Editorial of the “World”. The American intervention in Afghanistan had started in October 2001, under the presidency of George W. Bush, by launching high-tech cruise missiles towards the terrorist training camps of Al-Qaida, sheltered by the Taliban regime. . The aim was to destroy the organization responsible for the September 11 attacks. The operation, dubbed “Immutable Freedom”, was crowned with success in three weeks. It ended twenty years later with a chaotic, pitiful and hasty retreat, negotiated with the same Taliban whom “Immutable Liberty” had driven out.
For having fixed the calendar of this retreat without foreseeing the speed of the return of the Taliban, Joe Biden faces the first serious political crisis of his mandate. Seven months ago, however, it was a president praised for his immense experience in foreign policy who moved to the White House. Quickly, while getting down to managing the Covid-19 crisis, he was working to break with the diplomacy of his predecessor, Donald Trump, by putting the United States back on the rails of the multilateral system.
The break, however, was not complete. On China and the Afghan issue, in particular, the Democratic president is part of the continuity. Determined to repatriate all American troops with a view to his re-election, Donald Trump launched negotiations with the Taliban in Qatar; they ended with an inglorious agreement, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had sanctioned with his presence in Doha in February 2020. The agreement, of which the Taliban did not respect their part and which is in the Together at the origin of the current disaster, foresaw the departure of American troops.
Big mistakes
Joe Biden could have not applied it. But its opposition to the continuation of the intervention in Afghanistan is old and deeply rooted; he knew that he was supported on this point by public opinion, which had lost interest in this country, where only 2,500 American soldiers were present, whereas there were more than 100,000 there. content to restructure the departure schedule.
But, if the decision to withdraw was consensual, the execution of the operation was marked by serious errors, for which Joe Biden and his team must answer today. The rigidity of the calendar, first of all: by setting the symbolic date of September 11 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the attacks rather than linking the withdrawal to a series of conditions to be fulfilled, he forced the military to organize the withdrawal in high season fighting, favorable to the Taliban.
The sequencing of operations, then: the decision, difficult to understand, to evacuate the soldiers before the civilians, turned out to be catastrophic when Kabul fell and forced the Pentagon to send back 6,000 soldiers in disaster to hold the airport. The lack of consultation, too, with the European allies, who are nevertheless involved in the field. Finally, the errors of evaluation on the speed of the advance of the Taliban.
Renowned a man of empathy and compassion, Joe Biden seemed singularly devoid of it at the start of this crisis, when the dramatic images of evacuations flooded the screens. His entourage is already assessing the impact of this fiasco on his popularity and that of the Democratic Party. The most urgent thing, however, for the moment is to organize the continuation of the evacuation in Kabul under conditions more worthy of the first world power.
