A few hours before President Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline to close the airlift and thus end the U.S. war, Air Force transport planes were transporting a remaining contingent of troops from the airport. of Kabul. Thousands of troops had spent two distressing weeks protecting a rushed and risky airlift of tens of thousands of Afghans, Americans and others who wanted to escape a country ruled again by Taliban militants.
In announcing the end of the evacuation and the war effort. General Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said the last planes took off from Kabul airport at 3:29 p.m., Washington time, or a minute before midnight in Kabul. He said that several American citizens were left behind, who would probably reach “the very low hundreds,” and that he believes they will be able to leave the country.
The airport had become a U.S.-controlled island, a final position in a 20-year war that claimed the lives of more than 2,400 Americans.
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The closing time of the evacuation was marked by an extraordinary drama. U.S. troops faced the daunting task of getting the final evacuees to the planes while removing themselves and some of their equipment, even as they monitored the repeated threats – and at least two real attacks – of the affiliates. Islamic State group in Afghanistan. A suicide bombing on August 26 killed 13 members of the American service and about 169 Afghans.
The final withdrawal fulfilled Biden’s commitment to end what he called a “war forever” that began in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and rural Pennsylvania. His decision, announced in April, reflected national fatigue from the Afghan conflict. He now faces condemnation at home and abroad, not so much for ending the war as for managing a final evacuation that unfolded in chaos and raised doubts about the credibility of the U.S..
At times, the American war effort seemed to be carried out with no end in sight, with little hope of victory and minimal care from Congress for the way tens of billions of dollars were spent over two decades. The human cost has piled up: tens of thousands of Americans injured, in addition to dead, and countless people suffering psychological wounds they live with or have not yet acknowledged they will live with.
More than 1,100 soldiers from coalition countries and more than 100,000 Afghan forces and civilians were killed, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project.
According to Biden, the war could have ended ten years ago with the US assassination of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda extremist network planned and executed the 9/11 plot from a shrine in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has fallen sharply, preventing it from attacking the United States again so far.
Congress committees, whose interest in the war has waned over the years, are expected to hold public hearings on what failed in the final months of the U.S. withdrawal. Why, for example, did the administration not begin before the evacuation of U.S. and Afghan citizens who had aided the U.S. war effort and who felt vulnerable to Taliban retribution? It was unclear if some U.S. citizens who wanted to leave were left behind, but thousands of Afghans at risk were.
It didn’t have to end that way. The administration’s plan, after declaring its intention to withdraw all combat troops, was to keep the U.S. embassy in Kabul open, protected by a force of about 650 U.S. soldiers, including a contingent that would insure the airport together with the partner countries. Washington planned to give the now defunct Afghan government billions more to prop up its army.
Biden now has doubts about his plan to prevent al-Qaeda from regenerating in Afghanistan and to suppress threats posed by other extremist groups, such as the Islamic State group’s subsidiary in Afghanistan. The Taliban are enemies of the Islamic State group, but maintain ties to a diminished al-Qaeda.
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The final exit from the United States included the withdrawal of its diplomats, although the State Department has left open the possibility of resuming some level of diplomacy with the Taliban depending on how they behave in establishing a government. and in adhering to international petitions for the protection of human rights. .
The speed with which the Taliban captured Kabul on 15 August surprised the Biden administration. It forced the U.S. to empty the embassy and frantically accelerate an evacuation effort that featured an extraordinary airlift executed primarily by the U.S. Air Force, with U.S. ground forces protecting the airfield. The airlift began in such chaos that some Afghans were killed at the airfield, including at least one who tried to cling to the cell of a C-17 transport plane as it advanced down the runway.
By the end of the evacuation, more than 100,000 people, mostly Afghans, had been rescued. The dangers of carrying out this mission while surrounded by the newly defeated Taliban and facing attacks by the Islamic State were tragically concentrated on August 26 when a suicide IS terrorist detonated at the door of the airport and killed at least 169 Afghans and 13. Americans.
Speaking shortly after this attack, Biden maintained his view that ending the war was the right measure. He said it was time for the United States to focus on threats emanating from other parts of the world.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “it was time to end a 20-year war.”
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The start of the war was echoed by a promise made by President George W. Bush while he was on top of New York City’s rubble three days after the hijacked planes were attacked twin towers of the World Trade Center.
“The people who demolished these buildings will hear us all soon.” he declared through a megaphone.
Less than a month later, on October 7, Bush began the war. Taliban forces were overwhelmed and Kabul fell in a matter of weeks. A U.S.-based government led by Hamid Karzai took over and bin Laden and his al-Qaeda cohort escaped from the border into Pakistan. The stage was set for a futile American effort to build a stable Afghanistan that could partner with the United States to avoid another 9/11.
The initial plan was to extinguish bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, which had used Afghanistan as a staging base to attack the United States. The biggest ambition was to fight a “World War on Terror” based on the belief that military force could somehow defeat Islamic extremism. Afghanistan was only the first round of this struggle. Bush chose to make Iraq the next one, invading it in 2003 and getting involved in an even more deadly conflict that made Afghanistan a secondary priority until Barack Obama took over the White House in 2009 and beyond. later that same year he decided to climb Afghanistan.
Obama raised the level of U.S. troops to 100,000, but the war dragged on as the Taliban used Pakistan as a sanctuary.
When Donald Trump entered the White House in 2017 he wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan, but he was not only convinced to stay, but to add several thousand U.S. troops and intensify attacks on the Taliban. . Two years later, his administration sought an agreement with the Taliban, and in February 2020, the two sides signed an agreement calling for the complete withdrawal of the United States in May 2021. In return, the Taliban made several promises, including the promise not to attack American troops.
Biden weighed in on the advice of members of his national security team who advocated the detention of the 2,500 troops who were in Afghanistan when he took office in January. But in mid-April he announced his decision to retire completely and initially set September as the deadline to leave.
The Taliban launched an offensive that in early August toppled key cities, including the provincial capitals. The Afghan army largely collapsed, sometimes surrendering instead of taking a final stand, and shortly after President Ashraf Ghani fled the capital, the Taliban entered Kabul and took control on 15 of August.
Some parts of his country were modernized during the years of the U.S. war, but Afghanistan remains a tragedy, poor, unstable, and with many of its people fearing a return to the brutality the country suffered, especially women and girls, when the Taliban ruled from 1996 to 2001..
The failures of the United States were numerous. It degraded but never defeated the Taliban and ultimately failed to build an Afghan army that could deal with the insurgents, despite spending $ 83 billion to train and equip the army. Among the broken promises: a lasting partnership with a U.S. government friendly to the United States that could ensure the country does not become a breeding ground for extremists determined to attack the United States again.
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