Our current involvement in Afghanistan started 20 years ago, with U.S. planes being flown into two of our nation’s tallest buildings, our military headquarters, and a field in Pennsylvania. Those images are still seared in the minds of many of us who remember that horrific day.  As our involvement comes to a close, images of Afghan citizens clinging to the landing gear, falling from, and eventually packed 100’s deep within the bellies of U.S. planes will be seared for years to come.  Which brings us to the question, what in the world happened these past two weeks that got us to this point?

            To fully understand it, we need to briefly go back a bit further.  Back to the time period of the conclusion of Part 1 of this series.  After we entered Afghanistan in October 2001, we virtually had them defeated and thrown out of power just one month later, in November.  By early 2002, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda, were in full scale retreat.  With many of their fighters going back to hide in rural remote Afghanistan where their tribal affiliations were, and the leadership heading across the border to hide (or be hidden) in Pakistan (this is where Osama bin Laden was found).  

            By early 2003, the first phases and major battles against the Taliban had all but stopped.  This is when one of the first major blows to U.S. involvement and the future of Afghanistan started to deteriorate.   President Bush shifted major resources from Afghanistan to Iraq.  A force of 300,000 troops went to Iraq for the invasion, leaving less than 10% of that number in Afghanistan. As a result, neither conflict ended up going well. 

            As previously stated, at that time much of the remaining Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters were located in very rural parts of the country.  It is extremely difficult for a small fighting force of troops to safely and effectively simultaneously monitor rural tribal villages.  In 2004, the Taliban started a sizable resurgence.  The famed Ali Soufan, who was the only Arabic speaker on the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, and the person who came the closest to preventing the 9/11 attacks, even went as far as saying shifting those resources in 2003 lost us the war (There is a fantastic miniseries on Hulu titled “The Looming Tower” which details Soufan’s role pre and post 9/11. Give it a watch, or read the book The Looming Tower).  The Taliban were regrouping at that time, we knew it, and yet still turned our attention away.  Osama bin Laden would declare war against the United States in his famous 2004 video, accepting responsibility for the September 11^th attacks, and criticizing President Bush.  His video would inspire several terrorist attacks and bombings in the coming years. 

            When President Obama was elected in 2008, he briefly increased the troop presence in Afghanistan in 2009 to around 100,000 troops.  This is considered the third phase of the war, and was meant to protect the Afghan population, train the Afghan military and police force and hand security over to them by 2011, and eventually all forces would withdrawal from Afghanistan.  Even this transition period 10 years ago did not go well, as the Afghan military and police force showed major signs of being ill-prepared to hold off the Taliban.  Taliban attacks would again surge. While President Obama formally ended the U.S combat mission in Afghanistan on December 28^th, 2014; he also announced that not all troops would be leaving the country as first indicated.  A force of around 12,000 troops would remain to “train, advise and assist Afghan forces and to conduct counterterrorism operations against the remnants of al-Qaeda”. 

            Informally, and not known to many at the time, the Obama administration started peace talks with the Taliban as early as 2012.  In June 2013 the President formally announced the peace talks.  The talks would occur in Doha, the capital of Qatar.  Around the same time, the Taliban made a statement that they were opening a political office in Qatar.  Suhail Shaheen, one of the Taliban’s chief spokesmen, confirmed that the talks took place. (Shaheen is currently still serving as one of the Taliban’s chief spokesmen, and has given several interviews since the takeover).  For both sides to have these talks, two concessions were made.  The U.S. dropped the stipulation that the Taliban had to completely cut ties with al-Qaeda for talks to happen.  It would instead be used as a negation point. And the Taliban conceded that the U.S. would not have to withdraw all of their troops before negotiations could take place, as they had previously stipulated.

            The peace talks were best remembered by the prisoner swap of U.S. Army Soldier Bowe Bergdahl for five high-ranking Taliban members held in Guantanamo Bay.  Also known as the “Gitmo Five”.  One of the released prisoners was a man by the name of Khairullah Khairkhwa. He was the Taliban’s interior minister.  Upon release to Qatar, Khairkhwa would rejoin the Taliban and become a senior ranking member of their leadership.  He is currently a member of the Taliban’s official negotiation delegation, and just earlier this year in Moscow he sat across the table from President Biden’s envoy to Afghanistan to help negotiate the final terms of the U.S.’s recent withdrawal.  Many believe that he also helped plan the capture of Kabul, and he has been spotted in pictures currently in Afghanistan.  

