The honeymoon of the Taliban and their supporters is coming to an end.
Author: Ahmad Saidi, an analyst on Afghanistan and regional issues (Germany), especially for Sangar
What is currently being seen in Afghanistan is the result of the achievements of August 15, 2021. A day that will forever be remembered in the history of Afghanistan. Horrific images after the Taliban came to power, people fleeing, people hanging from foreign planes, suicides and explosions at Kabul airport, riots... one after another, which is beyond the scope of this article.
But what no one can deny is that the Americans had been planning to return the Taliban to power for at least several years. Although Abbas Stanikzai claims that negotiations between the US and the Taliban began in 2007, the main negotiations between the Americans and the Taliban began in 2010.
In my opinion, the Americans concluded that the process of the first Bonn in Afghanistan was not as fruitful as it was planned and intended. The reason was that the government, which was supposed to be built democratically, was day by day proving ineffective from various points of view. Elections have always been marred by fraud and widespread corruption, and on the other hand, instability and the war with the Taliban intensified every day. Given the cost of the war and the changes taking place in the world, the Americans gradually concluded that they should consider leaving Afghanistan, and they believed that leaving Afghanistan was not a continuation of the Bonn process.
Therefore, in 2010, when Obama was President of the United States, we heard specific discussions from the words of the Americans themselves, for example, they argued that the purpose of the war in Afghanistan was to fight and destroy al-Qaeda, and not to build democracy, and what is happening now in Afghanistan, is anti-democracy. The Americans tried to create the basis for dialogue with the Taliban and began to talk about good and bad Taliban.
I believe that these discussions were planned to create an address within the Taliban so that the Americans could talk to them and negotiate with them. The first steps in this direction were discussions about major Taliban figures from Guantanamo Bay prison and Pakistan.
For example, the issues of releasing Mullah Baradar from a Pakistani prison and opening a Taliban political office in Qatar were discussed, which became more and more serious every day. And this became the starting point of what we saw on August 15, 2021.
Opening the Taliban office in Doha in 2013 after much effort, Americans were able to find some former Taliban leaders, take them to Doha, give them an office, and also settle their families. This move, when the Americans, according to the Taliban, wanted to release five top Taliban leaders from Guantanamo Bay prison, had precisely this purpose. The Taliban, for the show, released the American Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five of the group's leaders.
These five Taliban were released from Guantanamo, ostensibly in exchange for an American soldier, and arrived in Qatar. I think this was part of the US's plan to bring Taliban leaders back into the political scene of Afghanistan. These five have become very important people in the current Taliban regime after September 15, 2021: Abdulhak Wasik is the current head of security, Nurullah Noori is the minister of tribal affairs, Mullah Fazil is the first deputy minister of defense, Khairullah Khairkha is the minister of information and culture, and Mawlawi Mohammad Nabi Omari - First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. Three of them are in senior positions in the security and military forces.
On the other hand, the Americans, through Zalmay Khalilzad, tried to free Mullah Baradar from Pakistani prison. This was promised once but was delayed. However, in 2018, Mullah Baradar was released from a Pakistani prison on the orders of the Americans and taken to Doha to organize negotiations.
At the same time, about 46 Taliban leaders were transferred from Guantanamo and Pakistan to Qatar along with their families in cooperation with the United States. They conducted active open and secret negotiations with the Americans until the fall of Kabul. Later, after the fall of Kabul, Mullah Baradar Akhund was flown to Kandahar from Qatar by a CIA plane.
On the other hand, taking into account the Taliban's demands on the Americans at the Doha negotiations, five thousand Taliban, many of whom were senior commanders of the group, were released from a Kabul prison and sent to the fronts of the war against the republic.
The Americans tried in a very organized and clear way to create an administration filtered from the Taliban for interaction. Then they brought to Kabul the same filtered Taliban who had been in prisons in Pakistan and Guantanamo for many years and placed them in very important security authorities and military departments.
The Americans very quickly announced some problems. When the Americans killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, John Nicholson, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that Mullah Mansour was an obstacle to peace in Afghanistan, so we removed him from the scene. The Americans finally signed a peace agreement with the Taliban in Qatar in 2020 without informing the Kabul administration led by Ashraf Ghani about the construction of a new system.
In my opinion, the US may have wanted the transfer of power to happen peacefully and forced some of the Taliban's opponents to participate in the new system. However, the Americans' disappointment in the Kabul administration was so great that they did not take its presence in the new government seriously.
