US Intelligence Failure on Taliban Opened Afghanistan to Russia and China

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The massive intelligence failure in the run-up to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan not only led to a chaotic evacuation, the deaths of 13 US service members and 170 Afghans, and the complete Taliban takeover, but also created a security vacuum that America's adversaries are taking advantage of.

The United States and its allies have seen a surge in anti-Western sentiment, largely led by China and Russia, which have strengthened ties following Washington's opposition to Moscow's war in Ukraine and Beijing's aggressive posture in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

However, as the United States seeks to distance itself from its decades-long war on terror, adversaries such as China and Russia have increasingly expanded their influence in South Asia and the Middle East.

Afghan Acting First Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar, left, and Chinese Ambassador to Afghanistan Wang Yu attend a press conference to announce an oil extraction contract with a Chinese company in Kabul, Afghanistan, on January 5, 2023. (Photo by AHMAD SAHEL ARMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

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“We don’t understand that when we turn our backs on Afghanistan and we just want to close the door and move on, we leave a vacuum there,” Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an expert on Middle East and South Asia security issues, told Fox News Digital. “Someone else is going to fill it.”

Although no country has officially recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, some countries, including major adversaries of the United States, have moved to establish diplomatic relations with the extremist group.

Last year, Beijing said the Taliban should not be “excluded from the international community,” and reports earlier this year suggested that Moscow was considering removing the Taliban from its terrorist list, a further indication that China and Russia are seeking to use the region for their strategic goals.

Not only does the Taliban's opposition to Western ideology work in Russia's favor by spreading anti-American sentiment, but Moscow is also seeking to expand trade with Afghanistan and other countries in the region to further ease the economic pressure caused by Western sanctions.

Sanctions are not the only motivating factor for the expansion of trade in South Asia, however.

UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters fly during a military parade to mark the third anniversary of the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops from Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan's Parwan province, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)

Last year, the Taliban announced plans to join China's Belt and Road Initiative, and reports suggested that Beijing was providing the Taliban with drones, which could hamper the United States' “over-the-horizon” strategy in Afghanistan.

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The U.S. failure to anticipate the Taliban takeover was not just an intelligence failure; it was indicative of a broader lack of understanding of the threats facing the U.S., Rubin said. “The other problem, which I wouldn’t call an intelligence failure but a diplomatic failure, was the refusal to deal realistically with the Pakistan issue,” he added.

Rubin pointed to evidence from a decade of war in Afghanistan that showed that 90 percent of the ammonium nitrate used in roadside bombs by the Taliban came from two fertilizer plants in neighboring Pakistan.

Pakistani officials said in 2011 they were working with Washington to stop smuggling activities at a time when the United States was struggling to halt attacks by al-Qaeda and the Taliban, just months after the United States suffered its deadliest year in Afghanistan, with nearly 500 American troops and more than 700 coalition forces killed.

However, the further discovery and subsequent assassination of al-Qaeda leader and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, in May 2011, left many questioning the reliability of relations between Washington and Islamabad, a question that remains to this day.

U.S. Marines from 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade walk toward a helicopter transport as part of Operation Khanjar at Camp Dwyer in Helmand province, Afghanistan on July 2, 2009. (Manpreet Romana/AFP via Getty Images)

Pakistan is engaged in a shadow war with insurgent groups on its border with Afghanistan, but Islamabad is also suspected of aiding the Taliban through covert operations.

Despite its ambiguous security posture, the United States continues to maintain close ties with Pakistan, which remains its largest export market and a major investor in the country, a relationship that has not gone unnoticed by China and Russia.

Beijing has also looked to Islamabad to expand bilateral economic partnerships through its Belt and Road Initiative, particularly the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, in which Beijing has invested some $62 billion.

Moreover, despite international pressure to walk a tightrope with Russia, Pakistan has indicated it may be willing to help Moscow circumvent Western sanctions aimed at crippling its war effort through a “barter” trade system that could potentially expand an alliance that could further burden the United States in a region where it must maintain positive relations.

“It’s simply wrong to look at Afghanistan in isolation,” Rubin said, hinting at the root of the U.S. failure to assess the overall security situation in the region. “We tend not to see the forest through the trees.”

A multi-year investigation published in 2023 found that the collapse of U.S. intelligence under the Trump and Biden administrations was due to Washington's failure to correctly interpret the Afghan government's ability to function without U.S. support.

BLINKEN TO FREEZE AID TO AFGHANISTAN AFTER REVEALING NEARLY $300 MILLION MAY HAVE BEEN DIRECTED TO THE TALIBAN

Taliban fighters mark the third anniversary of the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops from Afghanistan in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)

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“The Taliban were mistreating us and our intelligence wasn’t picking up on it,” Rubin said. “We were looking at Afghanistan through the prism of idealism and ideology. We were building a democracy. From the Afghan perspective, they were looking at it through the prism of survival.”

The expert explained that Kabul fell so quickly because the Taliban had been making inroads across the country with local governors and district chiefs for one to two years before withdrawing, meaning that Afghanistan's fall was played out on momentum and defections.

“In fact, a lot of families would send one son to the Afghan National Security Forces, the army we were training, and the other to the Taliban,” Rubin says. “The idea was not to favor one power over another, but that way, if one of their family members was kidnapped at a checkpoint, they would always have someone to call to try to get them released.”

Ultimately, the US's failure to understand Afghans, who lived under the constant threat of war for half a century after the 1973 coup, the Soviet-Afghan War throughout the 1980s, Taliban rule in the 1990s, and then the 20-year war on terror, meant that it failed to recognize that the average Afghan would not fully trust the Afghan government without US support.

“That's what Osama bin Laden said,” Rubin continues, “when you have a choice between a strong horse and a weak horse, it's natural to stick to the strong horse. That's what the Afghans do.”

Taliban supporters march in the streets of Kabul on August 15, 2023. Two years ago, the Taliban completed their return to power in Afghanistan after the fall of the Western-backed government and the rapid evacuation of foreign troops and organizations, as well as many Afghans who worked with them. Since then, no country has officially recognized the Taliban regime. (Nava Jamshidi/Getty Images)

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Open-source intelligence also showed that the Taliban had made gains across Afghanistan in the year leading up to the withdrawal, and questions have since arisen about why neither the Trump nor the Biden administration adjusted the withdrawal plans accordingly.

“Unfortunately, ego always trumps common sense when it comes to setting Washington policy,” Rubin said. “The second problem was simply exhaustion and the idea that this was a two-decade war, the longest in American history, and that by supporting the resistance we were going to do it again.”

“It was a compelling argument,” he added.

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