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Taliban Takeover
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Why the U.S. Withdrawal Spells Disaster for the World
BY SHAMMAI SISKIND
ON SEPTEMBER 21, 2001, Voice of America conducted an interview with the infamous Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.
It was a mere ten days since the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., events that changed the world in unimaginable ways. During that short period, however, it became imminently clear who was responsible for the 9/11 assaults.
The once obscure Osama bin Laden, who led what was thought to be a regionally focused, rag-tag team of former mujahideen known as Al-Qaeda, had orchestrated the most devastating terror attack in U.S. history.
Bin Laden’s whereabouts, while yet to be pinpointed, were determined to be somewhere in the mountainous eastern border region of Afghanistan. The U.S. government quickly issued an ultimatum to the Taliban, the Islamist group that had ruled the country since its successful and bloody takeover five years earlier. Washington wanted bin Laden, and they wanted him immediately.
The Voice of America interviewer put the question rather candidly to the Taliban commander: Do you intend to hand over bin Laden to the U.S.?
“No,” replied Omar, “We cannot do that. If we did, it means we are not Muslims, that Islam is finished.”
Omar went on to explain that his refusal was not an expression of support for Al-Qaeda’s actions but rather a point of principle.
“Islam says that when a Muslim asks for shelter, give the shelter and never hand him over to enemy. And our Afghan tradition says that, even if your enemy asks for shelter, forgive him and give him shelter. Osama has helped the jihad in Afghanistan, he was with us in bad days, and I am not going to give him to anyone.”
Indeed, Omar was prepared to go all the way on the bin Laden issue. In a conversation around the same time with Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, Omar stated: “I don’t want to go down in history as someone who betrayed his guest. I am willing to give my life, my regime. Since we have given him refuge, I cannot throw him out now.”
Despite Omar’s adamance, the question of whether or not to comply with the Americans’ demand was heavily contested within the Taliban leadership. Many of Omar’s own top aides were willing to acquiesce or at least be flexible on the issue. Several senior Taliban officials including the ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef, the foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, and Prime Minister Abdul Kabir were prepared to try bin Laden in an Islamic court or even hand him over to a third party.
But it was not to be. In the end, Omar’s stance won the day. The decisive event came in late September when a special convention of nearly 1,000 clerics gathered in Kabul to debate the question. In an official statement, the assembly ruled they were forbidden to surrender bin Laden to the United States. The group concluded its statement expressing “sadness over American deaths” and expressed “hope America does not attack Afghanistan.”
Fully aware of the potential consequences, the very same council urged bin Laden to leave Afghanistan of his own accord to avoid the potential “tumult” that might result. Omar reportedly abided by this advice and tried to convince bin Laden to flee the country.
For his part, bin Laden refused to abandon the infrastructure of fighters and facilities he’d set up in Afghanistan. He understood that attempting to flee to a neighboring country would all but guarantee his capture.
Shortly thereafter, American officials made the threat of war explicit. As then-Secretary of State Colin Powell put it, bin Laden will be in American custody “voluntarily, or involuntarily.” But Omar defiantly stuck to his ideo-
logical guns. America then came looking for their enemy-number-one.
THE 20-YEAR WAR
For most Americans today, the origins of the Afghanistan War are somewhat ambiguous. Most know it was a direct outcome of the September 11th attacks. Yet few can articulate why the U.S. has invested so much blood and currency in the country. This fact is even further highlighted by the sheer length of time the U.S. has been active in Afghanistan. Two decades after the fact, the events of 9/11 seem rather distant even for many who experienced them. The most recent presidential election marked the first national ballot in which those born after 9/11 could participate. There were U.S. military personnel serving in Afghanistan this month who had not been alive at the time of the attacks.
With this separation of time and relevance, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to fully fathom what the war was about and in turn what exactly the argument was for remaining or leaving. The Taliban, while a scourge to their own people and the world since their inception in the early ‘90s, never presented a reason for the United States to fight a war.
What America’s twenty years of intervention were at least trying to accomplish can be understood best looking forward, not backward. The Americans may have come for bin Laden and to topple the Taliban, but that was not why they stayed.
Viewing the chaos of the U.S. withdrawal, images of desperate Afghans trying to escape their country and looters walking off with advanced military hardware, it is easy to descend into a hindsight game: alas, the predictions of the pessimists proved true, and the U.S. was not able to create permanent, substantive change. Even advocates of America remaining in Afghanistan admit the achievements of the U.S. culminated in a sort of perpetual stalemate – one that has been the status quo for at least a decade. But this type of reflection does little for preparing the region and the world for what is to come. Much has been and will be written on the mistakes made during the war. What is critical at this point, however, is to understand what the fall of Afghanistan may bring.
DETERRENT AND ALLYSHIP
On August 16, the Monday editorial of the Chinese newspaper Global Times featured an article on the “Lessons for Taiwan from the Afghanistan Abandonment.”
