Escape from the Graveyard of Empires

Watching the hurried evacuation of American citizens, troops, and Afghani allies from the Kabul airport in August might seem to be an embarrassing defeat for the U.S. and the Biden administration. However, considering that the “former guy” had nearly a year to begin the withdrawal and did little, America’s exit from Afghanistan is nearly as remarkable as WWII’s Miracle at Dunkirk.

It’s all the more remarkable considering the long saga of failed ventures to occupy Afghanistan by some of the most powerful empires in history, from the Persians to the Mongols. After initial successes, these empires ultimately met with failure if not outright defeat. Even Alexander the Great’s unmatched record of conquering countries met its end in this country that is often called The Graveyard of Empires.

What we today call Afghanistan was Alexander the Great’s last stop on his rampage to conquer much of the known world. After defeating the Persians in Afghanistan, Alexander tried to push on to what is now called Pakistan (then the northern portion of India). Alexander left a good portion of his army lying dead in the Kindu Kush mountains. While trying to tame Afghanistan, Alexander began a physical and mental deterioration that led to a rebellion among his forces, forcing him to pull back to Babylon. He died not long after.

Britain's First Retreat

Britain fought two wars in Afghanistan in the 1800s; both failed to gain control over the region. (A Third Anglo-Afghan War was fought in 1919, but most of the fighting took place in neighboring India.) The First Anglo-Afghan War led to one of Britain’s worst military defeats.

Remnants of an Army by Elizabeth Butler shows the only British solider to

survive Britain's 1842 retreat from Kabul.

After occupying Kabul for three years, British forces were forced to evacuate the city in 1842. More than 16,000 troops and camp followers marched out of Kabul and into the Khyber Pass, a mountainous route through the Kindu Kush that links Afghanistan and Pakistan. Like Alexander before them, the British littered the mountain range with the bodies of their people. Out of the 16,000 troops and camp followers, only one British officer made it out the other end of the pass.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 intending to prop up a pro-Russian government in Kabul. The ten-year Soviet-Afghan War was not only unpopular in the USSR (it was referred to as Russia’s Vietnam), it was also extremely costly in both blood and national treasure. When Soviet leadership was taken over by moderates like Mikhail Gorbachev, the decision was made pull their troops out.

The End of the USSR

The Soviet pull-out was not as disorderly as Britain’s 1842 withdrawal. The USSR allowed itself nearly a year to slowly evacuate Afghanistan, beginning the withdrawal in May 1988 and completing it in February 1989. While orderly, it wasn’t without problems. At one point, Soviet troops had to fight their way past a recalcitrant Afghan warlord and his fighters.

While the Soviet withdrawal was ultimately successful, the die was cast for the fate of the USSR. In December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

In nearly each case, the cause of the occupation’s failure lay in the fact that Afghanistan was never really a country to begin with. The region has always been a hodgepodge of tribal factions led by warlords who form and destroy alliances based on who they saw as common enemies. There was no sense of nationality or common interest. Even when the Taliban “ruled” Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal, they still had to deal with dozens of individual warlords who refused to bend fully to their reign.

Trump's Failure

Donald Trump signed a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 after months of “negotiation” in which he handed them everything they asked for. There can be no doubt Trump’s military advisors, pointing to the Soviet example, told him the withdrawal would take as long as a year to accomplish properly. While troops began withdrawing in mid-2020, Trump never ordered the evacuation of nonessential personnel like the families of embassy staff, contractors, and Afghani allies, which should have been the first step.

In fact, Trump policies that made it harder to organize the evacuations. For instance, his immigration policies made it nearly impossible to issue Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) to Afghani who worked for the U.S. and NATO during our 20-year war there, leaving a backlog of more than 17,000 SIV applications when President Joe Biden took over. In fact, Trump refused to even brief Biden and his transition team on the situation in Afghanistan, leaving the new president in the blind until he took office.

That Trump did little to accomplish the withdrawal from Afghanistan for nearly a year—despite the fact he said he want to be out of the country by May of this year—forced Biden into a quick and hasty withdrawal process. The massive C-17 air transports flying out of Kabul this August did not carry military personnel, they carried those people who should have left Afghanistan last year.

Considering how little had been done by Donald Trump after signing the withdrawal agreement, what we watched happening at the Kabul airport was nothing less than a miracle in military logistics and a sign that for the first time in four years, we have real leadership in the White House.