Afghanistan, drifts and aftermath (II)

As a continuation of the first part of this work and the preliminary study I published a few days ago, it is necessary to reaffirm that the military and civilian intelligence, both individual and collective, of all the allied countries involved in the conflict has failed miserably, and not because they have not been able to discover the Taliban's sapping activities over the last twenty years, mainly since 2019 to recruit the will and followers of the poorly paid Afghans in the armed forces and the police, who have no morale and are very disappointed because they feel sold out, especially since last September in Doha, as it is now acknowledged that this was a popular opinion; but also because they have failed to detect or denounce the fact that some allies, apparently the US among them, were playing a double role, making pacts with one or the other or both at the same time to design their withdrawal plan without taking the others into account.

The increasingly frequent habit of not sharing much of the information obtained by the allied intelligence services on an individual basis, nor of providing the common services of the alliances or operational commands with real and useful content, is leading, and is expected to increase after the disaster in Afghanistan, to situations of insurmountable mistrust, operational failures and a loss of credibility of the organisations and their commanders trained for each occasion, as already occurred, in the first step, with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Going it alone is not only clearly evident in intelligence matters and dirty deals on the right and left; it is becoming even more apparent when it comes to dealing with the difficulties of extracting collaborators and diplomats after very poor coordination. Some countries have opted on their own to expand their remaining contingents on the ground or to deploy special forces equipped with helicopters suitable for risky extraction missions. Once again, there is a return to the accumulation of personnel and material in a small area - a potential target for an attack - without order or orderly coordination, which could also lead to more casualties among these contingents with the subsequent problems regarding the responsibilities of each of them when the time comes or due to a lack of coordination.

It seems that, once again, we are back to chasing flies with cannons; countries seem to be sparing no economic effort or means to try to extract as many Afghan collaborators as possible from Kabul airport or to charter civilian airliners to repatriate them from Saudi Arabia or Qatar to Europe or other continents. But, with the exception of the famous US plane that in the first hours of the chaos repatriated some 600 refugees crammed into its hold, the planes, at least the Spanish-flagged ones, take off from Kabul with a minimum percentage of their capacity.

On the other hand, once the refugees have arrived on European soil, they do not show much enthusiasm, at least in Torrejón, for staying in the country of arrival, which will undoubtedly raise old ghosts and cause problems in the final distribution of refugees arriving by plane to the EU, and border conflicts can once again be foreseen when they arrive en masse and do so by their own means through neighbouring countries. This is already being foreshadowed by the new fences and barbed wire fences being erected between Greece and Turkey.

Ghosts, which politicians, led by the illustrious Borrell, are hastening to try to distract with the revival of an old and hackneyed toy in their hands; the creation of a European force that would make us independent of NATO and the US and provide us with sufficient autonomy in security matters.

A subject always promoted and brought up by France, with Germany very reluctant and which I see as inefficient and almost unattainable, because the forces being talked about are not sufficient for a major mission, because of the problems of replacement and training over time, because of the cost of such a collective unit, but independent of the countries that nurture it, the origin of the weapons with which to equip it, the degree of proportion of forces among the members and command or authority over them, with the chauvinism that prevails in many countries that are very jealous of their contributions.

On the other hand, it is quite possible that many countries inside and outside Europe may rethink their security interests, which would lead to greater controls and even more or less partial or total closure of borders worldwide, depending on the evolution and development of this crisis and the size of the exodus of refugees in a few months or even weeks.

This situation could also lead to a certain rethinking of national priorities, resulting in a lesser predisposition towards alliances and coalitions open to all those who want them and, on the contrary, an increase in more selective bilateral relations as a form of coexistence and relationship in most political, social, economic and military aspects.

In this same concept, and as a point and a follow-up to it, it should be considered that the aforementioned security and defence problems for Europe and their possible solution leave the EU's relations and ambitions with the UK in the future up in the air or somewhat cornered. A country that has been orphaned without Europe after its Brexit and that clings as best it can to the support it can get from the US and in following them at any cost, such as its deployment in Afghanistan in both missions. So if this old/new defence initiative were to prosper, the British would be left out of these efforts, which is not advisable; although it is also highly advisable for the three actors (the US, the UK and the EU) to go two by two or separately on the issue. Therefore, the aforementioned possibility must be reconsidered, taking into account this change in the situation and in the role of the actors.

