US troops leave Afghanistan as Taliban prepare to take power

On one side of one of the bleachers there was still a stain of blood. The national stadium – a very minor team ground in Latin America – from Afghanistan to Kabul had been used until just a few days ago for “Educate” the masses. At half-time between games, every Saturday, two or three Toyota trucks accompanied by Taliban militiamen entered the field. Prisoners went downstairs and one of the chiefs read the “crimes” committed by the inmates. “Adultery,” he cried, then came the phrase: “stoning”. They would bring the woman to her knees, still covered from head to toe in her dark blue burqa, and begin throwing stones at her. When he collapsed from the stones he received in his head, they went to the next convict. “Flight”, “cut of a hand”. Once again, the man on his knees, supported by two militiamen. From behind appeared another man with a long beard with a sword and struck a well-aimed blow on the elbow of his left forearm. “Treason”, “death”. This detainee was also forced to squat and be shot with Kalashnikovs.

The audience was forced to watch. Whoever does not could find himself in the middle of the field and not precisely to strengthen his team. Fifteen minutes later, the Taliban loaded the bodies or what was left of them into the trucks and left. A moment later, the players reappeared on the playing field and the second half began.

This description, in addition to seeing it in videos recorded by the protagonists themselves, was told to me by some of the boys who looked after the lawn and who were those responsible for cleaning up blood and even human remains who stayed. “I saw several players come out with their shoes stained with blood. There was blood everywhere, ”the canchero told me, struggling to maintain a green field in the middle of a desert.

A scene from life under the Taliban in Kabul. There are many more. Women couldn’t study and only the older ones could go shopping, still wrapped in their burqas. Music was forbidden because it distracted attention from the five obligatory daily prayers. Same, Canaries in cages have been banned, which Afghans are very fond of, as their singing can also be distracting. Men who didn’t go to mosques every day they could be whipped.

The Taliban fled to the mountains when then-US President George Bush ordered them to bomb and remove from power in October 2001 just a month after September 11, the day of the attacks on the Manhattan Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The regime of the Afghan Ayatollahs had given refuge to the terrorist network Al-Qaida of Osama bin Laden and from there the attacks against the United States were organized. The war in Afghanistan thus became the longest in its history. Until, kills 3,500 and wounded 22,000 among Western forces, 14,000 victims among Afghan soldiers and 40,000 others among the Taliban. Among civilians, the dead reach 120,000 and there are 1.2 million displaced at the border with Pakistan.

Today, 20 years later, President Joe Biden announced the total withdrawal of troops – barely 2,500 US troops remain and 9,000 more from various NATO countries – precisely on the anniversary of the worst attack committed in this country on November 11. After long negotiations, his predecessor Donald Trump had committed to a departure on May 1. Without much sense, Biden extended it until September. “It’s time to end America’s longest war,” he said. “It’s time for American troops to come home“. Biden made the announcement from the Treaty Room of the White House, the same place where Bush announced the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001. “We cannot continue the cycle of expanding or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan in the hope of creating ideal conditions. for our withdrawal, hoping for a different outcome, ”Biden added. “I am now the fourth US president to meet with a US troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans. Two Democrats. I won’t pass this responsibility to a fifth“.

However, the decision to withdraw the troops comes at a very dangerous time for Afghanistan. The Taliban are stronger than ever, even stronger than when they were in power. They control almost half of the country’s territory. The militiamen in the black turban are at the gates of three large towns awaiting orders to advance. Little doubt that the foreign soldiers hardly come out, the Taliban will rush the offensive to return to power in Kabul.

CIA Director himself William Burns said shortly before the president’s announcement to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the departure of soldiers from Afghanistan would stop. a “significant risk” of a resurgence of terrorism in the region. “Our ability to keep this threat at bay in Afghanistan is due to the presence of the US military and the coalition on the ground,” he said. “As soon as we leave, the ability of the United States to collect information and respond to threats will diminish,” he continued.

The Afghan government knows that the departure of the last foreign soldier will be the signal that the Taliban militiamen are waiting for in an attempt to regain ground and, eventually, to regain control of the country. The same goes for ordinary Afghans. As in Iraq and earlier in Vietnam, those who worked for the occupation forces, from translators to cleaners, they are absolutely not protected. The US Embassy in Kabul has received thousands of refugee visa applications in recent weeks. We know that the Taliban keep spies on all government agencies and businesses. Its main objective will be to point employees.

The Taliban, which in Arabic means “Students” of the madrassas, Koranic schools, were clustered in southern Pakistan while in their country the various factions of mujahedin fought in a civil war. Many were veterans of the confrontation with the Soviet army that had invaded Afghanistan and had retired defeated in 1988. Six years later, one of the clergy of these schools, Mullah Omar (who had lost an eye and a leg during the war), began to assemble a militia which in two years he managed to seize power in Kabul. It was when he imposed Sharia, the 16th century Muslim law, on the 30 million Afghans (today there are 2 million more). Yes allowed Saudi Arabia’s Osama bin Laden to set up three major training camps for its fighters of the Al-Qaeda network (the list) with the aim of sowing terror in the world. In 2001, with the entry of American soldiers, Taliban leaders and Bin Laden and his men extinct in the Hindu Kush mountains and from there they launched offensives against local and NATO troops every summer. In 2015, they got strong and forced the United States into peace negotiations with too many twists and turns. Six years later control nearly half of Afghanistan and prepare to return to power.

In areas where the Taliban control the territory, witnesses speak of these new fighters they are not very different from the previous ones beyond a few concessions. In one district, elders managed to pressure Taliban leaders to open a secondary school for girls. In other provinces, clinics funded by international aid groups are now allowed to operate. But in these same places severe punishments remain common, often public. Torture and imprisonment are widespread for offenses as minor as possession of a SIM card from a non-local mobile phone company.

The group is still rooted in an extreme interpretation of Islamic law which seems to leave no room for compromise with the more liberal laws of the areas controlled by the government of Afghanistan. Public beatings and executions are rife in the Afghan Taliban. Yes women are almost completely absent from public life, being largely denied equal access to education and employment. In more remote areas, they enjoy some popular support as there have been improvements in health care and education, although this is largely due to the work of some international aid groups that the activists made it possible to operate. “All changes are for your own benefit only”said a 22-year-old university student from Helmand province who has lived in Taliban-controlled territory all his life and who was interviewed by a correspondent for the Washington post. “If they concede something, it is because at that moment, they cannot do otherwise. Yes people obey not only out of fear, but because they receive a subsidy. But never criticize them for anything because you become their enemy ”.

This is the imprint the Taliban will make if they take power in Kabul, a city that has already become accustomed to living in greater liberalism and connecting with the outside world. Cultural confrontation can be brutal.