As U.S. Troops Depart, What’s the Future for Afghanistan?

In 1989, the Soviet army pulled out of Afghanistan, after a decade-long occupation that had made the nation a entrance line within the Chilly Warfare. The U.S., which actively supported the Soviets’ opponents, together with radical Islamist factions, additionally disengaged. Bloody chaos adopted till the Taliban seized Kabul from the feuding warlords who had all however leveled it. The Taliban imposed stern theocratic rule, imposing harsh restrictions notably on girls, who had been largely barred from training and work. The Taliban additionally gave the terrorist group al-Qaeda a base. In 2001, after the Taliban refused to extradite al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden following his group’s Sept. 11 assaults on the U.S., the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. When bin Laden and the Taliban management fled, the U.S. mission morphed right into a nation-building enterprise — however with restricted army assets, because the U.S. targeted on a separate battle in Iraq. Finally, greater than 50 nations joined the coalition led by the North Atlantic Treaty Group. In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama ordered a “surge” in forces that reached a peak of 140,000 in 2011. Army commanders reported progress on the bottom, however battle fatigue at residence, particularly after the killing of bin Laden in Pakistan, led Obama to start out winding down the American troop presence. Doubts that the Afghan army might stand by itself prompted him to go away the final of them in place when he turned the presidency over to Donald Trump in January 2017. Inside a 12 months, Trump had deployed a further 3,500 U.S. troops to the nation on the Pentagon’s urging. In 2020, annoyed by the Taliban’s tenacity, he struck a cope with the group and commenced one other drawdown.