Afghan Americans said they are concerned for their family and friends after the Taliban took control of their home country, and fear for those who worked closely with the US forces.
The whole world watched as chaos gripped Afghanistan last week when thousands of Afghans rushed to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul hoping to leave the country following the Taliban return.
Taliban fighters took sweeping control of the country ending nearly two decades of American control earlier this month.
Halima Kazem, an American Afghan journalist and expert on Afghan affairs, said the American invasion of Iraq in 2004 left Afghanistan as a “fragile state.”
“When I was living in Afghanistan, we as journalists could definitely see the changes in those years, especially leading up to the US invasion in Iraq,” Kazem said.
“I remember when that happened in 2004. The country was in a fragile, vulnerable state and the work was far from being done.”
Kazem said the US invasion of Iraq 16 years ago left the door open for the Taliban to make a comeback into Afghanistan.
Scenes from the Kabul airport last week showed crowds racing towards American aircraft about to take off, while others desperately tried to climb on the wings or shoved their way up a staircase.
The number of people that want to leave the country is still increasing. There are a reported 2.2 million Afghan refugees already in neighboring countries while 3.5 million people are homeless at the border due to the crisis.
Farzana Nabi, an American Afghan expert who worked with the US Army for a decade, said she can sum up what happened in Afghanistan to four main points: hubris, political failures, military missteps, and the failure to learn from history.
“The US thought that state-building would be the best approach,” Nabi said. “It was a western model of democracy which failed to account for the reality of a country of people who do not necessarily identify along the national lines.”
During an interview on the “Bridge” show hosted by Sahar Khamis and broadcast on the US Arab Radio Network, Nabi said the Afghan government and army lacked a coherent strategy after the US withdrawal. All of that despite extensive support during the past two decades from the US military that included training more than 300,000 fighters and more than 3.3 billion dollars in funding.
“The US underestimated the people in Afghanistan and thought of them as backward people who were ill-equipped and did not have the capacity to take down a superpower like itself,” Nabi said.
“We took our eye off of Afghanistan at the time we became very much engaged in Iraq, and I think that is where we left this vacuum that they started to fill.”
Kazem agreed that the Americans made many miscalculations: “And I am not alone in that assessment.”
Kazem said the humanitarian crisis has become more complicated by last week’s suicide bombing that killed 73 people, including 13 US service members, and left hundreds wounded. Despite the US administration’s commitment to a smooth exodus, there are still Americans and Afghan allies trapped with no access to the airport.
“I have actually been contacted by two interpreters whom I worked with back in 2012 who are both begging me to get in touch with whomever I can at the state department to help them out,” Kazem said. “It is heart-wrenching because you feel like your hands are tied.”
Nabi called the situation in Afghanistan “scary,” as she believes the Taliban is only sharing what information it wants to share with the international community.
On the other hand, Halima said the confusion at the airport in Kabul and the large number of people wanting to leave choked the process. She said it could have been avoided if the US government had processed the visa applications for Afghans who worked as translators or interpreters for the US government and military.
“The army did not have a plan to secure the airport,” Halima said. “I do not know if they could predict what would happen. They did not think it would escalate so quickly.”