ONE YEAR ANNIVERSITY -THE AFGHANISTAN DEBACLE-HOW AFGHANISTAN BECAME THE WORLD'S FIRST NARCO-TERRORIST STATE THAT COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” - Thomas Sowell-

Today, August 15, 2022, the one-year anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal and abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban by the Biden Administration. [Note: This article is dedicated to the memories of DEA Special Agents Forrest N. Lemon, Chad L. Michael, and Michael L. Weston, and to the seven U.S. service members who lost their lives on October 26, 2009, when their helicopter crashed in western Afghanistan after completion of a joint counter narcotics mission, as well as all U.S. and International Security Assistance Force military personnel who lost their lives or were wounded in 20- year U.S. war on terrorism in Afghanistan.]

Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane in a recent Fox News Sunday interview summed up U.S. efforts in Afghanistan saying “"The very reason we went there, the very reason we stayed there for 20 years, to ensure that terrorists did not rise again, to attack the American people, and we’re right back where we started.”

Keane framed the terrorism threat to the U.S. saying, "We went to Afghanistan to stop the Taliban from providing sanctuary to the al Qaeda, from which the attack on the United States took place. We all know that. And what did this decision get us? It got us the Taliban in charge again … providing sanctuary to the al Qaeda," "And Zawahri's killing resurrected the fact that he’s living in a Taliban house in a neighborhood that I’ve been to many times, where senior Taliban leaders are in residence. And obviously, they are protecting the al Qaeda leader as well as his organization."

Two books were published giving two different points of view regarding the U.S. policy failure in the Afghan conflict, one account from an ex-CIA Officer, the other from a retired United States Army General.

The first book is ―88 Days to Kandahar‖ by ex-CIA officer Robert Grenier, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad and published in 2016. ¹

According to Grenier, Afghanistan ―could become a haven for ISIS and warned ―Afghanistan is in danger of turning into a sanctuary once again for Islamist extremists as the West withdraws troops and shifts its attention elsewhere.

The book tells the story of how America quickly won what he calls ―the first American-Afghan war" in 2001, and ―how we lost, or at least certainly didn't win, the second American-Afghan war. The book ends with a warning about how ―the errors of the past may yet be revisited when once again we may be called upon to fight a third American-Afghan war. Grenier‘s book offers a very grim view of the legacy of more than a decade of war against the Taliban insurgents. He writes ―For all the billions spent and lives lost, there is little to show, and most of that will not long survive our departure

The second book by retired United States Army Lieutenant General Daniel P. Bolger and published in 2015, is titled ―Why We Lost. ²

The book gives an inside historical account of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns from the perspective of a high-ranking U.S. military general that fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

In his soul-searching critique, General Bolger described the insanity surrounding the effort to name the Afghan conflict which included calling it The Long War, The Afghan War, The 9/11 War, The War on Terrorism (minus the ―ism‖), and a real bureaucratic gem, The Overseas Contingency Operation. General Bolger stated this euphemism arose as a result of a related phrase, ―the man-made disaster, on 9-11. ―The U.S. settled on naming the conflict a Global War on Terrorism against enemies referred to generically as terrorists, cowards, evildoers, and extremists, but U.S. military had no illusions that the targets were. They were going after the same bunch of Islamists and their ilk. General Bolger said ―Intelligence was garbled. Key decision makers were blinded by spreadsheets or theories. And we never fully understood our enemy.

Ill-fated decisions by President Obama to change U.S. Counter Corruption policy in 2011 and withdraw all U.S. troops with no pre-conditions from Afghanistan by end of 2014 sealed the fate of the Afghanistan

On June 22, 2011, President Obama has ordered the U.S. military to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and pull out another 23,000 by the summer of 2012, part of what he called "the beginning, but not the end, of our effort to wind down this war." "After this initial reduction, our troops will continue coming home at a steady pace as Afghan security forces move into the lead," Obama said in a primetime address to the nation Wednesday night from the East Room of the White House. " By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security." This decision by President Obama signaled to the Taliban that they were winning and to the Afghan government and public that they were being abandon by the U.S. ³

A Fox News article dated June 20, 2013, by Sib Kaifee titled “Taliban leader Mullah Omar vowed to take Kabul within a week of U.S. pullout” summed up the TSL response to President Obama’s peace overtures. Kaifee interviewed a Taliban member privy to now deceased Mullah Omar’s plans who said the leader disavowed the talks with the U.S. According to this Taliban member, Mullah Omar believed that Americans planned an exit of U.S. troops by the end of 2014, and the idea of Karzai and Mullah Omar co-existing in Afghanistan was inconceivable. The militant said Omar believed the Afghan government was “a worse enemy than Americans.” ⁴

Obama 2011, decision of a significant drawdown in forces including DEA personnel by 2014, adversely impacted U.S. counter narcotics efforts in Afghanistan as it left little time in achieving many counter narcotics U.S. policy goals and objectives, specifically addressing the threat that the Taliban posed to Afghan government. 

