Afghan withdrawal humiliating, deleterious

United States troops entered Afghanistan two decades ago in the name of a "war on terror". The US then attempted to build a modern Afghan state. While the former hardly qualifies as the victory President Joe Biden claimed, its attempts at the latter are an unmistakable, unfolding, messy failure.

In rapid developments on Sunday, the Taliban surrounded Kabul, US diplomats were evacuated from their embassy to the airport, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani left the country and the Taliban entered the capital.

Previously, as the Taliban captured one city after another, leaving the fate of the Afghan capital and government on the line, Biden seemed determined to fulfill his plan to withdraw the US military presence as scheduled. The US has shown its determination to leave the country, no matter what.

"An endless American presence in the middle of another country's civil conflict was not acceptable to me," Biden said on Saturday, the day when the Taliban took two strategically significant cities to the south and north of Kabul.

Even as Taliban fighters entered Kabul on Sunday, the US and its allies acted like disinterested parties, hurriedly accelerating the withdrawal of their nationals.

President Biden authorized the deployment of 5,000 troops to guarantee "an orderly and safe" drawdown of US and allied personnel. The United Kingdom sent 600 troops to help evacuate British nationals, and its ambassador has already left Afghanistan.

In the past few weeks, each place the US troops withdrew from fell to the Taliban in no time. Taliban fighters entered Mazar-i-Sharif on Saturday virtually unopposed, because the government forces surrendered first.

Whether the US will be able to smoothly pull out its troops by the August 31 deadline and how it will honor its claimed commitment to peace and stability in Afghanistan are by and large technical concerns. What Afghanistan as a country and its people will face following the departure of the US and its allies will be the real matter of significance.

US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad's meeting on Saturday with Taliban representatives in Doha failed to stop the fighting.

There have been fears of the Taliban returning to power and subsequent humanitarian crises.

The Taliban on Saturday assured both Afghans and foreigners that they would be safe, and it would "create a peaceful and secure environment" for Afghanistan.

Hopefully they will honor the promise. The people of Afghanistan have suffered enough from the devastation of war. They deserve peace.