Avoiding both the embassy roof and the Friendship Bridge

It was strongly suspected that the Afghan regime would not stand once the US and Nato forces left the country, but the speed of the Taliban advances came as a surprise to most observers, and perhaps even to the Taliban themselves.At present, the Taliban are behaving as if they are having their timelines disrupted. While the precept is to advance as fast as possible, and to take every advantage possible of the enemy’s weaknesses, there is also the military axiom warning commanders never to get ahead of their supply lines.

It is possible to see how the Taliban might achieve this. First of all, they do not have an elaborate commissariat. Second, their supply lines are in front: they depend for food, arms and ammunition on supplies surrendered by government forces., apart of course from their normal supplies, which have not been interdicted.

Apart from the claims of territory controlled, with the Taliban claiming 80 percent, and the government hotly denying this, the Taliban have not yet claimed control of any major conurbation, which one spokesman has said is the result of a deliberate strategy.

It is possible that the Taliban are waiting to see which way Pakistan goes in the matter of providing air bases to US drones.

However, while the Taliban are unlikely to show the same faith in the Pakistani establishment as at the time of their inception, they cannot avoid the reality that Afghanistan’s two largest ethnic groups, the Pakhtuns and the Hazaras, have their largest minorities in Pakistan.In fact, most of the many ethnicities that make up Afghanistan have majorities in some other country

The US attempt to prop up the Afghan regime will probably not succeed if the air bases are granted, so poor has been the regime’’s forces’ performance so far, but without those bases, the very purpose of the intervention and almost 20 years of war will be defeated. The USA seems to have gone one step ahead of its 1999 intervention in Kosovo, when it achieved its military objectives through bombing Yugoslavia into submission, without the use of ground forces.

Similarly, without ‘boots on the ground’, the USA would like to prevent the Taliban being able to give refuge to Al-Qaeda or any similar organization. That requires the threat of US air superiority. That in turn requires air bases nearby. There are at least three other options to bases in Pakistan: bases in Central Asia or India, bases in the USA, and aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea. India can be ruled out, for Pakistan can be expected to go for anything coming from Indian airspace. While some drones would get through, a lot would not. Stto can the USA (even Hawaii) for technical reasons, while having an aircraft carrier maintain station off the Makran coast would be prohibitively expensive. Central Asia remains a prospect, and the recent visit to Pakistan is worthy of note. That visit might have been about Pakistan’s participation in Black Sea naval exercises,made more sensitive by Israeli participation, but drone operations may have been proposed.

Pakistan’s national sovereignty seems to come in the way of it giving the USA bases. Prime Minister Imran Khan has been so repeatedly adamant that it has been accepted that this is not Pakistan trying to jack up the price. (It might be remembered that when Pakistan gave the USA overflight rights back in 1999, then President Perz Musharraf may have feared being bombed  into the Stone Age, but he also drove home a cash bargain).

There is a strong conflict between the Pakistani establishment which wants to oblige the USA, and the Pakistani people, who do not. Th Taliban, meanwhile, are watching carefully, as they do not want to provide any targets for drones. Drones proved effective in Pakistan, where they kept on removing leaders of terrorist organisations, as well as other terrorists. Though resented as an interference in Pakistan’ sovereignty, the did play their part in helping Pakistan overcome the terrorist menace.

The vacation of Bagram air base was therefore of great symbolic value, for it symbolized an end to the air supremacy that the USA enjoyed in the theatre. The problems of the Afghan Air Force, which could end up grounded without the Taliban doing anything, as its Russian-made aircraft (including a lot of helicopters) become inoperable because of lack of maintenance. The Afghan Air Force is also not able o provide the kind of air support that even the Afghan forces need to operate. The placing of anti-missile batteries at Bagram is a kid of sop to the Western diplomats left behind, indicating that the USA and allies would like to take out their diplomats from Kabul airport, and wish to avoid anything like the last helicopter from Saigon.

Even now, more than 45 years ago, that photo, of a soldier hanging on to the runner of a helicopter leaving the roof of the US embassy in Saigon, is still an iconic portrayal of a moment of US defeat.The Vietnam War was also one in which the US poured much blood and treasure, 50,441 servicemen were killed, and $168 billion spent, which would be about $1 trillion today. The USA spent about the same sum in Afghanistan, $815.7 billion till the end of 2020, but suffered only 2372 deaths.

The flit from Bagram by night meant that the US military also avoided the fate of the USSR, which withdrew from Afghanistan in February 1989, with the Commander of the 40th Army (the Soviet Army formation actually in Afghanistan), Gen Boris Gromov being the last Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan, walking across the Friendship Bridge across the Amu Darya, between Afghanistan and the USSR). There were no such last-minute heroics for US commander Gen Scott Miller, who handed over command to the Commander of Central Command, who will remain in his HQ inFlorida. When Gen Gromov crossed the Friendship Bridge, he was greeted by TV camera crews, at which he began swearing fiercely. US TV crews will not be edified by being sworn at by a retreating general.

The vacuum that will open up will witness competition. India’s presence will already be diminished by the withdrawal of the staff of their Kandahar consulate. The removal of an irritant from the Pak-India relationship is about the only positive to emerge from that withdrawal. China gives Afghanistan a very important place in its Belt and Road Initiative. It should be remembered that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is very important, but gains importance from Afghanistan. The BRI and CPEC are also important for the Taliban because they represent one way out for any government they form, in terms of revenue collection.

However, that puts Afghanistan in the crosshairs of the USA, but not because of terrorism. It would be working against the USA, by helping China and Russia meet their goals. This is the main reason that the USA would not like Afghanistan to settle down, under a Taliban or a hybrid government, and through India (and potentially through elements within Pakistan), make sure it remains disturbed.

It is also not known what sort of attitude any new Taliban government will have to Pakistan. While their previous stint in power saw them follow a pro-Pakistan policy, there is no such guarantee now. They may have realized that the apparent affectopn for them in certain circles was transactional, and they might have more in common with the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement than they had thought. They are not going to be as trusting of the establishment as they used to be, because they now know which way the establishment will choose if it has to choose between them and the USA.

However, while the Taliban are unlikely to show the same faith in the Pakistani establishment as at the time of their inception, they cannot avoid the reality that Afghanistan’s two largest ethnic groups, the Pakhtuns and the Hazaras, have their largest minorities in Pakistan.In fact, most of the many ethnicities that make up Afghanistan have majorities in some other country.