A Silver Lining in Afghanistan

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Five years ago, the United States was completing its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan when the terrorist group known as the Islamic State Khorasan Province carried out one last murderous strike.

ISKP’s suicide attack on the Kabul International Airport killed 13 U.S. service members and about 170 desperate Afghan civilians trying to flee the Taliban’s oppressive rule.

The carnage was a final reminder of what the American military had been doing in Afghanistan to begin with.

An Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban, American policy makers feared, would become a haven for terrorists, as it was before the U.S. invasion in 2001.

In the 1990s, the Taliban had offered sanctuary to al-Qaeda and like-minded networks, allowing them to train thousands of fighters and plot devastating assaults, including the 1998 embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and 9/11.

For 20 years, concerns that such attacks might resume kept the U.S. fighting a war that its officials knew they were losing.

In April 2021, William Burns, President Biden’s CIA director, warned that pulling out troops would create a “significant risk” of an al-Qaeda resurgence.

When Biden withdrew four months later, experts claimed that he had given terrorists a leg up .

Today these fears look overblown.

Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan has not become the global terrorist hub it once was.

Al-Qaeda, which remains far weaker today than in 2001, hasn’t carried out an attack from Afghanistan on the U.S. or Europe since the withdrawal.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has turned into a valuable—though deeply flawed—counterterrorism partner to the U.S., overturning the expectations of analysts who believed the group would revert to being a major sponsor of global terror.

The past five years have confirmed that staying in Afghanistan was folly.