Kabul massacre weakens America’s strategic position

The question of how much lower US prestige can sink under the Biden administration is acutely disturbing for the superpower’s allies to contemplate, especially Australia on the eve of next week’s 70th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty. Just days after the Taliban’s rapid victory over the disintegrating Afghan government and the launch of the desperate US and coalition airlift, Thursday’s suicide bombings near Kabul airport compounded the humiliation. The twin explosions killed 12 US marines and one navy medic, wounded another 15 US personnel and killed at least 80 Afghans. Diabolical terrorist group ISIS-K, which despises the Taliban for being “too soft”, claimed responsibility for the “martyrdom” massacre. As Scott Morrison said: “We join with our American and Afghan friends in mourning their terrible and awful loss.” Like Australians who had been serving at the same airport, the Prime Minister said, the young Americans were on duty “to protect lives, to save lives, but lost their own in providing a pathway to freedom for others”.

The fact the marines and those around them were vulnerable was a serious strategic failure that must not be overlooked. Hard questions must be asked and painful lessons learned in the White House and the Pentagon. The attacks were expected. Western intelligence agencies had warned of an “ongoing and high threat of terrorist attack”.

General Kenneth McKenzie, head of the US Central Command supervising the evacuation, admits: “We thought this would happen sooner or later.” The US had depended on the Taliban for security screening outside the airport since mid-August, he said. Why? “What a position for the US to be in: relying on the victorious enemy that has spent years trying to kill Americans to detect jihadists bent on killing Americans,” The Wall Street Journal noted.

Whatever advice he was given, Joe Biden did not provide adequate force to execute the evacuation mission and protect the troops carrying it out. The lack of manpower to secure the airport and the approaches to it, allowing safer passage for those escaping Afghanistan, was a serious failure, likely to leave supporters of the coalition war effort at the mercy of the Taliban. The other major US mistake was abandoning Bagram air base, 70km outside Kabul, in July. For 20 years it was the epicentre of US efforts to hunt down al-Qai’da, subdue the Taliban and rebuild Afghanistan as a modern state. The base has two runways, parking for more than 100 fighter jets and a 50-bed hospital. When abandoned, it had thousands of armoured and civilian vehicles, thousands of bottles of water and ready-made meals. The US also left behind small weapons and ammunition. On Thursday, Mr Biden said his military advisers told him Bagram did not provide much advantage over the Kabul airfield, with its single runway. If that was the case, he should have provided greater protection for the airport and insisted on an evacuation that was not rushed to conform to the Taliban’s “red line” deadline.

Despite the scramble of recent days and nights, now upended by the ISIS-K attack, Mr Biden was insisting on Friday that the US would complete its evacuation by August 31. Failure to do so could cost many lives. But Karl Rove, former senior adviser to George W. Bush, who took the US into Afghanistan after 9/11, said the operation lacked detailed planning and oversight by Mr Biden. As a result, the US’s main rivals, China, Russia and Iran, were “gleefully demolishing any remaining American influence in the region, while our radical Islamist enemies are exulting at victory over the Great Satan and enjoying a huge recruiting boost”.

Much of the administration’s credibility, and that of the US, now depends on fulfilling Mr Biden’s pledge to “hunt down” the terrorist attackers. He is ready to authorise further military force in Afghanistan to do so. Such an operation would be highly challenging, however, in view of the Taliban’s control of the country, despite the fact ISIS-K and the Taliban are bitter enemies. ISIS-K, named after the historic region of Khorasan, which stretched through what is now northeastern Iran, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, is a splinter group of Islamic State. It established itself about a decade ago in the borderlands with Pakistan, drawing disgruntled jihadists from other terror groups. Its raison d’etre is killing “infidels”, locally and across the world if possible. Last year it bombed a maternity hospital in Kabul, killing mothers and newborn babies. The crowded gateways to Kabul airport, supervised by the Taliban, provided an irresistible, easy target. The slaughter of the “innocent and the brave”, as Mr Morrison aptly described those who died in the attack, bodes badly for what lies ahead in Afghanistan.