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Who’s to blame for the Afghanistan debacle?

Afghanistan will fall to the Taliban, probably within days.

For many Afghans, that’s very bad. There will be a bloodbath. The survivors will be dragged backward into the Tenth Century. Girls won’t be allowed to go to school, will be pushed into arranged marriages, forced to wear burkhas, and not allowed in public without a male relative.

The Taliban are an ultra-conservative traditionalist Islamic movement intent on preserving a thousand-year-old way of life centered on the village and clan. They reject education, science, economic development, and modernity in all its forms. This way of life is familiar to rural Afghans, but will grate on Afghans used to greater freedoms in more cosmopolitan places like Kabul and the other major cities. They won’t have a choice. Taliban rule is undemocratic, and brutal.

To understand what’s happening, here’s what you need to know. Afghanistan is made up of about 28 major tribes. The Pashtuns make up about 40% of the population and are the dominant group; they’re geographically concentrated in the eastern provinces, straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and have a substantial presence in both countries. The Taliban are almost exclusively Pashtuns, and a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan represents domination of that country by its largest tribe.

(Note: The “border” is an artificial line, called the “Durand Line,” drawn by the British in the 19th century for their own purposes; it’s a real border, but a highly porous one, with no customs checkpoints or border patrols, and Pashtuns move freely back and forth across it; the Pakistani government makes little effort to govern that area, and the so-called “Northwest Frontier” is like the Wild West.)

It will be ugly. A bloodbath can be expected. Revenge is a basic tenet of Pashtun culture. For 20 years, American troops have been killing Taliban fighters; any Afghan who assisted U.S. troops in any way is a marked man. Likewise, Afghan government troops who fought against the Taliban are viewed as enemies, and Afghans have a tradition reaching back to ancient times of slaughtering their enemies; stories are already leaking out of surrendering Afghan soldiers being summarily executed.

So why are Afghan government troops giving up without a fight? Perhaps because they hope to be spared, but not just because of that; it goes to the mercenary nature of their society. Another feature of Afghan culture is they will switch allegiances on a dime. This was common during the Soviet-Afghan war. Afghanistan is a place, not a country, and there is no national allegiance as such; loyalties are to tribes, factions, and warlords whose services are for sale.

The decision to pull out was originally made by Trump, who doesn’t care if the Taliban kill their fellow Afghans or drag that society back into the Middle Ages. But Biden ratified that decision; he didn’t have to, he could have changed course. He reversed many other Trump policies, but stuck with this one. Ultimately, it was Biden’s call.

By pulling out our troops, Biden made a policy decision that’s bad for Afghans. But he’s not president of Afghanistan. Countries, including ours, act in their self-interest. We didn’t invade Afghanistan to make life better for Afghans, or save them from the Taliban.

We did it because Al Qaeda used Afghanistan as a base to attack us. We’ve fought there for 20 years, and Americans are tired of sending their sons and daughters* to Afghanistan and getting them back in aluminum boxes. They’re not willing to keep doing this absent a direct threat to our own country, which is perceived to no longer exist. That’s why we’re leaving.

(* 46 female U.S. service members have died in Afghanistan. See list here.)

Still, even in pure self-interest terms, it’s not a simple or easy decision. The big test of this policy decision is whether we’ll have to re-invade Afghanistan, should it become a terrorist base again. That remains to be seen; if that happens, our troops could end up paying for the same real estate twice.

Even if that doesn’t happen, there are bound to be knock-on effects. For one thing, it makes a Chinese invasion of Taiwan at least marginally more likely, because Beijing likely will infer from America’s decision to abandon Afghans to their fate that U.S. leaders lack the will to defend the Taiwanese people.

Another knock-on effect is that when we send troops into other countries in the future to protect our interests — which will happen — the locals will be reluctant to cooperate with us. Having seen what happened to the Afghans, they won’t trust us to stay and keep them safe, and will shrink from helping us.

Kabul probably will fall within days. This could have been prevented. Our troops kept the Taliban at bay for 20 years. But that would require keeping them there indefinitely, essentially forever, and our countrymen don’t have the heart or will for that. Eventual U.S. withdrawal was inevitable; if Biden didn’t pull them out, a future president would. This probably was going to happen no matter what.

Some will chalk up Kabul’s defeat as Biden’s first big foreign policy failure. You can’t really blame this one very much on Trump. He would’ve made the same mistakes, but the voters took that responsibility away from him, and it’s happening on Biden’s watch. But most of the blame for losing Afghanistan to the Taliban should fall on the Kabul government. Ultimately, it was responsible for defending itself, and the U.S. gave it all the support that could reasonably be expected.

Still, the U.S. withdrawal could have been better managed. It should have been more gradual, and coupled with a carefully organized evacuation of Afghans who need to leave. Instead, the Biden administration finds itself scrambling to find them sanctuary, with some success (see stories here and here).

Obviously, they didn’t expect the Kabul government to collapse so quickly. That miscalculation resulted from a deficient understanding of Afghan culture and society. The State Department and private academia have that expertise, so there’s really no excuse for not getting it right. But very soon now, that will be water over the dam.

By any analysis, from Americans’ point of view, Biden has bigger and more important problems to deal with here at home.,

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