The U.S. War in Afghanistan | How Does The United States View The Withdrawal Of Its Forces From Afghanistan?

How Does The United States View The Withdrawal Of Its Forces From Afghanistan?

The United States is withdrawing its last troops from Afghanistan, and President Biden says the US military mission in Afghanistan will end on August 31, ending the longest war in US history.

US troops patrol near a checkpoint in Wardak. File photo

The war, which began in 2001, has killed 2,448 Americans so far. Experts at Brown University in the United States say the war has so far claimed more than 241,000 lives in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including more than 71,000 civilians.

The United States has spent more than 2 trillion Dollar on eradicating terrorism from the region and moving Afghanistan toward Western-style democracy, but recent opinion polls show that most of President Biden's Support the decision to leave Afghanistan.

Michael O'Hanlon, a senior analyst at the Brookings Institution, an American think tank, says the American people have never thought about war for a long time and it is often mentioned in presidential elections.

October 8 this year marks the 20th anniversary of the incident, when newspapers carried headlines that the United States had targeted terrorist hideouts outside the country with airstrikes that killed four people in the United States on September 11. After the hijacking, two of them crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, one targeted the Pentagon, and the fourth crashed near Pennsylvania. A total of 2,996 people were killed in these incidents.

Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger planes and two of them collided with both towers of the World Trade Center. File photo

At the time, it was easy to imagine that the US campaign would usher in a democratic era with the overthrow of an oppressive government in Afghanistan that would be an alternative to terrorism around the world.

In November of that year, the Taliban were expelled one by one from the cities under their control, and Taliban leader Mullah Omar went into hiding with his comrades after losing his last stronghold, Kandahar. Hamid Karzai then set up a US-backed interim government in Kabul, which was seen as the beginning of a new dawn.

But 20 years later, we have a different picture of Afghanistan today, and the expectations that were dreamed up 20 years ago have not been met.

Throughout this period, democratic governments in Kabul have faced bombings and suicide attacks, and US troops pursuing the terrorist group al-Qaeda have had to focus their energies on countering terrorism in the country.

Smoke rises after a bomb blast in Kabul. File photo

As time went on, the scattered Taliban reunited and began to increase their influence in different parts of Afghanistan.

In the early days of the Afghan war, the United States set up a prison at Guantanamo Bay for dangerous terrorists captured in Afghanistan, where many people were brought outside the United States for trial. There are still 40 detainees at Guantanamo. Then a prison was built in Bagram near Kabul. Stories of inhumane treatment of the prisons later circulated in the media, but the US government denied the allegations.

President George W. Bush, meanwhile, has accused Iraq of developing weapons of mass destruction and, with the help of his allies, has waged a war against it, leaving Afghanistan in the lurch.

Analyst Michael O'Hanlon says that in the winter of 2001, the United States had the full support of its people to punish the Taliban, but the Iraq war diverted that attention. Debates erupted over the US military presence, which backed the idea that it was the US's responsibility to maintain peace and stability in the region.

During the 20-year period, four different US presidents, including George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and current President Joe Biden, provided the democratically elected Afghan government with all the resources it needed to deal with the insurgency. ۔

Democrat President Barack Obama has significantly increased the number of US troops and contractors in Afghanistan during his first term since the fall of Republican President Bush in 2009, bringing the total to more than 100,000 at one point. Was gone Later, it was gradually reduced, which reduced the number to about 10,000.

Obama's successor, President Trump, initially said he would withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan, but later withdrew because of fears that it would create a vacuum in Afghanistan. In April this year, Democratic President Biden announced that he would repatriate all US troops from Afghanistan on September 11, 2021, before the 20th anniversary of the war.

"We cannot continue to extend the duration or number of our military presence in Afghanistan in the hope of creating favorable conditions for withdrawal," he said. "I am the fourth US president to have US troops in Afghanistan, including two Republicans and two Democrats," he said. I will not hand over this responsibility to the fifth American president.