It has now been three months since President Joe Biden withdrew the last U.S. troops from Afghanistan. While Biden aides blame the Afghan government for believing threats of withdrawal were a bluff, Biden’s team ignores that his own special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad (a holdover from the Trump administration) had assured Afghan officials that there would be no withdrawal until the final stage of a peace agreement.
The Biden administration shows little guilt for the chaos they created in the manner and timing of their withdrawal. There have been no resignations to protest the president’s callousness and incompetence, such as what occurred when President Donald Trump betrayed the Syrian Kurds. Rather than fight terrorist groups, the Taliban encourages them. The notion that the United States could ally with the Taliban to fight other terrorists was always a fairy tale that Khalilzad sold to gullible diplomats and White House aides. Now, extremist elements from the Taliban’s suicide bomber brigade and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan man Afghanistan’s northern border and threaten the stability of Tajikistan. Promises of an over-the-horizon strike capability were false; there can be little effective intelligence collection in Afghanistan without a human component.
While winter snows have now set in and brought with them a temporary quiet as movement becomes impossible, Afghans expect the spring to be especially violent as terrorists vie for territory, Taliban factions set upon each other, and the National Resistance Front (the remnants of the former government) seeks to establish a toehold. Meanwhile, ordinary Afghans suffer.
The Taliban never had the capacity to govern effectively, but they now seek to transform their incompetence into profit by cashing in on the suffering they cause. The problem is that Taliban factions squabble over the aid they receive. Even though there is no evidence the funds reach people in need, the Taliban hope to turn the trickle of money into a deluge by having the United Nations recognize them as Afghanistan’s government.
For the Taliban, prioritizing U.N. recognition makes sense. While some within the White House and the State Department might wish to formalize ties in the name of realism, Congress would never allow it. U.N. recognition might be easier, and there are parallels: Washington lacks diplomatic relations with Tehran, but the U.N. has allowed the revolutionary regime to hold Iran’s U.N. seat since shortly after the 1979 revolution.
The U.N. decision about whom to credential rests within a special committee rather than the Security Council. The Taliban began lobbying for Afghanistan’s U.N. seat during September’s U.N. General Assembly. Most states ignored them. However, committee members China and Russia might extend recognition. Other committee members (Sweden, Namibia, the Bahamas, Chile, and Sierra Leone) say the U.S., which also sits on the committee, has not explicitly asked them to reject the Taliban’s U.N. credentialing.
Perhaps silence is Biden’s or Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s way to shirk responsibility for an outcome they privately believe is necessary to facilitate humanitarian aid. In essence, the logic that they need a government, however odious, to negotiate grants of aid and assistance repeats the worst aspects of Clinton-era North Korea deal-making. At the time, even the Government Accountability Office raised questions about North Korea’s diversion of food and fuel to its military while ordinary people starved. All evidence suggests the Taliban would do the same, even as the State Department and USAID continue to use money allocated as their main metric to claim success.
Biden may want to disown Afghanistan and deny any responsibility for the outcome, instead blaming the tragedy on George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump. He’s being deceptive. Thomas West, Khalilzad’s successor, meets with the Taliban, but he refuses to meet with the National Resistance Front, even as many members continue to counter the Taliban.
Presidents and secretaries of state are fond of resets. If Biden and Blinken truly care about the Afghan people, counterterrorism, and U.S. security, it is time for them to undertake a fundamental reset on Afghan policy. The U.S. need not reengage militarily, but vocally rejecting Taliban credentialing at the U.N., refusing to distribute aid through the group, and offering diplomatic and other support to the National Resistance Front would be a good place to start.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
