Chronic. The Twenty Years’ War will not end in May as expected. On this date, the American troops, present in Afghanistan since 2001, will not leave. Joe Biden is asking for a little time. The situation is not ripe, he said. The agreement negotiated by his predecessor, Donald Trump, is not being sufficiently implemented. The Pentagon hesitates. The Kabul government is reluctant.
Why is it so difficult to leave Afghanistan? Because that would be to recognize a failure? In military schools, the American intervention in Afghan soil will be taught as a typical example of the “opex” gone wrong. She will pass for the mother of these “eternal wars”, the forever wars post-Cold War era that Westerners – but this was also the case with the USSR in the 1980s – neither win nor lose entirely against local adversaries, who are much weaker militarily.
2001, therefore. In the name of the defense interests of the United States, we are going to fight against Islamist terrorism in an Afghanistan which has been at war continuously since the end of the 1970s. We do not know with whom we will sign peace in this country. of 22 million souls (which now has 38 million) or when we can declare “victory” and go home.
2021. The Pentagon might rightly ask: why do we have to leave Afghanistan? After all, in Europe and Asia, the continued presence of American troops contributes to regional strategic balances. But there is fighting in Afghanistan and it is the American front that is cracking. Public opinion in the United States is questioning the relevance of this endless war, never won, always started again.
2,400 Americans killed in twenty years
Because each spring, leaving their Pakistani haunts, the Afghan insurgents, the Taliban, followers of a brutal and retrograde Islam, belonging to the majority Pashtun ethnic group, descend the slopes of the Hindu Kush. They regain control of a large part of Afghanistan. They are increasing terrorist campaigns in the capital – killing children, women, men in the name of the fight against the Kabul regime. Since 2001, the deaths of Afghan civilians have numbered in the tens of thousands, mostly victims of the Taliban, according to the UN. In twenty years, American forces have recorded nearly 2,400 killed in their ranks. The United States has invested in Afghanistan – military deployment and civilian aid – a sum close to 1000 billion dollars.
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