            The next complication in the 20-year Afghan conflict occurred a few years later, around 2018.  At this point in time, the Taliban were once again growing in strength.  As a result, the Afghan government called for peace talks with the Taliban, and the future possibility of making them a formal political party and releasing Taliban prisoners.  The US then reentered the peace talk process around June of 2018.  In September 2018, President Trump appointed Zalmay Khalilzad as U.S Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, with a goal of facilitating an intra-Afghan peace process. 

            Zalmay Khalilzad is an Afghan-American who has served as a diplomat under several recent presidencies.  He was at times the Unites States Ambassador to Afghanistan, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, and the U.S Ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN for a bit under President Obama, and the U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan under both President Trump and currently under President Biden.  

            Khalilzad wasted no time conducting several rounds of talks with the Taliban, almost exclusively taking place at their office in Qatar mentioned earlier.  All-in-all, the talks were made up of a series of nine rounds.  The most notable, and one that has become recently popular on the internet and in memes, happened in February of 2019.  This meeting featured Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of the Taliban’s senior leaders, an original member, and considered by many to be a co-founder.  Baradar had been held in a Pakistani prison since 2010.  Just a few months before the February 2019 meeting, Baradar was released, at the request of Khalilzad to the Pakistani government.  Khalilzad felt that someone like Baradar, who had been a chief negotiator for the Taliban for years (even while he was in prison), would speed up the talks and improve the chances of a deal.  Especially since Baradar had real decision making power.  Baradar was put in charge of the Qatar Political Office at his release.  While nothing has been made former, there are good chances that Baradar will become President of the new Taliban governed Afghanistan.  

            Peace talks progressed quickly from there, and just one year later, the Trump Afghan Peace deal had been signed by February 2020.  The deal included several key points, commitments, and conditions. It hinged on four main contingencies.  The first of which was a cease-fire, temporarily, between the U.S., the Taliban, and Afghan forces.  Which would also be part of intra-Afghan negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban.  The second part was a withdrawal of forces.  The U.S. agreed to drop the number of troops in the country from 12,000 to 8,600 within 135 days of completing the deal.  If the Taliban followed through on their commitments, the U.S. would pull out all troops within 14 months.  That day would be May 1^st, 2021.  The third piece of the deal was the intra-Afghan negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government.  The Taliban agreed to start the peace process with the Afghan government by March 2020.  Lastly, the Taliban agreed to some counterterrorism assurances that they themselves would not conduct attacks, nor would they allow Afghanistan to be a safe harbor to terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. They would cut ties with all terrorist groups.  Not part of the contingencies, but also part of the negotiation process, was that that U.S. agreed to have the Afghan government release 5,000 taliban prisoners in exchange for 1,000 captured Afghan security forces.  

            As no surprise, the deal went sour just within a matter of weeks.  By March 2020, the Taliban did not follow through with starting intra-Afghan peace talks with the Afghan government.  The deal could have been null and void at this time, as it was conditional, and they were already failing to meet conditions.  The talks barely ever occurred at all.  Secondly, they did not hold their end of the deal regarding the cease-fire.  Four U.S. troops were killed just a few weeks before the of signing the deal, which almost caused it to never be signed.  But after the deal was signed, hundreds more Afghan security forces were killed, Taliban attacks on towns occurred, and districts were overrun.  And likewise, dozens of Taliban fighters were being killed.  The in-fighting had not slowed at all.  Additionally, they had shown no signs that they had cut ties with terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.  The United Nations even released a report stating that al-Qaeda remained “heavily embedded” within the Taliban. 

            Despite the Taliban holding up no point on the end of their deal, the U.S. was also to blame for major flaws within the deal.  First, Representative Khalilzad was negotiating and making deals about the future of Afghanistan, but the government of Afghanistan was not present at the negotiating table or a part of the talks. Decisions and actions were being made without the consent of the parties who were being required to do them.   Secondly, the deal called for no permanent cease-fire.  And lastly, the deal was doomed when the Taliban started making nonnegotiable unreasonable demands that were never going to be achieved, such as calling for the reestablishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.   And institution of Deobandi Islamic Sharia Law.  The absolute only part of the deal that was upheld, was one point, that we reduced our troop number to the required levels by the 135 day timeline.  The rest of the peace deal was a failure. 

