The U.S. congress wants to get to the bottom of the Afghanistan debacle.
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate have introduced bills to establish a non-partisan commission to report to the public on the mistakes made by the four presidential administrations that fought the war. The bills vary in details, such as the number of commissioners and the term of the commission, but the intent is clear: to force a public examination of how and why the U.S. project in Afghanistan failed.
At a U.S. government facility in Texas where refugees relocated from Afghanistan are being processed, Afghan children twirl American flags in the desert wind and decorate the inside of their tents with the stars and stripes. Transports flow in and out the sprawling facility, airlifting Afghan evacuees whose families fled from Afghanistan. Having found refuge in the U.S., many Afghans wonder—how long can they stay?
In recent weeks, Tajikistan has hit the headlines for its hardline stance on Afghanistan, where the Taliban recently returned to power. It might seem that if anyone should be concerned about maintaining good relations with the Taliban, it’s Tajikistan. It has an extensive mountainous border with Afghanistan that is difficult to control, and the Tajik military is believed to be the weakest in Central Asia. Tajikistan is a transit stop for most of the drug traffic from Afghanistan to Russia and Europe, and the country has suffered numerous terrorist attacks in the last few years.
The withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan is inevitably leaving a political vacuum in South and Central Asia. The question that many are asking is who will step in to fill it. Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours – Pakistan, Iran and China – all have special interests in the country that they are likely to pursue with renewed vigour.
Over the past few months, as we’ve watched our country collapse again and taken over by the Taliban, I, and many other Afghans have been experiencing trauma.
We’ve felt under attack from all sides. From the false narrative that Afghans didn’t fight for their country, or the narrative that the Taliban have changed; above all, we’ve been witnessing the desperation of fellow Afghans as everything they have built over the past 20 years has come under threat.
While Washington bickers about what, if anything, has been achieved after 20 years and nearly $5tn spent on “forever wars”, there is one clear winner: the US defense industry.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military relied to an unprecedented degree on private contractors for support in virtually all areas of war operations. Contractors supplied trucks, planes, fuel, helicopters, ships, drones, weapons and munitions as well as support services from catering and construction to IT and logistics. The number of contractors on the ground outnumbered US troops most years of the conflicts. By the summer of 2020, the US had 22,562 contractor personnel in Afghanistan – roughly twice the number of American troops.
“Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan. The longest war in American history.” These were the words of President Joe Biden on August 31, one day after the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan was concluded.
Notably, however, Biden asserted in the same speech that “we will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries. We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it. We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground, very few if needed.”
The militant Islamist Taliban have named key members of their interim government in Kabul, and no one from outside the group is included. But their totalitarianism will not bring peace, writes DW’s Sandra Petersmann.
Zack Kopplin answers the question “why did the Afghan National Army not fight?” by focusing on the widespread corruption and cronyism using the example of SOS international, a US company deeply tied to the American military and intelligence services, and its connections with Hashmat Ghani, the brother of Afghanistan’s former president Ashraf Ghani
