The US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was meant to herald a new era for the country.
However, 20 years later the western strategy lies in tatters.
The catastrophic fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban has opened up a worrying new chapter
for this long troubled country.
So, how did we get here? And why does it matter?
Hello and welcome. If you're new to the channel my name is James Ker-Lindsay and here I take an
informed look at international relations, conflicts and the origins of countries.
Afghanistan's fall to the Taliban is one of those moments in international relations that
clearly has special significance - even if it's unclear exactly what it'll mean.
If nothing else, we appear to be back to square one.
Two decades after the Taliban were ousted for harbouring terrorist groups,
they're now back in control.
More to the point, the speed of their takeover suggests that they'll have
an unquestioned - and, for the foreseeable future, unquestionable - degree of authority.
What can be said for certain is that it raises
very real questions about the future of Afghanistan,
its wider effects on international security and the potential geopolitical implications.
Landlocked, Afghanistan lies at the meeting point of the Middle East
and South, Central and East Asia.
At 650,000 square kilometers, or a quarter of a million square miles,
it's the 40th largest of the 193 members of the UN.
Its population is believed to be around 38 million.
In the absence of any sort of census for over 40 years,
best estimates suggest that the largest group are the Pashtuns, making up around
40 to 50 percent of the population and located in the south of the country.
Tajiks, located in the north, are around 25 to 30 percent.
Afghanistan's strategic position means that it truly has a long and rich history.
Over thousands of years, it's been invaded by many empires including by Alexander the Great,
the Arabs and the Mongols.
Moreover, as part of the ancient Silk Road linking China to the Middle East and Europe,
it's been at the crossroads of cultural exchanges.
But the most significant influence has been Islam.
Today, Afghanistan is almost wholly Muslim with around 90 percent adhering to Sunni Islam.
For our purposes, the story really begins in the 19th century .
As Britain established its presence in India it pushed northwards.
At the same time, Russia, in the process of consolidating
its control over Central Asia pushed south.
The Emirate of Afghanistan lay at the heart of this famous 'Great Game'.
However, in 1880 it became a British protectorate this lasted until 1919 when
the country formally declared independence, becoming the Kingdom of Afghanistan, in 1926.
In 1946, it became part of the first wave
of UN enlargement - alongside Iceland, Sweden and Thailand.
In the years that followed, Afghanistan steered a course
between the two Superpower blocs as part of the Non-Aligned Movement.
However, in 1973, the King was deposed and the country became a republic.
Five years later, Marxist military officers staged a coup.
As resistance to their rule grew amongst religious groups - the
so-called Mujahideen - the Soviet Union stepped in invading Afghanistan on 24 December 1979.
This would have disastrous effects for both countries.
Often described as the Soviet Vietnam,
the USSR would eventually lose over 15,000 to the US-backed Mujahideen.
In 1988, Moscow agreed to withdraw.
But rather than usher in a period of stability,
Afghanistan descended into civil war as the various Mujahideen groups turned on one another.
And it was this power vacuum that would eventually provide
the opportunity for a new group - the Taliban - to make their mark.
Supported by neighbouring Pakistan,
and promoting a very strict interpretation of Islam, they rapidly grew in strength.
Having first emerged around 1994,
by September 1996 they'd taken control of the Afghan capital, Kabul, and most of the country.
The effects of Taliban rule proved to be horrific.
Sharia law was strictly applied, including executions and amputations for punishments.
Women were banned from working and girls banned from education.
All images of living creatures were prohibited - a ban that would have a
devastating effect on the country's rich cultural heritage.
The decision to blow up the Bamiyan Buddhas - huge statues carved out of rock that had been
officially designated as world heritage site by UNESCO - came to symbolise the Taliban vandalism.
But what really made Taliban stand out internationally was its decision to become
a welcoming haven for other militant islamic groups, including Al Qaeda,
which had been fighting an increasingly high profile campaign against the United States.
The key moment, of course, was September 11, 2001.
Just weeks after Al Qaeda's attack on New York and Washington,
the United States and its NATO partners invaded.
Despite concerns of fierce resistance,
the Taliban quickly retreated from the capital and other key cities.
Instead, it concentrated on fighting an insurgency from its rural strongholds.
Meanwhile, the United States and its NATO and other allies began efforts to rebuild
the country by installing a new regime and building the Afghan National Army.
However, despite having 70,000 troops in the country,
by the end of the decade NATO efforts to defeat the Taliban were already faltering.
