In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, US President Joe Biden addressed that: “War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multi-generational undertaking of nation-building. We went to Afghanistan to get the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. We delivered justice to Osama bin Laden and degraded the terrorist threat of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. After 20 years of American valor and sacrifice, it’s time to bring our troops home.”
Joe Biden declared that the US has achieved its goal by killing Osama bin Laden; that’s why, he’s withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan. In fact, Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011; however, the West still considers the Islamic Ummah as a potential threat against its civilization. The key question is that if the main goal of the US was to kill Osama, then why did the US keep its forces in Afghanistan for another ten years to commit brutal crimes?!
On the other hand, in the wake of the occupation of Afghanistan, the US spoke of the fight against terrorism, counter-narcotics measures, state -and nation-building though it was over the past twenty years in the time of American invasion that cultivation of narcotics reached its peak which placed Afghanistan in the first rank in the world level. Though after twenty years, the US president announces that the war in Afghanistan was never meant to be an undertaking of a nation-building.
The traitorous rulers of Pakistan and Afghanistan contributed the US forces in defeating Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The US has regularly deceived the public with their slogans (i.e. prosperity, peace, human rights, women’s rights, democracy and state-building), however, millions of Muslims have been brutally slaughtered and wounded with tens of thousands have lost their families and got displaced under such deceptive slogans.
The sad reality is that the war the US had started in 2001 resulted in America retreating through a [tricky deal] of peace talks with the Taliban, while causing the war intensify harshly among Afghans. So, is anyone there to question the US of its continued war in Afghanistan under the pretext of the so-called slogans and deceptive goals?! You pulled millions of Muslims out of their lands by different means and displaced them from their homes!
All these are similar to the false statements the US used to claim about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and/or nuclear weapons as well as Iraq’s link to al-Qaeda – which later helped the US occupy Iraq under this pretext, even though it was finally proved that Iraq had no such weapons at all, and that the US wanted to demonstrate its power to the world as well as to establish strong bases in the Middle East to fight against ‘terrorism’ – a war that was essentially plotted against the Muslim Ummah. The US killed millions of Muslims in Iraq and ruined the country, even led it toward disintegration.
Three US presidents, George W. Bush, Barrack Obama, and Donald Trump led these wars by spreading brutal terror while showing reluctance to apparently declare their goals. The scope of such terroristic scenarios protracted to more than twenty Islamic lands until the US finally came to a conclusion that neither will it be able to break the resistance of Mujahideen of Afghanistan nor the puppet government of Afghanistan will survive without the support of US and NATO. Therefore, from a military point of view, the US and NATO suffered an obvious defeat in Afghanistan; that’s why they turned to protect their global reputation by means of peace talks with the Taliban. However, promises of freedom, democracy, nation-building, human rights, women’s rights, and re-reconstruction of Afghanistan were chanted widely at the Bonn Conference and other consecutive colonial conferences, after twenty years of terror and miseries, the US returns to the zero point.
US and NATO occupation of Afghanistan in addition to their sinister colonial intentions were also aimed at exerting influence over hydrocarbon reserves of the Caspian Sea, transporting these resources from Central Asia to South Asia, pushing for containment of China and Russia and finally to preventing the emergence of the Islamic State (Caliphate) in the region.
As Richard Dannatt, the former head of British Army and the then advisor to the British Prime Minister, in an interview with BBC Radio 4, confirmed that, “Afghan war is to prevent the re-establishment of the Islamic State (Khilafah)”. When he was asked about the occupation of Afghanistan, he stated: “There is an Islamist agenda which if we don’t oppose it and face it off in Southern Afghanistan, or Afghanistan, or in South Asia, then frankly that influence will grow. It could well grow, and this is an important point, we could see it moving from South Asia to the Middle East to North Africa, and to the high water mark of the Islamic Caliphate in the 14th, 15th century.”
Twenty years ago, everyone had witnessed that how the US, as a super power, plotted to unify the world leaders, including the rulers of the Islamic lands, under the pretext of ‘war on terror’ agenda to suppress Islam and Muslims. As for now, the twenty-year-old lies of the US have been exposed as the American war has lost its legitimacy, even trespassed against the principles and rules of Capitalism and Democracy. Therefore, the US is trying its new conspiracy to secure its presence in Afghanistan. As a matter of fact, the US intends to withdraw its military troops from Afghanistan, but pushes to maintain a long-term strong presence in Afghanistan by strengthening its intelligence, political and cultural influence in the country as well as a military presence in the region.
Consequently, the disclosure of America’s equivocal lies has further deteriorated the US status in the eyes of the public, demonstrating that the existing US and Britain are no longer the US and Britain they used to be twenty years ago and that the Western world is no longer the answer to the problems of humans, nature and the world. That’s why, the former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton pessimistically told CNN while discussing the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan that, “This is what we call a wicked problem.” She added that “There are consequences both foreseen and unintended of staying and of leaving.” Alternatively, the existing Ummah has changed considerably compared to the past twenty years. Even though the treacherous rulers and wicked systems still govern through the Islamic lands, waves of intellectual and political revolution of the Ummah are in full swing in the communities, turning the subject of ‘Re-establishment of Khilafah’ into one of the most wanted issues of the time. Therefore, we must increase the scale of our piety by bearing full trust in the Nussrah (support) of Allah (swt) and struggle for a fundamental change among the Ummah and with the Ummah together.
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Saifullah Mustanir
Director of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Afghanistan
(Translated)