Our Friends the Taliban Biden is relying on the group with ties to al Qaeda. Good luck.
The Taliban claimed Monday to have conquered the last major opposition to its takeover of Afghanistan, routing remnants of the former Afghan military and others in the Panjshir Valley. No doubt the abandoned U.S. military equipment helped. Let’s hope the Talibs feel grateful—because the Biden Administration plans to depend on them for years to come.
The White House hopes Americans forget about all this as it focuses on domestic affairs. But this is one of the more extraordinary political transformations in U.S. history. The Taliban, the sponsors of Osama bin Laden and killers of Americans for 20 years, have overnight turned into a courted U.S. partner.
“A new chapter of America’s engagement with Afghanistan has begun. It’s one in which we will lead with our diplomacy,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared recently, almost as if he was announcing a triumph like the fall of the Berlin Wall. “The military mission is over. A new diplomatic mission has begun.”
Mr. Blinken says the U.S. will now work with the Taliban to get the remaining Americans and Afghan allies out of the country, and he’s optimistic. “The Taliban has committed to let anyone with proper documents leave the country in a safe and orderly manner. They’ve said this privately and publicly many times,” said the Secretary of State.
And what if they don’t? Well, Mr. Blinken explained, the world is watching. “More than half the world’s countries have joined us in insisting that the Taliban let people travel outside Afghanistan freely,” he said. The United Nations is also on the Taliban case. “So the international chorus on this is strong, and it will stay strong.” If there is a signature phrase of the wooly-headed internationalism that permeates the Biden Administration, it has to be “the international chorus.” The world’s tenors and baritones will enforce world order.
In the real world, the Taliban have the leverage of being able to block safe passage for anyone as long as they want. That became clear over the weekend amid conflicting reports that private planes with Americans and others aboard were blocked from leaving Afghanistan from an airfield in Mazar-e-Sharif in the north.
GOP Rep. Michael McCaul blamed the Taliban, but an organizer of the flights told Fox News that the State Department was blocking the exit. As of midday Monday, State was telling the press it is no longer in the country and can’t control who leaves. How about calling on that diplomacy?
The U.S. will also be counting on the Taliban to help with counterterror operations since the CIA no longer has listening posts in the country. President Biden says the Taliban are the enemy of ISIS-K, the Afghanistan arm of Islamic State. That may be true, but thousands of ISIS fighters escaped from prisons when the Afghan government fell. They will set up camps around the country, and it isn’t clear how much the Taliban will want to go after them.
Meanwhile, the Taliban are entwined with other jihadist terror groups. Terrorism expert Seth Jones recently wrote on these pages that “the Taliban and al Qaeda enjoy longstanding personal relationships” and intermarriage, and “al Qaeda leaders have pledged loyalty to every Taliban leader since the group’s establishment.” In 2012 The U.S. officially designated the Haqqani Network as a terror group, and the Taliban has put them in charge of security in Kabul. Are the White House and Pentagon going to ignore that designation?
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The Taliban will presumably want something for their cooperation. Mr. Blinken described American leverage this way: “The Taliban seeks international legitimacy and support. Our message is: any legitimacy and any support will have to be earned.”
By ”support” we assume Mr. Blinken means access to the country’s assets held abroad, including at the Federal Reserve. It also means diplomatic recognition, which could free up access to aid and hard currency from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. This means that American taxpayers would in essence be financing al Qaeda and the Haqqani Network. We wouldn’t want to be Democrats on Capitol Hill voting on that one.
Stopping terrorism and liberating Americans trapped in the country are vital national interests. But there’s also the matter, which the Biden Administration keeps stressing, of how the Taliban treats women, girls and former opponents. The BBC reported on the weekend about a pregnant policewoman who was shot by Taliban militants in front of her family in Firozkoh in Ghor province. A Taliban spokesman denied responsibility, but local application of jihadist justice is a Taliban tradition.
The White House would prefer that all this go away so it can think “happy things,” as Mr. Biden put it not long ago when asked about Afghanistan. But he can’t duck the reality that his failed Afghan withdrawal has put the U.S. in this precarious position.
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