It seems that nobody or very few want to talk about the huge amount of sophisticated individual and collective weaponry, including combat aircraft, helicopters and troop transport and logistical vehicles, as well as the intact military infrastructure donated to the now non-existent Afghan army for its operation, all of which has passed entirely into the hands of the Taliban. To this must be added the equipment and the large amount of heavy and camp material that the contingents tend to get rid of or leave in the territory at the time of their withdrawals because of the cost of repatriation or the speed with which they can leave the area, and last but not least, the resulting access to certain sophisticated and secret technologies such as armed drones and excellent means of communication, surveillance and intelligence.

If we combine the above with the Taliban's ease of voluntary or forced recruitment among the younger population and the many converts who have been crouching for a long time and the integration of all of them into their military and para-police forces in exchange for a weapon, drug money (opium and heroin of which they are the second country in the world in production and export) and an apparent sense of authority, easily turned into tyranny and licentiousness, although their obedience is tightly controlled; We can easily conclude that their military capacity will soon have multiplied many times over, which will undoubtedly make it necessary to take them into consideration in any future military plan involving non-Western intervention, at least as long as they are able to keep it operational.

Given all that has been seen, it is not difficult to imagine that the Taliban, having almost completely defeated the Islamic State there and having forced it to move mainly to Africa, could easily become the focus or fulcrum of Jihadism in the East and Middle East, with the capacity to integrate Al-Qaeda and its regional franchises and with a good chance of becoming a leading movement exportable to the whole world after having sown all the continents with lone wolves that have been able to be introduced with the expected millions of refugees, who have moved in hastily and without being subjected to rigid controls.

Not all of Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban. Except for some sporadic acts of protest in Kabul and other major cities that were "half-heartedly allowed for the time being" or easily quelled, it is again the province of Panjshir and its valley, some 100 kilometres north of Kabul, that has become the only bastion against the Taliban as it was between 1996 and 2001.

Initially, the province is quite secure, relatively easy to defend, and residents there are well aware of the need to resist any Taliban attack led by Ahmad Massoud, son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, one of the main leaders of Afghanistan's anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s.

Although, as we have seen, these Taliban have greater military capabilities than the former, they do not want a repetition of their shameful history and have the support of Pakistan, Russia and China, which suggests that if they decide to wipe the resistance off the map, as they seem to have decided to do, the valley and its hills will not last long without foreign support, which is not very likely to happen at the moment, although they may have already asked the US, some Western countries and certain Arab countries to do so.

At this point in recent history, we should think and meditate on the principle that history often repeats itself, especially when the past is bad and the actors are the same or similar.

Just as Hitler fell into the same trap as Napoleon by not studying in detail what happens to a people as stubbornly resistant as the Russians, especially when they have a powerful ally, the cruel winter at its height, no one in the Pentagon, NATO and worse, the United Kingdom, thought to review the history of Afghanistan and see what happened to the British and their Indian forces in the same territory in January 1842.

The British at the time, like the Americans recently, thought it would be relatively easy to enter the country, effortlessly change the ruling regime and get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible. In both cases, they have been sucked into the same scenario and by the same actors into a conflict that is much more vicious, but above all, wider and more generalised than they thought.

Strategists should therefore visit more libraries to study and analyse battles, conquests and skirmishes around the world. Today the world has become too small for us, so we tend to go back to old scenarios, and if we do not study history and the actors involved in it, we will fall back into the same mistakes as our more or less close ancestors.

The seemingly ironclad agreements with the Taliban, China's expansion into Africa and South America, and the large interests and investments created by the Chinese in both regions, may be a trigger or a barrier to this kind of movement from thriving too much there. Of the two, it is Africa that is most at risk from the unstoppable expansion of Islamic State franchises. If the Taliban become the jihadist hegemon, their relations and common interests with the Chinese could bring about some kind of forced slowdown in the region. An effort to which the US could contribute if it finally includes both continents among its top four or five priorities, to be discussed in due course, once it withdraws from Afghanistan and the Middle East.

To conclude this continuation of the analysis and prospective work on the crisis in Afghanistan and before I dive into the writing of the third and final part, I would like to highlight the shameful role played by international feminism; a very brave feminism in the world capitals where they are not in danger for expressing their ideals, but totally silent individually or collectively at the global level in the face of the great outrages and abuses that can already be seen on the streets and in the premises of Afghanistan. 

For the time being, none of those organisations disguised as pink, which go through the streets of the main cities in almost all the world with drums and flutes, shouting rude slogans in a noisy and vindictive way to demand all their rights, which they have; however, in the face of this ignominious treatment they are incapable of opening their mouths and going out on the streets in the form of an energetic protest. Horrible silences, which must be transformed into losses of credibility and influence, if people are able to keep their memories fresh.