We all watched this past weekend as the Pakistani-orchestrated invasion of Afghanistan reached its end. The Taliban took over the government buildings and spread their militia across Kabul.
The U.S. has evacuated their embassy, as have most nations. All consular work is being done at the Kabul Airport. The Taliban are trying to stop many Afghans from leaving the country, and they are searching homes with a list of Afghans that helped NATO nations. Any Afghans that cooperated with NATO nations or international organizations are being targeted and tracked. The Taliban senior leadership has already gained the lists kept by the Afghan government and many other organizations.
How did this happen so fast?
This year, the Biden Administration faced a choice to continue to stick with the Doha Agreement and withdraw all our forces, or to leave the Agreement and continue to support the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in its war with the Pakistani-proxy force called the Taliban. Many options were presented between total withdrawal and stationing a large force indefinitely. The most popular option for most Afghanistan specialists was to retain one or two airbases to contain a counter-terrorism organization and a training and assistance team to continue working with the ANDSF to defend Afghans from a terrorist takeover.
In the end, the decision was made to remove all forces, and to remove the logistical support civilians that helped keep the young Afghan Air Force flying. After watching the events unfold this past weekend, it’s clear that the decision absolutely gutted the Afghan people, and doomed them to face the Taliban alone.
That decision fit neatly into the 20-year plan of the Pakistan military intelligence organization ISI. ISI were the ones who created the large Taliban force that invaded Afghanistan in the 1990s, after a small uprising was started near Kandahar. ISI are the ones that rehabilitated and built it even stronger after 2001 when the Taliban were removed from power. Two ISI generals announced publicly, at a February 2020 CENTCOM conference, that they would not go beyond helping America to get the U.S.-Taliban agreement signed late that month.
They publicly acknowledged that PakISI would continue to recruit, train, host, and arm the Taliban terrorist network and prepare it to strike when NATO left. And they kept their word. With China’s backing they said, they no longer needed America.
Pakistan used the 20 years of NATO assistance to Afghans to build a network of Afghan civilian leaders from town to district to national level that would help Pakistan to invade Afghanistan. As soon as President Biden announced a withdrawal in Afghanistan, the PakISI put their plan in motion. The Taliban bought their way through every major city and ultimately to Kabul.
So Many Lives Impacted
The Taliban, with Al Qaeda and other foreign fighters in their ranks, avoided combat with the ANDSF wherever they could. They simply bought the loyalty of the civilians and the civilians asked the ANDSF to stop fighting. The tenet of civilian control over the military, a strength in America, was a deadly weakness in Afghanistan and Pakistan knew it. In Pakistan, the Army runs the country and the civilians bow to them.
We are now seeing some of the senior Afghan leaders who were bought by Pakistan visiting the Pakistan government to get their orders on how to run Afghanistan. Pakistan achieved its dream of a Pakistani-pliant government in Kabul with money and terrorism. This is no different than the Russian invasion of the Ukraine to steal part of their nation. Afghans got divided and picked off. Where the ANDSF fought in force, they did very well in killing large scores of Taliban forces, but eventually the ANDSF were told to stop fighting by their national level leaders as well.
This week myself and friends of Afghans around the globe have been working to get Afghans marked for certain death out of the country. I want to share the words I received the morning after the Taliban entered the city of Kabul from some of the women’s-rights-focused Afghans I have been talking to lately.
“America pressured Afghan women to trust them. They told us to publicize ourselves. They urged us to excel outside the home and to break barriers. We did all that and then you betrayed us and broke our trust.”
“You came to Afghanistan and didn’t stop Pakistan from killing us. Then you left us alone to face all the terrorists of South Asia. I don’t know what to say.”
Steps Ahead – There’s Still Work To Be Done
The Afghan people have already started to resist the Taliban across the country in the face of their atrocities against Afghan people. Afghans are already starting to get killed for resisting Taliban rules. The former First Vice President Amrullah Saleh, a colleague of mine since 2002, has taken on the mantle of caretaker President and left the capital to form a resistance group to fight back against the Taliban with some other senior Afghans who despise Pakistan. They are being joined by Afghan SOF who were able to escape the Pakistani invasion force, and some pilots who took aircraft to the north. We will see in the coming weeks if they are successful.
Other Afghans are leading a global effort to get Western nations to investigate Pakistani terrorism support and create targeted sanctions that will weaken the Pakistan military so the Afghans can more easily throw off Pakistani rule in Afghanistan.
The world now has to find new ways to help Afghans. In a few weeks when all the Western people are gone and the media crews are kicked out, Afghanistan will go back into darkness and unspeakable atrocities will occur out of sight.
For now, the West can keep the Kabul Airport open and expand the perimeter to allow Afghans to get to the airport without being robbed, marked for execution, or killed. It would be wise to send in U.S. SOF to get endangered people out by escort. Many Afghans marked for death are stuck moving from house to house right now to avoid capture and death. They are reaching to Americans daily to get help.
The West should help keep the banks open; people need access to cash to escape and survive. They should also keep flights flowing; airlines must help Afghans escape before it is too late.
The U.S. and UN should lead on humanitarian assistance and maybe even send in a UN peacekeeping force to secure Kabul so that Afghans can escape.
Finally, nations can abstain from recognizing the new Taliban/Haqqani/AQ regime in Kabul. We are already seeing the untrustworthy nations of the world lining up to recognize the government – like China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and likely Qatar. While holding off from recognizing the Taliban, they must also investigate Pakistan terrorism support in every NATO nation and backlist the Taliban as terrorists, and Pakistan as terrorist supporters. The Taliban broke every promise in the Doha agreement; there is no reason to award bad diplomacy with a stolen nation.
