Charles Lister on what Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban means for the future of al-Qaeda.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
The Cipher Brief: Did you ever envision that the U.S. would pull out so quickly or completely leaving the Afghan military on its own without U.S. air support?
General Votel: I did not anticipate this during my time – but once the President sets a hard departure date – then a fast withdrawal is inevitable. No Commander wants to accept unnecessary risk with troops on the ground when you are up against a clearly articulated departure date.
“You’re all going to die,” the diminutive, senior U.S. intelligence official observed in matter-of-fact fashion to her stunned Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) hosts. Her rather blunt appraisal was uncharacteristic of the engagement to which the senior Pakistani officials had grown accustomed and cut to the chase: the consequences of decades of Pakistan’s support to the Taliban, violent Kashmiri liberation groups, radical madrassas, and extremist local political groups were coming home to roost.
As Kabul falls to the Taliban, it’s safe to say that this is without a doubt the most significant day for al-Qaeda since 9/11. After two decades of relentless counterterrorism pressure from the United States and allies, al-Qaeda’s central leadership was in dire straits just weeks ago.
Weeks before the official U.S. military withdrawal, Afghanistan is unraveling rapidly as the Taliban continue their swift military advance. They now control more than two-thirds of the country and half of the provincial capitals. With the government’s hold on Kabul in doubt, the Biden administration has dispatched troops to evacuate U.S. citizens from the country. We asked experts and scholars from across MEI to weigh in with their thoughts on the situation and what it means for the country, the wider region, and key international players.
The Afghan government appears to be in a state of precipitous collapse. At least a dozen provincial capitals have fallen to the Taliban in a week. The Taliban now control around 66% of the country.
The debate about whether Afghanistan was worth thousands of U.S. lives and a trillion U.S. taxpayer dollars should have occurred before those lives were lost and the money was spent. The decision to pull out our remaining 2,500 troops was made after all of that was done. That minimal number of troops preserved everything we fought for in the last two decades. We had significantly reduced the risk to our forces and the expense to the U.S. taxpayer.
It has been a year since the August 2020 announcement of the Abraham Accords, which normalized diplomatic relations between the UAE and Israel. The accords were later signed at a White House ceremony attended by President Donald Trump that September. In less than a year the UAE and Israel swiftly exchanged ambassadors. This was the highlight of the first year of normalizing relations between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. During their first year the accords also successfully passed the unexpected, brutal test of the 11-day military escalation between Israel and Hamas that began in late May 2021.
The expiration of Israel’s 2003 citizenship law early last month has finally ended the suffering of roughly 30,000 Palestinian families and paved the way for their reunification. Despite the efforts of the Zionist political parties to renew the law, the abstention from voting of the two Arab Palestinian Knesset members from the United Arab List — which, for the first time, is represented in Israel’s new coalition government — blocked the majority needed to extend the long-standing “temporary” law, which subsequently expired on July 6. While this is welcome news for many Palestinian families, the defeat of this notorious law is by no means a panacea. Until there is real change in Israel, Palestinians, both those who are citizens of Israel as well as those in the occupied territories, will continue to face legal obstacles when it comes to obtaining their basic rights.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
As the United States exits from Afghanistan, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it is important to reflect on the broader and longer-term reverberations of that withdrawal. In examining the withdrawal, peace process, and the recent dynamic of militia building and Taliban control, it’s becoming clear that a different transnational threat to U.S. interests is emerging.
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is not yet complete, but Afghanistan’s neighbors are already contending with its fallout as they face the immediate spillover of the conflict into their respective territories. The insurgency has reached the borders of all of Afghanistan’s neighbors, who are choosing to both engage the Taliban while also bolstering defensive and deterrent measures to contain the insurgency. While the net loser in all this is the Afghan state, the Taliban may be overplaying their hand. Should they rule most of Afghanistan, they could end up governing an isolated country deprived of the foreign aid it needs to function.
There is a new and little noticed geostrategic alliance on the rise. India, Israel, and the UAE have had surface-level, transactional relations for a long time. However, last year’s normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states — chief among them, the UAE — along with Turkey’s bid to return as the leader of a Muslim order and the growing distance between the UAE and Pakistan have created an unlikely and unprecedented “Indo-Abrahamic“ transregional order. This emerging multilateral pact may fill the gap the United States is leaving in the Middle East and has the potential to transform the region’s geopolitics and geoeconomics.