“President Biden has made it clear that the US can no longer serve as guarantor of democracy and freedom.”
It is not the fall of Kabul that surprised many but the pace by which the Taliban overran the country. The Taliban’s arrival came so swiftly that the US-installed government headed by President Ashraf Ghani scampered fast to leave the country. Many political analysts are wondering why the installed government tumbled like the proverbial house of cards, with President Ghani fleeing the country to an unknown destination.
US President Joe Biden could not believe it. According to him, the US has trained around 300,000 soldiers to fight against insurgents estimated to number around 75,000. They were trained to fight for their proxy in the guise of rooting out terrorism. This is the reason they invaded that country in September 2003 only to cost the American taxpayers more than $2 trillion dollars, the lives of 2,446 servicemen, and nearly 4,000 civilian contractors of which more than 66,000 Afghan military and police officers killed in fighting the 20-year war.
Civilian costs are even higher at 47,245 deaths. The number of Taliban and other opposition fighters killed stands at 51,191. The war includes direct funding, costing about $800 billion and $83 billion to train the Afghan army—only to melt like ice upon hearing the arrival of the Taliban forces.
Biden admitted that it was the US that paid the salaries of the Afghan soldiers, equipped them with sophisticated arms, supplied them with tanks, armored personnel carriers, Humvee combat vehicles, fighter jets, Blackhawk helicopters, and reconnaissance aircraft only to hand them over to the Taliban who descended from the hills.
The fiasco has, all of a sudden, shifted to the US Congress. Many could not reckon why the war that cost the US $2 trillion to fight what many observed as ragtag fighters fell. The US miserably lost that war and paradoxically caused poverty in the US to multiply. It mushroomed the number of unemployed and homeless persons, mired students in unpayable loans, and increased the gap between the rich and the poor thus fueling social unrest. It gained nothing but the hatred of the Afghan people.
Strangely, what we thought as extremely fanatical and brutal was dispelled by their liberation of the country. Their militia that patrolled the streets maintained the peace and order of the city and no looting similar to the rallies in the major cities of the US. The head of the Taliban announced there will be no revenge, and would allow women to practice their profession. As one observed, the general amnesty put many in a bind, fearing they would be meted out harsh punishment by their liberating victors.
To the surprise of many, the interim president who is also chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, announced a general amnesty to all. Many were surprised by the announcement. The only unusual incident is that those who feel guilty about betraying their country have to get out. In the stampede that ensued at the airport, many among the unruly crowd were injured and some were killed as security personal desperately tried to put order to people wanting to board the aircraft. One even tried to cling to an aircraft—that person fell when the plane took off.
Noticeably, it seems that only Russia and China did not evacuate their embassy personnel in Kabul. Barely two weeks before the fall, an official delegation from the Taliban visited Russia and China and gave assurances of a peaceful takeover by the Taliban government. In a meeting with Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and later with China’s foreign minister Wang Yi, the two countries promised to offer economic assistance for the rehabilitation of the country after giving assurance that the new Islamic Republic of Afghanistan would not export or support extremism, separatism and fundamentalism to other countries.
Even before the dust could settle, the US is already sowing intrigue in a frantic bid to divide the Afghan people. President Biden froze about $9.5 billion of the Afghan government’s reserves in US banks. According to reports, the US State Department was consulted before the action, adding that the Biden administration needs no new authority to freeze the reserves because the Taliban was already under sanctions from an executive order approved after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
China has all the reasons to economically develop that country. Afghanistan’s stability is key to protecting the more than $50 billion worth of Belt-and-Road projects that principally passes through Pakistan, exiting to the Indian Ocean. Cutting through Afghanistan to reach Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Iran, it could make the land route much faster, accelerate trade and promote progress in the Trans-Asian republics and ease the choking by India of the BRI to the Indian Ocean using the Port of Gwadar in Pakistan.
China is likely to benefit from the possible open policy exhibited by the new Afghan government. It could offer to its neighbors its precious rare earth minerals to mutually boost their economies. Today, China stands as the leading user of the product for the manufacture of electric cars and in the application of computer gadgets. Afghanistan has an estimated one to three trillion dollars’ worth of mineral deposit. The mineral is an important component in China’s production of electric cars which it now leads. The demand could intensify as soon as the use of electricity surpasses the need for oil and natural gas.
This now tells us just how we can rely on the Americans to fight for our freedom and democracy when it gave an excuse to invade Afghanistan only to end up economically bankrupt. Fighting for American neoliberalism has now raised questions on how it will deal in future relations with other countries like the Philippines, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran where there exists a budding war with the US, so to speak. This is asked because the US is likely to intervene and involve itself again in another war.
Besides, there remain today many unanswered questions in the aftermath of the Afghan war. What will the US do to the remaining Afghan prisoners still detained in Guantanamo now that the war against terrorism is over? To political analysts, it is no longer a question of the US proving the case against the suspects who have been detained since 2003 but the justification why they remain locked to date without charges.
Second is the effect of US President Biden’s speech to its allies in the aftermath of the US withdrawal. The speech is a downer to most of its allies still living to the belief the US has the power, capacity, and political will to enforce its policy of exceptionalism and unilateralism neatly tucked inside the discredited ideology of neoliberalism. The speech was an extraordinary redefinition of US goals and objectives. To quote what he said: “We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: Get those who attacked us on September 11, 2001, and make sure al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again.” x x x “Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy.”
President Biden gave a clear-cut goal that the US seeks to realize after the Afghan fiasco—that it can no longer serve as guarantor of democracy and freedom. That each country must, from now on, work to preserve its own freedom. Effectively, that puts a question to our alliance with the US and its local minions harping in disbelief that the US is now wavering on its commitment to preserve our so-called democratic institution.
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