[News] Afghanistan five years after Taliban’s return: The ruins of America’s longest and disastrous war

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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Afghanistan five years after Taliban’s return: The ruins of America’s
longest and disastrous war
Presstv
August 31, 2026
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*By Syed Zafar Mehdi*
[image: image.png]

*Five years ago, around this time, the Taliban overran Kabul, bringing to a
dramatic close America’s longest and most disastrous war after nearly two
decades.*

The images from those final days remain among the most enduring symbols of
a failed and costly military intervention – desperate Afghans crowding
Kabul airport, American aircraft evacuating personnel under chaotic
conditions, and Taliban fighters entering the capital as the puppet
government planted and funded by Washington collapsed almost overnight.

One photograph captured the moment with almost cinematic clarity. Major
General Chris Donahue, the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan,
appeared silhouetted against the darkness as he boarded a military aircraft
at Kabul airport on August 30, 2021.

It was the image of a dying Empire leaving in a humiliating manner and
reaffirmed what locals keep repeating – Afghanistan has been the graveyard
for the most powerful Empires in history.

The United States invaded and occupied Afghanistan nearly two decades
earlier with overwhelming military force and a declaration that it would
destroy al-Qaeda and the Taliban and bring Osama bin Laden, the alleged
mastermind of the September 11 attacks, to justice.

Yet after 20 years of brutal military occupation, trillions of dollars
spent and enormous human suffering resulting from the US-led coalition’s
horrendous war crimes, the occupiers have not achieved a political
settlement or eliminated the forces it had vowed to defeat.

The Taliban, armed largely with light weapons and relying on guerrilla
warfare, survived the full force of the most powerful military alliance on
earth. And Afghanistan once again demonstrated why it has earned the
ominous historical epithet: the “graveyard of empires.”

*A war that began with vengeance and ended in defeat*

The American invasion began on October 7, 2001, less than a month after the
September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people in the United States. Washington
presented the foolhardy military adventure as the opening battle in a
so-called global “war on terror.”

President George W. Bush vowed to destroy al-Qaeda and the Taliban that had
– in his words – provided sanctuary to the plotters of the 9/11 attacks.
The initial assault was devastating. Taliban positions collapsed rapidly,
and the group was driven from power within weeks.

That should have been the moment for Washington to reassess its mission and
pull out. Instead, it stayed because the US military-industrial complex
wanted to profit from the misery of Afghans. The American war machine
thrives on wars abroad.

What began as a so-called “counterterrorism” operation gradually evolved
into a far-reaching occupation project. Washington claimed that its mission
was to prevent terrorism, yet it created a governing structure that was a
recipe for disaster as the country became heavily dependent on US military,
financial, and political support.

The broader objective was to keep Afghanistan politically and strategically
subservient to Washington, preventing the country from developing into a
truly independent state.

Hamid Karzai, who was chosen as Afghanistan’s first president following the
overthrow of the Taliban, was initially portrayed as the blue-eyed boy of
the US-led coalition, a convenient Afghan partner who could lend legitimacy
to a project designed and directed from Washington.

In later years, as Karzai became increasingly aware of the limits placed on
Afghan sovereignty and the extent to which governments in Kabul were being
instrumentalized to serve broader US strategic interests, he grew
increasingly critical of his former patrons.

Washington claimed to be building a sovereign, democratic Afghanistan while
simultaneously exerting enormous influence over its political institutions,
security apparatus, and economic lifelines – even determining who would
govern the country and in what capacity.

*Botched exit, lost war*

The consequences were predictable. The February 29, 2020 agreement between
the Trump administration and the Taliban finally acknowledged what
successive US administrations had been reluctant to admit: there was no
military victory to be won. The agreement paved the way for a US
withdrawal, although the timetable was subsequently modified by President
Joe Biden.

On April 14, 2021, Biden announced that American forces would leave
Afghanistan. By the summer, Taliban fighters were advancing rapidly across
the country. Provincial capitals fell one after another, while Afghan
government forces, despite years of training and billions of dollars in
military assistance, frequently offered little resistance.

Ashraf Ghani, the US-backed president, fled the country with his family and
close aides. Government institutions collapsed. The Afghan security forces
disintegrated. And thousands of desperate Afghans rushed toward the airport
in Kabul to catch a flight out of the country.

The war that the US launched 20 years ago with overwhelming military force
ended with a frantic evacuation. The country was handed over to the same
Taliban the American war machine sought to eliminate.

