Time.news – A catastrophe that could have been avoided. So at Time.news Georgetown University professor Paul D. Miller, director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the US National Security Council from 2007 to 2009, former CIA analyst and war veteran in Kabul. Miller is one of the leading American experts on the Afghan question, on which he is preparing in-depth research within the university.
Professor Miller, was this epilogue in Afghanistan predictable?
“It was absolutely predictable and was in fact predicted by observers, academics, critics. The US Department of Defense has been saying for years that the Afghan government was not ready to go it alone. The intelligence forces had predicted that if if the Biden administration withdrew support from the local government, the Afghan army would have collapsed in an armed confrontation. Sure, there is surprise at the speed with which this happened but in fact everyone knew it would happen, which still makes it more reprehensible that the Biden administration has chosen to pursue this path “.
The veterans who fought in Afghanistan are expressing great regret in these hours, both on social media and in the press. Many say they feel betrayed by the way the United States fled Afghanistan. You too lived and fought there for many years, what are your feelings in these excited hours?
It was a very difficult week. I spent ten years there, first as a soldier in Afghanistan, then as an analyst in the CIA and on the White House staff for national security. I have worked for two presidents. Today I wonder if all those efforts were worth it. The Biden administration has chosen to ignore the successes we have achieved in over twenty years and has chosen to ignore the opportunity to consolidate some of the advantages we had gained in the country in order to preserve its fragile stability.
Yes, I’m disappointed with what’s going on but I don’t want to make it personal. Let us remember that those who are suffering the most are not the analysts in Washington but the Afghan people. I am thinking in particular of Afghan women and religious minorities.
In these hours we are witnessing a rebound between Trump and Biden. No one seems to want to take responsibility for what is happening and rather try to blame the political opponent. What is your perception on this?
An old proverb says: victory has a thousand fathers while defeat is an orphan. It is clear that no one wants to take responsibility for what is happening. But while President Biden deserves all the criticism of the case for what, in my opinion, was an irresponsible and unforgivable decision, on the other hand we must remember that the plans to leave Afghanistan started a long time ago. There was no lack of errors, a little in all administrations.
Starting with the decision of the then President Bush to intervene with a “light footprint”, a light imprint, not only in military power but also in civil resources and in assistance for reconstruction and then moving on to Obama’s catastrophic decision to announce with a lot advance the date of the withdrawal of the troops.
Then it was the turn of Trump who brought home a bad peace agreement with the Taliban and finally Biden who decided to leave the country in this way. The current situation was the result of a series of erroneous initiatives. The difference is that while in the previous cases we tried to straighten the shot, on the latter it is no longer possible. The world will always remember what Biden did these days. “
Polls show that most Americans are in favor of withdrawing troops. In your opinion, is this the reason that prompted the current administration to leave Afghanistan despite the adverse opinion of many advisers?
I have heard from some colleagues who are in the administration to understand what led to this choice and I hope to correctly interpret their thinking. In the White House they are convinced that leaving the country was inevitable, it would have happened sooner or later. They also want to cut costs.
There is a belief that the war in Afghanistan is a distraction from the problems we have at home and from other priorities such as the emergence of China and the disaster caused by the pandemic. I absolutely disagree with this view.
On July 28, as American troops withdrew, a delegation of nine Taliban led by political leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar met with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and Chinese state councilor in Tianjin. On that occasion Wang Yi openly said that Beijing expects to “play an important role in the reconciliation and reconstruction process of Afghanistan. The Taliban, on the other hand, they sought legitimacy. It appears that the United States served Afghanistan on a silver platter to China. Are there any agreements we are unaware of?
There are certainly other influences as well. China undoubtedly but also Pakistan. I don’t know who will have more weight in this phase between the two countries. In the long run, I think we will also see Russia and Iran gaining prominence in the region. I don’t think there has been any definite agreement between China and the Taliban or between the United States and China.
