Biden’s Afghan Disaster at Year Two

On the second anniversary of President Biden’s surrender of Afghanistan the danger is rising that the war-torn nation is again incubating terrorism, as it was before the September 11 attacks, even as America is underwriting the Taliban regime at Kabul. It makes a mockery of Mr. Biden’s pledge two years ago “to make sure Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland.”It’s hard to think of a statement, in the whole history of the American presidency, that is more mendacious than Mr. Biden’s on the surrender. Months before his remarks, the UN was warning that “there is still clearly a close relationship between Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” that “the top leadership of Al Qaeda is still under Taliban protection,” and that there were as many as 500 Al Qaeda fighters scattered across 11 Afghan provinces. In news that will not surprise anyone outside of the Biden administration, the UN recently sounded the alarm that Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan was metastasizing in the absence of American soldiers there. The country has become a “safe haven,” in the UN’s telling. Al Qaeda members “have greater freedom of maneuver,” and are making “good use of this,” the UN warns, as the terror group and the Taliban forge “a symbiotic relationship.”The UN observes that Al Qaeda now has between 30 and 60 top leaders in Afghanistan, “as well as an additional 400 fighters, 1,600 family members and a series of new training camps,” Voice of America reports. It’s a frosty Friday, we’ll say, when the UN is more clear-headed than an American president. Mr. Biden’s misunderstanding of the facts on the ground has led Afghanistan to revert to “a hub and haven for international terrorism.”That point is according to an opposition group, the National Resistance Front, that is fighting the Taliban. Its head of foreign relations, Ali Maisam Nazary, tells us that when America left, “thousands of fighters” converged on Afghanistan because the Taliban “provides sanctuary and safety and protection.” The country will become again a “launching pad for attacks against other countries,” Mr. Nazary warns. Yet Mr. Nazary laments that Mr. Biden has failed to back the efforts of groups like the National Resistance Front in their effort to take back their country from the Taliban. A similar point is made by a Green Beret and Afghan war veteran, Thomas Kasza, who now leads efforts to rescue America’s Afghan allies who were left behind after Mr. Biden’s surrender. We’ve described this rescue effort, now under the aegis of the 1208 Foundation, as a “Digital Dunkirk.”Mr. Kasza balks at the State Department’s claim that America wants to avoid a “return to violence in Afghanistan,” and so “we do not support armed opposition to the Taliban.” This hands-off policy, he tells us, keeps Afghanistan “in a perpetual state of limbo” while “actively deterring those who would resist the Taliban.” It’s “particularly deplorable,” he says, since America has lost its “moral authority towards dictating the future of the country.”Worse, Mr. Biden has taken billions in frozen Afghan assets — already awarded in court to families of 9/11 victims — and diverted them to a shadowy “Afghan Fund” in a misguided attempt at humanitarian aid. Mr. Nazary warns the Taliban are “exploiting and misusing these funds.” He considers the aid a part of a “failed policy of appeasement.” A London-based watchdog group confirms the aid is being diverted by the Taliban.Taken in all it adds up to a slow-motion foreign policy disaster on Mr. Biden’s watch, and not only for the Afghans. Allowing terrorism to fester in Afghanistan, if Al Qaeda revives its ambitions against America, poses a danger here at home, too. It underscores Mr. Biden’s delusion that he was giving up the fight in Afghanistan without victory because he “refused to continue in a war that was no longer in the service of the vital national interest of our people.”

Biden’s Afghan Disaster at Year Two

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