With the United States of America withdrawing its troops from war-torn Afghanistan after around 2 decades, the Central Asian country is in a conundrum as to how the geopolitics of the region will shape in the immediate future.
Even as several countries lauded the move, many believe the pullout might reawaken the ghosts of terrorism once again in the country, with the Taliban already running amok on the streets of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Former US president George W Bush yesterday came down heavily on the incumbent Joe Biden administration over the withdrawal of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) troops from the country, fearing that civilians were now at the mercy of the Taliban.
“I’m afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm… They are going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people and it breaks my heart,” Bush was quoted by German broadcaster Deutsche Welle as saying.
Bush was the one who had sent troops to Afghanistan during autumn 2001 after the horrific September 11 twin-attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, carried out by the al Qaeda.
General David Patraeus, who was the commander of the coalition forces and was chief of the US central command in Afghanistan in 2011, believes that the withdrawal of US military from the country “is a big mistake which the US will come to regret”.
“I fear the decision to withdraw has consigned Afghanistan to a bloody civil war, and is likely to produce millions of refugees, cause damage to infrastructure and foist an ultra-conservative theocratic regime over much of the country that curtails the rights of women, democratic processes and human rights… I expect we will see al Qaeda and the Islamic State affiliate in the Af-Pak region—the Khorasan Group—seek to establish sanctuaries in Taliban-controlled territory, just as al Qaeda established its sanctuary in eastern Afghanistan, when most of the country was under Taliban control in the late 1990s, and planned the 9/11 (World Trade Center) attacks,” Patraeus, who was also a former director of the American intelligence agency CIA, told the Times of India.
He said that without US support, Afghan forces will do “what some have done already – desert their posts, flee the Taliban, or surrender”.
Patraeus was not completely wrong with his prediction.
Barely hours after the Taliban proposed a three-month ceasefire, they asked in return the release of around 7,000 of their comrades who are currently held in Afghan prisons, along with the demand to ghost the records of their leader’s from the Union Nations blacklist, news agency AFP reported.
“It is a big demand,” Nader Nadery, a government negotiator involved in the peace talks with the terrorist group, said on Thursday.
‘Our mission in Afghanistan is not over’
Even though General Scott Miller, the last commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, returned to his country, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin hinted that there is more to the picture than what’s being seen.
“Scott and his staff are home now, and we are grateful for their safe return. But our mission in Afghanistan is not over. The drawdown continues and will be complete by the end of August,” Austin told reporters just hours after welcoming Miller at the Pentagon following his return from Kabul after three years.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Defense “is committed to protecting its diplomatic presence” in Afghanistan and will continue to fund Afghan Defense and Security Forces, along with taking on other advisory roles in the Afghan government to preventing a resurrection of extremist groups.
“We will also be working closely with the State Department to help relocate those Afghans and their families who have been of such service to our mission. We take seriously our obligation to them, and we honour their contributions,” Austin added.
