By Matthew Continetti
Saturday, August 28, 2021
Even as suicide bombers attacked the Kabul
airport on August 26 — killing, at this writing, at least 13 U.S.
servicemen and scores of civilians — visitors to the Al Jazeera website could
read an interview with Khalil Ur-Rahman Haqqani, the Taliban official and
U.S.-designated terrorist who is responsible for security in the Afghan
capital. “If we can defeat superpowers, surely we can provide safety to the
Afghan people,” said Haqqani, whose guards brandish the helmets,
night-vision goggles, small arms, and camouflage the Americans left behind.
“All of those people who left this country, we will assure them of their
safety,” Haqqani went on. “You’re all welcome back in Afghanistan.”
He’s lying, of course. Lying is what terrorists do.
Haqqani’s forces can’t protect the Afghan people from ISIS, or, apparently,
from the Taliban itself. The Islamic militia is executing civilians and former
members of the Afghan National Army, according to the United Nations. And Haqqani’s
colleague, spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, warned Afghan women and girls the other day that they
should avoid the outdoors and public spaces, since Taliban soldiers “have not
been yet trained very well.” And “we don’t want our forces, God forbid, to harm
or harass women.”
Just to subjugate them.
The massacre at Hamid Karzai airport was the consequence
of President Biden’s decision to rely on the Taliban for security. Despite the
lunacy of taking the Taliban at their word, the Biden administration sounded in
recent days as if Haqqani, Mujahid, and the rest of their deranged crew were
U.S. partners. Not only did Biden’s botched withdrawal result in America’s
departure from Central Asia, Taliban rule in Afghanistan, a catastrophe for
democracy and human rights, and a propaganda boon for the global
jihadist-Salafist movement. It guaranteed our dependence on a gang of medieval
holy warriors whose loyalty to al-Qaeda is the reason the United States invaded
Afghanistan in the first place. This historical irony is strategically dubious
and morally debased. The loss of life in Kabul is a taste of what’s to come.
Biden pretended as if the Taliban had changed. On August
19, he told George Stephanopoulos that the Taliban, like a
group of unruly teenagers, are “going through sort of an existential crisis
about do they want to be recognized by the international community as being a
legitimate government.” Later, in the same interview, he added, “I’m not sure I
would’ve predicted, George, nor would you or anyone else, that when we decided
to leave, that they’d provide safe passage for Americans to get out.” Nor did
he predict that there would be more American casualties on the way out of
Afghanistan than there had been in seven years.
In his remarks on August 24, Biden said, “Thus far, the Taliban have been taking steps to work
with us so we can get our people out.” The terrorist threat, he cautioned, came
not from the Taliban but from ISIS, “which is the sworn enemy of the Taliban as
well.”
Biden didn’t mention that ISIS and the Taliban share a
common adversary: the United States. Acknowledging that reality might have
jeopardized the drawdown of American forces and evacuation at Hamid Karzai
International Airport even before the terrorists struck on August 26. But it
might also explain how the suicide bombers caused so much damage. The Kabul
airport is surrounded by Taliban checkpoints. The Taliban won’t let Afghans
pass through. How did the bombers get by?
Biden won’t violate the Taliban’s “red line” that America
must leave by the end of the month because he fears that to do so would put
U.S. soldiers and citizenry at further risk. On August 25, Secretary of State
Antony Blinken reminded the world that the safety of Americans depends on the
Taliban’s good graces. “The Taliban,” he said, “have made public and private
commitments to provide and permit safe passage for Americans, for third-country
nationals, and Afghans at risk” — at risk of what and from whom, one might ask
the Taliban — “going forward past August 31st.”
Past August 31? The safe passage ended Thursday morning.
In his August 25 remarks, Blinken said, “The United
States, our allies and partners, and more than half of the world’s countries —
114 in all — issued a statement making it clear to the Taliban that they have a
responsibility to hold to that commitment and provide safe passage for anyone
who wishes to leave the country — not just for the duration of our evacuation
and relocation mission, but for every day thereafter.” And if the Taliban shirk
this responsibility — as they clearly did before the massacre at the airport?
Well, another strongly worded note is sure to follow.
It’s not just that the Taliban hold all the cards in this
game. Biden doesn’t even want to play. He’s made U.S. national security
contingent on the Taliban’s ability to act like a “normal” government and not a
terrorist crazy state. Earlier this week, CIA director William Burns met in
secret with Taliban chief Abdul Ghani Baradar. According to David Ignatius of the Washington
Post, “Burns was delivering a personal message from Biden, who evidently
has decided his best course for now is to cooperate with the former adversary.”
Former? When did the Taliban renounce their hatred of
America — or their allegiance to al-Qaeda?
They haven’t. Yet Biden and his foreign policy team
dangled in front of the Taliban the carrot of financial assistance and
international legitimacy in exchange for cooperation on counterterrorism and
regional stability. As for sticks, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen crashed the Afghan financial system and economy two
weeks ago when she froze Afghan government reserves in U.S. banks. The
Taliban are broke. They haven’t quelled the resistance in Panjshir Valley.
Which is why they’re negotiating with Hamid Karzai and former foreign minister
Abdullah Abdullah to establish a government that would cross the threshold for
renewed foreign aid and participation in global markets.
“We will judge our engagement with any Taliban-led
government in Afghanistan based on one simple proposition: our interests, and
does it help us advance them or not,” said Secretary of State Blinken. “If
engagement with the government can advance the enduring interests we will have
in counterterrorism, the enduring interest we’ll have in trying to help the
Afghan people who need humanitarian assistance, in the enduring interest we
have in seeing that the rights of all Afghans, especially women and girls, are
upheld, then we’ll do it.”
That sounded like a secretary of state ready to engage.
Precedent suggests that deteriorating conditions on the ground won’t matter.
Yasser Arafat’s incitement to violence and militarization of the Palestinian
security forces did not prevent Bill Clinton from indulging in the farcical
Israeli–Palestinian “peace process.” Neither Obama nor Biden thought twice
about promising (and in Obama’s case delivering) cash money to the
terrorist-sponsoring Iranian regime if it stopped spinning a few nuclear
centrifuges for a while.
Nor will the violence in Afghanistan this week derail the
U.S.–Taliban “partnership.” The Taliban’s string of broken promises didn’t
pause the “strategic dialogue” that has been taking place in Qatar for the last
several years between their personnel and U.S. special representative Zalmay
Khalilzad. Indeed, the mayhem in Kabul might reaffirm the administration’s
belief that the Taliban can be separated from, and used to combat, ISIS. In a
briefing on the afternoon of August 26, General McKenzie, head of Central
Command, said there was “no reason” to think that the Taliban
were involved in the assault on our troops. Our forces have been sharing intel
with the Taliban since August 14. “We will continue to coordinate with the
Taliban on preventing terrorist attacks,” McKenzie said.
“Any relationship or partnership with the Taliban is going
to be deeply frustrating for us,” former State Department official Carter
Malkasian, author of The American War in Afghanistan: A History, told
David Ignatius. It already is. The terrible events of Thursday morning have
made that clear. More terrible events await. How depressing to contemplate that
the 20th anniversary of 9/11 arrives with the Taliban in power, terrorism
resurgent, and America at the mercy of evil men.
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