OPINION…FROM WHERE I SIT: The End of America’s Longest War, Part 2 – An Airport Retrospective

The U.S. withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan was faced with two threats: the Taliban and the ISIS-K, both which did not prevent officials from being caught off guard by the unprecedented explosion near Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul–perpetrated by ISIS-K–and reportedly claimed the lives of numerous Americans and Afghan allies. Some grieved. Others had pointed fingers. All had wondered what it meant for the end of America’s 20-year long war.

U.S. officials made it clear that they had anticipated something like this when they announced that the ISIS-K was on the move and already had counterterrorism tactics laid out with the coordination of the Taliban, sworn enemies of ISIS-K. Although I do not really see what that had to do with instructing the remaining Americans in Afghanistan to stay put until further instructions while plenty of the Afghan families–some of the ones who worked in affiliation with the United States–were reaching the airports unharmed and were being evacuated.

Maybe they were trying to make room for the Americans so that they could avoid mixing them with the Afghans and they were able to board separate cargo planes. Yet somehow everybody overlooked the possibility that a terrorist would manage to breach the security, disguised as an Afghan we’ll say, get close to the airport, and cause an explosion.

How did anyone manage to breach the security remains as confidential as the identity of the Capitol police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. While it is a safe bet that the Taliban was not in on it, it would seem that conditions at the airfields were so erratic that they had failed to notice anything suspicious. If we were lucky, he could have waited until he had boarded one of the cargo planes.

But it does not matter. Any terroristic attack that occurs when America saw its end of its war in Afghanistan reads as an underestimation of our retaliation power and it will not go unpunished.

What we had seen is a microcosm of the Sept. 11 attack. There are those U.S. soldiers and diplomats who never made it out of the country. Some of them came home on gurneys. Some of them

came home in coffins. And those Afghans who had worked on America’s behalf all throughout the war had trusted us to bring them to freedom in return and we let them down.

But the question is how do we plan to exact our revenge when all withdrawal is complete? Will it mean another reconnaissance mission in Afghanistan from whence we had just finished extracting the troops? However so, it will have to wait.

America’s objective to withdraw all its people must be completed and its promise to bring Afghan allies out of Taliban-controlled sanctuary must be fulfilled.

Story by: Shannon M. Reid (sreid741@gmail.com), Spring 2020 English graduate