“This hasn’t been a 20-year war. It was one-year war fought 20 times,” said an exasperated US military top official of the ad-hoc and inconsistent policies, fraught with corruption and wrought in human rights abuse, played out in Afghanistan, ever since the President Bush administration US invaded the country two decades ago.
While it’s not the first time US played the poor-kid-regretting-some-shenanigans to downplay the unimaginable damage to an entire state it ravaged, e.g. Vietnam, this time it was actually to end the menace that the USA once birthed to fight for it against its cold war opponent the Soviets.
“The people we are fighting today, we funded 20 years ago… in our struggle against the Soviet Union,” said Hillary Clinton on multiple occasions.
But Afghanistan’s struggle to have an independent, self sufficient amd most importantly peaceful government goes way back.
In 1979 when the Soviets attacked the country, its warlords, tribes and group insurgencies were backed by Americans.
USA’s plan worked out, even if temporarily and after nine years of fierce and sporadic resistance and guerilla warfare, the Soviets were indeed forced to pack up.
But once its end was met, the USA abandoned this regional affair in a more inconsiderate way than one would a fling.
What followed in the war torn Afghanistan was years of civil war and bloodshed until the Mujahideen groups allied together to emerge as a uniform force now known as the Taliban.
This explainer attempts to draw a nutshell description of what has happened on August 15 with total Taliban takeover and deceleration of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, what has the posterity to see, and what was the crucible of what we see today.
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