The End of an Era: The Return of the Taliban and The Fall of Afghanistan
Taliban leaders pose behind the President’s desk.
By Drew Hopkins ‘24
The world watched in stunned silence as images and news trickled out of Kabul on August 15th. Reports that Taliban fighters had reentered the capital, virtually unopposed, were paired with shocking videos of Afghan civilians clinging to the sides of US military planes as they took off from Kabul’s airport. Not long after, pictures were released of Taliban leaders posing behind the President’s desk: an unmistakable symbol of the terrorist group’s total victory.
The shock from the climactic conclusion to America’s longest conflict has not yet fully worn off, but the silence certainly has, as accusations, counter-accusations, excuses, and blame have been freely flying amongst NATO leadership and the global public. This is certainly understandable, as everyone involved seeks to defend and distance themselves from one of the worst military debacles in modern history. However, Western anger is nothing compared to the fear and uncertainty that now grips the people of Afghanistan. As the country looks set to relive the violent repression and terror of the Taliban’s first stint in power, everyone from Kabul to Washington is now asking the same questions: how did we get here, and what comes next?
The question of “how did we get here?” is not a simple one, as it will take us through twenty years of military intervention, guerrilla conflict, civil unrest, and the utter failure of both the Afghan government and its Western backers to defeat the Taliban. In 2001, following the September 11th attacks, the United States invaded Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to dismantle al-Qaeda, which had been operating out of the country. The initial invasion, much like the one in Iraq a couple years later, went off without a hitch. Within months the US led coalition of UK, Canadian, Australian, and Afghan rebel troops succeeded in driving the Taliban out of power and establishing an interim government. The success of the conventional war was short lived: tens of thousands of Taliban fighters escaped to wage a guerilla war from the mountainous Afghan countryside as the United States and allies desperately sought to support the newly formed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
What started in 2001 as a quick invasion to flush out the terrorists responsible for 9/11 evolved into the longest war in American history. Over the next 20 years, American advisors would, at an astronomical cost, train and build up the Afghan Republic into a government capable of standing on its own two feet following a future withdrawal. After two decades of nation-building, thousands of American combat deaths, and over two trillion dollars (that’s $300,000,000 per day) spent, public opinion had turned decisively against continued involvement. President Trump committed to withdrawal in the 2020 Dohar Deal, and President Biden finally pulled the trigger and began the total withdrawal of US troops this year. The US and its allies spent twenty years, two trillion dollars, and thousands of lives to support the Afghan Republic. It fell in two weeks.
So what went wrong? How did the combined efforts of the Western world over decades culminate in the total defeat of the Afghan national government? The Taliban victory is a recent wound and still stinging, so there is plenty of blame flying around in political and military circles. However, despite the best efforts of everyone involved to distance themselves from the catastrophe, it is possible to determine the three main causes of the Afghan collapse. The first factor that contributed to the Taliban’s return is geography. Afghanistan is a rugged place; cave-riddled mountain ranges dominate the landscape and make communication, supply and travel immensely difficult. Combined with limited infrastructure, a majority rural population and ethnic divisions, the geography of the country is ideal for waging an insurgent war against a superior enemy. It was as much due to Afghanistan’s terrain, as to their cunning and brutality, that the Taliban were able to avoid defeat at the hands of the Americans for so long.
Second was the total failure of Afghan leadership. Corruption was the rule rather than the exception in the halls of power and foreign aid that was meant to purchase essential equipment often wound up in the pockets of military leaders. A favorite tactic of Afghan generals was to overreport the number of troops under their command when requisitioning funds and equipment; when the money to pay these nonexistent “ghost soldiers” arrived, the commanders pocketed it. The corruption of the Afghan leadership was matched only by their self-preservation instinct: generals surrendered entire cities without firing a shot, and the cabinet and president fled Kabul without even token resistance.
The corruption and cowardice of their officers fed into the third factor: an undersupplied, underpaid and demoralized military. The rank-and-file Afghan soldier often had to contend with minimal equipment and even less pay, as the central government routinely failed to fund pensions and salaries. The demoralization of the army led to widespread desertion, which, when combined with combat deaths, meant that the Afghan army routinely suffered from an unsustainably high attrition rate. It should be no surprise then that, upon seeing their officers abandon their posts, soldiers and policemen melted away from the fanatically determined Taliban. While many Afghan troops performed valiantly, especially the 22,000 Afghan commandos, most had no desire to die for a regime that would not even defend itself; those who wanted to continue fighting soon found themselves alone in the face of the enemy.
As the dust settles on the Afghan war, people around the world are left asking “what’s next?”. Nowhere is this question more potent than in Afghanistan itself, as tens of millions of Afghans are forced to come to terms with the new regime. The Taliban PR machine is already well at work, pumping out soothing statements of amnesty for all pro-government fighters, national reconciliation, and international peace. However, early reports of retaliatory killings of anti-Taliban fighters, the violent repression of widespread protest, and the desperation of translators and other coalition partners to leave the country suggest that the militant instincts of the Taliban are far from behind them. Whether the Taliban will continue its history of extremism and violence, or whether it will chart a new, peaceful course remains to be seen; what is certain, though, is that Afghanistan is in the throes of a historic and dangerous transformation.