I think the Taliban’s rapid advance was due to local negotiations between the Taliban and the little warlords of the series: when the time comes, join us or we’ll kill you all, including your families. This message must have been prepared in time, which is why it took a week to arrive in Kabul.
Let’s speak for a second the cynical language of the so-called realpolitik: has the United States also lost an economic opportunity?
Compared to China, yes. The Taliban are probably aware of the economic opportunity that China can bring to stabilize Afghanistan and China can certainly take advantage of it-
These days we have seen images of helicopters taking people away from the American embassy and the Kabul airport being stormed. None of this happened in the Russian or Chinese embassies. The images coming to us from Kabul tell us that the Americans and their allies are running away. What is the message that you think is reaching the world in these hours?
China and Russia were not involved in the war, they were not our allies. They were third parties, spectators. Now that the United States and its European allies are gone, these third countries have the opportunity to make money on our shoulders. I am not saying that Afghanistan is the most strategic area in the world for us because it is not true, but it is always negative when we lose. The point is: what kind of world do we want to live in?
The United States and its allies believe in a liberal world and we have tried to bring this vision to Afghanistan but sadly we have failed. Now Afghanistan will succumb to the worldview of the Taliban and the warlords that has a parallel with the totalitarian vision of the Chinese Communist Party or the Russian oligarchs. I suffer from the idea that we have inflicted unnecessary defeat on the liberal world.
Some observers believe it is impossible to win in Afghanistan because of the climate, the extremely inaccessible areas where the Taliban have been hiding for twenty years and other contingent causes. For some it is an impregnable country. How do you see it?
If you think in terms that nothing could be done in Afghanistan, then what happened this week was inevitable and this would have been the sad ending of the story anyway. I just don’t believe there are inevitable facts. Should we have done things differently?
Certainly, and I am referring to the decisions made in the last twenty years. There have been specific mistakes that have inflicted avoidable strategic damage to the Afghanistan project, from Bush to Biden. If these decisions had been different, perhaps today we would have different results. Of course, I don’t know how it would have turned out, but it doesn’t seem to me now that the Taliban signed a surrender document or embraced a democratic process.
What happened this week is a catastrophe that shouldn’t have happened. We should have given Afghanistan a little more relative peacetime and opened the door to meaningful negotiations with the Taliban. Now we have instability and insecurity and it was not supposed to happen.
Will Biden pay for this choice politically?
It is already paying. The criticisms rained down from the media and political opponents and are deserved but the electorate has a short memory. I am not convinced that people will remember this moment in a year, when there will be the mid-term elections or the next presidential elections. I hope that happens because this is the most embarrassing and humiliating moment in the world for American diplomacy that I have ever witnessed in my life. But I don’t think the electorate will remember him at the polls “.
You know very well what has happened in Afghanistan over the past 20 years. What do you foresee for the future?
The Taliban have a very capable public relations department and are telling the world that they have evolved since the 1990s and that they want a peaceful transition period. I think this is not true and that in some time they will impose their almost totalitarian theocracy. I think that women have lost everything they have achieved in the past twenty years and that there will be no open society in Afghanistan.
But there is also another aspect that is perhaps the most worrying one because it concerns national security: Al Qaeda or similar groups will find refuge in Afghanistan and western Pakistan. Over the past twenty years these groups have had a hard time proliferating, they didn’t have much space or time to recruit new recruits. Now they will have it.
We, and I include our European allies, are at a high risk of international terrorism. Fortunately, our internal security has definitely improved compared to the past but the risk, in my opinion, is potentially higher than in the 1990s. There are also other ramifications of this situation. You mentioned China. Here for me this is a step back for the international liberal system and a step forward for the global autocratic and authoritarian forces. I think NATO was weakened by this event.
The “cause” of democracy did not work. Afghanistan was the first step in demonstrating to the world that democracy can work anywhere, including the remotest places. Now this ideal has been swept away. The world will be a less safe place. Avoiding acting because “things can’t change anyway” will make the lives of people living in a condition of humanitarian crisis even more difficult. The implications of the war in Afghanistan will affect the future for decades to come.
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