A July 2012 Congressional Research Service report, titled “Opium Poppies & Security in Afghanistan” by Mark Checchia and Katerina Oksarsson, stated that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, the trafficking it facilitated and the illicit economy that kept it going threatened the very existence of the Afghan state and led to the undermining of virtually every aspect of Afghan effort to secure and stabilize the country. ⁵

In 2011, the Obama administration changed the focus of U.S. anti-corruption policy, from that of investigating corruption by leaders of criminal patronage networks and high-level Afghan officials to investigating corruption by low level governmental officials. This change in counter corruption policy by President Obama sent a signal to the Afghan government that the U.S. was giving tacit approval for the corruption and contributed to the failure of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. ⁶

This change in policy led to the failure to hold the Afghans accountable in addressing high level Afghan governmental corruption and was one of the principal reasons the Afghan population distrusted the central government and sympathizes with the Taliban that led to the debacle in Afghanistan. ⁷

ADVERSE DECISIONS BY THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION THAT IMPACTED ON THE WAR ON TERROR

Since 9-11, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been a leader in the United States (U.S.) world -wide war on terrorism. This was exemplified by two of the most significant DEA narco-terrorist investigations ever conducted, “Project Cassandra” and “Operation Reciprocity” that the American public probably never heard of as both investigations were derailed by the Obama administration for political purposes and vaguely reported by media.

Project Cassandra was an investigation of the Iranian-sponsored narco-terrorist group Hezbollah who became a major player in the trafficking of cocaine into the United States. Hezbollah has infiltrated criminal gangs in South America and set up its own billion-dollar international criminal enterprise to finance its terror activities.

The DEA investigative efforts to take down the Hezbollah network, never happened and Hezbollah was allowed to continue drug-running into the U.S., in order to avoid upsetting the Iran nuclear deal. ⁸

Operation Reciprocity was an investigation of the Taliban Senior Leadership (TSL) and the major heads of the Afghan Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). The Taliban had achieved integration as a narco-terrorist cartel that not only provided protection to Afghan DTOs but was also involved in lab operations that processed heroin, while integrating itself with criminal groups and corrupt Afghan politicians. DEA investigation documented that the Taliban had become the world’s largest drug trafficking organization for opium, heroin, and hashish. ⁹

The derailment by the Obama Administration of the DEA and Department of Justice (DOJ) investigative and prosecution efforts against the TSL and heads of the Afghan DTOs contributed to America's biggest foreign policy debacle in U.S. history, the fall of the Afghan state to the Taliban, the world largest drug trafficking and terrorist organization. 

The decision by the Obama administration to halt the DEA investigative efforts ensured that the DEA lost the ability to gather the necessary corroborating evidence to obtain a U.S. indictment of the Taliban Senior Leadership and the major DTOs they conspired with. ¹⁰

[Note: Salient point here is in the middle of the U.S. war on terrorism is the million-dollar question of why the Obama administration would stop the two most significant narco-terrorist investigations in U.S. history and why no one in the U.S. media asked the Obama administration the question as to why?]

COULD THE DEBACLE OF THE TALIBAN TAKING OVER AFGHANISTAN BEEN PREVENTED?

As to the consequences of the decisions made by President Obama and his administration in Afghanistan, history will be the judge. The administration‘s decision to seek peace talks with the Taliban in lieu of pursuing them in U.S. courts, when in fact both could have been accomplished simultaneously, resulted in the U.S. losing the opportunity to expose the Taliban‘s hypocrisy to the world as an opportunist criminal drug trafficking organization causing harm and destruction to other Muslims. ¹¹

What‘s ironic is the U.S faced the same situation in the 1990s when Colombia was in danger of becoming a narco-terrorist state, but had the political will to indict the FARC leadership, exposing their criminality to the world while the Colombian government was involved in peace talks with the FARC. Undoubtedly, the indictments against the FARC leadership had a hand in bringing them to the peace table. The Obama administration, when faced with the same set of circumstances in Afghanistan, ignored the threat posed by the Taliban. By promoting the false narrative that the Taliban did not pose a threat to the stability of the Afghanistan government, the administration has allowed ideology and political correctness to trump reality. It is apparent that the purpose of Obama‘s policies in Afghanistan is to achieve his short term political goals and preserve his legacy at the cost of American and Afghan lives.

Had the TSL been indicted, DEA and the world’s law enforcement community would have had eight years to investigative, indict, arrest and convict the TSL which would have exposed the Taliban as a criminal organization trafficking in illegal drugs and degraded their military capabilities and messaging as an Islamic freedom organization fighting to free Afghanistan from the Infidels. ¹²

The peace talks with the Taliban broke off in mid-2015 and attempts by the U.S., Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China to restart the talks have failed because the Taliban believes it is winning on the battlefield. However, U.S. officials continue to assert that despite the apparent deterioration of the security situation, the Taliban does not pose a threat to the stability of the Afghanistan government. Somebody is lying to somebody. Any U.S officials who put out a false narrative that the Taliban does not pose a threat to the stability of the Afghanistan government, after 15 years of reporting that they posed a serious risk, is either delusional, incompetent, or doing it for nefarious political purposes to mislead the American public.

