Editorials

Long Game: Taliban’s actions show we’ve learned little

If news out of Afghanistan is beginning to feel like deja vu all over again, you're not imagining things. Despite 20 years and billions upon billions of dollars spent, too many ordinary Afghan citizens find themselves right back where they started when it comes to a government in turmoil and the Taliban on the rampage.

On Tuesday, Zalmay Khalilzad, a U.S. peace envoy, wagged his finger at the Taliban and told members of the group that if they take over Afghanistan's government by force, they will not be recognized internationally.

It will surprise no one that this surge by the Taliban began in April, when the U.S. and NATO announced an end to military missions in the country. Our withdrawal is approximately 95 percent complete.

Without our support of the country's military, Taliban insurgents have been able to capture six of Afghanistan's 34 provincial capitals in less than a week. Military experts seem baffled as to why the regular Afghan forces have collapsed, running from battles sometimes by the hundreds. Small groups of elite forces and the Afghan air force are left to do what they can, with the help of some U.S. airstrikes.

It seems Western politicians and bureaucrats forgot, again, just how willing organizations such as the Taliban are to play the long game. In fact, they specialize in it. The Taliban appears not to have been weakened or to have missed a beat.

So, Khalilzad's mission was to "help formulate a joint international response to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan," according to the U.S. State Department.

Biden administration officials have said this fight is one for Afghan political and military leaders to win or lose. Fair enough. But should the Afghan government indeed lose control to the Taliban, the U.S. and other Western governments will have to come to terms with the fact that we have learned very little in more than a century of interactions with Afghanistan and the region as a whole.

We must not be naive in preparing for what comes next.