            One of the first orders of business for the new Biden Administration in early 2021, was reviewing the Taliban Peace Deal from the Trump Administration .  National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the administration was “taking a hard look at the extent to which the Taliban are complying”. In January 2021, just after President Biden took office,  a U.S. Congressional Panel urged President Biden to extend the May 1^st deadline to withdraw troops, as attacks by the Taliban against Afghan forces were steadily increasing. They warned withdrawing troops could lead to a civil war, with a resurgence of al-Qaeda.  One member of the Congressional Panel, retired 4-Star Marine General Joseph Dunford Jr., who once led all international forces in Afghanistan, stated if the drawdown goes ahead as scheduled, the terrorist groups will have the “opportunity to reconstitute” in just a matter of months.

            President Biden announced in April of this year that he would be withdrawing all remaining troops by September 11^th, 2021, which turned into August 31^st.  (After heavy criticism for selecting the 20^th anniversary date of the 9/11 attacks as the date to leave the country).  The withdrawal would start on May 1^st.  By the end of May, we had severely decreased airstrikes on Taliban positions, and they launched attacks on the most vulnerable provinces in southeastern Afghanistan. At the time, Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby stated that the Taliban had seized dozens of districts, and 4-Star Gen. Scott Miller, the top american general in Afghanistan, warned that a civil war could very well break out as the Taliban were strengthening.  President Biden himself even remarked in July that “The Taliban is at its strongest, militarily, since 2001”. 

            While much as been made about the Taliban taking over the country in one week’s time, and while that is true, they were seizing numerous amounts of U.S. military-supplied weapons and vehicles from Afghan forces that they were defeating after we stopped airstrikes from May to July.  This is something they had been laying the groundwork and planning for years. They certainly didn’t just decide to take over the country in one week. At the beginning of July, the U.S. Military quietly departed Bagram Air Base, the largest military base in the country, with the most secure airport runways.  Afghanistan’s district administrator for Bagram stated that the U.S.’s departure from the base happened overnight, in the middle of the night, and involved no coordination from local officials, and the new Afghan commander of the base was not notified of the departure.  The electricity was turned off within 20 minutes of the abandonment. This led to dozens of looters storming through the gates of the base.  Even Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid called us leaving the base a “positive step” and that the Taliban did not plan on seizing the airbase “for now”.  The Afghans and the Afghan military took a severe morale beating with the way in which we left the military base. 

The Afghan Security Forces decided to pool their resources and protect more strategic provinces, having to sacrifice other areas along the way.  At the beginning of August, the Taliban was starting to seize territory that it hadn’t claimed since the mid-90’s.  They were able to start launching attacks on major cities such as Herat and Kandahar.  August 6^th saw the Taliban take their first provincial capital city.  They took over another capital on the 7^th.  And in the next couple of days, they conquered 4 more.  On August 10th, President Biden stated that he did not regret his decision and was continuing to move forward with the withdrawal.  Also on August 10^th, U.S intelligence issued a warning that it would take 30-90 days for the capital, Kabul, to collapse and fall to the Taliban.  It fell 5 days after that warning.

Many have questioned, why did Afghanistan’s capital fall so fast? And questions have arisen about why the Afghan forces didn’t “fight back”?  This occurred for a number of complicated reasons.  First of all, the Afghan forces have been fighting.  In recent weeks they’ve lost 30-50 soldiers a day, according to CENTCOM’s commander General McKenzie.  He stated in April of just this year “The Taliban have never stopped fighting as I’m sure you’re very much aware.  So, and the pace of their attacks has been as high as any during the entire history of our war in Afghanistan.” Adding “Afghan soldiers, and policemen, and other security people are fighting and dying everyday in significant numbers, 30-50 a day, sometimes more a day”. The United States have lost a little under 2,500 service members throughout the War in Afghanistan.  While even one death is to much for a nation at war, the Afghan forces have lost north of 66,000 troops.  We have only had one combat death in Afghanistan in a year and a half, and really haven’t had any serious combat there in 5 years.  66,000 troops is more troops than we lost in either of World War I or Vietnam.  So the Afghan forces have suffered tremendous loss, and that is not counting the tens of thousands who have been wounded.  They have consistently been fighting and dying in large numbers.  This notion that the administration has put out that the Afghan’s don’t care to fight for their own country, from one week of assessment, it despicable.  

