The United States (and Britain) are leaving Afghanistan: why ?

Biden and Blinken have announced that the United States and Britain are leaving Afghanistan. Reason ? 'Mission accomplished', apparently. According to Biden, the terrorist threat emanates not from Afghanistan, but from further west in Asia and from the Horn of Africa. If that is the sole criterion, then that is 'success', of sorts. But the United States (and NATO) had much more ambitious criteria, including the re-construction of an entire society. By those criteria, the 'mission' has completely failed. Afghanistan is no more a sustainable and functioning society and polity now than it was in 2001. When I say that politics in Afghanistan is unsustainable at present, I mean that the state does not have a monopoly of violence in its own territory. If that is the case, then the tortured people of Afghanistan can have no assurance of stability whatsoever. The United States stayed so long because, since Nixon abolished conscription in 1972, the United States has been able to bear fighting wars where its own citizens face a decreasing cost in blood (if not treasure).

Many Afghans have come to depend on the forces of the Global North, as the only guarantee against an even more uncertain outlook, just as the anti-communist citizens of Vietnam and Cambodia relied on the United States to protect them from their fate. I do not imply that the United States should stay in Afghnanistan, or that it should have stayed in Southeast Asia. It should never have held out unrealistic promises in the first instance. One is reminded of the tragedies left in the wake of the 'decolonisation' of the British and French empires. The Global North has accomplished one thing for the people of Afghanistan: it has betrayed them. The story of the past forty years in Afghanistan has been that of foreign powers causing one problem after another, and then pretending to find solutions. Before 1980, the Afghans had a perfectly sustainable polity and society. It was not perfect ; but which human society is ? Biden may have calculated that the United States could no longer bear the cost ; but the Afghans will have to pay the cost, over and over again, for many years to come. This is yet another demonstration of the ultimate hypocrisy of imperialism and the 'white man's burden' : those areas of the world for which imperialists assume responsibility are ultimately regarded as dispensable. The ultimate outcome of the war in Afghanistan, whether judged to be 'success' or 'failure', was embedded in its 'mission' in 2001.

It is probably marginally better for the people of Afghanistan that occupying forces leave, in that may give the Afghans some hope of shaping their own destiny, in time. However, at this time, both remaining and leaving count as betrayals. However, it is unlikely that the Afghans will be left to their own devices. If the Americans truly do leave (and one cannot exclude the possibility that 'special advisers', CIA operatives etc will remain), that will leave a power vacuum which will be filled by China, Iran and Pakistan.