The fall of Kabul was inevitable anytime soon, but the rapid collapse of the Afghan Army is something that is at the center of the debate.               
One faIls to understand how 20 years of US training and military support couldn’t lift the Afghan Army’s warfare capabilities and morale. There was already thin confidence in the government of President Ashraf Ghani, who fled after leading for years a corrupt and inefficient administration, unpaid armed forces, military outposts without basic supplies, and absence of sustained air power support.

There is no denying that Afghans have paid a heavy price. They lost their men and material in the war, while women and other minorities were brutalized. The assessment of the Taliban threat must have signaled Kabul the need to shore up its military apparatus. But that didn’t happen on the ground. One wonders why.                                                                                    

The US was never going to solve all the problems of Afghanistan but they should have approached the Afghan issue with some pragmatism and intelligence. American armed forces and intelligence agencies played their roles in manipulating the civil war in Afghanistan. The US has spent trillions of dollars on fighting the Afghan war but they failed to prevent a Taliban takeover.

The US goal was to transform an ancient and complex society from what it was into what Washington wanted it to be. But defeating a country comprising warring factions and imposing peace and a new culture was beyond Washington’s reach.

Afghans’ foreboding

The scramble to leave Kabul symbolizes the foreboding felt by the Afghan people. Those who tried to escape from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport over the weekend were trying to avoid being trapped in the bleak future that awaits. But most Afghans, and especially those belonging to minority groups, do not have the luxury of flying out of the country. They will have to survive in a hostile and brutal regime or fight it.

Afghan society was yet to recover from the horrors of civil war post-USSR withdrawal when Militias turned against each other. warlords benefitted from the anarchy, business opponents were killed in cold blood, mass atrocities were the norm.    
                                               
The violence against the religious and ethnic minorities over the years is the reason people are scared of the horrors being repeated again and again. Those who have been sympathetic to the democratic forces and earlier government will be identified and they are the most vulnerable ones who will have to bear the brunt of the Taliban onslaught.

By leaving Afghanistan in such haste, the US will hurt its credibility in the long run, if not now, as its allies face the daunting question of whether to go onboard with the US as a net security provider.

The US might use ”over the horizon strategy” to keep a check on the Taliban and its affiliates but the militia’s donors and conflict entrepreneurs will try to fill the vacuum left by the US absence on the ground as a primary actor. This is going to reshape the regional security architecture and lead to more civilian strife in Afghanistan.

Prospects for peace bleak

The prospects for any peace soon in Afghanistan look bleak and one can expect a surge in extra-judicial killings and a spillover effect is inevitable. A refugee crisis will put the region on the road to more extremism. And an emboldened Taliban and its affiliates will flex their muscles within and outside Afghanistan.

The US might have killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, but Al-Qaida is still active along with its affiliates in Afghanistan, as the people await a grim fate.

The economy is in tatters, violence is at a historic high, there is social discord and minorities are in danger – this surmises the state of affairs in Afghanistan.

The regional powers like Russia may be comfortable with US withdrawal in the short term but it will have to redouble its commitments to the Central Asian Republics in security terms against religious extremism and Narcotics.

So is China going to benefit from the absence of the US in its immediate neighborhood? It has already invited Taliban at its conference level optics but it has to be cautious enough and not let its decisions invite trouble in its own territory!

Taliban’s future and India

One of the most important things to note is how the Taliban can remain a single political unit, given all the factions that make up the outfit. With no USSR or US to fight against, there is ample space for foreign powers to meddle in the affairs of the Taliban and try to purchase loyalties. They have a history of fighting each other as per their tribal loyalties and due to rival groups contending for total power over Kabul and Afghanistan.

The anti-Taliban resistance by the Northern Alliance, comprising Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and Pashtuns in the civil war of the 1990s is history now but its regrouping can’t be underestimated as well.

India, which has made huge investments in infrastructure and other developmental areas over the past two decades, is keenly watching the developments on the ground. India has so far maintained a strategic distance from Afghanistan developments, rather than getting involved directly, although it has huge stakes in the region at the broader security level.

But how the situation plays out is something India is closely keeping an eye on with strategic patience. It is especially monitoring the role of Pakistan in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal. India won’t let the developments in Afghanistan affect its interests, more so because Pakistan and China are rubbing their hands in glee, waiting to move in to fill the vacuum in Afghanistan left by the United States.

(The writer is a researcher on South Asian geopolitics at the University of Kashmir, India. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at mehrajudin868@gmail.com)