Kabul, the New Saigon


 

Now that the babysitters are leaving, the Afghan protagonists can resume their unfinished business, their civil war, the Taliban versus bloody everybody else. Journalists are drawing comparisons between Kabul 2021 and Saigon 1975.

The New York Times' Adam Nossitor writes that the capital, Kabul, is slipping into shock. 

With his military crumbling, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan fired a crucial part of his command structure and brought in a new one. He created a nebulous “supreme state council,” announced months ago, that has hardly met. And as districts fall to the Taliban across the country, he has installed a giant picture of himself outside the airport’s domestic terminal.

“There’s no hope for the future,” said Zubair Ahmad, 23, who runs a grocery store on one of the Khair Khana neighborhood’s main boulevards. “Afghans are leaving the country. I don’t know whether I am going to be safe 10 minutes from now.”

Intelligence estimates for the government’s collapse and a Taliban takeover have ranged from six months to two years. Whenever it comes, the outlook is likely to be grim for Mr. Ghani and his circle, as recent Afghan history demonstrates. Several of his predecessors in the country’s top job have met violent ends.

It appears the Taliban will be back in power, probably sooner rather than later. But that doesn't mean that their return will bring peace to this troubled land. Remember that, up to the al Qaeda attacks of 9/11, the Taliban and their Northern Alliance adversaries had fought themselves to a bloody standstill. It wasn't a draw. It was mutual exhaustion. Within months, the CIA, aided by American heavy bombers, had the Taliban on the run to the tribal territories in neighbouring Pakistan, Osama bin Laden and crew in hiding in the caves of Tora Bora.

With the government in disarray, the old militias are resurfacing.

Citizen militias are on the rise again in Afghanistan, with various ethnic and regional factions stirring up a volunteer effort to defend themselves against the Taliban’s advance.

On one level, the militia movement could inspire some hope that a large-scale collapse will not be immediate. But for many Afghans, the mustering is so evocative of the country’s devastating civil-war era that many fear it is a harbinger of greater chaos to come, with the war of insurgency fracturing into a multi-sided conflict with no central command against the Taliban.

Will the unfinished civil war resume? Will Afghanistan relapse into tribalism and warlordism? Maybe. Will the United States find itself dragged back in? We can only hope not.

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