Walking away from Afghanistan now, is a mistake

A few days back I had posted a blog ‘Joe Biden faces resistance on withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan’. Then I posted another blog ‘Chinese soldiers may enter Afghanistan after departure of US troops’. One of the comments received in response to the second blog was “United States seem to have decided to handover charge of Afghanistan to China.” 

Today, I am posting below a message of Marvin G. Weinbaum, Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan Studies at the Middle East Institute.

The Biden administration decision to disengage militarily from Afghanistan by 11th September 2021 may seem warranted; perhaps even overdue, after a commitment of two decades and spending US$2 trillion. The initial objectives of the US for intervention in Afghanistan were seemingly achieved years ago and its subsequently acquired aims in staying have proved mostly unattainable. But while a full unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan may appear to be defensible as the US weighs its global threats, the president’s action is nevertheless shortsighted and narrow in its understanding of US long-term security interests. Foremost, it is an “America First” policy that shows callous indifference to the consequences for a current-day Afghanistan that is to a large extent of our making. We are putting in motion developments that will eliminate any remaining possibilities for a negotiated peace, lead to increased violence, undermine a sitting government, collapse the formal economy, and place at risk the hard-won rights of Afghan women and minorities. The stage is also being set for an open-ended, proxy-driven civil war that in creating millions of refugees is likely to destabilize and radicalize the region.

In many ways we have been here before. After the Soviets bailed out of Afghanistan in 1989, the US decided that it had little stake in what happened in the country and the region. Virtually all government assistance ceased. We decided to let the Afghans sort out their differences and left Pakistan, our erstwhile partner in the jihad against communism, to fend for itself in coping with the fallout of the decade-long Afghan conflict. What we got in Afghanistan was a bloody, anarchic, fratricidal civil war, the rise of the Taliban, the settling in of al-Qaeda, and 9/11. In Pakistan, there followed a decade of political instability, an undeterred decision to go nuclear, and a high-altitude shooting war with an also nuclear-armed India that it took the US to help stop. It would have to do much the same three years later to prevent a potentially more deadly, globally impacting conflict on the subcontinent.

If walking away from Afghanistan and the region was a mistake in the 1990s, it is ever so much more so now. The US was not then worried about global terrorism or nuclear proliferation emanating from the region. Geo-strategically, we were unconcerned with having an adversarial Russia, China, and Iran among others filling the vacuum of an American absence. It is misguided to believe that we can compartmentalize our global interests. If tragedy befalls Afghanistan and the region falls into turmoil, it is difficult to believe that the US can expect to realize its objectives in areas now deemed of higher priority. A continued American military presence in Afghanistan small enough to be politically palatable but large enough to contribute to the country’s stability might not seem very satisfying but given the alternatives it might have been the least bad of all possible outcomes. Unfortunately, the Biden administration decision now rules that out.