New Delhi: Last week, the entire world witnessed one of the major humanitarian crises as the Taliban insurgents captured Afghanistan’s capital Kabul. The fear of a brutal Taliban regime led to desperation among Afghan citizens and foreigners residing in the war-torn country, who have been either fleeing or trying to leave the country ever since the insurgents made a rapid advance across Afghanistan.
There have been gut-wrenching images and videos of people trying to escape, with some even falling to death from a plane while trying to flee. Pictures have also gone viral that show parents handing over their baby to the US troops over the perimeter wall of the airport in Kabul.
However, as the world hung its head in shame, there was no sign of remorse in the US, which, in a way, was a coldhearted betrayal by Washington that should have weighed heavily on its conscience.
Here is WION Executive Editor Palki Sharma Upadhyay giving more details about what happened in Afghanistan was a collective failure of generations of US Presidents, policy-makers, and military commanders that helped create this monster called the Taliban.
The role of the US in the Cold War has been a closely guarded secret where it supported the Afghan warlords or better known as Mujahideens to form the Taliban in December 1979. At the peak of the Cold War, the Soviet Union decided to invade Afghanistan under the pretext of upholding the Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty of 1978.
At the time, the US went ahead and supported the Mujahideens to safeguard its interests, which is the official story. The people of America were not informed in the least that their government together with the British Secret Service the MI-6 began training and funding the Islamic extremists including Osama Bin Laden, the man who blew the twin towers in New York. Many do think that it is a conspiracy theory but if you look close enough, it’s not.
The British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook admitted in writing in 2005 that Osama Bin Laden was a product of a monumental miscalculation by the Western security forces. He was funded by the CIA and America’s western allies to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
It was at this time that the concept of Jihad or holy wars found its way into the global platform. Media reports at the time backed the Mujahideens and portrayed the Soviets as Christians who were trying to defile Islam. The term Mujahideen itself translates into ‘Islamic struggle’, a struggle that was supported by the Americans who wanted to turn Afghanistan into Soviet Union’s Vietnam.
The Soviet Union occupation over Afghanistan lasted for a decade and throughout this period the CIA kept expanding its program under the code name – Operation Cyclone.
In order to keep its hold, Washington kept funding the mujahideen with the help of Pakistan and by the end of 1987, the annual funding by America had reached $630 million. In March 1985, President Reagan’s national security team formally decided to provide the mujahideen with weapons with the help of Pakistan, which also looked after its distribution.
In 1989, the Soviet Union had lost all its control over Afghanistan, American had funnelled $20 billion into Afghanistan in arms and ammunition after which the Soviet Union disintegrated and America’s appetite for funding the terror group also ended.
As the funding ended, the mujahideen started fighting each other. The terror group was made out of many factions which worked together under the leadership of America but since it left, the Civil war followed creating destruction and chaos in the country almost ruining the city of Kabul.
Amidst the Civil war, emerged another group of mujahideen which called themselves an army of Robin Hood stating that their purpose was restoring peace and justice. They were called the ‘Talibans’ which also meant ‘students’. The Taliban were disillusioned with the internal dispute and later moved to Pakistan to study in seminaries. The Us might not have directly helped in forming the Taliban but picking up arms to protect their religion and people definitely comes from there.
Eventually, the Afghans got tired of mujahideen fighting and embraced the Taliban and relied on them to restore peace and remove corruption which allowed the Taliban to gain the power to implement the Sharia law which in hindsight was a big mistake on the part of the people. The Taliban took Afghanistan to the stone age as the world watched.
It was all America’s doing but it only realised it when the damage hit home. It was in 2001 that Osama Bin Laden carried out the 9/11 attack, one of the biggest and the most horrific terrorist strikes with the protection of the Taliban killing 2900 people. Washington decided to go after the Taliban which only led to more chaos. It did manage to kill Osama Bin laden but replaced the Taliban with another of its own.
20 years of war, $3 trillion spent, 2300 American soldiers killed, 75,000 Afghan soldiers in Americans killed but the US still could not dismantle the Taliban. But the current US president says that was never the aim in the first place.
America could not defeat the Taliban because it was after the wrong enemy. The root cause of the problem was Pakistan with its involvement in every step of the way giving the Taliban both financial and military training.
The US messed up even while withdrawing from Afghnaistan, at first it called its troops back, allwoed the Taliban to gain momentum, left its weapons unattended and now is palnning to evacuate the Afghans’s in danger. Today, Afghanistan faces the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world all caused by the US and its overconfidence and ignorance which could have easily been avoided. America’s botched up retreat from Afghanistan can only be called criminal.
