August 26 is an exhausting day. The loss of life in Afghanistan is a blow to the United States. This is the resurrection of the Islamic State, the evil Caliphate. Specifically, those terrorists who fled to Afghanistan from Iraq and Syria are called ISIS-K. This is their statement to the world that they will avenge their grudges against Satan. As the United States continues to staggeringly lose two decades of military occupation, ISIS-K is enjoying the moment of sitting on a duck; defeated by the Taliban’s strategic cunning.
The receiving end of “shock and awe” gave way to the anger and arrogance on the Internet, because Americans who really hate failure screamed, because the airport gate was blown up, the Taliban needed all kinds of retaliation against the Taliban.
The most spectacular canine tooth waving was performed by former National Security Advisor Lieutenant General HR McMaster at Fox News Announcing that Afghanistan is the new “terrorism center” on the planet, classifying the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State, and calling on the United States to redouble its efforts to combat the Taliban.
Comment trigger Almost immediately condemned by U.S. policy and strategy circles. Yes, McMaster is very angry. We can all understand this. But his critics are correct. His simplification of the local situation is dangerous, misguided, and not constructive for future national interests. For the sake of national cohesion, I think McMaster should retract his statement and replace it with a more sophisticated statement. Take time to explain the nuances in subsequent statements. He is indeed smart enough to know.
It is foreseeable that many others will engage in more expert and acrimonious reports, thus forming a noisy and cathartic news cycle. I ignore them all day long. The noise factor is not really useful data in the net assessment.
The objective report I saw in the quagmire was an article by Hollie McKay on the day of the attack on August 26, 2021. New York Post, “The Taliban leader threatened’malicious elements’ before the explosion at Kabul Airport.” She had talked with a Taliban security chief, saying that they were also trying to prevent ISIS-K from attacking the US compound at Hamid Karzai International Airport. Unfortunately, the efforts of all parties to intercept the bomber failed.
Regardless of anger and denial, all the nation-building projects invested by the United States are reduced to ashes, because, As Mckay said in a video interview with Lisa DatariThe war is not won on a battlefield where the United States knows how to fight. For thousands of years, this culture has used the same effective tools of statecraft-sincerely bribing the enemy with a cup of tea and mints, successfully fighting the invaders, and winning it asymmetrically.
We may have seen it, but we dismissed it because we Americans will never do such disgraceful things, and doing so makes us turn a blind eye to the power of this tool of Warcraft, even at the highest level of our government. Floor. This is a difficult lesson to learn, but if we are to continue to mature as a human-related culture, this is a lesson we must learn.I stick to my assessment on August 16, 2021, which is The Taliban played very well.
Experienced Afghan observers are not surprised.As Mackay pointed out very diligently in another article New York Post Entrance, “Rivalry between the Taliban and the Islamic State: what this means for Afghanistan” exist The Taliban and ISIS-K are not allies. They are actually rivals. It is important for Americans to know this, otherwise we will make mistakes again.
This competition is now beginning to show the world. The Taliban and the philosophical ally Al Qaeda are likely to end their power in Afghanistan in an internal struggle against the Islamic State. With the beginning of the next chapter of the killing, peace, if any, will be fleeting.
The Northern Alliance will observe from strongholds in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and northern Afghanistan, while the southern part of the country is in decline. They will wait for the two opponents to soften each other.
The Taliban, who are not fools, will realize that they need help to fight ISIS-K. They have a large reserve army to learn from. I would not be surprised to see them expand the scope of the amnesty and start recruiting former Afghan National Army (ANA) troops to help eliminate ISIS-K from Afghanistan.
This in turn will trigger a certain reaction from the Northern Alliance, either joining such a Taliban-ANA alliance or being excluded from the next version of Afghanistan.
As they say, one turn and one turn. This is a story that has experienced the culture of many empires.
This is a dilemma that the United States needs to deal with cautiously. Are we on one side? Which side? Do we advocate reconciliation or conflict? Now, there is almost no step back, assess the landscape, and find a constructive way forward.
Yes, we have lost another career. But the truth of the world is that our collapse was replaced by a emirate that was about to be born. The emirate will almost immediately be challenged by the power of a dangerous and rogue Caliphate. We are midwives in difficult labor; a kind of stillbirth.
Internationally, no one likes ISIS regardless of the letter bomber suffix. They are the biggest lightning rods in the global war on terrorism and are dangerous to every country and culture on this planet. To be sure, the Taliban can rely on the help of countries such as China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran. With the development of the war on terrorism in the next decade, this has established a new list of “good people”.
The next “voluntary coalition” will eventually bring the needs of ISIS-K to the United Nations. This has established a diplomatic arena where the United States and NATO must find a way to live in peace with these countries in order to eliminate the common threat to mankind.
Satire is poetic, even epic. Time will tell us.
It is worth noting that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is not the only faith-based country with which the United States has established a nation-state relationship. We have diplomatic, economic, and military cooperation relations with other countries with strict cultures. The value system of these countries is different from the diverse personalities that are a symbol of American culture.
This is part of the test of how we get out of this humble moment in history. Can we find balance? Or we will curl up into a fetal position, let this moment and the world leave us behind.
