A nation left in the dust 

When Talibal shadow mayor of Balkh district, Haji Hekmat, heard U.S. President Joe Biden’s announcement about when he planned to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, Hekmat proclaimed to BBC journalists on April 14, “We have won the war and America has lost.” 

Hekmat is absolutely correct. America’s early withdrawal of Afghanistan beginning before May 1 has handed victory to the Taliban. Contrary to President Biden’s claim that, “We went to war with clear goals. We achieved those objectives,” this peace accord does not fulfill the president’s own standard.

As he said on April 14, “I believed that our presence in Afghanistan should be focused on the reason we went in the first place: To ensure Afghanistan would not be used as a base from which to attack our homeland again. We did that. We accomplished that objective…Osama bin Laden was gone.” Yet cutting the head off the snake of al-Qaeda has absolutely not defeated the terrorist organization, nor magically ended terrorism in Afghanistan.

Instead, as CNN explained citing a U.N. report from 2020, “The senior leadership of al-Qaeda remains present in Afghanistan, as well as hundreds of armed operatives…The Taliban regularly consulted with al-Qaeda during negotiations with the United States and offered guarantees that it would honour their historical ties.” Al-Qaeda is actively plotting in Afghanistan now and the U.S. has even less of an ability to stop them.

While the Taliban itself is not a terrorist organization, it’s Islamic fundamentalism, meaning it is an extremist organization and represents only the most extreme of Islamic political thought. Because of this, the Taliban does in fact support actual terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, which are even more extreme than political organizations like the Taliban. 

Al-Qaeda’s status as extremists and terrorists has been known for years, especially after the tragic attacks they perpetrated on 9/11. If the Taliban’s ideas represent only a small fraction of that of the over a billion Muslims around the world, terrorist groups like al-Qaeda represent Islam about as well as the KKK represents Christianity. 

But instead of focusing our intelligence and military on actual terrorists like al-Qaeda, Americans are subject to the Patriot Act, passed just 45 days after 9/11, which as the American Civil Liberties Union explains, established a massive spy program for collecting the private data of every American.  

Meanwhile, Afghanistan will be turned back over to the same people responsible for harboring the mass murderer bin Laden, and the same organization that promoted terrorism around the globe. Instead President Biden said we need to move on because “the terrorist threat that we went to fight evolved.”

When he argues that, “Over the past 20 years, the threat has become more dispersed, metastasizing around the globe. Al-Shabaab in Somalia, al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, al-Nusra in Syria, ISIS…,” he is arguing for why being hyper focused on Afghanistan is unimportant. 

Yet, he fails to realize how this global terror threat developed, largely off the back of al-Qaeda’s own resources which the U.S. has failed to eliminate.

ISIS itself stemmed from al-Qaeda’s operations in Iraq, and two of the other groups he mentions, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al-Nusra are current al-Qaeda factions, while al-Shabab has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda.

Yet, Taliban leaders appear to be honoring the peace accords signed in Qatar and have switched focus from anti-American resistance to anti-Afghan government resistance, only targeting domestic opponents. Hekmat continued, “We want an Islamic government ruled by the Sharia. We will continue our jihad until they accept our demands.” Comments like these raise doubts about whether the Taliban will actually honor the agreement and join the Afghan government in a power sharing agreement.

Anyone willing to settle with the Taliban either is arguing in bad faith, or from ignorance. Former Taliban spokesperson and high-ranking leader, Mullah Wakil, explained why the Taliban did not hold elections after coming to power during the civil war in 1996, “General elections are incompatible with Sharia and therefore we reject them.” Moreover, even if the Taliban participated in democratic government, it’s more likely that they would spread their anti-democratic influence in Afghanistan.

As the BBC points out, the Taliban officially banned women’s education. President Biden doesn’t believe this will happen again promising, “…we’ll continue to support the rights of Afghan women and girls by maintaining significant humanitarian and development assistance.” In reality, Taliban leaders are far less concerned about women’s rights. 

The Taliban’s fundementalist interpretation of Islam and Sharia is not reflective of the diversity and beauty of Islam’s global traditon. But that doesn’t make Taliban Sharia any less brutal. Calling it “the Taliban’s perversion of Sharia law,” the Guardian documents practices like: banning women from shopping in public areas, death for apostasy and stoning for adultery. 

By every metric, even President Biden’s own, the war in Afghanistan has been a disaster. If this is what winning looks like, thank God we didn’t lose. For the people of Afghanistan, I hope things change for the better. Unfortunately, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will likely only strengthen al-Qaeda, hurt democracy, trample on human rights, keep women marginalized and leave an entire nation in the dust of America’s longest war.