@prashanthamine
Mumbai: Call it ignominy or Tehrik-i-Taliban Afghanistan’s (TTA) return gift to US President Joe Biden for pulling out the US troops from Afghanistan, TTA has appointed Alhaj Mullah Sirajuddin Haqqani as its Interior Minister (Home Minister). He is the same man whom the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has since 2010 designated him as a global terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head. What’s far worse is that he heads the Pakistan propped up Haqqani network which has been declared as a terrorist organisation by the US.
Sirajuddin Haqqani is wanted by the US for questioning in connection with the January 2008 attack on a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed six people, including an American citizen. He is believed to have coordinated and participated in cross-border attacks against United States and allied forces in Afghanistan.
Haqqani is also allegedly involved in the planning of the assassination attempt on then Afghan President Hamid Karzai in 2008. Besides this, the Haqqani Network is also blamed for an attack on the US embassy and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bases in Kabul in September 2011. Eight people that included four police officers and four civilians were killed in that attack. The Haqqani network also has had deep contact with the banned Al-Qaeda.
Despite facing universal flak for the messy pull out, US president Joe Biden strangely expressed optimism that China would try to work out an arrangement with the Taliban. Already, Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, Director General, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan is in Afghanistan lending active support to the Taliban in its bid to capture the Panjshir valley from the Northern Alliance.
We have already stated that Afghanistan is most likely to become the Sink Hole for either the Pakistani’s or the over eager Chinese. It is not without any rhyme or reason that Afghanistan has been described as “The Graveyard of Empires”. So far, Afghanistan has been a Graveyard for a total of 17,948 soldiers between 1839 to 2021.
Prior to the independence of Afghanistan in 1919, the British fought three Anglo-Afghan wars in 1839-1842, 1878-1880 and 1919 which led to 14,786 military deaths. The ferocity of the First Anglo-Afghan war of 1839-1842 was such that out of the 4,500 strong army of the British Empire and 12,000 accompanying civilians, the lone survivor was a British East India Company assistant surgeon, Dr William Brydon who rode horseback all alone all the way back to Jalalabad from Kabul.
In the post-World War II era, probably only the Soviets could alone have understood what it means to bear huge military casualties. In their 10 years of Afghanistan occupation between 1979 to 1989, the Soviets lost a staggering 14,453 of its men in armed clashes with the Mujahideen.
In the Operation Enduring Freedom that was launched by the US in 2001 and later supported by its NATO allies, overall, they lost 3,495 men, of which the US lost 2,348 personnel and the NATO lost 1,147 of its personnel till July 26, 2021 as per Statista research.
The situation already looks beyond redemption in Afghanistan with repercussions being felt in Pakistan with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) carrying out terror attacks inside Pakistan. Iran has issued stern warnings to the Taliban regime and Pakistan not to cross the redline over its atrocities on the Afghan citizens and honour international obligations.
Matters have also been exacerbated further with the Russians and the Chinese abstaining from voting on the United Nations Organisation (UNO) resolution on Afghanistan during the presidency of India at the UN Security Council (UNSC).
Although the large, heavy artillery pieces, weapons, helicopters, aircrafts left behind by the fleeing US army most of them are reportedly disabled, it is the small firearms that usually end up in the hands of the Taliban and that is worrisome for India.
It happened after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, with the dreaded AK-47 (Kalashnikovs) finding their way into the hands of terrorists worldwide. Another cause for worry is the penchant of the Chinese for stealing technological know-how, reverse engineering it and making cheap imitative copies of it.
The US which had armed the Mujahideen with shoulder launched Stinger missiles to take down the Soviet helicopters had to face its brunt from the same Taliban who they later on have been fighting against since 2001.
The reason for worry for the international community is the illegal arms and weapons factories near Peshawar, the capital city of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). Towns like Bannu, south of Peshawar where one could buy counterfeits of sophisticated weapons, missiles, rockets and automatic machine guns.
The town of Darra Adam Khel in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is another one such place where one could literally shop for illegal sophisticated weapons. Most of these towns and their illegal weapons factories remained outside the ambit of Pakistani law.
New York Times chief Washington correspondent David E Sanger in his book “Confront and Conceal” has an interesting revelation includes the successful attempt to stop the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud from gaining nuclear weapons in the summer of 2009
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There is a smoking gun that the US has left behind in Afghanistan is that successive administrations, be it Bush, Obama, Trump or Biden administration gave trillions of dollars to five US weapons manufacturing companies. The top five military contractors according to the US government’s own records received $2.02 trillion dollars in public funds between October 2001 and August 2021.
The top five beneficiaries included – Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Already the whispers in the White House and at Capitol Hill are that this was ostensibly done to help these US weapons manufacturing companies.
Such clumsy acts of leaving behind troves of weaponry has not been new to the US, they had done it before as well. The Soviets too did it in 1989. The spectacular surrender of the well trained and well-funded Afghan army was another thing that the US grossly under-estimated.
Single biggest mistake that the British, the Soviets and later the US made was to ram down their version of governance and systems on the Afghans who historically were alien to western systems of governance. One such case being the US trying to install western style judicial system in Afghanistan which has for centuries followed its own tribal cultures and its legal systems.