America’s colossal defeat in Afghanistan cannot be explained merely by
Taliban battlefield tactics. The deeper failure was political. For two
decades, Washington claimed to build a state and a government that could
survive after the departure of its foreign sponsor.

The Afghan state was weakened by rampant corruption, political
factionalism, dependence on foreign assistance and the empowerment of local
warlords and strongmen. At the same time, US and NATO military operations
across the country repeatedly caused civilian casualties and generated
anger and resentment that the Taliban eventually exploited.

*Ledger of US war crimes*

Airstrikes and night raids became part of everyday life in many Afghan
communities. Civilian killings were reported after almost every US
operation across the country, including the 2008 bombing in western
Afghanistan, the 2009 fighting in Farah province and the 2015 US airstrike
on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz and the list goes on.

These incidents were not isolated public-relations disasters. Afghans
realized that foreign occupation forces were imposing their will on the
country with brutal savagery.

The United States also relied heavily on notorious local allies, including
warlords and militia commanders involved in serious human rights abuses.
Rather than eliminating the conditions that had helped fuel insurgency,
Washington empowered actors whose conduct deepened public distrust of the
Kabul government.

The Taliban did not need to convince every Afghan that its own system was
desirable. It only needed to convince enough people that the alternative
was intolerable. That was one of America’s fundamental strategic failures,
and consequently, the US-backed Ghani government in Kabul collapsed before
the Taliban even fired a shot.

The dramatic fall of Kabul also exposed the fragility of the government
Washington had spent years propping up. Ghani’s flight became one of the
most humiliating episodes of the collapse. He had repeatedly insisted that
he would not abandon his country and had publicly expressed confidence that
Afghan forces could withstand the Taliban advance.

But when Kabul finally stood on the brink, he left. Karzai later said
Ghani’s sudden and unannounced departure disrupted efforts to negotiate a
political settlement with the Taliban. According to accounts from Afghan
officials, discussions over a possible power-sharing arrangement were
underway as the Taliban approached the capital. Whatever the precise
circumstances, the political collapse was astonishingly swift. Nobody was
prepared for it.

The Afghan government did not merely lose a war, but it also lost the
confidence of the institutions that were supposed to sustain it. That
raises a fundamental question: What exactly had two decades of American
military occupation accomplished?

The United States had trained hundreds of thousands of Afghan security
personnel, spent vast sums on military equipment and poured billions into
reconstruction. Yet once the foreign military umbrella disappeared, the
structure collapsed with extraordinary speed.

The answer is uncomfortable, but it is also something you cannot avoid.
Washington had built an Afghan state that was heavily and purposely
dependent on Washington.

*The human cost of the “war on terror”*

The consequences of the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan that
lasted two decades extended far beyond the battlefield.

Afghan civilians endured two decades of US and NATO airstrikes, brutal
night raids, cold-blooded killings, displacement, poverty, militant
attacks, corruption and political instability. The Taliban also committed
grave abuses, and so did the Daesh terrorist group.

The hallucinatory “war on terror” produced a paradox that should forever
haunt American policymakers – terrorism was supposed to be eradicated, yet
two decades later al-Qaeda remained present and Daesh had established a
firm foothold in Afghanistan.

The August 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul airport, which killed more than
170 Afghans and 13 US service members, was a particularly grim illustration
of that spectacular failure.

America claimed to have spent 20 years fighting “terrorism” in Afghanistan,
only to leave behind a country where terrorist groups could stage a
devastating attack during the American evacuation. That’s how successful
the 20-year mission was.

The International Criminal Court’s efforts to investigate horrendous war
crimes committed by the US and its allies in Afghanistan also encountered
fierce US opposition. The larger lesson is difficult to escape: foreign
invaders can kill civilians, destroy infrastructure, overthrow governments
but it simply cannot create legitimate political institutions, reconcile
rival communities or manufacture public trust.

*Five years later, Afghanistan remains in crisis*

The Taliban’s dramatic return did not solve any of Afghanistan’s grinding
problems. Five years on, the war-ravaged country continues to face severe
economic and humanitarian challenges, mostly driven by US sanctions and
confiscation of the country’s assets.

Poverty remains widespread, unemployment is high and Afghanistan’s
financial system remains fragile. Millions of Afghans continue to depend on
humanitarian assistance.

The international community’s decision to freeze Afghan assets and impose
sanctions after the Taliban takeover only compounded the economic crisis.
Washington also froze billions of dollars in Afghan central-bank reserves,
sparking protests inside and outside Afghanistan.

