Was the Victory of the Taliban Inevitable?

The meteoric collapse of the government Afghan it reinforced US President Joe Biden’s argument that nothing more could have been done to prevent the debacle. But was the victory of the Taliban really inevitable?

For those who criticize his decision to end the longest war in the United States, the 2,500 American servicemen who remained in Afghanistan in recent months showed that Washington could, at a low cost to the Pentagon, guarantee a certain degree of stability.

Biden and his allies reject this argument, pointing out that the American troops remained safe only because the taliban They agreed not to attack them as part of a withdrawal agreement.

“What we learned in the last two weeks is that if we had stayed one more year, or two more years, or five more years, or 10 more years, no training, equipment or money or lives lost by the United States was going to put us at risk. Afghan army in a position to be able to sustain that country by itself “said Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, in statements to NBC.

Lucas Kunce, an Afghan war veteran running for Senate in Missouri, put it bluntly: “I was there. Today era inevitable. Anyone who tells them otherwise is lying or they would have made us stay there forever. “

Despite his scathing criticism of Biden, former Republican President Donald Trump himself seemed to acknowledge this inevitability when his administration signed the withdrawal agreement with the taliban in February 2020.

“You can only hold someone’s hand for a while”Trump said. When asked if the Afghan forces were capable of defending themselves, he noted: “I hope they are, but I don’t know.”

“Blindness”

After spending more than $ 2 trillion and losing more than 2,500 American lives, polls showed that public opinion in the United States wanted to end the war that began after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

But for Richard Fontaine, an expert at the Center for a New American Security, a limited US presence in Afghanistan would have protected the gains made, especially for women and all Afghans who now fear the return of a brutal era.

“It turns out that a modest and viable presence of international troops – of which, by the way, the United States was not the majority – was not able to defeat the Taliban, but it made the difference between whether the Afghan government fell or not. fall into the hands of the Taliban”Said this former adviser to the late Republican Senator John McCain.

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HR McMaster, Trump’s former national security adviser, had strenuously rejected last week that the debacle was part of the long history of a “Cemetery of empires” en Afghanistan, as happened with the Russians or the British.

“The subject is not framed correctly. We are fighting Afghans for Afghans against this heinous group of terrorists called the taliban”, He said.

He recalled the seven-decade American military presence in South Korea, noting that it took years for the United States ally to become the thriving democracy it is now.

“We were convinced of defeat in Afghanistan,” McMaster said. Y “We are seeing the Afghan people pay the price for our blindness.”

A withdrawal under conditions?

Adela Raz, Afghan ambassador in Washington, considered on Friday “extremely unfair “ questioning the military’s will to fight.

Instead, he pointed to the loss of U.S. air support and the psychological effects of U.S. negotiations with the United States. taliban.

“What they understood at home is that they are abandoning them”he told PBS.

The February 2020 agreement gave rise to the first talks between the taliban and the Afghan government and included promises by the insurgents not to protect Al Qaeda, or attack major cities.

The United States said the agreement was conditional on the taliban they complied, but both Trump and Biden made it clear that they would withdraw.

For Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Governance, which supports US military restraint, any conditional withdrawal agreement would have been in vain, because the Afghan government had no interest in having the Americans leave.

“The United States could have stayed one more year, five more years, that would not have changed anything”, He said.