USA and Afghanistan: a war Biden will not get rid of

So far, President Biden has not presented a robust strategy for the time after the withdrawal of the US armed forces. It seems as if the longest war in the US will be with the country for a long time to come.

Four months can be a long time. In mid-April, US President Joe Biden made the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan concrete – and that now seems an eternity ago. “Instead of waging war against the Taliban again, we should focus on the challenges that lie ahead,” Biden said at the time.

Now it turns out that Afghanistan remains a challenge that lies ahead of Biden, precisely because of his troop withdrawal. That this withdrawal could be difficult does not appear in Biden’s speech at the time. And there does not seem to have been a reliable strategy for the time after that. Biden announced, for example, that the USA will continue to engage in diplomatic and humanitarian activities in Afghanistan.

Little remains of promises

The government will continue to be supported, as will the Afghan security forces, said Biden. And he promised women and girls in particular that they would continue to protect their rights, for example through development aid. Little is left of that. The government? There is no longer. The armed forces? Have disbanded. The US embassy? Has withdrawn. And international funds are frozen.

He expects the US to continue to generously support the Afghan people, said Ned Price, State Department spokesman late last week. There are ways of getting money into the country bypassing the Taliban. President Biden has just released $ 500 million for internally displaced people in Afghanistan.

What will happen to the fight against terrorism?

And what about the fight against terrorism when there aren’t any more in the country? “We will reorganize our counterterrorism capabilities in the region in order to prevent the return of the terrorist threat to the homeland from outside,” announced Biden in April, and even then his CIA director William Burns warned: The ability of the US Government gathering intelligence and responding to threats will decrease with the withdrawal of troops. That is a fact.

This should make it difficult for Biden to keep his promise on Thursday, namely to bring those responsible for the terrorist attack to account. The possibilities of launching drones from outside the country, for example, are limited.

Just a little retribution?

Maybe the US could get some retaliation by killing a few IS fighters, said Adam Kinzinger, Republican MP and ex-military himself. But: “If you look at our successful fight against IS in Iraq and Syria, we had people who were embedded in the local armed forces,” said Kinsinger at CNN.

This is exactly what will be missing in Afghanistan in the future. Biden wanted to end the US’s longest war to better deal with cyberattacks against China and Russia. But he is far from getting rid of this longest war, it seems.