Short-sighted American diplomacy leading to the worst.

By Simon d’Orlaq

We can only be taken aback by the way in which the United States decided to free itself from the Afghan quagmire in which with its allies they were bogged down. In twenty years the United States has spent more than one thousand two hundred and eighteen billion dollars in the purchase of only military equipment and the financing of the troops, to the great satisfaction of the American military industry.

No local development effort was made despite the fact that this ‘cemetery of empires’ that has been Afghanistan since the attempted Mughal conquest is the world’s largest reserve of lithium, an essential material for the twenty-first century and also of Lapis lazuli.

Bringing democracy by bombing people once again proves that it never works.

The most extraordinary way in which the Americans ended in a fishtail this story for which they are champions (withdrawal from Vietnam and Cambodia among others), is most strange. There was a meeting in Doha capital of Qatar on February 29, 2020 with Mike Pompeo secretary of state and his Taliban counterpart the Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar where it was agreed that the Americans would withdraw from Afghanistan, either in passing without referring to NATO allies, thank you for them for this accomplished fact.

This means that in a year and a half they have not been able to organize a retreat in good order. As a farewell gift worth over two hundred billion dollars they left an arsenal with advanced weaponry that made many countries envy.

In reality it should be understood that there is an agreement between the Americans and the Taliban and that the latter are enemies with Daesh the Islamic state; thus in the calculations of the State Department in Washington it was decided to make an accord with the Taliban but behind them with the Emir of Qatar who advised the Taliban that the best way to win was not to behave as the first government of the Taliban did in 1979/1990 under the banner of a Caliphat but rather to advance masked under for instance the Iranian model.

Thus by a reversal of alliance Whasington is persuaded to use the Taliban against Daesh. This diplomatic strategy is short-sighted and could well make matters worse to the dismay of Western nations.