How Does Kabul End?

CIPHER BRIEF EXPERT PERSPECTIVE 

Cipher Brief Expert Tim Willasey-Wilsey served for over 27 years in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He is now Visiting Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London.

Older Americans have Saigon 1975 and the helicopters from the Embassy roof seared into their memories. A previous generation of Britons was haunted by the image of General Percival surrendering vast numbers of troops and equipment in Singapore to the Japanese in 1942. How Kabul falls to the Taliban could have important practical and symbolic significance.

The announcement that the United States is sending 3,000 troops to Kabul alongside 600 British troops to manage the evacuation of their civilians and those Afghans who provided assistance, is a remarkably late response to a rapidly deteriorating situation. Unless carried out in the next 48 hours, it will also be risky. Taliban infiltrators are already inside Kabul and the forces which captured Ghazni and Kandahar on 12^th August will be heading towards the capital on their Honda 125cc motorbikes.

The US must have extracted undertakings from the Taliban negotiators in Qatar not to launch their full assault on Kabul until the evacuations are complete, but elements of doubt remain. Previous Taliban assurances have proved worthless, and it is doubtful that individual Taliban commanders would wish to hold back while some of Ashraf Ghani’s ministers, senior army officers, judges and officials are spirited away to a life of exile.

It is hard not to be impressed by the speed and élan of the Taliban’s recent successes; taking 13 of Afghanistan’s 34 regional capitals in almost as many days. It is reminiscent of the extraordinary progress which the Japanese made down the Malaya Peninsula in 1942 with Singapore as the ultimate prize.

The Taliban’s success has not happened by chance. It is clearly the fruit of preparation and planning. Above all, they have learnt from the experience of 1994 to 1996 when they eventually took Kabul but failed to capture the north, thereby allowing space for the Northern Alliance parties to survive and then reassert themselves following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

This time, the Taliban have focussed first on border posts with neighbouring countries (thereby denying the government vital supply routes and customs revenues) before taking outlying regional capitals and leaving Kabul (which is never easy to capture) until last. Above all, they have concentrated on the north where many rural Afghans are disenchanted with the Kabul government and regional warlords. The north is no longer the solid bastion of anti-Taliban sentiment it was in the 1990s.