After toppling the U.S.-backed puppet government of 72-year-old Ashraf Ghani Aug 16, the Taliban outlasted everyone, getting back into power since toppled Nov. 14, 2001 by former President George W. Bush Nov. 14, 2001. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom Oct. 7, 2001, three weeks after Sept. 11, seeking to neutralize 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. Taliban’s Supreme Leader Mullah Mohammed Omar refused to give former Secretary of Sate Colin Powell any information about Bin Laden’s whereabouts, prompting Bush to launch a full-scale attack on the Taliban government. Like Bin Laden, Omar went into hiding, eventually dying from tuberculosis or old age. April 23, 2013. Operation Enduring Freedom didn’t stop when Bin Laden fled Afghanistan Dec. 15, 2001 over Khyber Pass but instead last 20-years with the U.S. government backing numerous governments until its collapse Aug. 16.
Ghani fled the presidential palace Aug. 16 when he heard the Taliban had breached the presidential palace. Fearing he’d be beheaded in the public square, Ghani fled the country, signaling the collapse of the U.S.-puppet regime and military. President Joe Biden said he thought that U.S.-backed Ghani government had the resources to outlast the Taliban for months, admitting he was surprised by the sudden collapse. When the Taliban was in power from 1996 to 2001, they prided themselves on public amputations, mutilations and beheadings, all for violations of Sharia law. Taliban’s new Supreme Leader 52-year-old Abdul Ghani Baradar said the new Taliban would respect women’s right as long as they conformed to Sharia law, raising questions about life under Taliban-2 rule. Ghani and thousands of others in Kabul headed for the exits once Ghani’s government collapsed.
Now that the Taliban got what they wanted, rule over Afghanistan, Spokesman Zabhullah Mujahid expressed interest in keeping open the U.S. embassy. Russia and China already announced plans to keep their embassies open under Taliban rule. “We have communication channels with them [U.S.] and we expect them to reopen their embassy in Kabul, and we also want to have trade relations with them,” raising complicated questions for the Biden administration. Unlike Russia and China, U.S. and European Union officials measure their diplomatic relations in terms of human rights, something with which the Taliban has a poor track record. Secretary of State Anton Blinken 58, was noncommittal about reopening the U.S. embassy or engaging in diplomatic relations. Mujahid has no clue about the complicated PR issues over establishing diplomatic or trade relations with the U.S..
Biden and Blinken faced withering criticism for the manner in which they handled the exit out of Afghanistan. Biden announced April 17 that the U.S. military would leave Kabul by Aug. 31, extending the exit date by three months from the agreement former President Donald Trump signed with the Taliban Feb. 29, 2020. Biden has both blamed Trump’s agreement with the Taliban and used it to execute his exit strategy out of Afghanistan. When the ISIS-K suicide bombing happened Aug. 26, killing 13 U.S. soldiers, Biden and Blinken caught a ration of criticism for rushing the evacuation, creating the stampede on the airport that opened the door for the terror attack. “Given the uncertain security environment and political situation in Afghanistan, it was the prudent step to take, to establish some diplomatic channels in which to evacuate an remaining U.S. citizens unable to leave by Aug. 31.
Blinken said the U.S. Kabul embassy would remain shut until further notice, with diplomatic activities happening from Doha, Qatar. Biden walks a fine establishing diplomatic relations with the Taliban, when no one knows yet what life under Talibn-2 would be like. Taliban officials are starting to panic how they plan to pay civil servants to run the new government, when they’ve seized the country by brute force. “The Taliban is already noting the ‘different’ response from most of the international community as compared to the first time,” said an unnamed indo-European intelligence official, thinking the Taliban wants some international recognition. No one knows how the new Taliban regime will deal with anyone affiliated with the Ghani regime or might be associated with any resistance movements now forming to eventually undermine the Taliban’s new regime.
Biden and Blinken have been so consumed by the chaotic exit from Kabul that they haven’t begun to deal with life under the Taliban. If Russia and China continue diplomatic relations with the Taliban, it puts urgent pressure on the White House to keep channels open, if, for no other reason, to evacuate any remaining Americans. If the Taliban really turned over a new leaf, do you think the stampede to get out would have been so intense? Former Afghan citizens and workers in the Ghani government thought so much of Taliban-2 they fled in a stampede to the airport to get out. “The Taliban says all the right words for now: they will not allow the use of their territory for terrorist activities toward the east, in Xinjiangd, or toward the north, in Central Asia,” said Russian International Affairs Council Andrey Kortunov. You don’t need a crystal ball to figure out what comes next with the Taliban.
