Related Papers
EthnoScripts
EthnoScripts 24(1): Bilingual Special Issue "Fall of Kabul 2021: Backgrounds, Effects, Resonance / Der Fall Kabuls 202: Hintergründe, Effekte, Resonanzen
2022 •
Mira Menzfeld, Noah Coburn
Nach Jahrzehnten der Instabilität erschütterte Afghanistan im Spätsommer 2021 ein neuerlicher und zugleich tragisch wohlbekannter Umbruch: Die Taliban übernahmen die Macht. Scheinbar brauchten sie dafür nur wenige Tage, tatsächlich kündigte sich der Fall Kabuls aber schon weit vorher an. Um genauer zu verstehen, wie das passieren konnte, braucht es detaillierte und zuverlässige Einblicke: Wie sehen Menschen aus Afghanistan die Situation – vor Ort und im Ausland? In welcher Lebenswirklichkeit fanden und finden die jüngsten Entwicklungen statt? Welche religiösen und sozialen Hintergründe treiben die Taliban an? Mit Fragen wie diesen beschäftigt sich die vorliegende Sonderausgabe. Sie versammelt Beiträge, die die Hintergründe, Effekte und Resonanzen des Falls von Kabul 2021 verständlich beschreiben und einordnen.
Coulson-Thomas, Colin (2022),The Fall of Kabul: Who is Responsible?, The Politieconomy [International Research Journal of Political Economy], Vol. 7, Combined Issue I & II, July-December, pp 178-191
The fall of Kabul: Who is responsible
2022 •
Colin Coulson-Thomas
The unopposed fall of Kabul to the Taliban on 15th August 2021 apparently took many people by surprise, including decision makers who might have expected to have been better informed about the likely consequences of a final withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. This article written soon after these events occurred explores the rationale for US and NATO involvement and extraction from Afghanistan, economic, military and intelligence considerations, the attempted introduction of democracy, local Afghan self-sufficiency and viability, reading the road ahead, addressing contextual realities, particular local challenges, policy and its implementation, learning lessons from the fall of Kabul, reviewing purposes and priorities, and tentative conclusions. An externally imposed system that did not fully address and accommodate the fragmented, divided, tribal and actively resistant nature of the Afghan context was unlikely to be regarded as legitimate by armed and excluded insurgent groups. In the absence of a shared purpose across diverse communities, withdrawal from any intervention without a clear and carefully planned and thoughtfully executed exit strategy was likely to have serious negative consequences for those supporting and/or benefitting from the intervention. While some experienced greater freedom and opportunity for a period, the fall of Kabul appears to have vindicated those who have argued that from a US perspective and as practiced the war in Afghanistan was unwinnable. Holding ground across the country was likely to be costly if not impossible when faced with an armed insurgency with both local and regional support. Because of the seizure of abandoned equipment by insurgents, US taxpayers have funded the rearmament and re-equipment of the Taliban and increased its potential to entrench its position. The case for democracy in certain contexts may have been weakened and militant opponents may have been emboldened. Their activities may move back to Western streets. Ambition has to be tempered with caution and given existential threats such as climate change, distractions avoided. Going forward, policies must be realistic and flexible. Military capability should be both smart and strong. There are allies to reassure. As an era of assumed American economic and military supremacy comes to an end, the US must collaborate with them in seeking to contain totalitarian expansion
Asia Research Centre Brief
Asia Research Centre Brief 61, September 2021: Fall of Kabul government and Taliban takeover
2021 •
Asia Research Centre / Ośrodek Badań Azji (War Studies University, Poland)
In this Brief, our Afghanistan expert Przemysław Lesiński analyses the reasons behind the Taliban swift takeover of the country, as well as the implications of this turn of events.
