Where will Afghanistan go after the US military withdrawal?

After spending two decades in Afghanistan, the American, German and British soldiers are permanently evacuated from the country. In short, the international coalition formed in 2001 will no longer be present on the ground and with it the Afghan political and military scene will change, which will give rise to various implications which do not seem to bode well.

At the end of June, President Joe Biden released the announcement confirming Washington’s final decision to completely withdraw the last remaining IDPs in Afghanistan. The active service of the forces sent at the time will come to an end at an extremely important date for the United States. It has been reported from the White House that by September 11, there will be no more American troops there.

Britain has also withdrawn a significant number of its troops in the past three weeks, only 200 British troops remain in Afghanistan and they will be repatriated to the UK before the end of July. The German contingent of 550 troops has already left Afghanistan since mid-June. The deadline for the withdrawal of American troops signaled by Secretary of State Antony Blinken is still symbolic for the United States. It will come nearly 20 years after the barbaric terrorist attacks perpetrated by Al-Qaeda on September 11.

In 2001, the administration of George Bush (Jr.) realized that these attacks were planned and directed from Afghan soil and formed a US-led coalition to deploy in Afghanistan to overthrow the Islamist group from power. taliban, who got it. It was also able to temporarily expel Al-Qaeda from Afghan territory by destroying its operational bases. The coalition’s military operations also extended its actions to Iraq and Pakistan, where al-Qaeda leader Bin Laden had bases and a significant active presence.

During these two decades, the coalition carried out a great number of operations and an infinite number of military actions aimed at neutralizing the terrorist groups which had brutally beaten the West. However, the price of this military commitment to safeguard security over these 20 years has cost a high number of human lives and monetary sums that have exceeded billions of dollars.

The military losses recorded by Washington during these two decades reached a staggering 2,289 Americans killed and more than 19,000 wounded. The United Kingdom also counted 450 British soldiers killed in action and 1,326 wounded, to which must be added 104 German soldiers and a hundred other nationalities who made up this coalition were killed. But it is the Afghans who have suffered the greatest number of casualties with more than 52,000 members of their armed and security forces killed and an estimate – unconfirmed – of double the number of civilians lost.

The economic cost of taxing Americans has exceeded $ 100 billion. This is where an uncomfortable and unfortunate question inexorably arises as to whether it was all necessary and above all: whether it was worth it. The answer to the question will depend on the variables used to measure the results of those 20 years.

In the first place, the association which gave birth at the time to the alliance of the Taliban group with Al-Qaida was obviously not destroyed on the military side beyond the temporal, its objectives in terms of Islamo- policy show that the two groups continue to orbit. in the same Islamist ideology. Therefore, with the possible return of the Taliban to power, the return of Al Qaeda terrorist training camps in Afghanistan will also be inevitable.

Today it is without counting that the figure of the terrorist leader Bin Laden is not any more in this world, there will be other ideologues of the new direction which will surely exceed the projects of the leader killed on May 2, 2011, in Abbottabad , Pakistan. The leaders of terrorist groups occupy only a place and a time in the history of their organizations, but when they disappear or are killed in action, the new leaders maintain their assumptions, and in many cases overcome the brutal practices. of their former bosses. , the poison-poisonous gas experiments in rabbits and dogs that Bin Laden had commissioned from his bases in Afghanistan in his plan to obtain a “dirty” bomb that could be activated in densely populated areas of Western capitals.

In other words, it is quite possible that the same practices that led to the US-led intervention in 2001, which had the intention and objective of forever neutralizing ground-based terrorist groups. afghan, come back.

This open question has bothered Western intelligence officials since, during campaign periods, current President Joe Biden has promised to withdraw his troops from there. Leaks in British military command reveal UK concerns over existing links between the two groups and ex-IS (Islamic State) fighters who returned to Britain after fighting in Syria and Iraq .

The alliance between Al-Qaeda and the Islamist group Taliban has remained active since the defeated leader Osama Bin Laden decided to move his headquarters from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996 and until 2001, when Al-Qaeda benefited from the support and refuge granted by the Taliban.

In May 2000, Saudi Arabia, one of the few countries to recognize the Taliban government at the time, sent its intelligence chief, Prince Al-Faisal, to negotiate with the Taliban to hand over Bin Laden. The leadership of the Afghan group refused and it was precisely on the basis of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that the attacks on the United States were planned, ordered and directed 16 months later, on September 11, 2001.

El ex General Nick Carter, ex-Jefe del Estado Mayor del Reino Unido que estuvo al mando del contingente británico en Afganistán durante varios años, ha escrito varios documentos donde indica que a su modo de ver, los líderes talibanes deben haber aprendido de sus errores the past. Carter maintains that the Taliban have plans to regain power, but this time they will take care of their image so that they are not labeled by the world as Islamic terrorists. The English commander argues that a new leadership of the Taliban, mainly those who came into contact with life in shopping malls and major cities during the peace negotiations in Doha, Saudi Arabia last year, could position themselves in favor of a break with Al-Qaeda. to ensure its international acceptance.

However, in a weakly governed country with as much territory as Afghanistan, there is no guarantee that a future Taliban government will be able to contain Al Qaeda. The organization could enter and establish its cells without being seen in villages and towns far from Kabul with great ease. Ultimately, the only thing Al Qaeda or ISIL needs to thrive is a chaotic and unstable situation and all signs point to the conditions in Afghanistan for them to achieve this easily and quickly. term if they decide to. In the past, Al Qaeda was able to operate with impunity in Afghanistan because it was protected by the Taliban government despite having taken control of the whole country since 1996, after the withdrawal of the Soviet army. The United States failed when it tried to negotiate from outside – via its Saudi allies – to convince the Taliban to expel Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, the Taliban refused this request and what followed was the worsening of chaos in the country.

After the September 11 attacks, the international community called on the Taliban to hand over those responsible, but they once again refused. Thus, 4 weeks later, a military force made up of anti-Taliban Afghans called the Northern Alliance, which advanced on Kabul with American and British military support to eject the Taliban from power, and with them, the Al networks. -Qaida who fled to Pakistan. From that time until today, no large-scale international terrorist attack has been planned from Afghanistan.

In this way and in accordance with the counterterrorism policies and measures applied by the international community, it can be said that the western military presence achieved its objectives by neutralizing the terrorist hotbed. However, two decades later, Afghanistan has failed to achieve a comprehensive peace that would have ensured lasting political stability.. Al-Qaeda, Daesh and other Islamist groups that revolve around their ideological postulates have not disappeared from the scene, on the contrary, they are reappearing and there is no doubt that the departure of Western troops will promote their return and their reinforcement, which will lead to Afghanistan in the immediate mediocre future, where very likely the continuity of terrorist activity and confrontation within its political institutions will foster the greening of a violent and undesirable scenario.

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