Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
It has been difficult to have a serious, balanced conversation about what the United States and the Biden administration has done right in managing the exit from Afghanistan and what has been done wrong.
The collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the almost unimpeded resurgence of the Taliban occurred with a speed that confounded even the most pessimistic assessments of how long the government of Ashraf Ghani could survive following the unilateral withdrawal of the United States’ military presence.
Strategically and for a long, short, and medium-term interest, the decision to completely withdraw from Afghanistan, was a bad one, and the execution of it has been pretty bad as well.
There are external, structural, and international considerations that need to be kept firmly in view when looking at Afghanistan. To put it bluntly: ideology is going to have to take a backseat if the Taliban government is to survive.
Well what President Biden has done, inadvertently of course, is to put the band back together. They’re back. The Taliban are back. Al-Qaeda will be back with them.
As the United States and its allies withdraw from Afghanistan, military intelligence is under scrutiny. What could have been done differently?
In an interview, Fatemeh Aman discusses how ongoing developments in Afghanistan might affect neighboring Iran.
The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban lays bare Europe’s lack of strategic foresight and dangerous dependence on the United States. The EU must address its shortcomings or risk losing the ability to defend its values and interests.
We are not a 100% certain how much equipment the Taliban have acquired because we haven’t always taken terrific accountability of what equipment went where at what time, particularly when it came to small arms.
It would be foolish to assume the American withdrawal from Afghanistan will be repeated everywhere else that there is a U.S. presence.