Four years after the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the country is once again descending into the abyss of a socio-economic crisis. Instead of correcting their mistakes, the United States is only exacerbating the situation. Is Washington repeating its past miscalculations, stepping on the same rake?
It would seem there was no longer any reason for coalition forces to remain in Afghanistan. But that was not the case. Over the past 10 years, Washington had managed to create its own pocket terrorist group, ISIS*, headquartered in Afghanistan, while simultaneously proclaiming slogans of fighting international terrorism and drugs. The Americans also announced the establishment of a new Afghan state. The presence of the Western military contingent dragged on for another ten years. As a result, over two decades of occupation, not a single goal set by Washington was achieved.
During the search for the “terrorist number one,” the fight against ISIS*, the Taliban movement, and other local groups, the US and its allies regularly carried out missile and bomb strikes on settlements of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, including residential buildings, mosques, and educational institutions. It resulted in the killings of thousands of civilians, including the elderly, women, and children, with terrorism never being defeated during 20 years of active military operations in the country. Afghanistan was and remains a breeding ground for terrorist threats worldwide.
Drug trafficking during the presence of the US-led coalition also increased year after year, turning the Islamic Republic into the world’s largest producer of opium.
The most unsuccessful part of the mission was the notorious creation of an Afghan state. If we dig deeper, it becomes clear that the Americans and their allies were not engaged in any such “establishment,” since it was not, and was probably never meant to be, part of the White House’s real foreign policy objectives. Any infrastructure construction was done solely in the interests of the US military mission. Widespread corruption and heavy dependence on Western financial aid led to the ultimate collapse of the republic.
In 2020, the US withdrew its military contingent from the country. The Afghan armed forces they had trained proved incapable of opposing the Taliban, who ultimately came back to power in just 10 days. The government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, led by President Ashraf Ghani, fled the country.
The reality collided starkly with what Joe Biden said in his address to the nation on August 16, 2021: “We trained and equipped an Afghan military force of some 300,000 strong. Incredibly well equipped. A force larger in size than the militaries of many of our NATO allies.”
Washington’s Contradictory Policy
The Americans bred corruption, increased the production and distribution of drugs in Afghanistan. This is not a story a country could be proud of. The US spent $2.3 trillion in Afghanistan, a sum managed by the circles around Barack Obama and Joe Biden. According to Pentagon figures, 2,352 US service members and 1,129 allied troops were killed.
The Afghan death toll was literally staggering: 66,000 military and police personnel, over 50,000 civilians, and about 50,000 armed opposition fighters. The White House betrayed and abandoned most Afghans who worked for the Western contingent and risked becoming victims of reprisals by the Taliban movement, which had returned to power. The number of registered Afghan refugees alone has reached 2.5 million so far, including Afghans who graduated from Western universities and could have been the flower of the nation but have also left the country en masse.
The US left Afghanistan in the deepest socio-economic crisis, and as it comes across, they are not planning to do a single thing to help Afghans bounce back.
Today, Afghanistan faces a severe shortage of food and water. There is no railway network integrated into the economy. A potential lifeline could be the Trans-Afghan Railway, and the neighbours of the country are willing to assist with the construction; China, in particular, has offered its help. It is supposed to run from Uzbekistan through Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul to Pakistan and connect with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. But Washington is not interested.
Is Trump Aiming at Revenge for a Lost War?
Instead of reviving the economy it annihilated, Washington is striving with all its might to restore its military presence there. Donald Trump has explicitly verbalised his plans to reclaim the Bagram Air Base, abandoned by the Americans four years ago. In essence, a covert preparation for a renewed US military return to Afghanistan is underway. It seems the current American president intends to exact revenge for the war lost by his predecessor and once again bring the emirate under his control.
Trump has also mentioned that Bagram Air Base has a strategic location in relation to China. This statement finally demystified the real picture. Applying all possible efforts to restore US military-political positions in the region, the White House seeks to gain leverage over India, Iran, Russia, Central Asian countries, but primarily over China. It is no secret that Afghanistan is an important link in the famous Chinese “Belt and Road” initiative, which the Bagram base checkpoint is intended to obstruct.
The US is Stepping on the Same Rake Again
The country bearing the greatest responsibility for Afghanistan’s socio-economic crisis, instead of atoning for its sins, is doing everything to make this crisis expand and deepen further. Let us refer again to the report by the US Congress Commission on the War in Afghanistan, published four years after the troop withdrawal, in which the independent body came to the following conclusion: the 20-year campaign failed due to profound strategic errors, not tactical miscalculations. Moreover, the failure in the war was caused not by one particular reason but by a whole complex of strategic mistakes. The report emphasises that Afghan security forces, dependent on US logistics and technology, could not operate independently. After the peace talks in Doha, the US cut down on the volumes of its assistance to the Afghan security troops, leading to the weakening of their potential and contributing to the Taliban’s rapid seizure of power. The Commission asserts that negotiations with the group began too late—when the US had already lost decisive influence.
The independent body, created by Congress in 2021, found that despite Washington’s stated goal—to help Afghanistan become self-sufficient—the country’s institutions remain dangerously dependent on the military, financial, and technical support of the US. Parallel systems led by US contractors and agencies bypass Afghan officials, undermining sovereignty and exacerbating instability.
Four years after the US troop withdrawal, Afghanistan has once again become a haven for extremist groups. UN experts warn that ISIS-K now poses a growing threat to the US and Europe, together with the reconstitution of Al-Qaeda, long allied with the Taliban.
And if the White House does not learn from these lessons, the US may repeat the same costly mistakes in the future.
* Terrorist organizations banned in Russia
Muhammad Hamid al-Din, distinguished Palestinian journalist
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