From Kabul to Saigon, US Failure Resounds as Many Gloat

Many were stunned at how rapidly and suddenly Taliban forces made it to Kabul, and how before Sunday was over, advance elements of its red unit or special forces were posing for pictures inside the presidential palace, sitting on the president’s chair, behind the president’s desk, amid opulent surroundings and taking down the national flag of Afghanistan and rolling it up. A clear visual illustration of the end of one era and the start of another. The world held its collective breath, many are still holding their breath as I write this, but others are hopeful the ‘new’ Taliban would be more accommodating to liberal western affectations that the Afghan has long tried to internalize, like a square trying to fit inside a very small circle. The monster is no longer at the gates, it is now inside as the remaining US military units and diplomatic cadres barricade themselves at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. What a failure of US planning, military prowess and civilizing mission, right? Wrong! This is just a country liberating itself from an occupier.

 

I always knew the Taliban would win back Afghanistan eventually, they were too well trained and too smart and have more than enough support from among the long suffering people of the country not to win. The US made a huge mistake invading Afghanistan as it did, led by an alcoholic born-again president, it made an even bigger mistake when it sent its troops into towns and rural villages in search of Islamist insurgents. Unfamiliar as American troops were with local customs and traditions and culture let alone local dialects, they made a real mess of the whole thing. The end result was civilian casualties that mounted and continued to do so over the entire period of the US military presence in Afghanistan. The sons, brothers and fathers of those innocent casualties, collateral damage in military terms, never forgot who their real enemy was. I hate to say it, being a graduate of the liberal US educational system myself, but American ‘nouveau-imperialism’, a kind of oblivious self-deluding military occupation that tries to claim the mantel of liberator, is what every Afghan, outside of the liberal educated urban elite in Kabul, views as his or her true enemy.

 

Watching it all unfold on television yesterday, I instantly thought déjà vu, its Saigon all over again, this morning news channels verbalized that thought as comparisons were being made between the helicopters ferrying staff from the US Embassy in Kabul to the chaotic evacuation of Saigon by the US as it withdrew from Vietnam in 1975. There is no way the US Administration can escape responsibility for the biggest catastrophe to befall the naïve urban elite of Afghanistan who were hoping for a modern State and a stable life and the US to help them achieve that. Rushing to the airport to catch the last few flights out, many were shot and killed. Videos of dead bodies were reported to exist by news channels although I haven’t seen them myself. No one knows who shot at who, but a likely scenario is that skittish US soldiers guarding the airport may have mistaken rushing Afghan civilians for a rushing squad of Taliban fighters and opened fire, that is certainly one possibility. But I imagine in a city newly occupied by an external force there will be many people who arm themselves for protection. 

 

As banks closed down and ATM’s emptied, I recalled the travails of my own native Lebanon in late 2019. Images of vehicles of every description chocked Kabul roads over the past few days as people tried to evacuate, which resulted in traffic coming to a standstill. It must have been frightening to live through that and not know what would come next. I know from my own experience of living with uncertainty and never ending anxiety over the past two years in Lebanon, how psychologically draining and debilitating such a situation can be. My own humble prayers are with the people of Afghanistan, hoping they find a suitable modus vivendi between the various conservative and liberal elements that would see a peaceful country emerge from this horrendous experience.

 

As a Christian myself, I know the fear my co-religionaries have of extremist Islam and the strict application of Sharia Law. I know many European channels are voicing hope that today’s Taliban would be different from the Taliban of the 1990s. I am not so sure of that. I think it’s the same Taliban and the same zeal for application of Sharia Law. There may be some accommodation for European and Chinese companies and nationals operating inside Afghanistan, but I think the Taliban are pretty much the same, in fact, I would say they are now emboldened, and why shouldn’t they be. The mere fact that they advanced unimpeded over a matter of days to take the whole country barely engaging any Afghan army or security units, moving through the country like a hot knife through butter, means they have substantial popular support among the Afghan people, there is just no escaping that conclusion. Fear alone doesn’t explain how rapidly the Taliban advanced and took over. There is more to this story.

 

And besides, who are we liberal elites with our expensive US degrees to tell the majority of Afghans who is to rule them?! The Americans tried to impose their vision of a liberal modern democracy on the country and failed, clearly failed. When an American-backed Afghan president leaves in the dead of night for another country, presumably a permanent exile, then little wonder the Taliban just walked into his presidential palace without so much as a by your leave. If you look closely at the faces of the fighters in the palace you can notice a look of astonishment that says it all “are we really here, could this be happening”, of course the Taliban were probably among the first to be amazed and surprised by the speed of their own advance, I doubt they expected it.

 

So, it is safe to say that US power and prestige has taken a rollicking over the past 48 hours, and the impact of this cataclysm will reverberate throughout the region, the Middle East included.