Afghanistan (Washington Insider Magazine) -The twenty-year invasion of Afghanistan effectively ended yesterday as the last US troops pulled out of Kabul.
The airport in the capital was the last urban area free from Taliban rule and the Islamist group was quick to take charge of the area. For weeks the atmosphere in the airport grew increasingly chaotic as residents of Kabul, which is a particularly anti-Taliban part of the country, pushed to get on one of the last few flights out of the country before the change of power was completed.
Distressing images of people attempting to cling to the outside of planes and falling from the sky have circulated widely in the West.
President Biden has come under heavy criticism for the chaotic withdrawal. European allies have been largely taken aback by the speed of the move which did not allow enough organization to ensure all of their citizens could leave safely. The lack of communication and cooperation with which Biden carried this out has led to accusations of similarity to Trump’s policy of America First. Biden’s speech defending the withdrawal said the primary focus was “to save American lives”. He defended the move resolutely.
The EU now turns its attention to the inevitable exodus from Afghanistan as many of the population flee the poverty brought by the invasion and the extreme rule the Taliban will imminently impose. Desperate to avoid a repeat of the 2015 refugee crisis, which helped fuel a wave of hard-right populism in Europe, talks have been ongoing over a fund for Afghanistan’s neighbors to help them take on the coming refugees. Numbers have hovered around the $600million mark and Iran is even being considered as a potential recipient if they were to cooperate in taking in refugees. This may cause ever more tension with Washington, which has spearheaded sanctions and economic warfare against Iran to varying degrees of success for decades.
This course of action is not new for the EU or refugee populations. Most of the world’s refugees reside in countries surrounding conflict, such as Lebanon and Jordan who have the world’s proportionally largest refugee populations. As of 2016, Turkey is paid by the EU to prevent large numbers of refugees from moving to Europe and house them itself.
Joe Biden will likely continue to insist that the invasion was not a failure, but the people of Afghanistan and the surrounding countries will have further consequences to deal with yet.
