Joe Biden
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 16, 2021
The sudden seizure of Kabul by Taliban militants after they made rapid advances across the country has triggered sharp criticism of the U.S. policy in Afghanistan, where Washington ultimately failed to build a democratic government capable of withstanding the insurgents despite spending billions of dollars and providing two decades of military support.
U.S. President Joe Biden has yet to issue a statement on the capture of Kabul and the fall of the Afghan government on August 15, but leading figures in his administration have acknowledged they were caught off-guard with the utter speed of the collapse of Afghan security forces ahead of the planned U.S. military withdrawal by the beginning of September.
Biden, who has spent months downplaying the prospect of the Taliban taking control, is now facing rising criticism, especially from Republicans in Congress, with critics saying that the United States’ reputation as a global power had been badly tarnished.
“It is a colossal failure, and it is a humiliation,” former UN envoy to Afghanistan Peter Galbraith said on August 16, adding that it remained to be seen how it affects “America’s standing in the world.”
Galbraith told Reuters that rampant corruption within the Afghan police and all levels of government meant that money that the United States was giving in aid often ended up in Taliban hands, while local warlords, government officials, and police cooperated with the militant group.
Others, such as William Maley, emeritus professor at Australian National University, say several missteps led to the collapse of the Western-backed government in Afghanistan, but ultimately “appalling U.S. decision-making lies at the heart of the tragedy.”
“It is hard to see how Biden can emerge from this disaster without his credibility shredded, but the greater loss is to the credibility of the United States, which increasingly appears a fading power internationally,” he said.
“When historians look back at the shambolic U.S. exit from Afghanistan, it may increasingly appear a critical marker of America’s decline in the world, far eclipsing the flight from Saigon in 1975,” he added.
Much has changed in the two decades since the Taliban was overthrown by the U.S.-led invasion nearly 20 years ago, and some analysts have expressed concern that gains in areas such as women’s rights and the rights of the Shi’ite Hazara minority group will quickly disappear.
Under the 1996-2001 Taliban rule, women could not work, girls were not allowed to attend school, and women had to cover their faces and be accompanied by a male relative if they wanted to venture out of their homes.
U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an interview on NBC’s Today show on August 16 that while the situation on the ground in Afghanistan deteriorated faster than anticipated, Biden is prepared to marshal the international community on human rights in Afghanistan, where the Taliban is seizing power.
“He is prepared to marshal the international community on this issue. He cares passionately about these human rights questions, and we will stay focused on them in the period ahead,” Sullivan said.
“But that was not a reason for the United States to enter a third decade of war in the middle of an internal conflict in another country,” he added.
At home, Biden may feel even more heat as Republicans seize on the issue, saying it raises security fears inside the United States.
“We are going to go back to a pre-9/11 state. A breeding ground for terrorism,” Representative Michael McCaul (Republican-Texas) told CNN on August 15.
In an interview, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace tried to deflect some of the criticism from Biden and the United States, saying the Taliban’s takeover was a “failure of the international community.”
Assessing that the West’s intervention was a job only half-done, the former British Army officer maintained that the 20-year intervention by U.S.-led forces “wasn’t a waste,” but he accused Western powers of being short-sighted in policy matters.
“If it’s a failure, it’s a failure of the international community to not realize that you don’t fix things overnight,” he told the BBC, citing “a failure to recognize that military might on its own” could not completely resolve the situation in Afghanistan.
“Half the mission on its own…was entirely successful,” he said, pointing to the removal of the Taliban following the September 11, 2001, attacks and the death of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, which he said made the world safer.
But “that doesn’t mean that the next 20 years are going to be the same,” Wallace added, echoing concerns about the impact of the hard-line group’s resurgence on world security.
With reporting by AFP, Reuters, the BBC, and AP
Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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