The end of the beginning

NICK EICHER, HOST: Up next: chaos in Afghanistan.

As we reported a short time ago, panic has gripped the capital city of Kabul as the Taliban seize control.

Many Afghans are desperate to escape the clutches of the Taliban, fearing oppressive rule … and brutal reprisals against those allied with the West.

But for many, there will be no escape.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: So how did we get here and what happens next?

Joining us once again to help answer those questions is Michael Rubin. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and he’s an expert in Middle Eastern culture and conflict.

Good morning, sir.

MICHAEL RUBIN, GUEST: Good morning.

REICHARD: Well, we didn’t expect to be speaking with you again so soon. But the Taliban’s takeover has happened so quickly and took many by surprise. The last time you and I talked a week ago, you mentioned that we might see a civil war rather than total Taliban domination.

So let me just start with this question: What happened?!

RUBIN: Well, we still will see a civil war. Amrullah Saleh, who is the Vice President and was the deputy to Ahmed Shah Massoud, the former head of the Northern Alliance, has taken over the Panjshir Valley, which the Taliban doesn't control, and declared the first resistance. At the same time, I expect that all the neighbors of Afghanistan, with the exception of Pakistan, are now regrouping and will choose their respective proxy warlords to try to carve out a buffer. The thing to understand about the Taliban takeover is it's much more a result of momentum and political deals they cut than it is about actual fighting. And so the same trend can work in reverse. And indeed it did in October 2001, where the Taliban tend to lose cities as quickly as they get them. This really is the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end.

REICHARD: Prior to the U.S. and NATO pullout, the Afghan military was doing the heavy lifting on the front lines. We had not lost an American serviceman in combat in Afghanistan since February 2020.
Was the situation in Afghanistan somewhat contained prior to the pullout? Or was a major Taliban offensive going to happen regardless of whether our military withdrew?

RUBIN: Well, there's two questions there. Really, when it comes to the Taliban offensive, remember that in Afghanistan, because of the topography, because of the weather, fighting is seasonal. The Taliban would fight from the spring to the fall, but once the mountains were snow covered and the passes blocked, then you would have relative calm. So a lot of Afghans are asking why didn't you time your withdrawal so that it would come in the fall before the Taliban could take over? That would give us time to regroup. The other issue with regard to what happened, really, is the Afghan army is able to fight. But what they lack are the logistics to get from point A to point B when that fighting does occur. In effect, we pulled the carpet out from underneath them. And then lastly, while the Americans might look at this as an even playing field, the Afghans don't because Pakistan fully supported the Taliban, and that's one of the reasons why so many Afghans decided to make their accommodation with the Taliban, because they figured they didn't have any patron, the Taliban did, and they saw the writing on the wall.

REICHARD: The Biden administration is taking a lot of heat for this military pullout right now. But it was the Trump administration that initially set this in motion and negotiated a pullout with the Taliban.
Is the pullout that we’ve seen any different from what President Trump wanted to do? And if so, how is it different?

RUBIN: Well, there's enough blame to go around here. Certainly President Trump was ill-advised to strike a deal with the Taliban that cut out the elected Afghan government to insist that the Afghan government, which again wasn't party to the deal, release Taliban prisoners and so forth. Ultimately, however, the reason why so many people are blaming Biden is while Biden will say his hands were tied by the February 29th 2020 deal, which Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad signed, the fact of the matter is the Taliban had violated that agreement consistently. And if Biden is so insistent that he has to follow the agreements that his predecessor had made, then why don't we have the Keystone XL pipeline? Why don't we have the border wall with Mexico? The fact of the matter is, this was a choice and all throughout Biden's campaign—as with Trump—he talked about forever wars. And this was based less on events on the ground. As you noted, there have been fewer casualties over the last five years in Afghanistan than in any small sized American city or county because of car accidents. The expense of our presence in Afghanistan wasn't much more than it is in Japan or Korea, where we also have a deterrence mission. President Biden and some of his aides will talk about how we spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan, and it's all gone to naught. And they have a reason to complain—certainly the nation building aspect hasn't worked. But over the last five years or so, we found that golden formula, where with a minimal amount of U.S. forces, we could really amplify the local forces and have containment—not much different than what we have along the DMZ between South Korea and North Korea.

REICHARD: So let’s talk about what happens next. The Taliban seems to be striking a more moderate tone publicly, relatively speaking of course on issues like education and free press. Are you buying that? Do you think we’ll see a more moderate Taliban than 20 years ago?

RUBIN: No, I'm not buying that. First of all, there is a discrepancy between what their spokesmen are saying in Qatar, and some of the pronouncements which we actually see that are being made in the towns and cities in Afghanistan. At the same time, in Kandahar and Kabul and elsewhere, we're seeing the Taliban going house to house to try to arrest anyone who had worked with Americans. When it comes to Afghan Special Forces, they've been executing the Afghan Special Forces and raping their families. This isn't just a matter of the Special Immigrant Visas, which the Biden administration is still trying to process to fly up to 30,000 Afghans out of Afghanistan, if logistically that's still possible. But remember, for the last 18 months, we haven't done any visa interviews at our embassy in Kabul, the excuse for that was COVID. But you know, I mean, people can talk by Skype, people can talk by Zoom, you can physically hand in your papers in one room, and then get on a computer and do the interview in another. So all these Afghans who had gotten fully paid scholarships to study in the United States, no one's even thinking about them right now.

REICHARD: Michael Rubin with the American Enterprise Institute has been our guest. Thanks so much for your time and your insight!

RUBIN: Thank you.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.