President Biden also claimed that they had a force that was 300,000 strong.  That is simply untrue.  The Afghan forces never reached a number near 300,000.  This figure is coming from budgeting and funding numbers.  The U.S. has supplied enough funds to train and outfit 300,000 Afghan security forces.  But that certainly doesn’t mean they ever achieved close to that, mainly due to corruption and squandering.  Throughout this past year, those forces had limited resources, no logistical support, and a highly ineffective supply chain.  Recently they were starting to run out of fuel, ammo, food, and had not been paid, resupplied, or seen their family in months.  When the Taliban would roll into these cities, they were able to use the millions of dollars in their war chest (from places like Pakistan, China, and Russia) to pay off the warlords who controlled the forces in each region.  Having no food, ammo, or paycheck, it didn’t take much enticing for them to sign surrender agreements.  With distrust of the Afghan government, no U.S. air support, and failed morale from the U.S. overnight troop withdrawal, many of the forces simply did not have the means to continue that fight with the Taliban.  And that brought us to the current disastrous situations, humanitarian crisis, and poorly planned evacuations we are seeing in Kabul and Afghanistan as a whole.  

            David Sedney, a top pentagon official under President Obama, called the move “strategically stupid, a humanitarian disaster and morally reprehensible. “  Deciding not to abide by the “conditions-based withdrawal” agreed upon by the Trump administration, and instead deciding to leave the country against the advice of intelligence and senior Pentagon officials who wanted a force of 2,500 troops to remain.  Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, a senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, says she’s “disappointed” in Biden’s decision. “The U.S. has sacrificed too much to bring stability to Afghanistan to leave without verifiable assurances of a secure future,” Shaheen says. “It undermines our commitment to the Afghan people, particularly Afghan women.”  And democrat chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Representative Adam Smith stated on the Afghanistan withdrawal: “the thing that is really troubling is the Biden Administration didn’t listen to the intelligence more carefully and didn’t plan better…”.  With so many high ranking Democrat’s not in support of this decision, no less than 4 committee investigation have been launched to see what went wrong in the decision making by the Administration.  

The U.S. has most likely evacuated over 20,000 individuals.  But the job is not over, and is becoming increasingly dangerous.  The Taliban have surrounded the airport, placed check points, and blockaded roads.  President Biden stated that “We have no indication that they haven’t been able to get in” to the airport.  But at the same time the military was launching three Chinook helicopters to rescue around 170 Americans stuck at a hotel in Kabul who were unable to get into the airport.  And ISIS has made specific terror threats against the airport to the point where flights out are having to use missile-defense flares, and flights in using rapid, diving combat landings.  And now the Taliban are seizing Afghan-American’s passports and driver’s licenses, and denying them entry past the gates.  While the date to remove troops is August 31^st, the administration has stated that they are willing to keep the almost 7,000 troops currently in place there until the evacuations are completed.  I do not foresee that wrapping up before August 31^st.  

            We can be thankful that its not the faces of our leaders, but those of the soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors that the citizen of Afghanistan picture when they think of American support.  Those who’ve protected our freedom’s both domestically and abroad.  And tirelessly committed to protecting the freedoms of those who weren’t even their countrymen.  Those who protected citizens from taking a beating, being stoned to death, or women being whipped for flashing a bare ankle.  And giving young girls the opportunity to go to school, and women having the ability to have any job opportunity they so choose, such as in the media, as a lawyer, and in the police and military forces.  The recent images of a young female Marine comforting a crying Afghan baby, troops hoisting babies over walls of the airport, a young soldier pouring water into the mouths of children waiting to enter the airport, or cradling babies on the evacuation flights embodies everything a U.S. service member stands for.  Please keep our men and women in harm’s way in your thoughts and prayers, especially those locally here to southeast Missouri who are currently on the ground helping with the evacuations or piloting the flights.  

