Joe Biden needlessly abandoned the Afghan people – and Britain stood idly by

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Last night I heard friends from Afghanistan talking about what is happening on their streets. Unfamiliar voices that could have been ignored one day as nothing brings fear. Everyone has heard the stories.

In Lashkar Gah, where I lived for a year as an advisor to the governor of Helmand, in southern Afghanistan, friends I worked with are dragged from their homes and shot. In the morning, their bodies lie in the gutter, a warning to everyone.

In Kandahar, the teachers who gave hope to a new generation of pupils were silenced. Where there were once girls studying, one day becoming doctors, entrepreneurs and leaders in the country, offices are now empty. Groups of men invite families and ask fathers to register their daughters over the age of twelve. Those registered are forced to marry Taliban fighters they have not met before and enter a life of slavery. Half of the population has just been stripped of all rights.

This is not the new Taliban, as you think. This is the same Taliban as it has always been: vengeful, violent and born out of tribal strife in the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan. The group has not changed. Even her friends are the same.

Over the years, reports have shown that the Taliban’s association with al-Qaeda has not been broken. If anything, it’s stronger. With al-Qaeda losing in Iraq and Syria, it returned to Afghanistan, where it was joined by ISIS, another fundamentalist death cult. Other fighters include the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, whose violence gave the Chinese Communist Party a pretext to imprison at least one million Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

There will undoubtedly be other groups like it. We’ve seen this pattern before. In Libya, Syria, Iraq and of course Afghanistan before 2001, when a fundamentalist Islamic sect seized power, that region grows terrorists like weeds.

so what happened? Why did the Afghan people leave us to this fate? In what is considered the worst foreign policy failure since the Suez Crisis of 1956, the UK found itself unable to act quickly enough, or separately from the US President who saw the totemic anniversary of the 9/11 attacks as more important than the success of the mission.

[see also: The Afghan government’s collapse is a humiliation for the United States and Joe Biden]

Joe Biden could have waited for winter, when the fighting will be toughest in Afghanistan, before withdrawing the last few US forces that were needed to enable the Afghan military’s combat power. He could have made the withdrawal in stages to make sure each job was safe before moving on to the next. Or he could have simply realized that 2,500 soldiers, the number of American soldiers remaining in Afghanistan, is half the crew of an aircraft carrier – a tenth of the number deployed in the Gulf and a fraction of those in South Korea and Japan.

He could have stayed. The ongoing cost was low; It was the sunk cost that he kept focusing on. But the fact is clear – the money is spent and not returned. The men you buried, from Paul to Arbroath, will never rise again because we left. Withdrawals don’t save money, it wastes effort – mine, theirs, and everyone else’s. This was not a war forever. This was a heated operation of the kind required to support an embryonic government still fighting a local insurgency. Withdrawal from Germany in 1950 would have resulted in a new Wehrmacht reform under the control of Soviet forces. Leaving Cyprus today could risk another explosion of violence on the Green Line. Instead of dropping out, we stayed in both.

This strategic patience is essential to victory in the war. The battles are noisy, rushing, confusing and complex. It is about movement and speed. Winning wars means winning battles, but it also means having the stamina to keep going, staying on the line, and proving the resolve that brings people together. The tragedy of Afghanistan is that while we have won every battle, those victories don’t matter without patience.

The night the Americans left Bagram Air Force Base, they didn’t tell anyone. In the morning, people who thought they were partners, allies with a common future, found out that their friends were gone. The people who were guarding the gate, and who served the helicopters, all disappeared. No wonder they then started looking to save themselves – that’s what their teacher had just done.

Without the helicopters, supply lines have run out, ammunition and food have dried up, and morale has evaporated—the key ingredient that turns an idea into action. It’s amazing how long they kept fighting. With foreign armies putting resources and money into the Taliban, Afghan soldiers were abandoned until their positions became no longer acceptable and they rushed home or surrendered to the enemy. Many were killed, and many are now in fear.

They are not alone. Allies around the world are wondering what the deal with the United States would mean, and the true cost of an American alliance. Would a future president copy this option and leave without warning? Will the alliance raise your profile enough to make you a target, but fail to secure the lasting commitment needed to make it worthwhile?

Like the failure of the Suez Canal, the crisis in Afghanistan will completely change our foreign policy. For the UK, the White House alone cannot determine our options. We need to deepen our other alliances, and over the coming years, we need to reflect on what that means.

From Commonwealth countries that now receive more investment from Beijing than London, to merchants who find it easier to shop in Guangzhou than in Glasgow, we need to recognize that there is a problem, and change it. Because the direction we’re on will only lead to one end point – back to Kabul and failure.

We can change. We can open our markets and remember that allies expand our influence, distance us from enemies, and enrich our economy. But all of that requires an end to the perennial disagreements of the past years, a commitment to partnership, and a determination to continue.

If we give it, we will not fear the blow at night.

Tom Tugendhat is Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and Conservative MP for Tonbridge, Edinbridge and Mulling.

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