The latest incarnation of the Taliban may be even more brutal and unscrupulous

As bad as the situation in Afghanistan has been with an American presence, it could get far worse without it, writes Borzou Daragahi

Taliban fighters sit on a vehicle on the street in Jalalabad province on 15 August (AFP/Getty)

It had been a fierce two-hour firefight but Afghan government forces in the northern province of Faryab ultimately heeded the Taliban’s calls to surrender, emerging with their hands in the air. The Taliban fighters who captured them were in no mood for mercy, though. They promptly opened fire, slaughtering two dozen people in a June incident that was captured on video and described by an Amnesty International researcher as the “cold-blooded murder” of unarmed combatants.

Taliban apologists, interlocutors and even their own representatives have for years argued that a new and improved version of the network of groups is unlike its violent predecessors who terrorised the nation, massacred religious minorities, turned women into little more than slaves, destroyed ancient monuments and harboured al-Qaeda during their 1996 to 2001 rule. This version was ready to share power with other Afghan political forces, name members of the country’s Shia minority as commanders and abide by international norms.

But that appears to have been extremely wishful thinking. An ugly vision of Afghanistan’s future under the Taliban is already emerging. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that desperate Afghans are pouring into Kabul from areas newly invaded by the Taliban and describing massacres of civilians, summary executions of captured soldiers, and demands that unmarried women be handed over to their fighters as spoils of war.

Yes, the US and the west should stop their endless wars of imperial conquest. But it is unconscionable for the international community to throw 38 million Afghans to feral wolves and squander the hard-fought social and educational advances its women and minorities have made over the last two decades. It is reckless to take the representatives of the murderous Taliban at their word that they won’t let the country become a haven for transnational terrorists. The world needs to focus on Afghanistan and focus now, before it’s too late.

The US argues that after spending $2.2tn and losing nearly 2,500 soldiers, it has done all it could in Afghanistan over the last 20 years, and that its continued presence in the country would be folly. But the US bears a special responsibility for what has happened in Afghanistan over the last 42 years. It doesn’t get to just walk away.

US meddling in Afghanistan started with Washington’s support for mujahideen forces and allied foreign fighters, which later became al-Qaeda, against Soviet forces in the 1980s. US mistakes continued with its abandoning of Afghanistan after the Russian withdrawal, its disastrous pivot to Iraq after the toppling of the Taliban in 2001 and the demoralising semiotics of its retreat this year.

Three US successive administrations have been trying to extricate America from Afghanistan. But did US troops really need to hand the Taliban a propaganda victory on a platter by leaving the country’s largest airbase in the dead of night, without even holding a proper handover ceremony with their Afghan colleagues?

Many have attributed the rapid Taliban advances to the weaknesses and corruption of the government under president Ashraf Ghani. But there’s also an argument to be made that it was the US that severely undercut him when Donald Trump’s administration agreed in 2020 to talks with the Taliban that excluded Ghani’s administration – effectively confirming Taliban propaganda that politicians in Kabul were little more than Washington puppets. “The Afghan government was made weak, and also marginalised and excluded from the peace process,” said an editorial this week in the Kabul newspaper The Daily Afghanistan.

The US also suffered some major intelligence failures. It was apparently convinced by its own rhetoric that there was no “military solution” to the conflict in Afghanistan and that the Taliban would at some point have to forge a political settlement with the Kabul government. It should be obvious by now that the Taliban had been planning this offensive for months if not years, biding its time for the proper moment to impose itself on the country.

Those who have passionately advocated a withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan have argued that whether the US left now or in 10 years, the result would have been the same. But that’s not the point. The result may have been the same 10 or 15 years ago as well, and if keeping a force of a few thousand international troops in the country could have prevented the disaster that is now unfolding, perhaps it would be worth it, even for the sake of Afghan civilians.

Errant US airstrikes that kill civilians may garner headlines and rile up self-described “anti-imperialists”. But United Nations statistics have repeatedly shown that more than 90 per cent of Afghan civilians are killed by the Taliban, government forces or in the crossfire of battles between the two. The latest UN figures show that the numbers of civilians killed and injured have spiked as the Taliban lunges for power. As bad as the situation in Afghanistan has been with an American presence, it could get far worse without it.

As Taliban forces rally ahead of what could be their complete takeover of the country, their plans and vision for Afghanistan should take centre stage. Ahmad Wali Massoud, president of the Ahmad Shah Massoud Foundation, told me in an interview that the latest incarnation of the Taliban may be even more brutal and unscrupulous than the ragtag bands of pious students who subdued the squabbling mujahedin factions that were wreaking havoc on the country and established a dictatorship in the mid-1990s.

“The Taliban of the 1990s were very religious and discerning and would not embrace just anyone,” said Masoud. “But now they are extremely accepting of anyone who would fight alongside them in their quest for power. There are criminal elements. There are foreigners. They have already committed many crimes. They’re even worse than the Taliban of before.”

Back in the 1990s, the Taliban used the allure of law and order to win over international allies and local hearts and minds. But this time, it is the Taliban threatening Afghanistan’s law and order.