The fall of Kabul: a 20-year mission collapses in a single day
The final collapse of the 20-year western mission to Afghanistan took only a single day as Taliban gunmen entered the capital, Kabul, on Sunday, President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, and America abandoned its embassy in panic.
Even the militants themselves were surprised by the speed of the takeover, co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar admitted in a video statement in the evening. Now the group faces the challenge of ruling, he added. They are expected to proclaim a new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan soon.
Many in Kabul do not trust promises made by the former insurgents of an amnesty for their old enemies and those, like women’s rights activists, who sought a different future for Afghanistan. The airport was mobbed with thousands of people desperate to escape. In the evening they flooded on to the runway, halting all air traffic.
In deeply humiliating scenes for the Biden administration, less than a month before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, smoke spiralled from the embassy compound as staff hastily destroyed documents, before a final group took down the stars and stripes flag and headed to the airport by military helicopter.
It was clear from early Sunday that a second era of Taliban rule had effectively begun. Taliban commanders started the day so confident of victory that after their fighters surrounded the capital, they ordered them to stay outside the city and wait.
Right from the start of America’s mission in Afghanistan, the Trumpet forecast this outcome. Here’s what we wrote in the November 2001 issue of the Trumpet magazine:
Does America have the will to see it through? What happens when the war spreads from Afghanistan to other, less-isolated governments—when world opinion begins to turn on the U.S.? What happens if American soldiers begin to die—or if retaliatory terrorist attacks on American soil intensify? Would the unanimity of public opinion fracture? Would fear intensify and determination falter? …
While the U.S. wants to eliminate terrorism and is becoming much more aggressive in trying to do so, its efforts will fall short. It frankly does not have the necessary will to tackle the enormity of the problem!
Thus, America is forced to confront the issue using clever half-measures. At this point Iran is no longer considered a “state sponsor” of terrorism. Instead—in a telling twist of irony—it is being courted as an ally in fighting terrorism! …
The Trumpet has often written that the pride of America’s power has been broken (Leviticus 26:19). That is God’s doing—a curse on a nation that rejected His commandments and abandoned His protection.
With the country currently standing at attention, singing patriotic anthems and waving flags, padding its security, issuing proclamations and orders, deploying ships and planes and personnel, America may appear strong to some. These actions may even be temporarily holding the next attack at bay. But on the whole, they are not acts of courage, but of fear. And they are not complete or savage enough to eliminate the threat.