While the Republican government collapsed and the Americans abandoned their important base at Bagram, the Afghan National Army did not participate in the withdrawal, which lasted several hours. This means that the Americans have practically interrupted communication, communication, and all contacts with the government of Ashraf Ghani and were preparing space for the Taliban to come and seize power.
I do not find it unlikely that even on the day of the fall, a scenario was planned in which Ashraf Ghani fled, the Taliban came and took power in Kabul, and his cowardly comrades scared him into fleeing first to Uzbekistan. and then to the Emirates.
I am fully confident that the United Arab Emirates hosted Ashraf Ghani with the permission of the United States and provided him with all the conditions. I believe the Doha Agreement is a counterbalance to the Bonn-1 conference, bringing Hamid Karzai to power. I understand that the day Kabul fell to the Taliban was similar to the American attack on Kabul in the first period when the Taliban were removed from power. It is unlikely that we feel that on the day of the fall of Kabul, the American intelligence services were not operating in Afghanistan and were not planning, they did not have a clear idea of the development of events, the connection between the Taliban and them was interrupted.
I believe that the Americans decided to leave Afghanistan. Still, they could not leave Afghanistan in a power vacuum. They realized that the government of Ashraf Ghani or any other government from the Bonn conference would sooner or later not be able to protect Afghanistan. There would be a civil war, or such groups like the Taliban would dominate again, so the Americans planned to try to bring a filtered Taliban into power.
There is no doubt that the Taliban have enjoyed and continue to enjoy international support. The Americans helped the Taliban establish their power in Afghanistan. Why? Because in the scenario of replacing power in Kabul, there was no other option besides the Taliban. The scenario of Afghanistan transitioning to civil war and Afghanistan finding itself in a situation where the presence of terrorist groups counters the interests and goals that the United States pursues in Afghanistan after its withdrawal.
But it seems impossible to achieve this goal over time. The US national interest required that investments be made to a group, namely the Taliban, to bring that group to power, and then to secure US interests in Afghanistan and the region so that those investments are not wasted. This scenario, as we see, turned out to be not so practical.
On the other hand, the war that the United States continued in Afghanistan was not only a war with the Taliban, but also a war of the Americans themselves, and it required restrictions. We must understand these issues. I believe that just as the Americans did not achieve what they wanted at the Bonn Conference through the Taliban administration, they will never achieve the goals that they set and outlined in Doha.
An example of this is the events that we are now seeing at the regional level. Explosions on behalf of ISIS in Kerman (Iran), Kandahar, Moscow, the murder of the Chinese in Pakistan, the declaration of a state of emergency in France, events in Germany and several other countries against ISIS attacks, all these shows that the withdrawal of the Americans from Afghanistan was a big and irreparable mistake . And it is likely that trust in these rehabilitated Taliban, which will lead to stability and security in Afghanistan, is in vain.
In the long term, Americans may think that Afghanistan could be seen under the same administration as Egypt, or as an example of Gulf governments such as Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait, with which the US is engaged, but this is unlikely to happen in Afghanistan.
The examples should become scientific. Now I see to some extent the deadlock of this process in Afghanistan. The Americans may be in favor of creating an inclusive administration in Afghanistan, but it is clear what the Taliban have done for the sake of an inclusive government and the opening of schools for girls. The world demands, they ignore. I do not think that the current Taliban system, which was built and woven in dark intelligence establishments by the great superpowers led by the US, is the answer to the current crisis in Afghanistan and the countries of the region.
On the other hand, I do know that most Afghans can tolerate the oppression, violence, and tyranny imposed on Afghanistan by the Taliban. Maybe some people comply because of ethnic, tribal, and linguistic beliefs, but for people who believe in democracy, freedom of speech, and humanity, this situation is unacceptable.
Result
The United States concluded that it should once again demonstrate its active presence in the region, control Afghan airspace, and attack its opposition forces using drones. The honeymoon of the Taliban and their supporters is coming to an end. The people of Afghanistan will once again take control of their destiny, either through self-sacrifice or with the cooperation of the international community.
On the other hand, if the world does not take immediate steps to eliminate what is happening in Afghanistan, the blanket of terrorism will cover the powerful countries of the world.
The continuation of this situation could lead to another September 11th in one of the Western countries, and then it may already be too late. Opponents of the Taliban must know and believe that strength comes from unity and destruction comes from a lack of unity and mutual acceptance. Accept the one you think is best.