As the world watches in horror as Taliban hordes surge across Afghanistan, we are reminded that wars are often lost before they are ever fought. Czechoslovakia in 1939 was lost at the Munich summit in 1938, betrayed by weak, short-sighted allies. France in 1940, was lost in 1936 with the Nazi remilitarization of Rhineland which altered the balance of power in Europe. Even the road to the Nazi extermination of Jews in Europe (1941-45) lay through International acquiescence to the Nurenberg laws of 1935. The current and previous US administrations seem to have unlearnt many of these lessons when they negotiated in bad faith with the Taliban at Doha.
The recent battlefield success of the Taliban has created a frenetic search for scapegoats. Clearly, if it's not convenient to look for them in Washington, they must lie in Kabul or somewhere in Afghanistan. A constituency of critics has emerged in the media, some who were gulled by the ISI, others who were passionate believers in Islamabad's role in Afghanistan, many die-hard allies of the Pakistan military in the organs of the American state. These have banded together in common poise and are shrilly accusing the embattled Afghans of cowardice, incompetence and lack of will.
The facts however are unambiguous. More than 45,000 Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers and policemen have been killed fighting the Taliban since 2014 when President Obama announced an end to the combat mission in Afghanistan. Several thousand more militiamen too, have lost their lives fighting against Taliban fighters. Since the Taliban resurgence began in 2015, there have been many Taliban attacks and many towns and provincial capitals besieged. In each of these cases, Afghan troops and police surrounded and poorly supplied held on and eventually repulsed the Taliban, when backed by American airpower and Afghan reinforcements. There were defections and some surrenders, but a large part of Afghan security forces fought with great courage and tenacity against fearful odds. They had the stomach for the fight, bled white in protracted urban battles and eventually prevailed.
Yet now the same units are losing ground to the Taliban who seem to take territory on a trot, with every little fighting. Many underhand bargains have been made, before the battle and traitors within are now playing their part and undermining resistance to the invaders. But these cannot fully account for Kabul's military reverses.
To comprehend this collapse one must look to the deal with the devil at Doha done by a political camarilla in Washington. The Trump administration, eager to achieve a political victory by bringing troops home, initiated a hasty, ill-thought self-defeating process of negotiating with the Taliban.
First, it kept the Afghan government out of the loop and negotiated over their heads. It sent a message across the region, that the lawful government in Kabul mattered little. The Taliban, which regarded the government in Kabul as stooges, was delighted at this public admission by Washington of the Afghan government's irrelevance.
Secondly, Washington made clear that the US priority was for a swift withdrawal of troops, with Afghanistan's security and stability put on the backburner. From the beltway, it seemed a bargain and as in the old Afghan proverb, the Yankees ‘ paid a penny for twenty five uncaught birds’. The US offered a concrete timetable for a helter-skelter withdrawal, promised to ease sanctions, assistance in legitimizing the Taliban and release of 5000 Taliban prisoners from Afghan jails. In return, the Taliban have given vague assurances of not allowing attacks on the US or its allies from its soil. They have also sung some incantations about ceasefire and dialogue, all of which have been forgotten in the violence of the Taliban offensive.
There is an Afghan proverb that goes ‘The wound of the sword will heal, but not that of the tongue’. It was a second Munich and it sent the message to all stakeholders inside and outside Afghanistan, that the US does not have Kabul’s back.
After more than forty years of civil wars, invasion and terrorism, the Kabul government was only in the process of entrenching itself across lawless provinces, fighting the Taliban, negotiating with warlords, bargaining for tribal loyalties. The central state was trying to impose order and its legitimacy across a Hobbesian landscape. It was at a precarious stage in its development with a steel frame at the core, but a weaver's nest of compromises keeping its body alive and ticking across its territory.
The Doha process has delivered a shattering blow to the still-growing edifice. Demoralization and defeatism have infected parts of the Afghan state and it is hardly fighting back. For sure, many Afghan units are fighting with great elan and at places are making the Taliban pay a heavy price. Yet this perilous situation might have been altogether avoided if messrs Khalizad and Pompeo the architects of the Doha talks, had not been so myopic and naive.
The Biden administration could have reviewed its security posture, given the Taliban's flagrant violations of its ceasefire promises and battlefield brutalities. Yet their attitude is much like that of the old Roman empire, in its attitude in dealing with the Germanic barbarians. Faced by appeals from its distant province of Britain for help against invasion by barbarians, the emperor Honorius issued an infamous response, asking them to look to their own defences. With not even token assistance, Britain which stood strong as a Roman province for four hundred years, saw the quick dissolution of its military and administrative organs, making them vulnerable to raids and incursions.
The world is witnessing once again a hasty abandonment of trusted allies. The consequences for the region could be dire.
The author is an independent writer.