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Senate reforms : edit in The Express Tribune, Nov 19th, 2020.


Abandoning Afghanistan: Editorial in Pakistan Today, Nov 19th, 2020.
US President Donald Trump is expected to issue a formal order for the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, to follow on the ‘warning order’ he has already issued to this effect. The order comes in the midst of the turmoil into which the US Defense Department was thrown by his post-election sacking of the Defense Secretary and his chief deputy. It is almost as if Mr Trump, who was defeated earlier this month in his re-election bid, wants to rattle as many cages as possible, and make the job his opponent, President-elect Joe Biden, will step into in January, as difficult as possible.

This step will mean that the USA will leave Afghanistan as the USSR did in 1988: without a settlement with the forces resisting the Kabul government it installed. That led to the Taliban filling the resulting vacuum, the refuge for Al-Qaeda, 9/11, and a US involvement that has lasted 21 years, and counting. Meanwhile, the instability in Afghanistan has meant the entire region has been in turmoil. The worst sufferer has been Pakistan, after the Afghan people themselves.

Mr Trump has a motive to make Mr Biden fail: despite his age, Mr Trump looks increasingly likely to run again. However, rather than look at that narrow personal interest, Mr Trump should see the bigger picture, which is that US interests will be damaged, perhaps irretrievably, if Afghanistan is allowed to once again have a haven for militancy. It should not escape notice that the Islamic State has been relatively successful in its recruitment drive in Afghanistan, where it has won over to its side several Taliban commanders. The IS is an obstacle in the government-Taliban talks that are central to the peace effort. IS bases its appeal on opposing any deal. It is not just a matter of abandoning those Afghans who had helped US forces, but of abandoning the entire region to the kind of chaos that ultimately broke the USSR apart. https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/11/18/abandoning-afghanistan/