taliban the longest war the United States ever participated in, almost tied with the Vietnam war which lasted 19 years. The Afghanistan conflict, like Vietnam, has been costly. More than 47,000 civilians and 2,400 U.S service members have been killed during the conflict, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. Now, with the Taliban taking back control of the country, it has made the entire conflict pointless.
The similarities between the Vietnam war and the Afghanistan conflict are almost one to one. In Vietnam, we fought, and many civilians and U.S. troops died, only for the U.S. to quickly withdraw out of the country after a long public outcry. Later, North Vietnam invaded and took the capital of South Vietnam in record time after the U.S. troop withdrawal, arguably making the entire war pointless. Kabul has become Biden’s Saigon, despite how fiercely he defends his decision.
The Taliban has made a few promises after taking over in the first news conference on August 17th, 2021 in Kabul. The Taliban’s main spokesman Zabinhulla Mujahid sought to calm fears of what a Taliban-controlled government would look like. The main issue on the table is women's rights. Mujahid said the government would respect the right to work and study and be active in society “but within the framework of Islam,” which is the dogmatic way to say that women will have very little and limited rights based on the strict conservative Islamic reading the Taliban believes. We have yet to see any female-filled positions in the new Taliban government -- I would not hold my breath to see one any time soon.
It is possible that Biden’s Presidency will be riddled with the consequences of his decision that seem to have doomed Afghanistan to another Islamic Conservative government that limits all forms of human rights, especially women’s rights. This resulted from the withdrawal of American troops and has caught the world’s attention. Specifically, the People’s Republic of China has cast its eye on the region. Whether or not Afghanistan becomes another target of China’s continuous neo-colonial agenda remains to be seen. The fate of Afghanistan is now foggier than it already was. Whether the country remains united, or falls apart, or falls into huge debt to China, Biden started this situation with his quick and sudden withdrawal. The full repercussions in Afghanistan and on world politics have yet to be fully seen.