Afghans who fled five years ago have since found themselves scattered
across the world, with many still living in limbo, waiting for asylum or
resettlement. The United States, meanwhile, abandoned thousands of Afghans
who had worked alongside its military over those two decades, failing to
uphold promises made to those who had assisted the US and its allies. Many
Afghans who had supported NATO-ISAF forces were left stranded in
neighboring countries, particularly Pakistan, with no clear path to safety
or resettlement.

Yet the post-2021 record also contains developments in some areas that
deserve acknowledgement. The Taliban have significantly reduced the
cultivation of opium poppies after imposing a nationwide ban on narcotics
production. The resulting decline in cultivation represents an important
development for international counter-narcotics efforts.

For Iran, which shares a long border with Afghanistan and has historically
been deeply affected by narcotics trafficking, the issue is particularly
significant. Tehran has repeatedly called for greater cooperation with
Kabul against drug trafficking.

The Taliban have also presided over a marked reduction in some forms of
corruption that characterized the previous political order, where US
agencies tolerated and encouraged corrupt practices as a means of
maintaining influence over local institutions.

However, none of this excuses the Taliban’s authoritarian rule or its harsh
restrictions on fundamental rights, particularly the denial of education to
women and girls. Their exclusion from schools and universities remains one
of the most deeply troubling aspects of Taliban rule and has drawn
widespread international condemnation.

The Taliban’s biggest political challenge remains international
recognition. It has been isolated because of its treatment of women and
girls, restrictions on civil liberties, and exclusionary political
policies. Whatever its achievements in improving security or curbing
narcotics, the denial of education to girls remains a major obstacle to
international normalization.

At the same time, international policy toward Kabul is changing slowly and
gradually. Russia’s recognition of the Taliban government represents a
significant diplomatic shift, while China, Qatar and the United Arab
Emirates have maintained engagement with Kabul.

This does not mean the Taliban have achieved broad international
legitimacy. It means the world is beginning to recognize a practical
reality: the Taliban are in power, and Afghanistan cannot be understood, or
stabilized, without dealing with them.

Isolation alone is unlikely to transform Afghanistan. Engagement, however,
should not mean surrendering demands for basic rights. The international
community must find a difficult middle ground between normalization without
conditions and isolation without results.

*The real lesson of Afghanistan*

The fifth anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power should not be
reduced either to a celebration by the Taliban or a condemnation of the
Afghan people. It should be an occasion to examine, honestly and
critically, the failure of foreign intervention in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was invaded in the first place because Washington believed that
overwhelming military force could solve a fundamentally political problem.
Twenty years later, the same Taliban movement was back in Kabul – and five
years on, it remains in power.

The United States possessed the world’s most advanced satellites, missiles,
drones, bombers, special forces, and intelligence networks, backed by the
military might of NATO allies. The Taliban possessed none of these. Yet
they outlasted the world’s most powerful military alliance.

Why? Because wars are not won by technological superiority alone. They are
won through political legitimacy, strategic clarity, and an understanding
of the society in which the war is being fought. Washington never developed
a convincing answer to the most basic question: what, exactly, was
Afghanistan supposed to become with the war of aggression?

Was it a counterterrorism mission? A war against the Taliban? A
democracy-building project? A campaign for women’s rights? An attempt to
contain regional rivals? Or was it, ultimately, an occupation project that
ended in spectacular strategic failure?

Twenty years of reckless war produced no satisfactory answer, and the
Taliban’s return to Kabul five years ago exposed the consequences of that
failure.

Afghanistan’s history is littered with the ruins of foreign ambitions –
from Alexander the Great and the British Empire to the Soviet Union and,
finally, the United States. The country has absorbed the heaviest of bombs,
sanctions, displacement, economic collapse, and political upheaval left in
the wake of successive foreign interventions.

That is why the central lesson of America’s Afghan debacle should not be
that Afghanistan is somehow uniquely impossible to govern. The lesson is
that even the world’s most powerful countries cannot indefinitely impose
political solutions on societies they neither understand nor genuinely
trust.

Americans left behind an economy struggling under the weight of war and
sanctions, millions of displaced Afghans and a political system that
collapsed dramatically.  The Taliban’s return therefore represented two
stories at once. For them, it was a victory over a foreign occupation. For
Afghanistan, it was another chapter in a much longer history of war. And
for the United States, it was a strategic reckoning – a failure of colossal
proportions.

Five years later, the most important question is not whether the Taliban
deserve praise or condemnation. They deserve scrutiny, like any ruling
establishment. The more important question is whether the world has learned
anything from the catastrophe the United States inflicted on Afghanistan
for 20 long years.
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