Joe Biden calls time on America’s longest-ever war
Apr 13th 2021THE FIRST American forces to enter Afghanistan in 2001 arrived on September 26th, when a CIA team dropped into the Panjshir Valley in the north. At the peak of the war a decade later, America had more than 100,000 troops battling the Taliban.Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.Another decade on, all of them will be gone and the longest war in American history will be over—for the Americans, at least. On April 14th President Joe Biden announced that every American soldier would leave by September 11th, the 20th anniversary of the attacks that prompted America to invade in the first place.Mr Biden had inherited a peace deal from his predecessor. In February 2020 Donald Trump’s administration had signed an agreement with the Taliban in which America committed to reducing forces and ultimately withdrawing from the country entirely by May 1st 2021. In exchange, the Taliban promised to break with al-Qaeda and discuss a political settlement with the Afghan government.There is little sign that the Taliban has fulfilled either of its promises. In January America’s Treasury department noted that al-Qaeda members remained “embedded with the Taliban”, and on April 12th the group said it would not attend a forthcoming meeting in Turkey that would have discussed, among other things, the formation of an interim government.Mr Biden’s military advisers had sought to dissuade him from leaving, warning that the Taliban would seize the country and set back women’s rights by decades. Yet in the end Mr Biden, who as vice-president had lobbied against Barack Obama’s surge of forces to Afghanistan in 2009-10, decided that the country was no longer a vital interest. Al-Qaeda is a shadow of its former self and the rise of China demands American resources in the Pacific.Officially, America has 2,500 troops remaining in Afghanistan, supplemented with several thousand private contractors. Mr Biden’s hope may be that by announcing a clear end date, he can dissuade the Taliban from attacking American forces after May. Yet the certainty of America’s departure also removes any incentive for the Taliban to make concessions to supporters of the current Afghan state. Indeed, a Taliban spokesman warned that “problems will certainly be compounded” if American troops stay on after May 1st.Once American soldiers and warplanes leave, the Taliban will be able to press its advantage. That does not mean the state will collapse at once, but it will struggle to stave off the insurgents’ advances. The Taliban has been steadily expanding its presence in and around cities, controlling the roads to Kabul and Kandahar. John Sopko, America’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, has said that the Afghan army is “a disaster”.Mr Biden’s move will also force out America’s European allies. Approximately 7,000 troops from other countries are deployed to Afghanistan as part of a NATO-led coalition that trains Afghan forces. “Recognising that there is no military solution”, as a statement put it, they will leave, too.America’s hope is that, even without troops on the ground, it can continue to keep al-Qaeda and Islamic State (which has a modest presence in the east of the country) in check through long-distance counter-terrorism methods, such as drones and special forces. What is less clear is where those forces would be based.America may seek to place them in Central Asia or Pakistan. “But the politics of this type of basing remains enormously complicated and the administration hasn’t figured out a workable arrangement,” says Asfandyar Mir of Stanford University. “Until that happens, al-Qaeda is going to gain.”American officials say they will continue to send money to Kabul, mindful of the lessons of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, when the Soviet-backed government clung onto power in 1989—only to collapse three years later when funding was withdrawn.Yet America’s departure will create a power vacuum that Pakistan, a longtime supporter of the Taliban, and India, a fervent opponent, will seek to fill, along with China, Iran and Russia. A war that began in 1979, with the Soviet invasion, will take another grim form.■See also: We are tracking the Biden administration’s progress in its first 100 daysDig deeperJoe Biden is wrong to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan (Apr 2021)Joe Biden offers unconvincing reasons for ending America’s longest war (Apr 2021)This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “The end of forever”