The War in Afghanistan Excerpted from Lakdawala lecture, New Delhi Online version with notes, prepared Dec. 30
Ahmed Badran
The threat of international terrorism is surely severe. The horrendous events of Sept. 11 had perhaps the most devastating instant human toll on record, outside of war. The word "instant" should not be overlooked; regrettably, the crime is far from unusual in the annals of violence that falls short of war. The death toll may easily have doubled or more within a few weeks, as miserable Afghans fled-to nowhere-under the threat of bombing, and desperately-needed food supplies were disrupted; and there were credible warnings of much worse to come. The costs to Afghan civilians can only be guessed, but we do know the projections on which policy decisions and commentary were based, a matter of utmost significance. As a matter of simple logic, it is these projections that provide the grounds for any moral evaluation of planning and commentary, or any judgment of appeals to "just war" arguments; and crucially, for any rational assessment of what may lie ahead. Even before Sept. 11, the UN estimated that millions were being sustained, barely, by international food aid. On Sept. 16, the national press reported that Washington had "demanded [from Pakistan] the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population." There was no detectable reaction in the U.S. or Europe to this demand to impose massive starvation; the plain meaning of the words. In subsequent weeks, the world's leading newspaper reported that "The threat of military strikes forced the removal of international aid workers, crippling assistance programs"; refugees reaching Pakistan "after arduous journeys from Afghanistan are describing scenes of desperation and fear at home as the threat of American-led military attacks turns their long-running misery into a potential catastrophe." "The country was on a lifeline," one evacuated aid worker reported, "and we just cut the line." "It's as if a mass grave has been dug behind millions of people," an evacuated emergency officer for Christian Aid informed the press: "We can drag them back from it or push them in. We could be looking at millions of deaths."1 The UN World Food Program and others were able to resume some food shipments in early October, but were forced to suspend deliveries and distribution when the bombing began on October 7, resuming them later at a much lower pace. A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees warned that "We are facing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in Afghanistan with 7.5 million short of food and at risk of starvation," while aid agencies leveled "scathing" condemnations of U.S. air drops that are barely concealed "propaganda tools" and may cause more harm than benefit, they warned.2 A very careful reader of the national press could discover the estimate by the UN that "7.5 million Afghans will need food over the winter-2.5 million more than on Sept. 11," a 50% increase as a result of the threat of bombing, then the actuality.3 In other words, Western civilization was basing its plans on the assumption that they might lead to the death of several million innocent civilians-not Taliban, whatever one thinks of the legitimacy of slaughtering Taliban recruits and supporters, but their victims. Meanwhile its leader, on the same day, once again dismissed with contempt offers of negotiation for
USA today, after the fall of Kabul, by Hugues HENRI
hugues henri
International public opinion, taken aback by the rapid capture of Kabul by the Taliban on August 15, 2021, remains petrified after the collapse of the Afghan institutions laboriously put in place by the US and the UN since 2001, with the help of heavy investments of hundreds of billions of dollars. Indeed, the strategy implemented, that of Nation's Building, which had succeeded in Japan and West Germany after World War II, has completely failed in Afghanistan. The observation is all the more alarming since everything leads us to believe that the extremist ideology of the Taliban, who have emerged victorious from this 20-year conflict, has not changed fundamentally, except for the fact that they know how to communicate much better in the media and on the Internet. Afghanistan has been the scene of more than forty-two years of civil and international war, with armed occupations by the great powers, first by the Soviet Union between 1979 and 1989 and then by the USA with its allies in ANZUS and NATO, from 2001 to 2021. The destruction and loss of life are considerable. But foreign interference is expected to continue and even increase in the near future. Indeed, the Pakistani government and its ISI secret service have done everything possible since the 1980s to gain an upper hand over its Afghan neighbor. Although a proclaimed ally of the US in the war against the Red Army, this conflict has also been an opportunity for Pakistan to introduce and support extremist religious groups such as the Taliban, which are their creations and creatures. In the same way, the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda led by the Saudi Oussema Bin Laden was established in Afghanistan with the help and blessing of the Pakistani secret services. During the war against the USSR, the USA, led by Reagan and Bush senior, practiced the strategy of "dominoes" and "containment" that had been in use since the beginning of the Cold War in 1948. They supplied weapons to the most fundamentalist religious guerrillas such as those of Guldbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islam and in particular ground-to-air missiles which were very effective against the Red Army's air force, but also subsequently against the Afghan loyalist forces grouped around Commander Ahmad Chah Massoud during the Afghan civil war which lasted from 1992 to 1996, the date of the Taliban's first victory in Afghanistan. I would like to add that this first Taliban victory is in fact the victory of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have financed and equipped the Taliban from the beginning. Their Sunni Wahabbite obedience structures the religious doxa of the Taliban who want to reinstate the Sharia as they did in 1996 and 2001, with an extremist propensity that made them ban music, poetry, plastic arts and cinema; that excluded women from education, work, public life as a whole and forced them to wear the burkah. All Afghan women of all ages and conditions are once again in real danger of a generalized regression to pre-2001 medieval obscurantism.
