The US 'loss' of Afghanistan is a repositioning and the new mission is not a 'war on terror,' but Russia and China
Wait
until the war is over
And we’re both a little
older
The unknown soldier
Breakfast where the news
is read
Television children fed
Unborn living, living,
dead
Bullet strikes the
helmet’s head
And it’s all over
For the unknown soldier
The
Doors, “The Unknown Soldier”
In
the end, the Saigon moment happened faster than any
Western intel “expert” expected. This is one for the annals: four frantic days
that wrapped up the most astonishing guerrilla blitzkrieg of recent times.
Afghan-style: lots of persuasion, lots of tribal deals, zero columns of tanks,
minimal loss of blood.
August 12 set the scene, with the nearly simultaneous capture of
Ghazni, Kandahar and Herat. On August 13, the Taliban were only 50 kilometers
from Kabul. August 14 started with the siege of Maidan Shahr, the gateway to
Kabul.
Ismail
Khan, the legendary elder Lion of Herat, struck a self-preservation deal and
was sent by the Taliban as a top-flight messenger to Kabul: President Ashraf
Ghani should step out, or else.
Still
on Saturday, the Taliban took Jalalabad – and isolated Kabul from the east, all
the way to the Afgan-Pakistan border in Torkham, gateway to the Khyber Pass. By
Saturday night, Marshal Dostum was fleeing with a bunch of military to
Uzbekistan via the Friendship Bridge in Termez; only a few were allowed in. The
Taliban duly took over Dostum’s Tony Montana-style palace.
By
early morning on August 15, all that was left for the Kabul administration was
the Panjshir valley – high in the mountains, a naturally protected fortress –
and scattered Hazaras: there’s nothing there in those beautiful central lands,
except Bamiyan.
Exactly 20 years ago,
I was in Bazarak getting ready to interview the Lion of the Panjshir, commander
Masoud, who was preparing a counter-offensive against … the Taliban. History
repeating, with a twist. This time I was sent visual proof that the Taliban –
following the classic guerrilla sleeping cell playbook – were already in the
Panjshir.
And
then mid-morning on Sunday brought the stunning visual re-enactment of the
Saigon moment, for all the world to see: a Chinook helicopter hovering over the
roof of the American embassy in Kabul.
‘The
war is over’
Still
on Sunday, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem proclaimed: “The war is over in
Afghanistan,” adding that the shape of the new government would soon be
announced.
Facts
on the ground are way more convoluted. Feverish negotiations have been going on
since Sunday afternoon. The Taliban were ready to announce the official proclamation
of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in its 2.0 version (1.0 was from 1996 to
2001). The official announcement would be made inside the presidential palace.
Yet
what’s left of Team Ghani was refusing to transfer power to a coordinating
council that will de facto set up the transition. What the Taliban want is a
seamless transition: they are now the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Case
closed.
By
Monday, a sign of compromise came from Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen. The
new government will include non-Taliban officials. He was referring to an
upcoming “transition administration,” most probably co-directed by Taliban
political leader Mullah Baradar and Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former minister of
internal affairs who was also, in the past, an employee of Voice of America.
In the end, there was
no Battle for Kabul. Thousands of Taliban were already inside Kabul – once again the classic
sleeper-cell playbook. The bulk of their forces remained in the outskirts. An
official Taliban proclamation ordered them not to enter the city, which should
be captured without a fight, to prevent civilian casualties.
The
Taliban did advance from the west, but “advancing,” in context, meant
connecting to the sleeper cells in Kabul, which by then were fully active.
Tactically, Kabul was encircled in an “anaconda” move, as defined by a Taliban
commander: squeezed from north, south and west and, with the capture of
Jalalabad, cut off from the east.
At
some point last week, high-level intel must have whispered to the Taliban
command that the Americans would be coming to “evacuate.” It could have been
Pakistan intelligence, even Turkish intelligence, with Erdogan playing his
characteristic NATO double game.
The
American rescue cavalry not only came late, but was caught in a bind as they
could not possibly bomb their own assets inside Kabul. The horrible timing was
compounded when the Bagram military base – the NATO Valhalla in Afghanistan for
nearly 20 years – was finally captured by the Taliban.