In the third and final part of this series, we will take a look at what comes next.  The combat battle for Afghanistan has shifted.  We will look at where that will take place, and who those players will be, as well as what type of U.S. equipment the Taliban has seized.  Additionally, we will take a look at what all of this means for the U.S, the region, and globally.  While President Joe Biden may be done with Afghanistan, you can bet Afghanistan is not finished with him.  

Sources:

Obama, Barack; “Statement by the President on the End of the Combat Mission in Afghanistan”; 12/8/2014; obamawhitehouse.archives.gov

Graham-Harrison, Emma; Roberts, Dan; “Taliban peace talks: ‘Peace and reconciliation’ negotiations to take place in Qatar”; 6/19/2013, theguardian.com

Ians; “Peace talks with US started secretly under Obama: Taliban Spokesperson”; 03/02/2020; business-standard.com

Ackerman, Spencer; “Bowe Bergdahl faces life in prison after being charged with desertion’; 03/25/2015; theguardian.com 

“What happened to captured US soldier Bowe Bergdahl; 06/01/2014; bbc.com

Sperry, Paul; “Taliban leader was freed from Guantanamo Bay in 2014 swap by Obama”; 08/16/2021; nypost.com

“Department of Defense JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment” – Khairulla Khairkhwa  

“Joint Declaration between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the United States of America for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan”; 02/29/2020; state.gov

Shah, Taimoor; Nordland, Rod; “U.S. Diplomats Held Face-to-Face Talks With Taliban, Insurgents Say”; 07/28/208, nytimes.com

“Zalmay Khalilzad Will Try to Pave Way for Taliban Talks with Afghanistan”; 09/28/208; Cato Institute

“Pakistan frees Taliban co-founder at US request; will play constructive role in Afghan peace initiative”; 02/09/2019;  National Herald

“Afghan peace talks: Taliban co-founder meets top White House envoy”; 02/25/2019; bbc.com 

Maizland, Lindsay; “U.S.-Taliban Peace Deal: What to Know”; 03/02/2020; cfr.org

Witte, Griff; “Afghanistan War 2001-2014”; britannica.org

Gul, Ayaz; “Afghan-Taliban Peace Talks Continue as Fighting Kills Dozens”; 09/17/2020; voanews.com

Gul, Ayaz; “Taliban Kills 21 Afghan Troops, Warns of ‘Dangerous Escalation’ if US Breaches Deal”; 02/05/2021; voanews.com

Wellman, Phillip Walter; “US goes one year without a combat death in Afghanistan as Taliban warn against reneging on peace deal”; 02/08/2021; stripes.com

Dunleavy, Jerry; “From prison to power: Taliban leaders go from jail, to negotiating table, to Kabul”, 08/18/2021; yahoo.com

Lee, Matthew; Madhani, Aamer; “Biden to pull US troops from Afghanistan, end ‘forever war’”, 04/14/2021, apnews.com

Macias, Amanda; Wilkie, Christina; “U.S. military mission in Afghanistan will end by August 31^st, Biden says”; 07/08/2021; cnbc.com

Gannon, Kathy; “US left Afghan airfield at night, didn’t tell new commander”; 07/06/2021; apnews.com

Shinkman, Paul; “From 300,000 to a Few Hundred: What happened to Afghanistan’s Army”; 08/18/2021; usnews.com

Madhani, Aamer; Miller, Zeke; “‘Overdue: Biden sets Aug. 31 for US exit from Afghanistan”; 07/08/2021; apnews.com

Woodward, Alex; “Biden overruled top generals’ advice to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan”; 08/17/2021; independent.co.uk 

Johnson, Thomas; Goodson, Larry; “How America Lost Afghanistan”, newslinesmag.com, 8/18/21

Dozier, Kimberly and Hennigan, “President Joe Biden Is Withdrawing U.S. Forces From Afghanistan.  What Happens Now?”; 4/13/21; time.com

“The shocking speed of the Taliban’s advance: A visual timeline” – Washingtonpost.com

McLeary, Paul; Seligman, Lara; Ward, Alexander; “Taliban seize power amid chaos in Afghanistan”; 08/15/2021; politico.com