Abandoned and betrayed: Afghanistan goes back to the 1990s

None of what we were told about Afghanistan after 2002 was ever true. But those telling us that which was not weren’t liars – most of the time. They just didn’t know what they were talking about. They made it up as they went along. 

The result is what we see today. A nation that was saved from the Taliban has now been handed back to them, resulting in untold misery, especially for women and girls. 

But it didn’t have to be this way. If the United States, empowered by righteous anger after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, had simply gone in with overwhelming force and then, having removed the threat of al Qaeda and driven the Taliban leadership into the hills, withdrawn, leaving with a warning that any further acts of terrorism directed against the US would be met with a stern reprisals, Afghanistan today would barely figure on the world’s radar.

The US could have left a 3,000-strong Marine detachment to guard the Bagram airbase, with a couple of squadrons of bombers and attack jets, plus a coterie of special forces charged specifically with finding Osama Bin Laden. An enlarged American embassy could have taken up the cause of girls’ education and disbursed funds for the construction of schools and clinics. But other than that, they would have been well advised to leave whatever faction, or factions, that took charge in Kabul to get on with the business of government. 

The Taliban, chastened, would have made a comeback. But they would not have been the force to be reckoned with that they are today. The vaguely pro-Western middle class in the capital, allied with the tribal warlords, would have reached some form of accommodation with the Islamists, giving the country a chance to go forward much as it had prior to the Soviet invasion, when King Zahir Shah presided over a period of peace and relative prosperity. 

But no. The liberals in New York and Washington weren’t having that. Western-style democracy was to be the way ahead. Even as they watched the occupation descend into chaos, even as they watched the same mistakes being repeated over and over in Iraq, the liberals demanded that “nation-building” was the only outcome of the US invasion that could possibly justify the destruction and loss of life on all sides. 

Afghanistan would become not only a stable country, but a model to its neighbours – as if Kansas or Idaho could be recreated in central Asia, complete with an elected president, a functioning Parliament (with women MPs and ministers), and Islam transformed into some safe, Muslim version of the Episcopal or Baptist Church. 

But if America got everything wrong, so did the UK. I recall watching on the BBC a lecture given by a British Army major to a group of tribal elders in Helmand province. Armed with a whiteboard and pointer, the major, through a translator, tried to explain to the bearded men sitting cross-legged in front of him how an elected provincial council would supervise the construction of schools and libraries dedicated to the education of children and young people of both sexes. The elders looked at each other. At first they were puzzled, but after a bit they realised that the man with the pointy stick was talking nonsense, and one after the other they got up and left. Bear in mind, these were not Taliban – these were, for want of a better word, the moderates. 

It has been argued that the nation-building that gradually took over from mere occupation had its successes. It did. Millions of girls were given an education; thousands of young women went to university and pursued careers. Roads and airports were built; clinics as well as schools, multiplied across the country. While bribery and corruption remained a constant, Afghanistan in general became a safer and more outward-looking place. 

The only way to ensure that this process of improvement had any chance of taking root and becoming permanent was if the protective shield of US, British and other Western forces remained intact. That shield has now been summarily removed and the Taliban are back with a vengeance. 

President Biden wasted no time. Never a fan of the forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he wants to concentrate on nation-building at home in America. Within weeks of taking office, he announced that all American troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by a date in September and that, from that point on, the government in Kabul was on its own.

For a man whose self-image is steeped in principle and Old School morality, the withdrawal was a spectacularly cynical act of bad faith. Biden – rather like Boris Johnson – claims that he will continue to support the lawful government in Afghanistan, but the plain truth is that he has cut and run. Within a matter of days the new lawful government in Kabul will be that of the Taliban. Sharia law will become the only form of legal redress, allowing Islamist judges to order the execution of any deemed to have undermined the faith and the amputation of the hands of thieves. Girls and women will be told that their education is unimportant and that all jobs that involve decision-making will in future, as in the past, be taken by men alone. 

We’re not talking about the Middle Ages. Afghanistan will be going back to the 1990s. 

The only question that remains to be answered is, what made us think that we were ever going to make a lasting difference in a country that has gone its own way for a millennium and more? Did we really believe that 20 years would do it? We’d have made as much impact in the long run if we had limited ourselves to a leaflet campaign. 

Amid tragedy there is always farce, in evidence of which I offer you, from memory, the recent headline on a story in the Guardian about Britain’s part in the unfolding events: 

“Starmer demands recall of Parliament to avoid a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan”

The Taliban must have been shaking in their sandals when they saw that.