A view of the Kabul Airport after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan
UN Security Council’s open meeting on Afghanistan to take place today
Kabul/New York/Washington/New Delhi: Taliban entered the Presidential Palace while President Ashraf Ghani fled for Uzbekistan with his wife on August 15. There was little resistance from the Afghan forces and the militants entered the national capital, allowed inmates escape the main jail, and finally took control of the troubled nation after months of fierce fighting.
However, it is to be seen how a Taliban-led government in Afghanistan would be accorded legitimacy by the United States and its allies. It was the USA that had overthrown the last Taliban government after the notorious 9/11 attack that saw Afghanistan-based Al Qaeda hitting and demolishing the iconic World Trade Centre twin towers in New York with two hijacked civilian aeroplanes. The US government had insisted that the then Taliban government of Afghanistan, which was in power there since 1996, immediately hand over the terrorists and close the training camps or face an attack from the United States. When they refused, “Operation Enduring Freedom” was launched on October 7, 2001, less than a month after the attacks of 9/11.
However, it was a deal struck with the Taliban in February 2021, that prompted the US and allied forces to withdraw their forces from Afghanistan this summer. While the deal was struck by the then Donald Trump regime – seen as a no new invasion era, it is Trump’s successor Joe Biden’s hasty and unceremonious Afghanistan, pull out, is a reminder of the Vietnam like catastrophe.
While the Taliban has assured residents of a peaceful transfer of power, panic stricken residents of Kabul were seen thronging to banks to in face of growing insecurity, while women and girls feared for a restrictive regime, that had previously banned girls going to schools.
In a joint statement on August 15, the US Department of State and Department of Defense said they were completing a “series of steps” to secure the Hamid Karzai International Airport to enable the safe departure of U.S. and allied personnel from Afghanistan via civilian and military flights. “Over the next 48 hours, we will have expanded our security presence to nearly 6,000 troops, with a mission focused solely on facilitating these efforts and will be taking over air traffic control,” it said. Over the coming days, the USA aims at transferring out of the country thousands of American citizens who have been resident in Afghanistan, as well as locally employed staff of the U.S. mission in Kabul and their families and other particularly vulnerable Afghan nationals.
“And we will accelerate the evacuation of thousands of Afghans eligible for US Special Immigrant Visas, nearly 2,000 of whom have already arrived in the United States over the past two weeks. For all categories, Afghans who have cleared security screening will continue to be transferred directly to the United States. And we will find additional locations for those yet to be screened,” the US stated.
Taliban’s success is a blow to the USA, and the US President Joe Biden’s first big strategic failure since assuming the office of the POTUS. His hasty and unceremonious Afghanistan pull out, after his predecessor Donald Trump’s no new invasion era, has come under fierce scrutiny. The USA was supporting the Afghan National Security and Defense Forces, and now the USA embassy in Kabul was busy “burning documents” by its own admission.
Reports from Kabul point out at how the USA was in a panic situation as it scampered evacuate its diplomats and civilians in helicopters on Sunday August 15. Only on Sunday, 3000 US forces had reached Kabul to take the rearguard action. The Taliban could advance and take control of the country in spite of the US attacking the surging force with fighter jets for the last many days.
On August 15, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken though tried to put up a brave front by justifying Biden when he told an interviewer, “And as we’ve discussed before, we were in Afghanistan for one overriding purpose: to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9/11. That’s why we went there 20 years ago. And over those 20 years, we brought bin Ladin to justice, we vastly diminished the threat posed by al-Qaida in Afghanistan to the United States to the point where it’s not capable of conducting such an attack again from Afghanistan. We’re going to keep in place in the region the capacity to see any re-emergence of a terrorist threat and to be able to deal with it. And on the terms that we went into Afghanistan in the first place, we’ve succeeded in achieving our objectives.”
Also read: A hapless world watches Afghanistan spinning out of control
Nonetheless, that the USA grossly overestimated the military prowess of the Ashraf Ghani – led Afghan government, could be gauged by the statement first made by President Biden earlier, and thereafter the Pentagon on August 13, 2021. Biden was quoted as saying that “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely”.
A pointed question was posed by a journalist to Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby that if the US could not stop the Taliban from “over-the-horizon”, which the USA was trying to do, how was it going to stop al-Qaida from over-the-horizon? Kirby had claimed that while the over-the-horizon counterterrorism strikes and capabilities “still exist and will exist going forward”, the Afghans had the capability to turn the tide on the ground. “And we still believe that they (the Afghan military) could make a difference on the ground. We will do what we can from the air, but they have the advantage. They have greater numbers. They have an Air Force. They have modern weaponry. It’s indigenous forces that can make the difference on the ground. And that’s — so our – our support to the Afghans was really done in that — in that vein.”
With the Taliban emerging as victorious, the question arises on the legitimacy of its rule in Kabul. Already countries such as India, Germany, Qatar, Turkey and many others had earlier reaffirmed to not recognise any government in Afghanistan that was imposed through the use of military force. Yet, what makes the situation tricky for the USA is the China factor. That China already invited and hosted Taliban leadership just a few days ago and had a “fruitful” meeting with them might add salt to Biden’s injury. Not just that, Chines Foreign Minister Wang Yi even posed with the Taliban leadership for a a photo op. As it is, today China has many interests to protect in Afghanistan since it has made considerable investments in the country, including a pledge to spend $3 billion to develop the Aynak copper mine. Although many of those investments remained stalled because of the country’s instability, China’s determination to go ahead with them was well reflected in its meeting with the Taliban. As far as India is concerned, it did have discussions with the Taliban leadership in Doha recently, where it was invited as a special observer by the Qatar government that does not oppose the Taliban.
In New York, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said last night (IST) that he was following “with deep concern” the rapidly evolving situation in Afghanistan. He urged the Taliban and all other parties to exercise utmost restraint in order to protect lives and ensure that humanitarian needs can be addressed.
While pointing out that conflict was forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, he reiterated that there continued to be reports of serious human rights abuses and violations in the communities most affected by the fighting. He was particularly concerned about the future of women and girls, whose hard-won rights must be protected. While he called on the Taliban and all other parties to ensure that international humanitarian law and the rights and freedoms of all people were respected and protected, he was also scheduled to address the UN Security Council’s open meeting on Afghanistan, today (August 16).
“The United Nations remains determined to contribute to a peaceful settlement, promote the human rights of all Afghans, notably women and girls, and provide life-saving humanitarian assistance and critical support to civilians in need,” he stated.
Earlier, on August 15, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs stated the External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar will be visiting New York during India’s Presidency of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and will be presiding over two high-level signature events on August 18 and 19. The first event on August 18, 2021 will be an Open Debate on ‘Protecting the Protectors: Technology and Peacekeeping’ while the second event on August 19, 2021 will be a high-level Briefing on ‘Threats to International Peace and Security caused by Terrorist Acts’. Both these topics are priorities for India during its UNSC innings.
– global bihari bureau
