The chaotic withdrawal a year ago of USA in Afghanistan damaged the credibility of Government of Joe Bidenwhich seeks to maintain its influence on the international board while several open fronts accumulate: the fight against terrorism, the rivalry with China and the war in Ukraine.
(Read here: The costs for the world that will leave the Afghan abyss)
Biden had promised that Kabul would not be another Saigon, but the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, completed on August 31 in the face of the Taliban’s sudden and fleeting advance, looked a lot like the end of the Vietnam War.
(You may be interested: Restrictions on rights mark the first year of the Taliban’s return to Afghanistan)
desperate evacuation
Images of the hasty evacuation of diplomatic personnel and Afghans collaborating with the United States went around the world, while an attack at Kabul airport killed 13 US soldiers and more than 170 civilians.
After two decades of invasion of the Central Asian country, billions of dollars invested and more than 2,400 fallen US soldiersAfghanistan returned to square one: the Taliban returned to control the country.
“The chaos that occurred reflects a total lack of planning. The United States believed that the Taliban did not have the strength to return to power and they were wrong,” Robert Crews, a Stanford University professor and expert in the history of Afghanistan, told Efe.
For Crews, the main mistake was thinking that the Afghan Army was prepared to fight the Taliban without the presence of the US Armed Forces on the ground.
But he does not hold the Biden Executive responsible for everything, since he considers that it was the Doha Agreements, signed in 2020 by the then Donald Trump Administration with the Taliban to lay the foundations for the US withdrawal, that “paved the way” for the return of the fundamentalists.
The Afghanistan disaster had a major impact on Biden’s popularity, which plummeted and began to rebound until just a few weeks ago. But the White House has not been self-critical and Biden himself defended last week in a statement that thanks to leaving Afghanistan, the United States can fight terrorism “without endangering thousands of troops on the ground.”
Humanitarian aid and terrorism
Precisely, terrorism is now the main obstacle for the United States to fulfill its promise to help the people of Afghanistan, where almost 23 million people suffer a severe food crisis, according to UN data.
And it is that the presence in Kabul of the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri, assassinated last July by the United States, blew up the incipient talks between Washington and the Taliban to unlock Afghan funds.
The chaos that ensued reflects a complete lack of planning. The United States believed that the Taliban did not have the strength to return to power and they were wrong
In total, the United States keeps frozen 9,000 million dollars that the Afghan government sent abroad before the fall of Kabul, of which the White House intends to allocate 3,500 million for humanitarian aid and the rest for the families of the victims of the attacks of September 11.
In statements to Efe, a spokesman for the State Department assured that the Taliban regime “seriously violated” the Doha Agreements by “giving shelter” to the leader of Al Qaeda, thereby squandering any possibility of international recognition or relief of sanctions.
The same source explained that the United States is now exploring an alternative mechanism to unlock the funds so that they “benefit the Afghan people and not the Taliban.”
Withdrawal or reorientation?
For Juan Luis Manfredi, holder of the Prince of Asturias Chair at Georgetown University in Washington, the consequences of the chaotic exit from Afghanistan went much further: Biden was left “in a weak and complicated position on the international scene.”
“The expectations of the leadership capacity of the Biden government were high and, truthfully, it was the first great disappointment,” the professor told Efe.
Since then, the United States has been left “without any ability to influence” in a region of high strategic importance, he said, since Afghanistan borders Iran, China, Pakistan and the Central Asian republics.
That withdrawal was interpreted by many as a withdrawal of Washington on the global board, something that Russia wanted to take advantage of last February with the invasion of Ukraine.
However, the defenders of Biden’s strategy point out that, unlike what happened in Afghanistan, where they did not see the Taliban advance, the US intelligence services did know how to anticipate weeks in advance that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was preparing the occupation of Ukrainian territory.
And that through the continuous shipment of weapons to the Ukrainian Army, it has been possible to contain the war in the east of the country.
Manfredi does not consider that the United States is in a withdrawal phase, but in a clear reorientation of its foreign policy to focus on the political and commercial rivalry with China, a country that the White House perceives as its main threat.
Proof of this is Biden’s latest tour of Asia and the recent visit of the Speaker of the Lower House, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan, which has triggered tension with Beijing. But the professor warns that if the United States wants to remain a superpower, it must be able to attend “more than one front at a time.”
EFE
More news
#United #States #pending #challenges #year #chaotic #withdrawal #Afghanistan