While it is impossible to know how the Afghanistan withdrawal would have gone during a Trump administration, there is no doubt that Biden made decisions out of arrogance and with a focus on optics over substance, leading to a humiliating defeat for America and its allies. It is fair to question if the Trump plan was feasible, but to throw it away and then blame it for your failures, as the Biden administration is doing, does not hold water. It defies logic to blame a plan you didn’t use.
Trump’s deal with the Taliban had conditions. It required that the Taliban stop attacking US forces. They did. It required that it start negotiations with the US-baked Afghan government, and they did engage in on-and-off talks. It also, crucially, required that they do not allow terrorist groups inside of Afghanistan, specifically mentioning Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
In exchange, the United States would remove all of its forces by May 2021, would review and potentially lift US sanctions on members of the Taliban and recommend that the UN’s sanctions of the Taliban be reviewed and potentially removed.
Trump’s claim that he would have left troops in Bagram base is likely false, that is not in the text of the agreement. However, it would have allowed 8,600 troops to stay in the country until talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban started.
While the document stressed that the US still does not recognize the Taliban as a state, it notes that following the US withdrawal, the US would “seek economic cooperation for reconstruction with the new-post settlement Afghan Islamic government” that was to be birthed through the talks with the Afghan government.
“All of that went away, and yet those conditions were violated tremendously. And, Biden undertook the extraction that he did and in the way that he did,” argued former US State Department foreign policy analyst Michael Maloof on Sputnik’s Political Misfits. “It's something that's not really new because Biden, even when he was vice president, during the Obama administration, wanted to get out of Afghanistan. He didn’t care how… this [was a] failure of policy.”
The plan would never come to fruition. As early as January, weeks after taking office, Biden was already signaling that he may keep troops past the May 1 deadline. Days later, the Taliban responded, moving its commanders and soldiers back into combat positions.
“Senior commanders and governors have been directed to return to their positions and attend special sessions and discussions to chalk out a future strategy,” a Taliban regional commander told US media at the time.
Media reports framed it as a decision Biden was making on his own, consulting with his advisers but not the government of Afghanistan and certainly not the Taliban. In April, Biden announced his decision: US Troops would instead begin their final withdrawal from Afghanistan, with the final troops leaving on the symbolically significant date of September 11.
The Taliban said publicly that the plan was unacceptable to them, and gave the US two weeks from the May 1 deadline to pull out completely. There are no reports of the Biden administration engaging in direct talks with the Taliban about extending the deal, by all appearances, it seems to have been a unilateral decision by the Biden administration. The first reports of direct negotiations between Biden officials and the Taliban came on August 10, just five days before the group took over the Presidential Palace in Kabul. The Taliban would end up kicking the US out on August 30, as refugees hung to the wings of the final plane leaving Kabul.
Biden also imposed new restrictions on the Afghan government, requiring that any deal they made with the Taliban protect the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. A noble cause to be sure, but not one that the Afghan government, which was already losing its fight against the Taliban, was in a position to demand.
At every turn, Biden could have argued that the Taliban violated the Trump agreement and sent more troops in, even if they were just there to secure the area as allies and equipment were moved out and not to prop up the failing Afghan government. The Taliban no longer saw itself constrained by the Trump deal –by May they had resumed their attacks on US soldiers. Biden clearly didn’t see himself constrained by it because he’s the one who broke it, yet it is Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris who are pointing to the deal as the reason for their failure.
“We are in the midst with this government today of a very Orwellian experience, of ‘1984,’” Maloof said. “What I'm referring to specifically is double speak, doublethink. Don't believe what you see. Don't believe what you hear. Believe us.”
Today, the Taliban is in complete control of Afghanistan. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said that the repressive conditions for women and girls in Afghanistan are “unparalleled in today's world.” The US has no leverage over who the Taliban does –or doesn’t– allow in its country, and they are better armed than they have ever been, having seized valuable equipment left behind, estimated to be worth more than $7 billion. Last month the Taliban held a parade showing off abandoned US and Soviet-era equipment, including US helicopters, surface-to-air missiles, and armored personnel carriers.
“We're living off a principle that while they don't adhere to our democratic notion, we're not going to have anything to do with them. Well, that doesn't allow us to at least have… some influence over time. And, when we at least have a presence, we can affect some change,” explained Maloof. “The Chinese and Russians have somehow figured out how to deal with them and still want to adhere to certain principles, and I think that over time, they’ll prevail with some of their views on policy. But we’re not there because we don’t want to be players. We just picked up our marbles and went home.”
Trump and Harris will have the opportunity to lay out their arguments on who screwed up Afghanistan on Tuesday, when the two will hold their first debate ahead of November's presidential elections.