An Indian expert evaluating the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan wrote that the US priority was after the Cold War in West Asia and now the priority is to face China, and the US has now chosen the option of leaving Afghanistan.
“Afghanistan is a landlocked country in South and Central Asia,” said Mumtaz Ahmad, an Indian expert. Its borders are the result of the “great game” of Central Asia. Britain’s interests in Afghanistan diminished with its withdrawal from the Indian subcontinent, but the Soviet Union expanded its interests to support Afghanistan’s transformation into a secular state and to control the Muslims of Central Asia.
The imposition of economic and social change on conservative society in the form of civil war was reflected. The defeat of the communist regime in Afghanistan led to direct Soviet military intervention in December 1979.
America’s great strategy for the Cold War was to contain communism and the Soviet Union. The Carter administration supported the Resistance Front inside Afghanistan through cooperation with Pakistan. By 1989, the Soviet army had withdrawn from Afghanistan, and we were seeing a decline in US interests in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The neoconservatives dominated the discourse of the grand strategy after the Cold War, emphasizing the promotion of democracy and interventionism in international affairs and peace through power. The United States entered the Persian Gulf region in defense of pro-Western secular monarchies, as well as in the larger strategy of controlling Iraq, Iran, and the Islamists. Until 1998, neoconservatives such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld spread information about regime change in Iraq.
Surprisingly, a balancing act against US hegemonic behavior was introduced by al-Qaeda, which had its roots in the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Aden, Mogadishu and the Khobar news towers rationalized the US military presence in West Asia, but bin Laden’s shift from Sudan to Afghanistan complicated US goals.
With the US focus on Afghanistan, Mullah Omar and the Taliban government came under scrutiny. In 2000, Bill Clinton told the new US President George W. Bush that he was the biggest threat from bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda’s attacks on US soil in 2001 drew the US into Afghanistan. The neoconservatives and others did not pursue goals beyond destroying terrorist networks. The Taliban have said they will not hand over bin Laden. On October 7, 2001, Bush launched an operation to eliminate the Taliban and capture or kill bin Laden. Following the Bonn Agreement in 2001 and the formation of a new government led by Hamid Karzai, much of the government came from the Northern Alliance, which represented non-Pashtun groups and was ideologically influenced by the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan and the Muslim Brotherhood. Bush sent Zalmai Khalilzad as special envoy to Afghanistan, and Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the olive branch to moderate Taliban elements during a visit to Islamabad. The neoconservatives were preparing for the occupation of Iraq. The Bush Doctrine was exactly what neoconservatives had been pursuing since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bush said in 2002 that the civilized world was threatened by an “axis of evil” consisting of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
Hence, the real US military interests were in the Persian Gulf region, and this explains why the US pursued diplomacy with the Taliban. The government in Afghanistan also had limitations in establishing a stable and democratic state because the Taliban is a combination of Pashtun political Islam and financialism.
Then the US priority shifted to the Indo-Pacific region. This development followed the Euro-Atlantic financial crisis in 2008. China has found opportunities to lead the global market by setting standards. Realizing the change in the balance of power, Barack Obama introduced the strategy of “turning to Asia” and, at the behest of the Obama administration, Qatar opened the Doha peace process in 2013. Donald Trump has normalized diplomatic contacts with the Taliban, declaring that ending the war in Afghanistan is a priority.
The United States has said China, Russia and Iran are revisionist powers, while the United States has limited capabilities to exercise power on the continent. Therefore, the changed policy of the great powers is not in favor of the US presence in Afghanistan. The United States has set September 2021 as the final date for ending two decades of military occupation in Afghanistan. The minimum guarantee required of the Taliban is that Afghanistan should not become a base for terrorist networks and attacks on the United States.
Hence, why the Taliban-US peace process is advancing can be explained by where the US strategic focus has been. The US strategic priority in the post-Cold War era was West Asia, not Afghanistan. In the post-American era, the United States faces China, which, unlike the Soviet Union, is not only a military power but also an economic and technological power. Trans-regional power always has the option of leaving the scene, and that is what the United States is doing. Afghanistan‘s challenge is twofold: One is the process of intra-Afghan peace, which represents the multi-ethnic harmony of Afghan society, and the second is the prevention of maneuvers and actions by regional powers that can bring back the specter of ethnic warfare.