This analysis delves into the consequences of the US's hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan under the Trump and Biden administrations, examining the implications for Afghan society and international relations.
UPDATED: INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS: The West’s ignominious dumping of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 was not the first time that the United States abandoned the Afghan people. During the 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) massively supported the mujahideen (holy warriors) fighting the Soviet occupation with over hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of weapons, ammunition and funding a year (estimated total: up to three billion USD). This became the American intelligence agency’s largest and most successful ever covert operation.
Operating out of the Northwest Frontier town of Peshawar, the only problem was that Washington, together with Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and various other donors, were channelling most of their backing through Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence agency, ISI. This meant that the bulk of their support was not only being siphoned off by Pakistan’s corrupt military regime but directed to hardline Afghan fundamentalist groups, such as Hekmatyar Gulbuddin’s Hezb-e-Islami and warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani’s Haqqani Network, later designated a terrorist organization by the US State Department.
Highly effective “commanders of the interior” such as Ahmed Shah Massoud, known as the Lion of Panjshir, Abdul Haq and others, only received a modest portion of this outside backing. A Talib collaborator responsible for numerous bombings against civilians during the NATO occupation from 2001 onwards, Hekmatyar is currently living as an eminence grise in Kabul. Sirajuddin Haqqani, the son of Jalaluddin who died in 2018, is now deputy leader and acting interior minister of the Taliban.
Throughout the 1980s, experienced international aid workers, journalists and even well-informed US diplomats and intelligence operatives consistently warned the Reagan administration that the CIA’s continued support of such extremists through ISI would prove disastrous. Nevertheless, highly influential anti-Soviet advocates such as Texan Democrat, Congressman Charlie Wilson, best known through George Crile’s book and later film, Charlie Wilson’s War, persisted in their advocacy for working through the Pakistanis.
Hekmatyar Gulbuddin, otherwise known as the “Big H”, is a hardline Afghan fundamentalist heavily supported by both Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence Agency (ISI) during the 1980s and early 1990s, and by the CIA. While never formally joining the Taliban, his Hezb-e-Islami (Islamic Party) faction, was responsible during the NATO occupation (2001-2021) for numerous bomb and IED assaults against both military and civilians. During the 1980s, Hekmatyar was also responsible for the murder of moderate Afghans, such as Professor Sayed Madjruh, former Dean of Philosophy in Kabul, as well as several foreign journalists and aid workers, notably British-Polish filmmaker Andy Skrzypkowiak, both in 1987. Hekmatyar’s Hezb also brutally murdered the young BBC reporter Mirwais Jamil in 1994 in Kabul. Now in his mid-70s, Hekmatyar lives in the Afghan capital pursuing a new career as an Islamic scholar.
Islamabad’s goal was to place Hekmatyar as the head of a pro-Pakistani Islamic Emirate in Kabul once the Soviets left. The fact that his radical Hezb faction murdered scores of moderate Afghans as well as foreigners including American and British journalists rarely appeared to be an issue. As a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and the PBS NewsHour working out of Peshawar at the time, I found myself the target of a planned hit by Hekmatyar, whom we all referred to as the “Big H”, for highlighting his abuses. It was only when confronted directly by several other western journalists as well as myself that he appeared to stand down with his threats, at least temporarily.
While the CIA’s support may not have directly benefitted Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden (also Peshawar-based), whom I encountered twice across the border in Afghanistan, the Saudi-Yemeni Jihadist certainly received funding through the Saudis and other Arab donors collaborating with the Americans. Washington’s indiscriminate if not naïve backing resulted in the rise of the Taliban, IS and other extremist Islamist groups operating out of Afghanistan. Some, or their offshoots, are now reportedly active in Talib-run Afghanistan once again.
While CIA support continued beyond the 14 April 1988 Geneva Accords leading to Soviet withdrawal in February 1989, the United States washed its hands of Afghanistan once the communist regime of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) collapsed three years later. This led to bitter civil war resulting in massive destruction of the Afghan capital and up to 50,000 people killed. With Hekmatyar failing to garner popular support, ISI changed its backing to the Taliban who took Kabul in November 1996.
For its part, Washington officially never acknowledged its responsibility for the mess it had helped create. Nor, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, has it ever admitted that its military backing of the mujahideen through ISI, ultimately produced a whole new slew of anti-western Islamic extremists, including Al Qaeda.
