Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it!

Winston Churchill in a speech to the ‘House of Commons’ 1948

It’s the anniversary of 9/11 and it’s with a heavy heart that I finally write a post about the abandonment of Afghanistan. I just wanted to wait until the last British and US soldier had actually left and had arrived home safely and all the hopeless chatter on the MSM had lessened.  My main thoughts are with the families of the 15 US Marines who again paid the ultimate sacrifice in the scramble to evacuate their countrymen.

What can I say, if you wrote this particular ending for a work of fiction it would hardly be believable. The billions of dollars the West has spent on its twenty-year experiment in nation building has failed miserably! We have wasted our treasure and the blood of our best people on a succession of wholly corrupt Afghan politicians who have been bleeding us dry while they defrauded and deluded their own people. Those same members of the Afghan elite are now living in stolen luxury in their villas in Dubai while their countrymen starve.

I had spent over six years in Helmand and Kabul supporting the US/UK and NATO effort and only now is the real news beginning to seep into the public domain. Some at the fighting edge of the ANA (Afghan National Army) had not been paid for 9 months while the Taliban’s ISI (Pakistan’s, Inter Service Intelligence) trained Red Teams (quasi-special forces) have overrun checkpoints at will and inflicted horrendous casualties. The ANA’s morale was at rock bottom and they felt they had nothing to fight for. The whole thing was compounded by our shameful treatment of the people of Panjshir, who we left defenseless against their mortal enemy. Sometimes fact is less believable than fiction?

My book An Evil Shadow Falls presents a nightmare scenario where elements of ISIS get hold of a nuclear device stolen from the Pakistani Army to attack the US and UK. The finale of the story ends on the anniversary of 9/11 on a stormy night in the Atlantic. The idea was far-fetched, maybe? but no more unbelievable than the way things actually worked out. The attack in the book was mounted to punish the liberal democratic West on a historic date in the Islamist calendar. The fall of Kabul and our capitulation to the Taliban and their evil ideology has achieved this in a far more humiliating way.

The Future

Worst case scenario

Islamism, as a cause, will be emboldened throughout the world, and support for terrorism will increase at home. EMNI, (ISIS’s own intelligence agency) would have some of its people leaving from the chaos of Kabul and those agents will soon be distributed throughout Europe and the USA. The war that our young men fought, died and were maimed in, the so-called War On Terror, meant to protect us from a war being fought on our own streets, will now after 20 wasted years finally be fought on those same streets.

Best case scenario

The Afghans find their own solution without the constant and sometimes paternalistic support of the West. They will learn to fight back and become a proper nation. The young over there now have been exposed to education and the internet and the Taliban will not be able to put the technological genie back in the bottle, but it’s now up to them. Will they solidify around the remains of the Northern Alliance and claim their country back?

The historical Overview.

The Soviet 40th Army had fought until the very last moment. The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan was planned over two years and managed to leave a 300 thousand strong Afghan National Army and national infrastructure that lasted under the well-respected Afghan President Dr. Najibullah for more than two and a half years before Russian support totally dried up and it fell to the chaos generated by the warlords and religious fanatics supported by the West.

On the 15th of February, the senior Soviet officer in Afghanistan, Col-General Boris Gromov clashed with reporters as he finally made his ceremonial exit on what they called ‘The Freedom Bridge’ into Russia. He was angry and swore at the media who shouted questions at him as he reached his homeland. He also said:

“The leadership of the country starts wars while others have to clean up the mess.”

31 August 2021

The last US soldier is leaving under the cover of darkness, leaving the Afghan people under the control of the same fanatics that his brothers had fought in 20 years earlier?

Nothing changes.