Withdrawal Gives Wings to the Taliban

The promised U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan allows the Taliban to ramp up its offensive in Afghanistan. They have taken over six cities in a week while Washington and NATO stick to their plans. The Afghan forces alone, with their incompetent commanders and dependency on the U.S. military, have been unable to stop the Taliban, who are responsible for committing repeated human rights violations and imposing Sharia or Islamic law in its strictest form.

Two decades after the intervention of a U.S.-led international coalition to overthrow the Taliban, Afghanistan is once again threatened by the group, as the coalition could not be trusted to keep its promise to keep the Islamic State or al-Qaida at bay.

Unlike Iraq and Syria, where President Joe Biden found a strategy to maintain a U.S. presence, Biden plans to withdraw from Afghanistan mainly for economic reasons. The war on “global terror” unleashed by George W. Bush after 9/11 cost $1.9 trillion. The Taliban resurgence adds up to a failure of such huge amounts of money to rebuild Afghanistan. In this context, the withdrawal ordered by the White House adds even more uncertainty to the situation. The U.S. risks creating a scenario of further destabilization and a refugee crisis.