That led the US and
NATO to literally beg the
Taliban to let them evacuate everything in sight from Kabul – by air, in haste,
at the Taliban’s mercy. A geopolitical development that evokes suspension of
disbelief.
Ghani
versus Baradar
Ghani’s
hasty escape is the stuff of “a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing” –
without the Shakespearean pathos. The heart of the whole matter was a
last-minute meeting on Sunday morning between former President Hamid Karzai and
Ghani’s perennial rival Abdullah Abdullah.
They
discussed in detail who they were going to send to negotiate with the Taliban –
who by then not only were fully prepared for a possible battle for Kabul, but
had announced their immovable red line weeks ago – they want the end of the
current NATO government.
Ghani finally saw the
writing on the wall and disappeared from the presidential palace without even
addressing the potential negotiators. With his wife, chief of staff and
national security adviser, he escaped to Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. A few
hours later, the Taliban entered the presidential palace, the stunning images duly captured.
Commenting
on Ghani’s escape, Abdullah Abdullah did not mince his words: “God will hold
him accountable.” Ghani, an anthropologist with a doctorate from Columbia, is
one of those classic cases of Global South exiles to the West who “forget”
everything that matters about their original lands.
Ghani
is a Pashtun who acted like an arrogant New Yorker. Or worse, an entitled
Pashtun, as he was often demonizing the Taliban, who are overwhelmingly
Pashtun, not to mention Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, including their tribal
elders.
It’s as if Ghani and
his Westernized team had never learned from a top source such as the late,
great Norwegian social anthropologist Fredrik Barth (check out a sample of his
Pashtun studies here).
Geopolitically,
what matters now is how the Taliban have written a whole new script, showing
the lands of Islam, as well as the Global South, how to defeat the
self-referential, seemingly invincible US/NATO empire.
The
Taliban did it with Islamic faith, infinite patience and force of will fueling
roughly 78,000 fighters – 60,000 of them active – many with minimal military
training, no backing of any state – unlike Vietnam, which had China and the
USSR – no hundreds of billions of dollars from NATO, no trained army, no air
force and no state-of-the-art technology.
They
relied only on Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades and Toyota pick-ups –
before they captured American hardware these past few days, including drones
and helicopters.
Taliban
leader Mullah Baradar has been extremely cautious. On Monday he said: “It is
too early to say how we will take over governance.” First of all, the Taliban
wants “to see foreign forces leave before restructuring begins.”
Abdul
Ghani Baradar is a very interesting character. He was born and raised in
Kandahar. That’s where the Taliban started in 1994, seizing the city almost
without a fight and then, equipped with tanks, heavy weapons and a lot of cash
to bribe local commanders, capturing Kabul nearly 25 years ago, on September
27, 1996.
Earlier,
Mullah Baradar fought in the 1980s jihad against the USSR, and maybe – not
confirmed – side-by-side with Mullah Omar, with whom he co-founded the Taliban.
After
the American bombing and occupation post-9/11, Mullah Baradar and a small group
of Taliban sent a proposal to then-President Hamid Karzai on a potential deal
that would allow the Taliban to recognize the new regime. Karzai, under
Washington pressure, rejected it.
Baradar
was actually arrested in Pakistan in 2010 – and kept in custody. Believe it or
not, American intervention led to his freedom in 2018. He then relocated
to Qatar. And that’s where he was appointed head of the Taliban’s political
office and oversaw the signing last year of the American withdrawal deal.
Baradar
will be the new ruler in Kabul – but it’s important to note he’s under the
authority of the Taliban Supreme Leader since 2016, Haibatullah Akhundzada.
It’s the Supreme Leader – actually a spiritual guide – who will be lording over
the new incarnation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Beware
of a peasant guerrilla army
The
collapse of the Afghan National Army (ANA) was inevitable. They were “educated”
the American military way: massive technology, massive airpower, next to zero
local ground intel.
The
Taliban is all about deals with tribal elders and extended family connections –
and a peasant guerrilla approach, parallel to the communists in Vietnam. They
were biding their time for years, just building connections – and those sleeper
cells.
Afghan
troops who had not received a salary for months were paid not to fight them.
And the fact they did not attack American troops since February 2020 earned
them a lot of extra respect: a matter of honor, essential in the Pashtunwali
code.
