WASHINGTON: A decade after returning from Afghanistan, Marc Silvestri was convinced it was time for his comrades to come home too. But watching the chaotic pullout unfold in real time has stunned the army veteran.
“It’s been a tough couple days,” the 43-year-old head of veterans services in Revere, Massachusetts told AFP.
“I was in favour of the withdrawal, I thought it was time. Twenty-plus years, billions of dollars spent, I never expected the speed and the brazenness of the Taliban would be what it is,” he said.
“I never expected that the training and money we put into the Afghan army, that they would just lay down their weapons and turn the country over. That’s been shocking to me.”
For US veterans of the 20-year war, the lightning Taliban takeover has variously brought shock, anger, resignation and worry, both for their Afghan allies left behind and compatriots at home reeling from the calamitous end to the US campaign.
In just days, the Afghan military and government disintegrated. On Sunday, Kabul fell without a fight as the Taliban entered the city and President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.
The news spurred desperate scenes, as Afghans converged on the airport in a bid to escape and foreign governments scrambled to evacuate personnel.
For veteran Chad Fross, the withdrawal of US troops “was always going to be a mess” regardless of who was in charge, because of a failure to fully understand Afghanistan.
“A lot of people are going to be asking, ‘Why?’ It was pointless for me to be there. To watch friends die or lose body parts or lose their minds,'” said Fross.
“But at the same time, I have to wonder how much more pointless it would be to stay the course when it would be the same outcome 20 years from now.”
“LEAVING THEM IN THE LURCH”
The fate of women is a painful point of the Taliban takeover for Fross and others.
During their brutal 1996 to 2001 regime, the Islamist militants sharply curtailed women’s liberty, keeping them behind closed doors and forbidding education.
But the US invasion of 2001 was meant to change that – and, in urban areas especially, for many women it did.
All those hard-won gains are set to be eroded with the Taliban’s return to power, however.
“These kind of ideals that we thought we were going over there to secure, these are the things that I think bother a lot of people,” Fross said. “It bothers me too.”
