Afghanistan needs international support – but history tells us the west could just walk away again

In 2008, on a visit to Kabul, George W Bush wanted to reassure Afghans “you can count on the United States, we shall be staying to ensure security.” Seven years earlier, after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, Tony Blair declared: “This time we will not walk away” – as the west had done in the past after using the mujaheddin to drive out the Russians.

But that is precisely what is happening in Afghanistan now with US, British and other international troops pulling out. Joe Biden has given the symbolic deadline of 9/11 for the withdrawal to take place, but most have already left.

The bulk of the UK contingent, of around 750, departed without any great hail or farewell, with a flag-lowering ceremony behind gates at Kabul airport. Many British commanders, like their American counterparts, are unhappy at the speed at which the withdrawal has taken place – leaving Afghan allies to face the enemy. But the decision that matters has been taken in Washington.

Around 650 US troops will be left behind to protect the embassy and Kabul airport. There are discussions on stationing western special forces – as shown in some secret British Ministry of Defence documents which were found beside a bus stop in Kent earlier this week. But the Taliban hold that the Doha agreement between them at the Americans stipulate that all western forces must be gone.

In any case, special forces alone will not turn the tide in what is going to come. The Taliban have been advancing, taking over districts and military bases, border posts. It has not all been one way – government troops have taken back some of the territories lost, sometimes with the help of US airstrikes. But the insurgents will keep coming.

There is now talk of another “fall of Saigon” episode, a reprise of the momentous time in April 1975 when Americans were scrambling to get on helicopters from the embassy roof, as the victorious Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army came into the city, after the most shattering defeat in US military history.

It need not have unfolded this way in Afghanistan. In 2003, after the fall of Mullah Omar’s Taliban regime with the hardcore of the movement fleeing to Pakistan, there was a great opportunity to establish stability and start rebuilding the country.

Instead, George W Bush and Tony Blair invaded Iraq on the false pretext of Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction. Vital resources needed to secure Afghanistan were moved to the Iraq mission. The Taliban, fed and watered across the border by their backers in the Pakistan military and the intelligence service, exploited the security vacuum and moved back.

The Americans and the British appeared at the time to be in a state of denial. I recall Donald Rumsfeld – who died on Wednesday – the then US defence secretary, telling a group of us journalists in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif in 2004 that “the Taliban are marginalised, they are effectively finished, they will have no future role to play in Afghanistan.” But they were already back; the first of the suicide bombings had taken place.

Now, many Afghans who can are moving abroad with their families, fearful of the Islamists taking over and imposing – once again – their brutal, intolerant brand of religious rule. It is a sad reversal of a time of optimism and hope in 2001 when Afghans returned from abroad to rebuild their country after the fall of Mullah Omar’s regime.

But will the Taliban really gain control of the country again and, if so, how long will it be before that happens? According to a new mantra in Washington and London, Mohammad Najibullah – the Afghan president left behind by the Russians – was not just a Kremlin stooge, as the west had previously declared, but an astute leader who had kept the insurgency at bay for some time until the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the money tap being turned off.

The mujahideen fighting the Russians and the Afghan government were backed by the US, Britain, other European states, Saudi Arabia, China and Iran. Weapons, including Stinger missiles, and millions of dollars were sent to them through the Pakistan military. Foreign Islamist fighters who travelled to Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden, subsequently spawned al-Qaeda and Isis and brought jihad back to Europe and America.

The rebels captured Kabul. Najibullah who was then tortured and lynched, had his body dragged behind a truck through the streets of Kabul, and then hung from a lamppost near the presidential palace.

That fate will not befall those in President Ashraf Ghani’s government, according to this narrative, which will continue to receive international funding, again according to this narrative, and thus they have a far better chance of survival.

Over the period when the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) began pulling out in 2014, the rush to raise the strength of the Afghan security forces led to training course being curtailed, and, at times, being thrown into battle before they were fully prepared. The losses among the country’s army and police have been horrendously high.

There have been justified complaints about corruption and inefficiency among the military, as well as cases of lethal Taliban infiltration of their ranks. But, overall, they have defended their country well. I have, over the years, been on military operations with Afghan forces a number of times, and seen their bravery and sacrifice at first hand.

With air support from the Americans, and if material support for the Taliban and other groups like the Haqqani Network from Pakistan is kept in check, the Afghan forces may well successfully put up resistance. However, there is the possibility of the country increasingly divided with the government losing control of the south.

The process of Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan took place alongside contact with mujaheddin groups and commanders, especially Ahmad Shah Massoud – “The Lion of Panjshir” – who was to become an implacable adversary of the Taliban and was later murdered by al-Qaeda in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks in New York.

Reconciliation efforts with the rebels were patchy at best. Soviet documents from the time point to the need of convincing Afghan soldiers and their Russian advisors not to call the Islamic fighters names like “ gangs of murderers”, “ mercenaries of imperialism”, “baby killers” and “skull bashers”.

The Afghan forces were not expected to last against the rebels for long after the second and final phase of Soviet withdrawal in 1989. But they generally gave a good account of themselves and inflicted a heavy defeat on the enemy in the east of the country the same year.

The insurgents, following a plan by Hamid Gul, of the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) were supposed to follow up a victory in Jalalabad with a strike on Kabul. But the Afghan forces not only withstood the attack, but threw back the Taliban.

The Russian government of Mikhail Gorbachev pressed the Najibullah government to attempt a power-sharing agreement with the opposition, a stance backed by Iran and China who had backed the mujahideen. But George W Bush wanted a military victory and Britain, another active supporter of the rebels, dutifully followed the American lead.

For the next three years the Afghan forces continued to hold their own and also carry out successful operations against the mujahideen, reaching, ironically, levels of effectiveness they had failed to do under Russian tutelage while exposing political and military vulnerabilities within the mujahideen.

In 1992 the rebels captured a large city, Khost, for the first time. It was a propaganda as well as a military win as Khost had become known as “Little Russia” due to its support for Afghanistan’s communists. But, yet again, they failed to push on from there; stalemate ensued.

It was events in Moscow the same year, which had a direct bearing on what happened next in Afghanistan. Boris Yeltsin’s government, which emerged from the crisis, refused to sell oil to Afghanistan, reportedly because it didn’t want to be seen to be supporting a communist influenced regime. Russian subsidies to the Afghan budget have already been cut.

The following year the Uzbek warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, changed sides with his militia, members of the Kabul government have been secretly holding talks with the rebels, and a number of commanders defected.

The mujahideen took over Kabul in April 1992, Najibullah was killed. A new governing council was formed, but it soon fell apart. A savage civil war ensued with 400,000 Afghans losing their lives. It ended eventually in Taliban rule.

Now, in the gathering darkness, Afghanistan faces an uncertain and dangerous future. The departing US commander, General Scott Miller, has warned that the country could face a “very hard time… civil war is certainly a path that can be visualised if this continues, and that should be of concern to the world”. He urged the Afghan leadership to unite with his troops leaving.

But it is not just unity that the government and armed forces need to face the strife that will come, but also international support. And, judging by the west’s past record, there is no guarantee that they will not walk away from Afghanistan once again.