National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has weighed in on the situation in Afghanistan, in a digital newsletter addressed to subscribers.
He emphasised that the war in Afghanistan, launched nearly 20 years ago in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, was “one of the great cruelties of my generation”.
Now, it had unexpectedly reached its “tragic conclusion”, wrote Snowden on Substack online platform, underscoring that it left him with a “profound sense of regret at the error of it all”.
After President Joe Biden announced his decision to end US military presence in Afghanistan on 14 April, amid the withdrawal, the Taliban* Islamic group embarked upon a swift offensive, reclaiming territory from government forces, entering the capital, Kabul, and assuming power in the country on August 15.
Taliban fighters sit on a vehicle along the street in Jalalabad province on August 15, 2021.
© AFP 2023 / -
Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled the war-torn country, while Taliban claimed it would support an inclusive new government and respect the religious beliefs and spiritual values of all Afghans.
‘Politicized Agony of 9/11’
The former Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency contractor wrote that the war in Afghanistan was not justifiable, and “forever will be wrong”. Accordingly, he applauded the decision to withdraw forces from the South Asian nation.
Reflecting on the start of the US military campaign, Snowden said his righteousness was manipulated at the time, when his government told him, via media, that Afghanistan's ruling Taliban were harbouring al-Qaeda terrorist group, and that the Taliban and al-Qaeda* hated America for its freedoms. According to him, when George W. Bush, then in his first year of US presidency, stated that, “You are either with us or you are against us in the fight against terror,” he never defined who, exactly, was the enemy.
It is only much later that Snowden, when working for the CIA and later the NSA, was able to “apprehend the nature of our violence in Afghanistan”.
“For all the talk of democratising Afghanistan, it was never clear that it was Afghanistan we were fighting. Weren't we fighting the Taliban? Or Al-Qaeda? And weren't they backed by Pakistan? And what about Saudi Arabia?” wrote the whistleblower.
Snowden, who fled the US and ended up in Russia in 2013 after blowing the whistle on the vast extent of US and UK illegal mass surveillance programmes, underscored that, “Americans were fighting ourselves, or our own governance”. The events of 9/11 had been politicised, according to Snowden.
The NSA whistleblower slammed the attempt by US President Joe Biden to defend the “honour” of the Afghanistan war and claims that Osama bin Laden had been brought to justice as “offensive”.
“He could have been brought to justice, but we shot him instead. He wasn't even in Afghanistan,” wrote Snowden.
In a reference to the Vietnam War, Edward Snowden suggested that America will again fail to learn from the mistakes from this “tragic sequel”.
“We will just sit by as the people of Afghanistan—many of whom were as deluded by American promises as Americans themselves—cling to hopes and cling to planes and fall, lost to the desert of theocratic rule. Some will say, they didn't fight! They get what they deserve! To which I say, “And what do we deserve?”
Looking ahead at the future the fractious country of Afghanistan faces, “unable to form an inclusive whole; unable to wade beyond shallow differences in sect and identity”, the whistleblower ended on a note of warning, writing:
“Today, the country this describes is Afghanistan. Tomorrow, the country this describes might be my own. “
Edward Snowden initiated a major international scandal after he leaked classified US and UK intelligence information about extensive surveillance programmes to the newspapers The Washington Post and The Guardian.
A picture of former US NSA Contractor Edward Snowden posted on Twitter
© Photo : Twitter / @valtaprosessi
Forced to leave the United States for Hong Kong and then Moscow, Snowden was later granted a three-year Russian residency, which was made permanent in 2020.
*The Taliban, al-Qaeda are terrorist groups outlawed in Russia and many other countries