Collapse in Afghanistan

(Second of two parts)

• Communications failure. In selling withdrawal, Biden weeks ago assured Americans that it was “highly unlikely” for the Taliban to be “overrunning everything and owning the whole country.” He insisted that “there’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof” of the United States embassy. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “We are staying, the embassy is staying, our programs are staying. If there is a significant deterioration in security, I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.”

As these predictions unraveled in real time, the administration pivoted to insisting that “we have succeeded” in Afghanistan. What should’ve been a tough but necessary decision became a debacle, opening Biden to charges from political opponents that he is personally responsible for the failed war – a ludicrous charge for a 20-year, $2-trillion failure, but one he now partially owns.

The next few days will be crucial. The Kabul government has fallen and now-former president Ashraf Ghani has fled the country into exile, but many Americans and foreigners are still stuck in the capital, with thousands of US troops on their way to help evacuate them. Will the Taliban try to kidnap or kill Americans as they leave? Will the chaos lead to accidents and deaths of American journalists, aid workers, diplomats or soldiers? The White House is staring down a number of worst-case scenarios reminiscent of the Tehran hostage crisis in 1979 and the failed Iran hostage rescue in 1980. We’ll know in short order whether Kabul 2021 will be added to the list.

Even if Biden avoids further catastrophe, the optics from the coming weeks will be staggeringly bad. The Taliban will enjoy the propaganda coup of raising their flag above Kabul – including in the former American embassy – on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Billions of dollars of military materiel abandoned by the Americans will be paraded through the capital.

Taliban forces will establish their rule with atrocities, especially against women and girls. The US media is unlikely to let this go – especially if, as is likely, some are caught up in it. Congress will hold hearings and interrogate senior administration officials as to what happened.

Afghanistan will once again serve as a safe haven for international terrorism – either because the Taliban directly welcomes extremist groups or, more likely, because it won’t be able to control its territory. Conflict zones are magnets for jihadists from around the world, as demonstrated by Afghanistan in the 1980s, Bosnia in the 1990s, Iraq in the 2000s and Syria in the 2010s. The wave of ISIS terrorism in Europe was enabled by the organization’s ability to recruit extremists from across the world, train them in Syria and Iraq, and deploy them back to their home countries.

The American ability to monitor and strike against terrorist groups in Afghanistan will be limited, given the absence of on-the-ground intelligence and the limitations of regional military capacity. The “known unknowns” about Afghanistan will skyrocket in the coming years. That alone is bad news for America.

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Ian Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media and author of “Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism.”