Afghanistan 2021: On the US Withdrawal and 'Ending the War'.

Written April 16th 2021.

Reacting to President Biden's decision to pull out all troops by September 2021, Simon Jenkons writes,

The military theorist Gen Sir Rupert Smith, in his book The Utility of Force has pointed out that modern armies are almost useless in counter-insurgency wars. They have roamed the Middle East from Afghanistan to Libya, “creating one ruined nation after another”. Britain’s sole justification is the hoary Foreign Office cliche about having influence, deterring terror and standing tall in the world. They are neo-imperialist vacuities.

Jenkins is largely right about how futile and counter-productive the Afghanistan War has been and it remains to be seen whether President Biden will finally withdraw all troops by September 11 2021. After all, the public diplomatic phrase ‘drawdown’ is still being used and that always implies something less than the promised pull out. 

In any case, one of the central war objectives, that of securing the construction route of the geopolitically important TAPI gas pipeline, still remains in the balance. The US has, behind the scenes, brokered a trip for the Taliban to Turkmenistan to cut them into the future prosperity this pipeline would provide, so peace might be possible.

But, of course, there is a New Great Game over Afghanistan and that was always going to make the creation of a pro-western liberal democratic client state that would assist in projecting western power into the Eurasian Heartland-and so secure dominance in the region-a delusion. Jenkins is right about the ‘neo-imperial’ hubris.

What Jenkins misses is any mention of the resource factor and the geopolitics of energy. The TAPI pipeline is part of what Hilary Clinton and Victoria Nuland referred to as the New Silk Route Strategy back in 2012. It is about uniting regional powers from Turkmenistan through to the Indian subcontinent under a US/western aegis.

The aim of the New Silk Route Strategy is set to become, if anything, potentially even more important in 2021 now that Biden has committed to rivalling China’s Belt and Route Initiative in order to check Chinese inroads from Central Into South East Asia. Russia is also trying on a spoiler strategy in Afghanistan, as in Syria.

The only way peace could ever come to Afghanistan would be for the US and Britain to try to broker a regional peace settlement with China, Russia and, of course, with Iran which has also spun around completely from a position of hostility to covertly back the Taliban. After all, TAPI is part of the sanctions strategy to thwart the rival IPI project.

We really need articles with more background information that inform Western publics what the real stakes have been in Afghanistan. The TAPI pipeline’s connection to the war is not a ‘conspiracy theory’ but an inherent part of the geopolitical struggle for the upper hand in Eurasia. The only conspiracy is the one of silence on it.