Afghan civilians evacuate from Kabul Airport under the supervision of US forces. (Taylor Crul, USAF, Getty Images).
This article is the third and final installment of a Wire series on the history of Afghanistan in light of Taliban’s takeover of the country in August, 2021. You can read the first installment here and the second installment here.
THEY SAY PEACE WHEN THERE IS NO PEACE
By the end of 2017, the American public was fatigued with the War in Afghanistan. The bulk of the US Coalition’s effort eradicate the ISIS Caliphate in Iraq and Syria was complete, and populist President Donald Trump was vowing to bring an end to “endless wars” abroad.
Meanwhile, despite a larger deployment of US forces to support the Afghan military, the Taliban had managed to reestablish a presence across most of the nation. A series of suicide bombings in major cities rocked the country, including a powerful, vehicle-borne detonation in the heart of Kabul’s government district during rush hour on January 27, 2018, killing over 100 people. Although the bombings gained no tactical advantages for the Taliban, they created a psychological advantage against an urban Afghan populace which lived in constant fear of the militant group’s terrorism. Vocal support grew for a negotiated peace.
In February, 2018, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani proposed unconditional peace talks with the Taliban, offering political legitimacy and prisoner releases. The Taliban refused to recognize the Afghan government, but signaled a willingness to negotiate directly with the United States. In July, the militant group initiated a new offensive in Northern Afghanistan, followed by another offensive in August that temporarily took Ghazni, Afghanistan’s sixth-largest city. Although the Ghazni was soon restored to government control, the offensives nonetheless reinforced the impression that the Taliban could not be fully defeated, and that a negotiated peace was the only viable way to end the war. Back-channel negotiations between the United States and the Taliban began in the second half of 2018.
By early 2019, the outcome of the Afghan War was uncertain. A third of the country’s provinces were contested by the Taliban, and hundreds of Afghan troops were dying every month. Formal negotiations began in February between the United States and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. The talks produced a “breakthrough" in September; the outline of a peace agreement “in principle” to end the 17 year conflict. In exchange for Taliban commitments to a ceasefire, direct negotiations with the Afghan government, and the exclusion of foreign terrorist organizations from Afghanistan, US forces would withdraw from the country incrementally over a period of 14 months. The negotiations were paused by President Trump in September after a US soldier was killed in a Taliban attack, but had resumed by the beginning of 2020, with a formal agreement signed in February. The accord was highly controversial, with some pundits and experts predicting that the Taliban would use it as a smokescreen in its continuing fight against the Afghan government, while others maintained that it was the only way to end the war.
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No sooner had the political wing of the Taliban signed the agreement in Doha than its militant wing launched a new offensive in the restive Helmand province. Coalition forces were muted in their retaliation, while commanders attempted to maintain the efforts of diplomats in Doha. It was a losing effort, as the Taliban conducted over 4,000 attacks in March and April of 2020, killing over 900 Afghan security personnel, while Taliban negotiators continued the narrative of good-faith negotiations in Doha. The violence only continued to escalate through the summer, as the Taliban sensed an advantage. June, 2020 was the bloodiest month of the entire war until that time, with almost 300 Afghan soldiers killed and over 500 wounded. Taliban talks with the government in Kabul for prisoner releases stalled, giving the militants a pretext to step up their pace of attack.
While the Taliban continued their push against the Afghan government, the branch of the Islamic State in Afghanistan known as ISIS-K (ISIS Khorasan) took advantage of rising instability in 2020 to wage their ruthless brand of jihad. Attacks against Shi’a Muslims and Sikhs, considered infidels by the radicals, were eerily reminiscent of ISIS attacks against Shiites and Yazidis in Iraq and Syria. Horrific suicide bombings which targeted civilians in government-held areas were also used by the group as a way of striking fear and grabbing headlines, including one in May which killed 16 new mothers and infants in the maternity ward of a Kabul hospital. Both the US Coalition and the Taliban opposed ISIS, creating a complex, three-way war for control of Afghanistan. Hundreds of ISIS-K fighters were killed or captured and detained along with al-Qaeda militants in heavily guarded facilities near Kabul.
Despite the rise in violence, the US and Afghan governments remained eager to implement a peace deal with the Taliban. After a series of large prisoner swaps, direct negotiations between the Taliban and Ghani administration finally began in September, 2020, and US troop withdrawals continued as scheduled. As US President Trump left office in January, 2021, it appeared that a rapprochement between the Afghan government and the Taliban might succeed. The incoming administration of President Joe Biden continued the pace of withdrawal, resetting its end date to August 31, 2021. But all hopes for a peaceful, stable Afghanistan were short-lived.
