Afghanistan Braces for Renewed Conflict When America Departs

KABUL—Afghanistan’s beleaguered government will be on its own against the Taliban once American forces withdraw in September.

But many in the Afghan capital said they fear the pullout sets the stage for a renewed civil war, possibly one in which some of Afghanistan’s neighbors—India, Russia, China and Iran—will be playing a much more significant role.

“We don’t know if Afghanistan will become the new Syria,” said Timor Shah Mohseni, a 48-year-old shopkeeper in central Kabul.

Ghani—brought together by their mutual hostility to the Taliban and now running the national government.

“Everyone knows that the government in Kabul in its current form is untenable without U.S.

The Afghan government, which has stopped releasing military casualty statistics to avoid demoralizing the troops, said this week that its security forces are conducting close to 98% of operations independently and are fully capable of defending the country on their own.

Still, Fahim Ahmadi, a mobile-phone repair technician in Kabul, said he feared the worst.

“The roots of this government are weak,” he said.

For Afghan women, a flagship cause for a generation of Western aid workers, the future looks particularly dire, as many hard-won freedoms look likely to be rolled back.

one of four women on the Afghan government team in peace negotiations with the Taliban, has been calling for months for women to have a more significant stake in the peace process.

In two major Cold War conflicts—America’s involvement in Vietnam and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan—considerable time passed between the final withdrawal of foreign troops and the fall, respectively, of Saigon and Kabul.

air support for Afghan government troops would likely allow the Taliban to seize and keep major cities in the short term.

“In 1989 the institutions were more united, and everyone really was feeling their back to the wall,” said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghan Analysts Network think tank, who served as an East German diplomat in Kabul at the time.

Moscow, which has since nurtured ties with the Taliban, may not be as opposed to a Taliban takeover this time

The Taliban, who have been engaged in years of negotiations with the country’s neighbors, insist that they now want to live in peace with all nations, and will no longer harbor terrorist groups

Ashley Jackson, who has spent years researching the Taliban at the Overseas Development Institute and is the author of the book “Negotiating Survival” about life under the Taliban, said that senior figures in the insurgent movement favor a diplomatic solution

“They do want to cut deals with other Afghan political actors in order to come to power, legitimately, so that they don’t become this pariah state that they were in the 1990s,” she said

Pakistan, the Taliban’s main backer in the 1990s, claims it doesn’t want a full Taliban takeover, pointing out that a peaceful Afghanistan is in its interest and that war there would inevitably spill into Pakistan