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal
Kabul at War (1992-1996) : State, Ethnicity and Social Classes
2007 •
gilles dorronsoro
Understanding Afghanistan - History and focus of the last two centuries until the rise of the Taliban in 2021
Understanding Afghanistan - History and focus of the last two centuries until the rise of the Taliban in 2021
2021 •
Giulio Luigi Antonucci
This thesis aims to analyse the historical, geographical and social roots behind the rise of the Neo-Taliban in August 2021. It would be reductive to link recent events in the country, namely the invasion of Western foreign troops and their final retreat, with the return of the Islamic extremist group. In order to explain contemporary events, one has to go back in time, and not only that, one has to analyse all aspects of a population and its history. As we shall see, however, that of Afghanistan is not at all an easy analysis to make. Its ethno-cultural matrix is full of different influences, positions and traditions, each of which is fundamental to an understanding of the country as a whole. The first chapter analyses precisely these differences, describing the multitude of tribes, villages, cultures, as well as their diverse nature immersed in a geographical and historical context that have shaped their complex diversity. In the second second chapter, we begin to describe the history of the modern Afghan state, from when it was a protagonist in the so-called 'Great Game' as a buffer state between the British and Tsarist colonial empires, to the Soviet invasion of 1979 and the subsequent retreat followed by civil war, a context that fostered the first rise of the Islamic fundamentalist group the Taliban. The second part of the chapter focuses on the religious and political nature of this group, its internal hierarchies, its international relations and its politics as a whole. The final chapter concludes the historical journey of Afghanistan, from the fall of the Taliban to the withdrawal of US troops and the subsequent seizure of power by the Neo-Taliban. Finally, an attempt is made to understand the geopolitical repercussions that present-day Afghanistan might have on international balances.
Conflict, Security & Development
Afghanistan: the politics of post-war reconstruction
2002 •
Amalendu MISRA
Afghan Wars Syllabus 2020-21
James Caron
This postgraduate module examines the various international and domestic factors that led to and fed the wars in Afghanistan since 1979. It is equally about Afghanistan, and about transformations in contemporary war worldwide, in which Afghanistan-to its people's great misfortune-has been a central stage of innovation. The module provides contexts ranging from geopolitics, to local political economy, gender, cultural change and contestation, and more. It provides a holistic view of events from the vantage point of secondary literature published at the time, and of retrospective critical scholarship. Finally, it serves as an interdisciplinary introduction to main debates in the field of Afghan history, and asks participants to engage primary sources each week. By the end, participants will gain a multifacted appreciation of the full political-economic and sociocultural scope of war over the past forty years-an understanding especially of Afghanistan, but also of changing trends in twenty-first century war generally. Participants will leave equipped to produce their own original critical interventions about all this, in academic and public conversations alike.
SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW [SAIR]
Afghanistan: The Defeat of Reason
2019 •
Dr. Ajit K Singh
The possibilities of peace in Afghanistan are rapidly receding, as Pakistan and its terrorist proxies, emboldened by the ‘defeat’ of the US and its Coalition partners, are likely to create more chaos in the country, and potentially in the wider South Asian region. Forces rooted in an ideology of religious hatred and extremist unreason are progressively being promoted with the active cooperation of the US and its partners, even as an elected Government at Kabul is marginalized in the negotiation process.
