Editorial of the “World”. Nearly twenty years ago, in response to the September 11 attacks perpetrated by Al-Qaida, the United States supported Afghan rebels to overthrow the then Taliban power. The legitimacy of this policy was that the Taliban, although they were not complicit in the offensives in New York and Washington, refused to hand over Osama bin Laden and his fighters. This Afghan war lasted from October 7 to December 17, 2001, ending with a victory for the anti-Italian forces. The other essential aspect of the engagement in Afghanistan was obviously the tracking down of Al-Qaida men. However, after the flight, on December 16, 2001, of Bin Laden to Pakistan – where he was killed ten years later – no jihadist remained in Afghanistan.
US President Joe Biden, by decreeing a military withdrawal from Afghanistan before the twentieth anniversary of September 11, thus puts an end to a double error. On the one hand, the West had no reason to deploy in Afghanistan in 2002, the year following the victory of the anti-Italian forces: one does not occupy militarily a country where there is no longer an enemy to fight. . On the other hand, their very presence served as a magnet for the Taliban to resume the fight, fueling an Afghan civil war that no longer existed at the end of 2001.
Absolute horror for Afghans
Mr. Biden’s decision is therefore difficult to challenge. He is, since George W. Bush launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the third American president elected on a pledge to end the “Endless wars” from America. It accomplishes what Barack Obama and then Donald Trump had started without going through with the process. It not only endorses the fact that this war was unmanageable, as the British and the Russians have also observed over the past two centuries, but above all that a foreign military presence is in no way justified in this conflict between Afghans.
Now that the Taliban have reconquered Kabul and will exercise power, there are only painful questions left… The main question obviously concerns the fate of the Afghans, who will live for the second time under the reign of radical Islamists. We can fear the worst for civilians, women, officials, who have believed, for two decades, in a different country. The previous Taliban rule, from 1996 to 2001, was an absolute horror for the Afghans.
Another question concerns the reason which was at the heart of the international engagement of 2001: will the Taliban once again become hosts for Al-Qaida? They pledged, during negotiations with the Trump administration on a US military withdrawal, that this would no longer be the case, but, to this day, their connection to the jihadist movement remains.
Even if the American decision can be regarded as legitimate, a parallel is therefore to be feared, that Mr. Biden lived as vice-president of Mr. Obama. After the American withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, the Iraqi jihadist movement regained such vigor that it was necessary to re-engage troops a few years later to fight the Islamic State organization. There is no doubt that Mr. Biden has this precedent in mind and that, beyond the spectacular rout of the Afghan allies in Washington, he must pray that he will not have to send soldiers back to Afghanistan, in a few months or years, to fight a new generation of international jihadists there.
