United States exiting Afghanistan’s well of blood

Hossam al-Haddad

As the administration of US President Joe Biden makes its initial moves to get the remaining US security forces out of Afghanistan, it is better to consider former US President John F. Kennedy’s insightful comment on foreign policy: “Domestic policy can only defeat us, foreign policy can kill us.” This is a rare nugget about the nature of foreign policy.

Given the enormous human and economic costs a nation could incur as a result of floundering on its foreign policy front, it can be said that Kennedy had spoken on behalf of all countries. However, there is no denying that the comment applies particularly to expansionary powers or hegemonic states.

A reasonable opinion is likely to be the one that the US decision to withdraw from Afghanistan should have come much earlier, perhaps two years after its bloody adventure into conflict and the war-torn country. Given the enormous human costs incurred by the United States in particular for the long 20 years in Afghanistan, it can be said that the United States made one of its worst foreign policy mistakes, being severely overshadowed by the bloodshed incurred in Vietnam; however, in both theaters, the consequences for the United States were staggering.

The death toll in the United States speaks for itself, as more than 2,300 members of the American security forces were killed and more than 20,000 wounded in Afghanistan, and reports indicate that more than 450 Britons died in the same swamp along with hundreds of similar individuals of many other nationalities. It took an exceptionally long time for the United States to realize that Afghanistan was a lost cause.

The lesson that the United States and other expansionist powers must grasp is that these wars will not be an easy journey for them in the complex conflict and war zones of the South, where the facts on the ground in these theaters are amazingly complex. Afghanistan is pushing this point home with remarkable cruelty. The projection of power in Southwest Asia and its continuation in Washington’s “war on terror” were among the primary goals of the United States in Afghanistan, as well as in Iraq, but what was not taken into account by the United States before these military interventions was the internal political realities of these countries, which are not subject at all to simplified analyzes and political prescriptions.

The Soviets had to contend with some features of the treacherous political terrain that Afghanistan presented in the late 1980s, but their main concerns were more closely related to Cold War motives. Simply put, the Soviets were intent on preserving the “satellite” status of Afghanistan, and their war effort was aimed at this. Basically, preparing Afghanistan for democracy was not the least of the Soviet Union’s concerns, of course.

However, the same does not apply to the United States, which had assisted the terrorists with the task of eliminating the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, but their goal was also to have a US-friendly regime in Kabul that would serve as a true bridge to US power and influence in the region on an ongoing basis. In other words, the United States expected the regime that replaced the Soviets to be primarily pro-Western and friendly to democracy. The United States has not in any way compromised Islamist fundamentalist regimes in Afghanistan whose political philosophies were opposed to the theory of democracy as the United States imagined and practiced it.

However, the fundamentalist Taliban regime that eventually came to power in the mid-1990s in Afghanistan once the Soviets withdrew defied all Western expectations. As is well known, the Taliban were not only repressive and undemocratic, they were also fiercely opposed to everything Western. There were no hopes that the Taliban would act for Western interests. Besides, the United States did not expect to see Afghanistan as a country dangerously divided along ethnic, tribal and religious lines. Afghanistan’s problems have been exacerbated over the years by the meeting of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and these groups have global Islamist fundamentalist ties.

The goal of the United States has been to have religiously moderate and pro-democracy regimes in Kabul, but as developments over the past few decades have demonstrated, these administrations were not in a position to hold out against the Taliban. In fact, it is the Taliban that is already in power in Afghanistan right now. After years of futile attempts by the United States and its allies to contain the Taliban, they have no choice now but to talk to the Taliban in order to secure some comfort to bring about an “honorable exit” from the bloodstained ground. This is where things stand in the present moment.

Yet, as commentators have pointed out, it is the Afghan civilian population that has suffered the most from decades of bloodshed in the country. Conservative estimates indicate that the number of Afghan security forces who have been killed in Afghanistan has reached about 60,000 so far, and that twice as many civilians have been killed.

Accordingly, the Afghan people will be left to face an uncertain and dangerous future when the last of the US security forces and their allies leave Afghanistan in September this year. The country will be left to its own apparatus, and given that the Taliban is likely to be the dominant formation in the country but not its legitimate government, this situation exposes many Afghan civilians to a very painful and almost dark fate.

There is much to think about for the United States and other democratic nations about the suffering of Afghanistan. One of the lessons it offers itself is that not all the countries of the South are “ready for democracy.” This applies to many countries of the South that already claim to be democracies in the Western sense. Southern “democratic” political systems challenge the ease of analysis and classification, given the many markers of identity they present alongside the legitimacy they have achieved in the eyes of their states and peoples. What we have are seriously volatile states full of contradictions, and connecting with them will prove extremely problematic for the rest of the world.