The Fall of Kabul is a reality giving several lessons to the learned, and thousands of articles and numerous books would be soon written for finding the causes of this. Whatever the reasons, this is the defeat of an engineered installed rule.
Military men look at this event as engaging in a war without a clear strategy and goals as mentioned by former ISI Chief Lt Gen Asad Durrani who believes the USA entered Afghanistan as an angry and wounded elephant and “shifting goalposts” not only bogged down the USA, rather all western countries.
Former diplomats with whom I talked believe that once the USA entered Afghanistan, it decided to stay at any cost because the time provided it an opportunity to stay in an important region from where the USA could have an eye on everybody— Iran, China, Pakistan, and the Central Asian countries.
Former Ambassador and retired General Khalid Jafri believes the USA lost the war the day they entered into war in Afghanistan because this was a war looking for strategic objectives after entering into the war.
Military men like former Ambassador Maj Gen Zahid Mubashar believe that the USA spent billions of dollars on the Afghan National Army (ANA), but this army collapsed like a house of cards because an army cannot be created in a period of five or ten years, and the USA never learned this from history.
Ambassador (retd) Hassan Javed, who is the writer of several international books on foreign affairs and public diplomacy and is a leading expert on China issues, is of the view that history is taking a turn once again. Such events happen once in a century. He says the British-Afghan War of 1919, was a signal of the decline of the British Empire. Similarly, the collapse of the USSR came in 1991 after its defeat in Afghanistan. American historian Francis Fujiyama thought that history ended in 2000 AD with victory to the so-called Western values of Democracy, Capitalism, etc. Actually, history is ending now with the collapse of the Post-Second World War Order drawn by the Western powers.
These events are likely to have regional and global ramifications, as has been the case throughout history. ‘Old narratives are neither likely to help nor stop the rot or sinking of Western societies,’ believes Ambassador Hassan. Historians may write Fall of Kabul as the greatest defeat of the US allied forces and would write a new order of the world.
A long list of reasons for the Fall of Kabul would soon emerge but an immediate reaction to how the war was lost in Afghanistan is as follows:
The US war in Afghanistan lacked strategic clarity with no clear mission, in fact, as ‘The Afghanistan Papers’ showed, the war was based on ‘misleading/deceiving public opinion.
The USA from the very first day became a victim of slow and fast thinking, metaphorically they put the risk analysis on the backburner and started deciding in a hurry to gain more. Apparently like gambling, for if chance would have favoured them, they could have achieved what they expected, but as the very name gambling represents, without putting your decisions under the scrutiny of probability, the likelihood of the odds against the desired outcome tends to be higher instead of being in favour. The decision-making having a high ratio of probabilities with a higher likelihood toward odds must not be taken by depending on mere chances. Chances of odds in favour or against have no logical framework, for they are based on predictions derived from previous experiences. And the nominal data is in percentage, which is based on speculation, on other hand, and probable factors can be much more conclusive in risk analysis.
The probability of winning the Afghan War was based on chances, built on predictions of odds that may be in favour at the exact time and space. The war itself was a misperceived factor and clearly relying on uninformed variables. The proper noun for the supreme vector was chosen as “War against Terror” in 2001.”
The USA took chances in Afghanistan to defeat the former USSR and went for taking the chance of creating Mujahedeen in early 1980, and that chance was based on the “probability” of harming the USSR. Leaving Afghanistan and Pakistan to face the results of civil war after the withdrawal of the former USSR was also taking another chance to let Afghans and Pakistanis clean the garbage of war.
Indirectly supporting the advent of the Taliban was taken as a chance for the cleansing of Mujahedeen but here the “game of chance” went out of control when according to the USA, its soil was attacked by the Taliban on 9 September 2001. Operation Enduring Freedom was launched as another probability for cleansing the Taliban and reverting the concept of Jihad that was promoted to defeat the former USSR.
The expected outcome of launching Operation Enduring Freedom was saving humanity, protecting women’s rights, cleansing Al-Qaeda, and so on and so forth. The core objective of destroying Al-Qaeda was achieved by December 2001 as said by former President Bush. However, the USA started talking about “nation-building”, and the Bonn Summit provided a corrupt warlord system that had previously been rejected by the people of Afghanistan and gave a passage to the Taliban to root out the Rabbani government.
A so-called “Big tent strategy” was evolved by involving warlords capable enough to disrupt the state-building process, in a state-building process. The Bonn Agreement sought to establish a new constitution. According to data available with several Think Tanks, the Bonn Agreement model for the reconstruction of Afghanistan was based on a “maximalist model”.
The Maximalist model offers roles for community and society as direct stakeholders and was used in post-conflict reconstruction in the Balkans, sub-Saharan Africa, and East Timor during the 1990s conflicts. One can understand that the Bonn process forgot the sensitivities of Afghan culture, history, and norms and borrowed a model that had nothing to do even with the sensitivities of the region. Questionable elections produced only two Afghan presidents during 19 years (December 2001 to August 2021). The US quest for nation-building continued till US Chinook transferred its staff to Kabul Airport. What new chance will the USA not take?
Americans are born cheaters