Just looking at this title, one might be prodded to question what a conflict in Afghanistan has to do with the years-old China-Taiwan dispute. The answer is that it has everything to do with it.
The conflict between Beijing and Taipei is one of the many international controversies in which the U.S. has a major vested interest and has committed, in a variety of ways, to maintaining a particular status quo. To put it bluntly, the only reason Taiwan has not been overrun by waves of Chinese soldiers and reverted back to a province of the People’s Republic is because the United States has declared itself the guarantor of Taiwanese independence. Hardly a month goes by without some demonstrative action on the part of the U.S. Navy – sailing an aircraft carrier through the South China Sea for instance – to remind the region of America’s commitment.
The sudden and all but complete American pullout from Afghanistan has sent a powerful signal: the U.S. is not reliable to back up its geopolitical pledges. The Global Times, a widely read propaganda outlet fully controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, naturally sought to milk this for all its worth. The Monday article spun a very convincing narrative of how the U.S. is essentially a serial betrayer, a pattern that began during the Revolutionary War no less, when the fledgling country turned its back on France shortly after receiving vital assistance from the nation. Its historical accuracies aside, the article’s message was merely saying out loud what everyone else in the room is already thinking: in light of Afghanistan, how reliable are U.S. security guarantees?
This drop in confidence can and likely will have serious fallout. Nations that may have naturally sought to ally with the United States on important issues may now have to think twice. At the very least, governments are going to be very hesitant to put all of their eggs in the American basket and will certainly seek out alternative partners – even countries who are declared adversaries of Washington. This trend, which has already been observed in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and in some areas in
Bin Laden in 1989 with anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar
southeast Asia, will almost certainly be accelerated by the Afghanistan calamity.
A NEW TERROR HAVEN
The most important and immediate consequence of a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan will be the reestablishment of a state-haven for jihadists.
This is more than a theoretical concern. The Taliban has long demonstrated its willingness to allow terror groups to operate freely within their territory. Two years before 9/11, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1267, creating the so-called Al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee. The resolution recognized the links between the two groups as essentially a terror conspiracy and imposed sanctions on their funding, travel, and arms shipments.
Now that Taliban control over the country seems a foregone conclusion, this danger of a safe operating base for the world’s terror groups has resurfaced. Reports have emerged that groups ranging from Hamas to Tehrik-i-Taliban (commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban) are seeking meetings with the Taliban in hopes of receiving some form of accommodation from Afghanistan’s new leadership.
Even without any active assistance from Taliban officials, the lawlessness and power vacuum created by the withdrawal presents substantial opportunities for jihadists and regional countries who support them. For instance, there have been credible reports that Iran has been organizing efforts to smuggle weapons and equipment left behind by the Americans through its eastern border for the benefit of its proxy groups in Iraq and Yemen.
Also worthy to note in this context is the contribution of the Taliban’s opium enterprise, which even today remains a major supplier to the global heroin market. At one point, the U.N. estimated that a whopping 80 percent of all non-synthetic heroin originated in Afghanistan. Aside from the devastating health crisis this helps perpetuate, the Taliban’s opium profits have remained a significant source of illicit finance and terror funding despite the ongoing conflict. With the reemergence of a Taliban regime, this industry will undoubtedly grow to even bigger proportions.
Today’s Taliban has shown exceptional diplomatic savvy for a third-world militant group.
Already in 2019 when the Trump administration began open negotiations with the group, Taliban officials showed an impressive aptitude for statesmanship and solidifying ties with foreign governments.
Hearing press conferences led by Taliban leaders is a lesson in political double-speak, pledging rights for women (as long as they comply with Shariah law) and declaring amnesty for those who had helped U.S. and foreign forces. Undoubtedly, when the microphones are turned off, the Taliban will resort to their murderous ways.
In recent months, as the Taliban advance picked up momentum, the group began dispatching emissaries to regional powers including China, Iran, and Russia. Beijing (allegedly) has already promised big investments in energy and infrastructure projects, including the building of a road network in Afghanistan. All of this is likely in order to secure rights to the country’s vast, untapped rare-earth mineral deposits, the market for which China has been trying to corner for years.
THE ROAD AHEAD
Of course, there are no clear conclusions as to what this regional shake-up will bring. The same entities that speak today of affinity for the Taliban could become foes with the group tomorrow. China, for instance, which is today eager to cooperate with the group, is also concerned that Afghanistan’s new jihadist overlords may stir unrest among its Muslim Uighur population. Similarly, Russia does not want the Taliban takeover to embolden uprisings in Central Asia. Iran, while at least somewhat delighted with the American failure and the immediate opportunities it presents, has traditionally been at odds with the Taliban.
The one thing that remains certain, though, is that a resurgence of the Taliban regime opens a slew of complexities and threats for the entire region. It will have far-flung consequences, not just for Afghanistan, but for the world’s most important power contests and geopolitical rivalries for years to come.
Taliban leaders in the Afghan presidential palace A packed U.S. military plane filled with Afghanis fleeing the country
