Pakistan and the United States Have Betrayed the Afghan People

MESOP NEWS ARGUMENT : Worth reading: especially note Fair’s point that 80-90% of US investment in Afghanistan ended up back in US economy, siphoned by contractors

Washington ignored Islamabad funding and supplying the Taliban. Now Afghans are paying the price.

By C. Christine Fair, a provost’s distinguished associate professor at Georgetown University’s security studies program.

U.S. President Joe Biden has defiantly asserted he does not regret his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan even as Kabul has fallen to the Taliban and as desperate Afghans scramble for the last flights out of the country. The United States is begging the Taliban for assurances they will not attack U.S. personnel as Washington scrambles to evacuate its personnel, leaving its long-standing Afghan partners to fend for themselves as the Taliban hunt them and their families down.

U.S. officials are busy offering sanctimonious repines that justify the U.S. exit. They have announced to U.S. and international audiences that the time has come for Afghan National Security Forces to seize the reins of their nation’s defense, that Afghan leaders must unite and fight for their country—that the United States has done enough. This is rank nonsense, and Biden knows it. The United States did not do enough—and even enabled the current onslaught.

Biden did not come to this situation unawares. The Obama administration in which Biden served benefited from a raft of experts, including former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel and longtime South Asia watcher Peter Lavoy, who was the national intelligence officer for South Asia. Prior to the 2008 election, there were numerous assessments about the Afghanistan War and the myriad ways in which Pakistan was undermining U.S. efforts there. Then-President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming team, led by Riedel, spearheaded the so-called “assessment of assessments” and offered refreshingly blunt insight into how Pakistan, which benefitted handsomely from U.S. emoluments, aided and abetted the Taliban and undermined U.S. efforts.

Biden, like Obama, understands Pakistan is the major force behind the Taliban. Without Pakistan’s intelligence and military establishment’s unstinting support for the Taliban, the group would be a nuisance rather than an effective fighting force. The United States has steadfastly refused to do the one thing it could have done long ago: targeted sanctions against those in Pakistan’s deep state who sponsor Islamist militants.

Full text via www.mesop.de