Last August 15, 2021, a group of Taliban entered the international airport of Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, and forced the withdrawal of President Ashraf Ghani. All this is a consequence of the withdrawal of the United States troops from Afghan territory at the request of the government of President Joe Biden. They had been pushed back from Kabul two decades ago by the US troops.
It all started when Biden announced in April 2021 that the United States was going to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, so the fundamentalist Taliban began to develop a strategy to regain a presence in the country, especially in Kabul. So Lotfullah Najafizada, news director of Tolo News, an Afghan media company, told the BBC in an interview:
“I think the government is paying a lump sum price, or the country is paying a lump sum price for years of mismanagement, for years of bad politics, for years of very narrow politics. And that has resulted in what we see today on the battlefield, where a lot of soldiers are not fighting. Today we saw that a provincial governor, who was very recently appointed, fled Ghazni before it fell to the Taliban, and he came to Kabul; they arrested him here.”
While Sergio Maydeu, international analyst, complemented:
“A central and effective authority [covering the whole country] has not been built. With the emergence of a counter-power such as the Taliban, all that fictitious construction of the state has fallen at the slightest important movement. There has not even been a military response at the state level. Territories have been handed over directly, without a fight.”
Why are US troops leaving Afghanistan?
Thanks to White House peace talks with the Qatari Taliban in February 2020, then-President Donald Trump announced that in 14 months, US troops would be leaving Afghanistan. This move was outlined since Barack Obama’s administration in 2014.
When Biden assumed the presidency, he assured that this move would take place before September 11, 2021. The maintenance of the troops represents a heavy expense that, at the time, was intended to guard against possible terrorist attacks in the United States. Although it was expected that the Taliban forces would be taking over the Afghan government with the withdrawal of the US troops, they didn’t think it would take that little.
“The fact of the matter is we’ve seen that that force has been unable to defend the country … and that has happened more quickly than we anticipated.” Declared Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Origin of the conflict
This conflict dates back to more than three decades ago: in 1989 when a group of Afghans known as the mujahedeen managed to overthrow the communist government imposed by the Soviet Union in 1979. This success was shared with neighboring allies, such as Pakistan, in addition to the participation of the United States, who sought to defeat the USSR in the Cold War.
However, after a short time, some discrepancies between Afghan groups began to emerge until 1996, when Taliban groups succeeded in establishing fundamentalist Islamism, that is to say, a radical interpretation of Islam. Everything changed, of course, on September 11, 2001, when the terrorist attack in New York, carried out by the Al-Qaeda group and operating from inside the Taliban Afghanistan. In response, the government of then-President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan, but some radical groups managed to hide on the border with Pakistan.
Who are the Taliban?
It is an Islamic and radical armed group whose name translates to “students of the Quoran.” It was made up of former Afghan resistance soldiers in 1994 on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Known originally as mujahedeen, this collective wanted to impose their own interpretation of Islam, avoiding all foreign contact including culture and language.
For two decades, the tension and conflicts between US forces and the Taliban carried out until 2020, when former President Trump signed a peace deal after the Taliban sent an open letter in 2017. According to the treaty, the US would free 5,000 Taliban prisoners and start the withdrawal of the US troops; in exchange, the Taliban promised to cease the threatening of US security and that of their allies. Things got worse reaching the highest levels of violence registered in Afghanistan in over two decades.
What do the Taliban want now?
Although they have promised they’re a renewed group seeking peace and establishing a more inclusive government, the imposing of a regime still threatens stability and the preservation of human rights for everybody, especially women.
According to Amin Saikal, author of Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival, “as far as their ideological commitment is concerned, they have not really changed.”
Photos: Wakil Kohsar for AFP
Translated by María Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards
