Miguel Ángel Medina
Deputy Director of the Antoni de Montserrat Chair of Global Studies at the Universitat Abat Oliba CEU
As the song says, twenty years is no time at all, but the almost 2,500 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan in these two decades are. When in early October 2001 George W. Bush ordered the deployment of U.S. troops in the Central Asian country to confront Bin Laden and the Taliban groups, neither analysts, academics nor policy makers could have imagined that, twenty years later, the Afghan theater would continue to be the scene of the most virulent conflict at the international level (far surpassing conflicts such as the Syrian, Yemeni, Libyan or Congolese). The announcement of the withdrawal of U.S. troops, an idea conceived by the Obama Administration in 2011 but scheduled for September 11, 2021, brings to the table several considerations about this conflict, which will be discussed below.
The first is the strong symbolic charge of the withdrawal. Although Biden decided to extend the military presence beyond May 1 – the deadline that his predecessor in the White House Oval Office had agreed with the Taliban, despite threats of attack – the final decision has been made. September 11 not only marks the twentieth anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, but also shows that the US cannot be the world’s policeman forever. Afghanistan was a war that Washington could not win and did not know how to end, and the withdrawal carries an implicit message to the world; two decades later, the US has said enough is enough.
The second derivative leads us to glimpse a foreign policy of the Biden Administration that seems more pragmatic, more austere, even more utilitarian. The announcement of the withdrawal is not an absolute surprise, but the way in which it will be implemented is. Blinken wants to turn the page as soon as possible and close this bloody book of recent history. Afghanistan has been one of the stones in the shoe of the United States since the end of the Cold War, and the country’s new foreign policy involves a firm commitment to definitively withdraw the nearly 3,000 soldiers deployed in Afghanistan, once a safe, orderly and decisive exit has been assured. Without grandiloquence, but with a firm hand. A strategy very similar to the one followed in Libya, by the way.
The third element to highlight is what the decision may mean in terms of transatlantic relations. It has been repeated on both sides of the Atlantic that in Afghanistan ‘we went in together, we learned together, we fought together, we are leaving together’. The announcement of Washington’s withdrawal from the Central Asian country was accompanied, a few hours later, by the announcement of the withdrawal of the Atlantic Alliance. NATO is thus putting an end to its longest-running (18 years) and most robust international peacekeeping operation (ISAF once had 130,000 troops on the ground and fifty participating countries). It is almost impossible to imagine an international mission in the Asian country that is not led by Washington, and it will be necessary to analyze the impact of the new scenario on the geographical and thematic areas of common interest for all the allies: relations with Russia and China, the fight against terrorism on an international scale, failed states, weapons of mass destruction… And let us remember that in the Afghan conflict it was the only time that the allies invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, and not to increase the American security umbrella in Europe, but so that the European countries would help Washington.
And let us not forget, finally, how the international community will react to this US withdrawal. With or without the military presence of Washington and the other NATO members, the achievement of a viable peace agreement seems a long way off, and the power vacuum created by the withdrawal of US troops only increases the questions about the possible solution to the Afghan conflict. Let us point out that this is one of the most multifaceted and multidimensional conflicts on the current international scene, with several layers overlapping in the same theater: the Taliban, the residual presence of Daesh, the warlords and opium lords, and the central government. It would be a major strategic mistake to abandon the Central Asian country completely, so maintaining a diplomatic presence, humanitarian aid and logistical support to the Afghan government is probably a good idea. And not forgetting the necessary involvement of neighboring countries directly affected by the insecurity emanating from Kabul. Pakistan, Iran and, above all, China, will have their eyes wide open. We will have to keep an eye on the talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government that will take place soon in Turkey, and see what message the international community sends to the Central Asian country from September onwards.
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