It’s
impossible to understand the Taliban – and most of all, the Pashtun universe –
without understanding Pashtunwali. As well as the concepts of honor,
hospitality and inevitable revenge for any wrongdoing, the concept of freedom implies
no Pashtun is inclined to be ordered by a central state authority – in this
case, Kabul. And no way will they ever surrender their guns.
In a
nutshell, that’s the “secret” of the lightning-fast blitzkrieg with minimal
loss of blood, inbuilt in the overarching geopolitical earthquake. After
Vietnam, this is the second Global South protagonist showing the whole world
how an empire can be defeated by a peasant guerrilla army.
And
all that accomplished with a budget that may not exceed $1.5 billion a year –
coming from local taxes, profits from opium exports (no internal distribution
allowed) and real estate speculation. In vast swaths of Afghanistan, the
Taliban were already, de facto, running local security, local courts and even
food distribution.
Taliban
2021 is an entirely different animal compared with Taliban 2001. Not only are
they battle-hardened, they had plenty of time to perfect their diplomatic
skills, which were recently more than visible in Doha and in high-level visits
to Tehran, Moscow and Tianjin.
They
know very well that any connection with al-Qaeda remnants, ISIS/Daesh,
ISIS-Khorasan and ETIM is counter-productive – as their Shanghai Cooperation
Organization interlocutors made very clear.
Internal
unity, anyway, will be extremely hard to achieve. The Afghan tribal maze is a
jigsaw puzzle, nearly impossible to crack. What the Taliban may realistically
achieve is a loose confederation of tribes and ethnic groups under a Taliban
emir, coupled with very careful management of social relations.
Initial
impressions point to increased maturity. The Taliban are granting amnesty to
employees of the NATO occupation and won’t interfere with businesses
activities. There will be no revenge campaign. Kabul is back in business. There
is allegedly no mass hysteria in the capital: that’s been the exclusive domain
of Anglo-American mainstream media. The Russian and Chinese embassies remain
open for business.
Zamir
Kabulov, the Kremlin special representative for Afghanistan, has confirmed that
the situation in Kabul, surprisingly, is “absolutely calm” – even as he
reiterated: “We are not in a rush as far as recognition [of the Taliban] is
concerned. We will wait and watch how the regime will behave.”
The
New Axis of Evil
Tony
Blinken may blabber that “we were in Afghanistan for one overriding purpose –
to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9/11.”
Every
serious analyst knows that the “overriding” geopolitical purpose of the bombing
and occupation of Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago was to establish an essential
Empire of Bases foothold in the strategic intersection of Central and South
Asia, subsequently coupled with occupying Iraq in Southwest Asia.
Now
the “loss” of Afghanistan should be interpreted as a repositioning. It fits the
new geopolitical configuration, where the Pentagon’s top mission is not the
“war on terror” anymore, but to simultaneously try to isolate Russia and harass
China by all means on the expansion of the New Silk Roads.
Occupying
smaller nations has ceased to be a priority. The Empire of Chaos can always
foment chaos – and supervise assorted bombing raids – from its CENTCOM base in
Qatar.
Iran
is about to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a full member –
another game-changer. Even before resetting the Islamic Emirate, the Taliban
have carefully cultivated good relations with key Eurasia players – Russia,
China, Pakistan, Iran and the Central Asian ‘stans. The ‘stans are under full
Russian protection. Beijing is already planning hefty rare earth business with
the Taliban.
On the Atlanticist front, the spectacle of
non-stop self-recrimination will consume the Beltway for ages. Two decades, $2
trillion, a forever war debacle of chaos, death and destruction, a still
shattered Afghanistan, an exit literally in the dead of night – for what?
The only “winners” have been the Lords of the Weapons Racket.
Yet every American
plotline needs a fall guy. NATO has just been cosmically humiliated in the
graveyard of empires by a bunch of goat herders – and not by close encounters
with Mr Khinzal. What’s left? Propaganda.
So
meet the new fall guy: the New Axis of Evil. The axis is
Taliban-Pakistan-China. The New Great Game in Eurasia has just been reloaded.
Reprinted
with the author’s permission.
Copyright © Asia Times
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/08/no_author/the-islamic-emirate-of-afghanistan-back-with-a-bang/