While the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was broadly welcomed by most Afghans, the manner with which the West proceeded to operate in the country remained highly questionable. It spent more than three trillion taxpayer dollars’ worth of military and development support over nearly two decades of occupation. It also largely placed the responsibility for heading up the so-called “recovery process” into the hands of NATO generals.
Unfortunately, few lessons were learned from the 1980s. At the Bonn conference in December 2001, experienced Afghan hands warned that any outside intervention should entail a long-term process, over 30-40 years, without throwing billions of dollars at the problem. Furthermore, it should not be a military-led process, but one involving local civil society and entrepreneurs rather than expensive outside contractors.
In the end, much of this massive backing was for nought. First, the US mission in Afghanistan became severely distracted when Washington turned its attention to Iraq in 2003. Second, Washington allowed the military to run the show. And third, absurdly huge amounts of funding ended up in corrupt western and Afghan hands with no proper accountability. The West’s abrupt abandonment of the country under the Trump administration basically nullified much of what had been achieved such as the broad education of women and girls at all levels and a not-aways efficient but nevertheless accessible nation-wide health system.
Initially, the West’s involvement had provided hope for a new future for an overwhelming majority of Afghans. In the end, however, it has left the country with little other than a hardline Islamist regime based in Kandahar that cares little for what most of their people want, and not just the aspiration of women and girls, notably a dynamic new future properly engaged with the international community. According to UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, “Afghanistan is the only country in the world to prohibit access to education for girls over the age of 12 and for women.” Primary education has fallen sharply with 1.1 million girls and boys no longer attending school.
NATO training of Afghan military and police during the 2001-2021 occupation. (Photo: NATO)
The human costs for Afghans and the West have been enormous. Many of those killed whether American, British or Afghan, during the NATO war died pointlessly, a sad legacy for their families. According to Brown University’s Watson Institute, over 70,000 Afghan civilians are believed to have succumbed, while an estimated 2,298 US and 1,145 Allied troops were killed as were nearly 4,000 military contractors or mercenaries not to count the tens of thousands wounded, many of them severely. Over 73,000 Afghan police and army security force members died, while an estimated 60,000 Taliban were also killed. Often ignored, too, are the thousands of former service personnel believed to have died, and who continue to die, from suicide resulting from PTSD, depression and other related factors.
With the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) involving 42 countries – 30 of them NATO members – from active combat in 2014 leaving Afghan security forces to assume the load, it was inevitable that the Americans and their allies would eventually seek to remove themselves militarily from Afghanistan. But the idea was to do this intelligently while still providing a modicum of military and development support for the government to operate on its own.
Another lesson from the past was that the PDPA regime managed to fight decisively hard against the mujahideen for three years following the Red Army withdrawal, but only as long as Soviet military and financial support continued. The moment the tap was turned off by the Kremlin, the regime collapsed.
One of the main problems with the planned withdrawal process was that the West was backing an unpopular and corrupt regime in Kabul headed by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Both he and other members of his government were stashing away as much as they could by channelling funding abroad and purchasing property in places like Dubai and London. Less than one fifth (18.8 per cent) of eligible Afghans voted in the 2019 elections with barely half the votes (less than one tenth of the voting population) going to Ashraf, and yet the West persisted with its support of an administration with no legitimacy.
According to independent Human Rights and UN assessments, the bulk of ordinary Afghans wanted neither Ashraf nor the Taliban. Yet this, too, was ignored. With former Donald Trump determined to bring an end to the war and a complete US pullout as soon as possible, the US president undertook one-sided negotiations through his Afghan-American envoy, Zalmay Khalizad, with the largely Pushtun-dominated Taliban. Tribal Pushtuns represent the largest minority in Afghanistan, primarily in the east and south, and, given that no proper census has been made since 1979, may or may not possess a slight overall majority. The US-Taliban talks completely sidelined everyone else with a stake in their country’s future, whether the disenfranchised Kabul regime or the majority of Afghans.
Trump’s goal was simplistic. He wanted a quick deal agreeing to a withdrawal of the remaining 14,000 American troops over 16 months. In return, the Taliban would provide assurances not to allow any terrorist groups, such as IS and Al Qaeda, to operate on Afghan soil. With wishful thinking that the Taliban might want peace with shared government responsibilities, the Trump administration, much against the advice of some of his consultants including select Congressional Republicans, finally signed a one-sided peace accord in Doha with the Taliban in February 2021.