In 2009, the Obama Administration announced it would send an extra 17,000 troops to the country.
But as the years passed, questions grew about what the United States hoped to achieve.
While there were undoubtedly many areas of improvement, especially for people in the cities,
many wondered how long NATO would have to remain in place.
Reflecting a wider US public fatigue with Afghanistan, the Trump Administration held
peace talks with the Taliban and, in February 2020, they reached a deal.
The US and its allies would agree to remove their forces from Afghanistan within 14 months
in return for peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government and a commitment that
Al Qaeda and other islamist groups would not be allowed to operate from afghan territory.
After taking power at the start of 2021,
there were real questions about whether President Biden would see through the policy.
However, in April 2021, less than three months after he took office,
Biden announced that he would adhere to trump's decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan,
announcing that they'd be out by the start of September.
With the US withdrawal now confirmed, the Taliban saw the opportunity to advance.
Despite assurances that the country's armed forces - which now had almost a third of a
million troops - could hold back the 70 to 80,000 strong Taliban, as the deadline for
US withdrawal approached, the Taliban began to make rapid headway; with major provincial
towns and cities falling at an increasing pace during the second week of august 2021.
On Sunday, 15 August, and amid scenes of chaos as people tried to escape,
the Afghan president fled and Kabul fell.
The Taliban was back in control.
So, what does the U.S. withdrawal really mean?
There are several different aspects to consider.
For a start, there's obviously concerns about the immediate impact on Afghanistan and its people.
Even though the Taliban has said that it won't carry out revenge attacks,
the reimposition of Taliban rule is likely to lead to reprisals.
More generally, it's like see the imposition of many - if not
all - of the harsh restrictions of the past, including the complete erosion of women's rights.
At a very human level, the effects are likely to be disastrous.
Beyond this, there are wider regional and security issues.
Here two key points stand out. The first centres on refugee outflows.
Faced with the reimposition of harsh rule, hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, look set to flee the country.
Already, there are real concerns that many will try to make their way through
Iran and Turkey to Europe - potentially prompting reruns of the 2015 refugee crisis.
Secondly, there will inevitably be concerns about whether Afghanistan
will again become a haven for Islamist insurgents.
As things stand, the Taliban insists that it won't; arguing that, if it's left alone,
it won't bother other countries.
However, the fear is that it will once again become a sanctuary for such groups.
The UN Secretary-General has already called for the international community to work
together to be sure that it doesn't again become a haven for terrorists.
Then there are the wider geopolitical questions.
Already, debates are emerging about how Russia and China might respond to the situation.
But perhaps the most important implications will be on the United States and the Western alliance.
There's no doubt that the dramatic fall of Afghanistan represents a huge defeat for
Washington; not just in terms of its apparently catastrophic failure to anticipate the collapse
of the country's government, but also because of the way in which the Afghan
National Army - despite years of training and investment in equipment - simply folded.
Indeed, it calls into question the entire process of state building in the country.
With over 3,000 US and NATO soldiers dead, and over two trillion dollars spent - or over
300 million dollars a day for 20 years - many are asking what it was all for?
For his part, President Biden is unrepentant.
In a speech delivered the day after the Taliban retook Kabul,
he stood by his decision to pull out American troops, making it clear that the failure of
Afghans to fight for their own country just proved that the U.S. was right to leave.
However, as many prominent observers have noted, by this stage only a few thousand troops were
needed to stop the country from falling to the Taliban and throwing away two decades of work.
In the meantime, there will also be questions about whether this
represents the final end of the western era of liberal interventionism and state building.
After such a catastrophic failure, publics will want to know what such
massive operations in Iraq and Afghanistan really achieved.
In this sense, and with the feeling that the United States no longer has the appetite for
international intervention, the fall of Afghanistan may well come to mark the end
of the 30-year 'Post-Cold War Era' and the real start of a new period of international relations.
Afghanistan is one of the world's most fascinating countries.
Lying at the crossroads of key geographical regions, it's long been at the heart of Eurasian
geopolitics and has seen numerous invasions over the centuries, including the U.S.-led one in 2001.
However, this most recent phase of external intervention is now at an end.
The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban came far faster than anyone had thought possible.
Whatever happens, the disastrous decision to pull out of Afghanistan and the speed at which
the Taliban has managed to take control of the country has raised the very real prospect that
20 years of efforts will now be reversed and that we could well be back to the situation
we faced in the late 1990s, when Afghanistan became a haven for international terrorist s,
a human rights black hole, and a source of wider international instability.
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