U.S. Caught Unprepared by Taliban's Advance

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

As the Taliban retakes control of Afghanistan, American policy makers are left looking on in dismay. President Joe Biden’s aides thought that, even after American troops left the country, its government would have the luxury of time to keep the rebels at bay.

Intelligence assessments, we now know, wildly overestimated the capabilities of an Afghan army that disintegrated, often before shots were even fired.

Joe Biden was just as clueless as his advisors. “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States in Afghanistan,” he announced on July 8. “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

The surprise is that they’re all surprised. I didn't realize how out of touch with reality American policy makers and officials are. They seem to have had no idea Afghanistan was a corrupt “dead state walking.”

I know that sounds harsh, but what else can you call a country that collapses virtually overnight, like a house of cards, with virtually no resistance to a rag-tag army whose weaponry was no match for the western-installed government.

The Taliban, with no armored vehicles, no heavy artillery, no air force, took over as fast as their vehicles enabled them to travel. And everywhere there were Afghans waiting to welcome them. They obviously had been surreptitiously preparing and were in place ready to rise up.

Taliban opponents were left in the dust despite being the recipients, according to various sources, of upwards of about one trillion U.S. dollars in military and other aid.

Engaging in some hyperbole, I have remarked many times that within 24 hours of the western withdrawal, the Taliban would destroy the girls’ schools, NGO offices, civil society groups' buildings, and all the other attempts at “democratic nation-building” Washington had been engaged in for two decades. Unfortunately, I may be proved right.

Have you ever heard the phrase “fifth column?” The term comes from the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939.  As four of the Nationalist columns moved on Madrid, a fascist general referred to his militant supporters within the capital as his “fifth column,” intent on undermining the Republic’s government from within, awaiting only the arrival of the rebels.

And so it was in Afghanistan, as we watched newscasts of President Ashraf Ghani fleeing Kabul in an airplane. He maintained he left the country to avoid bloodshed as the Taliban entered the capital Kabul.

This is the same president who a month earlier had declared that “I will never kneel before such a destructive force. We will either sit knee-to-knee for real negotiations at the table or break their knees on the battlefield.”

But perhaps he then recalled the fate of the last Afghan president, Mohammad Najibullah, who was in office when the Taliban captured Kabul 25 years ago. They abducted him from UN custody in September 1996, tortured him to death, and then dragged his dead body through the streets of the city.

And while we’re speaking of déjà vu scenes, there were also pictures of helicopters evacuating Americans from the U.S. Embassy. Some of us still remember pictures and newsreels of people fleeing Saigon on helicopters in April 1975 as the Viet Cong entered the city to end another ignominious war.

Why didn’t America win the war in Afghanistan? Why weren’t they able to completely rout the Taliban, create an effective, independent government, train and sustain a competent Afghan army, and then leave? 

Some Republicans believe it was due to “woke generals” who were allegedly better at playing progressive political games than fighting America’s enemies. They blame President Joe Biden – unfairly, in my opinion.

The Taliban is a predominantly Pashtun, Islamic fundamentalist group that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001. The founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, launched the movement in 1994 to secure the city of Kandahar, which was plagued by crime and violence. It has had far more support than most of us would like to admit.

It is stronger now than at any point in the last twenty years. This coming Sept. 11 will find it once again in control of Afghanistan, as was the case 20 years ago.