Be it Vietnam or Afghanistan the region has always remained alien to the US. It has been the hallmark of the US to employ locals as translators and people amiable to them for intelligence and other logistical purposes. These people would later be given free US citizenship as a parting gift.
But this time President Joe Biden is getting all the flak after the Taliban dangled a Afghan translator from the US made Blackhawk helicopter. There is some dispute as to exactly how many US citizens, translators and Afghans hired by the US and NATO allies are left behind at the mercy of the Taliban.
Just like what former President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor (NSA) Henry Kissinger got away with a hasty pull out from Vietnam in 1973, President Joe Biden appears to have fancied that he too might get away by pulling off another Vietnam in Afghanistan.
It was not that the Biden administration was not aware of what deal the previous Trump administration had brokered with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. Former US president Donald Trump too was eager to pull out US troops out of Afghanistan.
In both Vietnam and Afghanistan, the US had lost the objective of the war long ago and was negotiating with the adversaries from a position of weakness. But the manner in which the US left Afghanistan without a proper exit plan, without brokering a ceasefire and without taking its NATO allies into confidence is why the Biden administration is facing flak from all quarters.
It is for the manner in which the US pulled its troops out of Afghanistan that has not gone down well with the veterans from the US and UK armies.
Retired Special Operations Staff Sergeant Trevor Coult, a highly decorated British Army officer remarked that he was “absolutely shocked” at President Joe Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, rendering the 20-year war “a total waste.”
He further added, “6,500 people died, including 3,000 deaths at Twin Towers, and we didn’t achieve a single thing,” said Sergeant Trevor Coult, who has been feted by both the queen and President George W. Bush. “He destroyed 20 years’ work in less than 24 hours”, remarked Sgt. Coult.
Sergeant Coult is not alone, about 88 US Army retired Flag Officers have in an open letter demanded the resignation and retirement of US Secretary of Defense (SECDEF), Llyod Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), General Mark A Milley. The letter signed by retired Rear Admiral Philip Anselmo of the US Navy among others argued that both SECDEF and CJCS in their capacity should have briefed the Commander in Chief and the US President about the consequences of a hasty pull out of troops. They added that if they did not do everything in their authority to stop the hasty withdrawal, then they should have resigned in protest.
In a strongly worded letter, the former US army officers noted “The consequences of this disaster are enormous and will reverberate for decades… The loss of billions of dollars in advanced military equipment and supplies falling into the hands of our enemies is catastrophic. The damage to the reputation of the United States is indescribable. We are now seen, and will be seen for many years, as an unreliable partner in any multinational agreement or operation. Moreover, now our adversaries are emboldened to move against America due to the weakness displayed in Afghanistan… Trust in the United States is irreparably damaged.”
Republican Senator Marco Rubio and other Republican senators had in an August 18 letter addressed to SECDEF Llyod Austin had raised serious concerns over what they called “high-tech military equipment paid for by US taxpayers has fallen into the hands of the Taliban and their terrorist allies. Securing US assets should have been among the top priorities for the US Department of Defense prior to announcing the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Senator’s in their letter further add that the Taliban will seek to work with Russia, Pakistan, Iran or the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for training, fuel, or infrastructure necessary to utilize the equipment they do not have the capabilities to use on their own. They also wanted to know whether the administration was making any attempts to recapture and destroy the military equipment left behind by the US army in Afghanistan.
The US pullout from Afghanistan has also irreparably damaged relations the US had with its NATO allies in the European Union (EU). President Joe Biden held the UK for the Kabul airport attack. Already under fire domestically for toeing the US line, an embattled British Prime Minister Boris Johnson remarked that the US decision to pull out of Afghanistan ‘accelerated events’.
The EU too targeted the UK Prime Minister for the turn of events in Afghanistan. Article 5 of the NATO treaty was invoked for the first- and only-time which states that in case a NATO member was attacked it would be treated as an attack against all its allies and hence NATO joined the US in its war in Afghanistan.
EU President Charles Michel in an equally strongly worded statement had remarked, “The conclusion of a political agreement with Taliban, followed by the principle, manner and timing of the military withdrawal, have been US decisions. Those decisions are sovereign, and certainly legitimate in view of US interests. Their choice and the rapid capture of Kabul by the Taliban created this sudden and chaotic situation.”
Both the British Prime Minister and the EU President were unequivocal in their stand that the decision and the resultant mess it created was all and entirely was of the US. They both then went on to hint that the lessons learnt from the Afghanistan fiasco was that NATO will now have to rely on its own resources to defend itself against any external attacks rather than rely on the US which they now feel is an “unreliable, untrustworthy partner.”
The ties between the US and its NATO allies appear to have ruptured as the EU President in his statement on lessons for the EU, further adds, “The EU must remain modest and realistic without losing sight of its fundamental values… Finally, the necessity to reduce our dependencies and strengthen our strategic autonomy is more and more apparent. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan forces us to accelerate honest thinking about European defence, in connection with the discussions between NATO partners.”