Basically, Trump handed over Afghanistan, lock, stock and barrel to the Kandahari hardline leadership. The agreement also enabled the one-sided release by the Ashraf regime of 5,000 Talib prisoners without the Taliban providing any reciprocity.
Military evacuation of Afghan civilians and former security and government personnel and their families from Kabul in August 2021. (Photo: Air Mobility Command)
As any experienced counter-insurgency specialist can affirm, Trump made the most basic mistake. He named the date for final withdrawal, an insurgent’s wet dream, enabling the Taliban to do whatever they liked after the US and its allies had withdrawn militarily. Equally disastrous, there was no arrangement for the United States and its Western allies to leave behind contract or mercenary personnel with spare parts support to help the Afghan military maintain its costly and highly sophisticated weaponry, such as helicopter gunships, tanks and other materiel. When Ashraf slipped out of Kabul into exile in the United Arab Emirates as the Taliban began entering the capital, there was no longer any leadership for the highly trained and relatively competent Afghan government forces which promptly disintegrated.
When President Biden took over Trump’s mess, he had the means to rectify America’s moral responsibilities to the Afghan people. While he briefly extended the withdrawal deadline, he did little else. As a politician, Biden had always been against a prolonged US commitment to Afghanistan. Yet some of his advisors adamantly suggested that he re-negotiate with the Taliban to ensure a more representiave cross-section of Afghans, including women, in any talks. The idea, too, was to provide the basis for more free and fair elections that would include Talib candidates in the fall of 2021, and not the sort of political mess the West permitted two years earlier. Biden refused. On taking control, there was – and still is – no reason for the Taliban to hold elections.
Both Trump and Biden have a shared responsibility for the Afghan debacle, even if the former is now seeking without factual basis to place the blame fully on the current president. Both could have pushed for a more organized withdrawal that probably would have left a modest NATO contingent in place but with proper support for the Afghan security forces to do their job. At the same time, Washington could have pushed for a more realistic political settlement, without doubt no easy task, that would seek to involve all sides, including the Taliban. As on-the-ground assessments were already showing from just prior to 2001 and then again from 2016 onwards, growing numbers of Talib commanders were tiring of war and would be prepared to access a more accommodating settlement leaving Kandahar’s hardline leadership out in the cold.
As the lessons from Peshawar during the 1980s should have taught the Americans, you cannot simply play with a country’s future and then, like some spoiled child, go for the more glittering toy on the other side of the room. While the US and British military with broad support from numerous independent groups and individuals managed to stage an exemplary evacuation of some 122,000 Afghans, many of them former NATO or Afghan army employees and their families, this was more like temporarily covering a highly toxic chemical spill with flowers. It failed to deal with the real issue at hand, notably that the West had dismally failed the people of Afghanistan, once again.
Since the 2021 collapse, growing numbers of Afghans, particularly young men and boys, are seeking to make their way west at enormous risk in search of a new future, both to Europe but also Latin America in an effort to slip into the United States. They see little or no hope in Afghanistan. While armed Afghan opposition to the current regime, including factional disputes within the Taliban, are slowly on the rise, the current leadership is unlikely to change soon. This suggests that the international community, including the United Nations. needs to stop catering to the politically correct and urgently embrace a new and more pragmatic approach for dealing with the Taliban given that more than a quarter of the population are living under dire humanitarian straits. Ordinary Afghans deserve more than just basic survival.
Global Insights editor Edward Girardet is a journalist and author focusing on conflict, humanitarian crises and development who has covered Afghanistan since just prior to the Soviet war in 1979. His 2011 book “Killing the Cranes – A Reporter’s Journey Through Three Decades of War in Afghanistan” is considered a ‘classic’ (New York Review of Books) and one of the most informed on this country’s apparently never-ending humanitarian and economic turmoil since civil war first broke out in the summer of 1978. Other books include: “Afghanistan: The Soviet War”; “The Essential Field Guide to Afghanistan”. (4 fully-revised editions) and “Somalia, Rwanda and Beyond.” Girardet has recently completed a new book to be published in 2025: Tales of the American Club: From the Hippie Trail to the Afghan Wars.
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