Runaway groom

In a recent speech, President Joe Biden blamed the Afghanistan National Armed Force and its commander, the erstwhile President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani, for giving Afghanistan to the Taliban on a platter. He said it was the responsibility of the Afghans, their government, and law enforcement forces to protect and develop their country. He also said that the US had never gone to Afghanistan for nation-building. Nevertheless, he agreed that no amount of military presence could guarantee a stable and secure Afghanistan — it had not in the past 20 years and will not in the future. He justified leaving Afghanistan with the remark that how many more daughters and sons would the US sacrifice to fight such wars. However, Biden’s speech has raised anger against the US instead of lowering it.

So why are people angry at the US? For one group of people, the anger stems from the reincarnation of the Taliban. For another group, the anger stems from seeing the corrupt leadership that the US had cultivated in Afghanistan at the expense of pushing the country backward in time. Finally, to yet another group of people, the anger stems from the US policy to use Afghanistan as a base to keep an eye on China, causing regional countries to spend millions on defence from the sheer fear of having a superpower languishing in their backyard.

All these groups are also stung with common anger stemming from the way the US had left Afghanistan. The haste, the unpreparedness, the forsakenness of promises built into myriad peace contracts had bewildered even those who had a fair idea of how the US changes heart once its interest in a project wanes.

If one were to remember the cause of invading Afghanistan, it was Osama Bin Laden. Had the then Taliban government either handed over Bin Laden to the US or had given him to another country, there might have been no war. That day of reckoning did arrive, though, when in 2010, the US Marine captured Bin Laden from Abbottabad, Pakistan. Pragmatically speaking, with the capture of Bin Laden, the Afghan war lost its purpose and should have ended. However, it was not to be. The US decided to stay on — for ten more years. For what? Purportedly to build the Afghan army to defend themselves, build a democratic process for governance, and build a system where women could play a larger-than-life role. The US did not do any of these, but it did each of them with a lack of vision and the ideological thrust required to keep the objectives afloat, strengthened, and resistant to external conspiracies.

Read More: Afghanistan: Biden has had his way

A soldier is not a robot or a drone that can be managed from Atlanta with a joystick. A soldier is a man of flesh and blood. More than military training, ammunition, a strong general on his back, a good salary, and a worthy retirement plan, he needs commitment, will, morale, discipline, and the belief in the cause to fight. One wonders if the Afghan forces did even know whose war they were fighting. Were they fighting the US war? Were they fighting for their survival? Did the soldiers know their enemy? In this ambiguity it was natural for the Afghan army to fall apart on losing the gravity — the US — that had pulled it together. It also explains why the Afghan government, busy saving its skin, failed to provide logistical support or reinforcement to their soldiers to fight out the Taliban. Without food, ammunition, reinforcement, and moral support, the soldiers had little reason to die for a cause as dubious as Ghani himself, who left his country in the middle of a crisis. How does one expect loyalty or commitment in this situation? Why would not the soldiers have fled from a war that had no purpose?

Courage to fight emanates from leadership, and this casket has been empty in Afghanistan since long.

Whether we like it or not, the Taliban are part of Afghanistan. Moreover, if the US had been organising the Afghan army to fight its people, it was not creating any defence; instead, it was sowing the seed of discord. More than any solution Afghanistan ever needed to survive, it was unity among different factions divided into linguistic, ethnic, and tribal lines. Unfortunately, no effort was made in this regard. In his latest speech, Biden has only exposed the US to more criticism for being an unreliable and uncommitted partner of both war and peace.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 19^th, 2021.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.