The Afghan leadership had better turn to their military leadership demanding a result-oriented war strategy to contain the Taliban advances; instead, they loved to target Pakistan with their hate-infested posts. At the end of the day, they learned the bitter lesson that it was not a wise defense work. 

The footage of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani taking a one-way flight to Tajikistan is doing the rounds. He remained aloof to what is happening in Afghanistan in previous days and weeks. Another day and another provincial capital fall to Taliban under the keen (or sleepy) eyes of the Kabul regime and the international community. No doubt that in some Afghan cities, local warlords along with the security forces put up a fierce resistance for days, but given the poor war strategy and a lack of reinforcements, the Afghan forces caved in to the brutal Taliban onslaught. At the end of the day, the Taliban entered Kabul unchallenged.    

Meanwhile, the Afghan government urged India to convene the session of the UN Security Council only to malign Pakistan. Though the session ended without any concrete result, India-Ghani government alliance was badly exposed. 

Islamabad did its work well: our Foreign Office kept on asking the Kabul government to reach out the Taliban for a political settlement but the Ghani government started a venomous work against Pakistan. 
Perhaps, the Ghani government was relying strikes from the skies by the US attacks on the Taliban.  

As NATO and US troops’ pullout deadline of August 30 is nearing, another round of war had already started – Taliban vs Kabul forces and the US vs Taliban. In both rounds, the Taliban were the common enemy or culprit. As the Taliban’s advances went unchallenged, the United States announced continuing air strikes to facilitate Afghan forces in their fight against the Taliban. As Pakistan had refused to grant access to its airbase, and the US has vacated the Bagram field earlier this month, it is very likely the US was conducting strikes from a remote location, most probably Doha. The strikes showed that Taliban were still a force that the US and other countries could not afford to ignore them and that the troop withdrawal was not well planned. This also implied that the Afghan government in Kabul should have been ready for the tough days ahead even though the US commander believed that “the Taliban are nowhere close to victory”. 

Pakistan, however, kept on reminding the Kabul government and the international community to go for a political settlement. Despite arranging an accord with the militants, the US failed to organise Afghan security forces. The result is the Taliban’s rampage has forced Afghan forces to flee, leaving residents at the mercy of the militants. 

There are reports that the Taliban are also committing atrocities against civilians in areas they captured. The world must be united in their fight against the Taliban, side by side finding a political solution to end civil war in the war-torn country.  

Pakistan’s role is crucial, the world must not forget. The current is, however, going otherwise.  

Recently, the Twitter hashtag #SanctionPakistan was making the rounds hitting the online waves more than 900,000 times. According to social media insight outlet, Talkwalker, up to 40 percent of those tweets tagged were generated in Afghanistan. 

It emerges as if most of the Afghans, led by Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, believed the Taliban’s unstoppable march had the active backing of Pakistan. Not true. Pakistan has clearly said it will go for “an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned” government in Kabul.  

The recent developments show that Americans showed haste in leaving Afghanistan. We had better leave history to decide about the losers and victors of the War on Terror, or to be precise the Afghan war, led by the US and joined by NATO and allied forces, as all US troopers have left the Bagram Air Base.

The sprawling base, which remained the hub of the US military activities for almost two decades, now looks like the sea of scrap military gears. With the departure of the troopers from Bagram, one can infer the end of the American presence in Afghanistan, even though US troops are present in the parts of the country. Bagram was the rundown base where the first batch of the US troops landed after the twin towers attack in 2001. Within months, the base turned into a sprawling garrison. In the days to come, the base saw countless landings and takeoffs and many ups and downs. The airbase also hosted three presidents – Bush, Obama, and Trump – from time to time. The fourth president, Biden, however, was in a hurry to desert the base and kept his resolve and words. Bagram is now under the Taliban control. 

Now, in the post-withdrawal scenario, Pakistan and the US need to work together for peace in Afghanistan. But that should happen only when both countries have the same interest in the region. Pakistan should not be used as a launch site of drones and bomber jets to target militants in Afghanistan. The target of retaliatory actions by the militants in Afghanistan would be, no doubt, Pakistan. Building on the lessons of the war on terror and the Afghan war of the 1980s, Pakistan is unlikely to become a strategic partner in future Afghan adventures.