Afghanistan, five years on: From occupation to liberation to state-building – a decolonization story

Five years have passed since the Taliban entered Kabul and effectively ended twenty years of American occupation in Afghanistan. Today, we can evaluate the meaning of the events of August 15, 2021, somewhat farther from the noise of those early days. Even then, we said that this was above all an event of independence and liberation. Five years later, there is no reason to change that judgment; on the contrary, the distance Afghanistan has traveled has made the meaning of this judgment even more visible.

When the US entered Afghanistan in 2001, it said it would eliminate the Taliban, eradicate terrorism, and build a new Afghanistan in line with its own values. Twenty years later, after a war cost exceeding trillions of dollars and incalculable human costs, the regime it left behind collapsed within days. President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, the Taliban entered Kabul, and as the last American soldier left Afghanistan on August 30, 2021, the image of Afghans clinging to the wheels and wings of planes to escape the Taliban was etched into minds as the fruit of America's occupation.

Whatever one calls it, the world's greatest military power being forced to withdraw from a country it had occupied for twenty years without achieving its objectives is not a simple defeat—it is a debacle. For Afghans, despite all their problems, it is a victory of independence. The Afghans described it as a "Conquest" (Feth) and, after taking over the administration, said they followed the practice of the Prophet Muhammad when he conquered Mecca as a Sunnah, pardoning everyone, including those who had committed the worst crimes against them.

Afghan Defense Minister Mullah Muhammad Yaqoub Mujahid's statement on the fifth anniversary—"Today, neither our politics, nor our security and defense forces, nor our economy are dependent on anyone"—is a good summary of how the Taliban currently reads its own experience. Prime Minister Mullah Muhammad Hasan Akhund conveys the same message: Afghanistan wants to live in peace, security, and prosperity with other countries; it will not allow its territory to be used against others, but it will not accept intervention or conspiracies against itself.

Afghans won their independence. What did they do next?

The Afghanistan the Taliban took over was not a normal country. It was a country that had been at war for nearly 45 years; it had experienced Soviet occupation, bloody conflicts between mujahideen groups, the Taliban's first period, and then twenty years of American-NATO occupation. In such a country, the first need, before ideological debates, is security.

Today in Afghanistan, despite all its shortcomings, there is a functioning central authority across almost the entire country. Many armed formations opposed to the Taliban are mentioned, but none have been able to establish lasting geographical control. UN assessments also say that these groups have not been able to pose a serious challenge to the Taliban's dominance over the country. More importantly, Afghan society, exhausted by forty years of war, does not appear eager to become the human resource for a new civil war.

This is no small achievement. In a country like Afghanistan, which is constantly prone to fragmentation along ethnic, tribal, and regional fault lines, the fact that a new civil war has not broken out for five years can itself be counted among the Taliban administration's most important achievements.

The second important area is the fight against drugs. Afghanistan continued to be one of the world's largest opium production centers during the American occupation years. The scale the drug economy reached under the presence of forces that invaded the country with claims of "counter-terrorism," democracy, and modernization deserves scrutiny in itself. The Taliban administration, on the other hand, has made a fierce fight against drug production and trade one of its administration's fundamental policies. Today, the government counts the provision of security, curbing corruption, and the fight against drugs among the main achievements of its five-year record.

The third area is perhaps even more important:

From resistance to reconstruction

Despite international sanctions, the freezing of Afghan assets, and severe financial isolation, roads, bridges, railways, and irrigation projects are being built. It is reported that investment has been made in 600 dam projects to support farmers and utilize water resources.

To this, we can add new industrial facilities being built every day, new telecommunications investments, transit corridors being developed with China and Uzbekistan, and progress on the TAPI natural gas pipeline. Each of these alone may not be a massive economic success. But together, they show the shift in Afghanistan's mindset: the country that won its independence on the battlefield is now trying to establish its economic independence.

Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Mullah Beradar invites Afghanistan to transform its geographical position into a transit and trade advantage without making trade a hostage to political disputes. Afghanistan wants to stop being a transit route for endless wars in the heart of Asia and become a transit route for trade routes.

Perhaps the most important transformation of the fifth year is precisely this: the search for a transition from jihad to reconstruction, from resistance to construction, from a war economy to a production economy.

International isolation is not as absolute as it is made out to be.

According to information provided by Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, Afghanistan today maintains relations with more than 40 diplomatic missions; visas are being issued, Afghan passports are being accepted, delegations are coming and going, and economic contracts are being signed.

The question Muttaqi asked on the fifth anniversary is actually a question that Western capitals should also ask themselves: "What did the countries that did not establish relations with the Islamic Emirate gain in the last five years?"

Because the Taliban's message today is not to close itself off from the world. On the contrary, even to the US, the message is: you can return to Afghanistan—but with your diplomats, not your soldiers; with your investments, not your bombers. You can invest in mines, roads, and dams. Afghanistan wants relations with the world, but as an independent country, not as an occupied one.

The great test ahead for the Taliban is no longer fighting, but building a state. It must institutionalize law, spread education to the entire society, develop shura and social participation, integrate different Afghan elements into the system, and accelerate economic development.

The Taliban fought for twenty years against the world's most powerful military alliance and eventually drove it out of the country. Now it faces an even harder struggle: making peace permanent, eliminating drugs, reducing poverty, reintegrating millions of returning Afghans into society, and lifting the country up by building roads, dams, factories, and trade corridors.

The fact that the 107th anniversary of liberation from British occupation and the fifth anniversary of liberation from American occupation are celebrated around the same days is extremely meaningful for Afghan memory. The unchanging message of Afghanistan's modern history is that great powers enter this country very confident, and when they leave, they find themselves questioning why they entered in the first place.

Perhaps before the world has anything to teach Afghanistan, it needs to remember this simple lesson that Afghan history has taught the world:

Afghanistan is a country that appears easy to occupy, but impossible to subdue.

Now the task ahead for Afghans is to consolidate the independence they won through military victory with justice, education, production, prosperity, and good governance.