The chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan a year ago damaged the credibility of the Joe Biden government, which seeks to maintain its influence on the international chessboard as several open fronts accumulate: the fight against terrorism, rivalry with China and the war from Ukraine.
Biden had promised that Kabul would not be another Saigon, but the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, completed on August 31 in the face of the sudden and fleeting advance of the Taliban, It was very similar to the end of the Vietnam War..
Images of the hasty evacuation of diplomatic personnel and Afghans collaborating with the United States have gone around the world, as an attack on Kabul airport killed 13 American soldiers and more than 170 civilians.
After two decades of invasion of the Central Asian country, billions of dollars invested e over 2,400 American soldiers fallenAfghanistan is back to square one: the Taliban have returned to control the country.
“The chaos that has occurred reflects a total lack of planning. The United States believed that the Taliban did not have the strength to return to power and they were wrong,” Robert Crews, a professor at Stanford University and an expert on the history of Afghanistan, said. told EFE.
For Crews, the main mistake was thinking that the Afghan military was ready to fight the Taliban without the presence of the US military on the ground.
But he does not hold Biden responsible for the entire Executive, since he believes that it was the Doha Accords, signed in 2020 by the then administration Donald Trump with the Taliban, that laid the foundations for the withdrawal of the United States, that “paved the way” for the return of the fundamentalists.
The disaster in Afghanistan had a major impact on Biden’s popularitywhich collapsed and started bouncing until a few weeks ago.
But the White House has not criticized itself, and Biden himself defended last week in a statement that thanks to the abandonment of Afghanistan, the United States can fight terrorism “without endangering thousands of soldiers on the ground.”
Humanitarian aid and terrorism
Precisely, terrorism is the main obstacle today for the United States to deliver on its promise to help the people of Afghanistan, where nearly 23 million people are suffering from a severe food crisis, according to United Nations data.
And it is that the presence in Kabul of the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri, assassinated last July by the United States, it blew up the incipient talks between Washington and the Taliban to release Afghan funds.
In total, the United States holds frozen $ 9,000 million that the Afghan government sent abroad before the fall of Kabul, of which the White House intends to allocate 3,500 million for humanitarian aid and the rest for the families of the victims of the attacks. September 11.
In statements to the EFE, a spokesman for the State Department assured that the Taliban regime has “seriously violated” the Doha agreements “by giving refuge” to the leader of Al Qaeda, thus squandering any possibility of international recognition or relief of sanctions.
The same source explained that the United States is now exploring an alternative mechanism to unlock the funds so that “they benefit the Afghan people and not the Taliban”.
weakened government
For Juan Luis Manfredi, holder of the Prince of Asturias chair at Georgetown University in Washington, the consequences of the chaotic exit from Afghanistan went much further: Biden was left “in a weak and complicated position on the international scene”.
“The expectations of the Biden government’s leadership ability were high and, to be honest, it was the first major disappointment,” the professor told EFE.
Since then, the United States has remained “without any ability to influence” in a region of great strategic importance, he said, as Afghanistan borders Iran, China, Pakistan and the Central Asian republics.
That retreat has been interpreted by many as a Washington retreat on the global chessboardsomething that Russia wanted to exploit last February with the invasion of Ukraine.
However, the defenders of Biden’s strategy point out that, unlike what happened in Afghanistan, where they did not see the Taliban advance, the US intelligence services were able to anticipate weeks in advance that Russian President Vladimir Putin was preparing the occupation. of the Ukrainian territory.
And that through the continuous dispatch of weapons to the Ukrainian army it was possible to contain the war in the east of the country.
Manfredi does not consider the United States in a phase of withdrawal, but in a clear reorientation of its foreign policy to focus political and commercial rivalry with Chinaa country that the White House perceives as its main threat.
Proof of this is Biden’s latest trip to Asia and the recent visit by the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan, which sparked tensions with Beijing.
But the professor warns that if the United States is to remain a superpower, it must be able to attend “more than one front at a time”.
Source: EFE
CB
Eduard Ribas and Admetlla
Source: Clarin
