As the last men of the dwindling American garrison in
Afghanistan pack their bags, there is an echo of the Soviet Union's own
withdrawal from the country, more than 30 years ago. But, in truth,
Washington's defeat is far greater.
In December 1979, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan to
support the unpopular government of the ruling People’s Democratic Party of
Afghanistan (PDPA). They soon found themselves bogged down in a war against Mujahedeen.
Nine years later, the Soviets decided that there had been
enough bloodshed and, in May 1988, they began their exit. The final contingent
of Soviet troops drove back across the bridge to the USSR in February the
following year.
Twelve years later, US troops arrived to fight Taliban.
Soldiers of other NATO states then followed. Together, they stayed even longer
than the Soviets, but are now on the way out. US President Joe Biden has
promised that American soldiers will leave Afghanistan by the end of August.
As the US completes its retreat from its longest war, its
enemy is on the march. Lately, Taliban have captured 12 of Afghanistan’s 34
provincial capitals, including the second and third largest cities in the
country, Kandahar and Herat, both of which fell on Thursday.
The pace of Taliban advance has been remarkable. In some
places, government forces simply ran away without a fight. The Governor of
Ghazni province was said to have surrendered his city in exchange for free
passage out of the area. US-trained government troops have fled or deserted en
masse and, in some cases, gone over to Taliban. It’s fair to say that it’s been
a rout, and the Americans haven’t even fully left yet. The government may be
able to hold onto the country’s capital Kabul, but even that is no longer
certain.
In short, the 20 years of America’s and NATO’s war in
Afghanistan has ended in ignominious failure – total and absolute. So, of
course, did the Soviets’ war, but not quite so abruptly.
After the last Soviet troops crossed over the Friendship
Bridge linking Afghanistan and Soviet Uzbekistan, Mujahideen launched a major
offensive, confident that they would be able to defeat the government forces in
short order. Their offensive collapsed completely. The Afghan army stood its
ground and not a single major population center fell into the hands of their
opponents. It was not until two years later, when the post-Soviet Russian
government of Boris Yeltsin cut off funding to the Afghans that the PDPA regime
finally fell.
The contrast with what has happened this past week could not
be clearer. Even after the Soviets had left, the troops they had trained and
equipped fought hard and successfully. Today, the troops that America and its
allies trained and equipped at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars have
scattered to the four winds with only the slightest effort at resistance.
But, to be fair, the problem lies not in army exercises or
crates of machine guns. The current batch of Afghans has had plenty of both.
They outnumber Taliban and are better supplied. The problem is one of morale: not
many of them are willing to die for their government.
The PDPA had a well-deserved reputation for corruption,
incompetence, factional in-fighting, and dogmatic, counterproductive policies
that alienated the Afghan people, such as its Marxist assaults on religion and
private enterprise. Mujahideen, the Taliban’s precursor, enjoyed substantial
support from the United States, including signing for the delivery of
sophisticated Stinger missiles.
The fact that the Soviet-backed government put up a better
fight than its contemporary counterpart can, therefore, only have one
explanation, Afghans respect their current rulers even less than they respected
the socialist PDPA. And that is really saying something.
All of which begs the questions of why America and NATO
spent so long supporting the regime in Kabul, and why the latter got to be so
disliked.
The answer to the first question is largely one of prestige.
Having installed the current government, Western states felt that their
reputation was tied to its survival and thus refused to abandon it even when it
became clear that it wasn’t worth supporting.
The answer to the second question is that the awfulness of
the current government owes a lot to the policies pursued by Western states.
After Najibullah was overthrown in 1992, Afghanistan
suffered a vicious civil war in which drug-running warlords competed for power
and inflicted all sorts of atrocities on the Afghan people. When Taliban came
along offering fierce but incorruptible justice, many Afghans breathed a sigh
of relief and gave them their support.
Canadian General Rick Hiller famously said that Taliban
were “detestable murderers and scumbags.” What he failed to note was
that Taliban enemies were, on occasion, even worse. When America and its allies
moved into Afghanistan, these enemies returned to their homes, this time with
the backing of Western powers, and resumed their criminal ways. Unsurprisingly,
the locals weren’t too impressed.
Beyond that, Western powers flooded the country with money.
Pour cash into an impoverished country without adequate controls, and the
consequence will be mass corruption. So it was in Afghanistan.
Not only did this delegitimize the government, but much of
the aid flowed down into the hands of Taliban. As John Sopko, the US official
responsible for auditing American expenditures in Afghanistan put it, “the
end of the US supply chain in Afghanistan is Taliban.” If you want to know
who armed and paid for Taliban, the answer is that America did.
