As the last American forces left Kabul, many pundits, especially those who wanted to paint the withdrawal as a success, drew parallels to the infamous British retreat from Kabul after the first Anglo-Afghan War.
While Henderson, unlike Stengel, is correct that the withdrawal was to Jalalabad and not out of Afghanistan entirely, he is wrong that Brydon was the only survivor. Notwithstanding, that is, Elizabeth Thompson’s 1879 oil painting, the late Peter Hopkirk’s flowing Great Game narrative, or the fictionalized account narrated by Flashman, the character made famous by the late George MacDonald Fraser.
While it is true that several thousand British soldiers, family members, and their camp followers departed Kabul, and only Brydon arrived in Jalalabad, he was not the only survivor. Several dozen British citizens survived the long march from Kabul, but they were taken hostage en route during the multiple hit-and-run attacks led by partisans of Dost Mohammad, the once and future Afghan king. Dost Mohammad was, at the time, the nemesis for British strategists who sought to prop up Shah Shuja and turn Afghanistan into an important piece of informal empire. (Prior to his death, Taliban propaganda likened Mullah Omar to Dost Muhammad and implied that post-Taliban Afghan Presidents Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani were like the hapless Shuja).
Over the next several years, Dost Mohammad’s forces ransomed off (and, in some cases, married off) his British hostages, much to the benefit of his treasury and to the continued humiliation of the British Empire. The retreat from Kabul would mark one of its worst military defeats, at least until the loss of Singapore a century later.
Herein lies the true parallel with Afghan history.
President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken left behind more than 100 Americans. The true figure may be much higher: No one has confirmed how the White House and State Department generated that number and are simply assuming its accuracy. National security adviser Jake Sullivan suggested the United States has leverage, although the only leverage it might have is the up to $9.4 billion in Afghanistan’s foreign reserves that American banks physically hold.
However, the disaster of the American withdrawal might be worse despite Stengel’s potted analogy or, separately, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin’s effusive praise of the State Department’s efforts. There is a pattern not only in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen but also in Afghanistan where tribesmen and criminals kidnap foreigners for profit. Sometimes, as in 19th-century Afghanistan, they seek to ransom hostages themselves, but today, they also often sell them to transnational terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. While Biden, Blinken, and Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad differentiate between the Taliban on one hand and al Qaeda and the Islamic State’s Khorasan branch (ISIS-K) on the other, no American official has ever shown any evidence to suggest that the Taliban have disassociated themselves from such groups.
Simply put, as the White House seeks to turn a new page, it is likely that the Taliban will flip an old one: The Taliban will negotiate for as much of the $9.4 billion as they can get but will keep the pressure on Biden’s White House by selling American prisoners sporadically to groups that might make a spectacle of their execution. In that scenario, Washington spin will be irrelevant, as will Biden’s angry rhetoric and blame-shifting. The withdrawal was strategic malpractice. Leaving Americans behind was unforgivable, but what comes next could be even worse.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
minions won't read this - it is not consonant with their marxist revolutionary rhetoric/narrative
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fiden , and LSM - Lie!