“ThE WORST POSSIBLE OUTCOME”
On May 1, 2021, four months before the scheduled departure of all remaining US troops, the Taliban launched a massive, multi-pronged offensive against the Afghan military. Sensing the Taliban initiative and feeling abandoned by Coalition forces, entire brigades of the Afghan army surrendered with little or no resistance, although opposition was more fierce in urban areas. Still, the momentum had clearly swing towards the Islamist militia, who tripled the number of Afghan districts under their direct control during the summer. By August, the Taliban offensive seemed unstoppable. The first provincial capital fell on August 6, followed by the major cities of Ghanzi and Herat on August 12, Kandahar on the 13th, Mazar-i-Sharif on the 14th and Jalalabad on the 15th. High-security prisons around Kabul were raided by the Taliban and thousands of prisoners were released, including thousands of al-Qaeda and ISIS-K detainees.
By mid-day on August 15th, the Afghan capital of Kabul was surrounded by the Taliban and all supply routes were cut off. President Ghani fled, and foreign embassies were evacuated. The militants entered the city with no resistance, and by the end of the day, they were sitting at Ghani’s desk in the Presidential Palace, taking pictures. The Afghan government had collapsed, and the war had come to a shocking and painful end much sooner than predicted by analysts and experts. Tens of thousands of Afghans fled from the larger, urban areas into the countryside, including thousands who had served in the Afghan military or who had worked for the Afghan government and Coalition, in fear for their lives. The aftermath of the Taliban’s sudden victory was described by one US Senator as “the worst possible outcome.”
By August 16, the US footprint in Afghanistan was reduced to a perimeter around Kabul International Airport, where a massive airlift operation continued for another two weeks Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians clamored at the airport gates in an attempt to evacuate, including US-Afghan dual citizens, US residents, and special VISA holders. Desperate scenes of Afghan mothers lifting their young children over the wall of the airport complex riveted the international press and galvanized the American public. An ISIS-K suicide bombing outside the airport gate on August 26 claimed the lives of 13 US service members and 170 Afghan civilians. It was the first of many indications that ISIS-K was resurgent, coming less than 2 weeks after prison releases swelled their ranks to an estimated 5,000 or more. Despite a near 24-hour airlift operation that reportedly evacuated over 100,000 people to different places in the Middle East, Europe and the United States, many more were left behind. On August 30, 2021, the last US military transport plane took off from Kabul, carrying the last contingent of US troops.
After the US evacuation, the Taliban wasted no time in assuming the apparatus of state, forming a new parliament and filling government ministries, while negotiating alliances with nations like China, Turkey, and Iran. Ironically, the militant group’s rivalry with ISIS-K developed into a full-blown insurgency in the months following the end of the war. Jihadists loyal to the Caliphate began attacking Taliban positions in response to the Taliban’s détente with China, which systematically persecutes its Muslim Uyghur minority. At the time of this article’s publication, analysts in the US intelligence community have warned political leaders that ISIS-K is recruiting and training in Eastern Afghanistan with impunity, and that the terrorist group could be in a position to conduct international strikes within a year.
Afghanistan Rising
The nation of Afghanistan is facing an unprecedented crisis, as the ravages of war, combined with the isolation of the Taliban by the international community, has led to major economic contraction inside the country. Over 90% of Afghans could soon fall below the poverty line, and an impending food shortage is threatening millions with famine, leading some Afghan parents to sell one or more of their children in order to feed their families. In addition to economic and food crises, the Taliban have exploited their victory by taking unmarried girls as young as 12 as war brides. Even married women are targeted for sexual slavery, while their husbands are murdered. Female Afghans have once again been banished from the workplace and schools.
Besides the litany of dire conditions facing the general population, Afghanistan’s small but burgeoning Christian community is facing even greater life-and-death circumstances. Home to the world’s second-fastest growing underground church, Afghanistan’s growing network of Muslim-background disciples became targets of the Taliban even before the fall of Kabul. As the civil war raged in the headlines, leaders of the Afghan discipleship movement began quietly receiving ominous letters from the Taliban, claiming to know who they were and what they were doing.
As their government collapsed, thousands of Afghan believers attempted to flee the country via the Kabul airlift, or by foot across Afghanistan’s porous borders. But others resolved to stay, discerning opportunities for gospel advancement in the midst of suffering and upheaval. Tens of thousands of internally displaced persons need food, water, shelter and medical care, and reports of Afghan Christians working among IDP’s have already begun to surface. Recently, FAI partnered with Global Catalytic Ministries (GCM) to raise funds for the evacuation of Afghan believers who chose to leave, along with support for the ministries of those who remained, and the resulting testimonies have brought great encouragement.
Like the Apostle Thomas almost two millennia ago, Afghan Christians are heralding a message of Good News in the face of great danger. In Matthew 13, Jesus describes the Kingdom of Heaven as a woman kneading dough. Just a pinch of leaven can be worked through the entire batch, and when it is heated in the oven, the dough will rise. Likewise, just a pinch of the gospel can spread and work through every layer of society. The Afghan batch has been placed into the fire of war, hunger, poverty and persecution, but it is in the fire that leavened dough will begin to rise. The vision and mission of Thomas to make disciples of the people at the foot of the Hindu Kush is finally being realized. Afghanistan is rising.