ADVERSE DECISIONS OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION

For the Biden administration and Military to blame Trump for the withdrawal debacle in Afghanistan by promoting the Big Lie, its Trump fault, Afghan government fault and the Afghan Military fault is outrageous as the facts show the fault for failure of the withdrawal in Afghanistan is owned by President Biden due to piss poor planning that led to the biggest failure in U.S. foreign policy history. 

Fox news reported that the Biden administration had initially pledged to leave no U.S. citizen behind, saying, "We’re going to stay to get them all out" in the run-up to the end of the withdrawal. Secretary of State Antony Blinken later admitted that at least 100 Americans remained in the country after the final pull-out. ¹³

A minority House Republican investigation discovered that 800 Americans have evacuated from Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, highlighting the ongoing effort to bring every American home. ¹⁴

The new House report, which comes in at 118 pages, argued that "the choices made in the corridors of power in D.C. led to tragic yet avoidable outcomes: 13 dead service members, American lives still at great risk, increased threats to our homeland security, tarnished standing abroad for years to come, and emboldened enemies across the globe." ¹⁵

The ramifications of these failed policy decisions will resonate for years to come as Afghanistan is now the model for Islamic and Marxist terrorist organizations worldwide in convergence with transnational criminal organizations in funding their insurgencies through narcotic trafficking in establishing failed states into governments.

Bottom line is how does the US recognize the world largest drug trafficking organization and terrorist organization in the world the Taliban Senior Leadership as a legitimate government when they were co-conspirators with Al Qaeda in the attack on 9-11?

Where the was accountability for U.S. policy makers of intentionally lying to the American public in keeping the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan vague, that allowed politicians and high-level government officials to “reap the rewards of success without facing the consequences and responsibility of failure.” ¹⁶

The information illustrates the unintended consequences of bad policy decisions by former President Obama, and President Biden. [Note: The same foreign policies advisors for the Obama administration are now the same foreign policy advisors for the Biden Administration who have establish a pattern of ignoring reality and putting National Security at risk to achieve their short-term political goals.] 

Sadly, DEA lost three agents and the U.S. squandered the lives of thousands of U.S and coalition troops, as well as Afghan security personnel and civilians. As of today, the Afghanistan is now the model for Islamic and Marxist terrorist organizations worldwide in convergence with transnational criminal organizations in funding their insurgencies through narcotic trafficking in establishing failed states into governments.

With their tremendous efforts and sacrifices, DEA and U.S. and ISAF military personnel, along with certain far-sighted State Department Ambassadors and diplomats who served in Afghanistan, went above and beyond the call of duty to get the job done in spite of the obstacles. They didn‘t fail in their efforts. They were betrayed by their Commander-in-Chiefs.

1. Robert Grenier. ―88 Days to Kandahar." published by Simon and Shuster. 2016.

2. Daniel P. Bolger. ―Why We Lost: a General‘s inside account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.‖ Published by An Eamon Dolan Book. 2015.

3. Obama Orders Start to US Troop Withdrawal From Afghanistan - ABC News (go.com)

4. Sib Kaifee. “Taliban leader Mullah Omar vowed to take Kabul within a week of U.S. pullout.” Fox news. June 20, 2013.

5. Mark Checchia and Katerina Oksarsson. “Opium Poppies & Security in Afghanistan.” Congressional Research Service. July 2012

6. Warren P. Strobel and Marisa Taylor. ―U.S. Won‘t Pursue Karzai Allies in Anti-Corruption Campaign.‖ McClatchy Newspapers, January 6, 2011.

7. Matthew Rosenberg and Graham Bowley, ―Intractable Afghan Graft Hampering U.S. Strategy,‖ New York Times, March 7, 2012 and Kenneth Katzman, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs. ―Afghanistan: Politics, Elections and Government Performance.‖ The Congressional Research Service, June 5, 2012.

8. https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/07/how-obama-admin-subverted-plan-to-take-down-taliban-drug-running-just-like-it-shut-down-operation-against-hezbollah/

9. The secret story of how America lost the drug war with the Taliban - POLITICO

10. How Obama admin subverted plan to take down Taliban drug running, just like it shut down operation against Hezbollah (legalinsurrection.com)]

11. Kenneth Katzman, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs. ―Afghanistan: Post-Taliban governance, security, and U.S, policy. Congressional Research Service. April 15, 2016

12. When Bowe Bergdahl got in the Way of DEA in Afghanistan - The DENISE SIMON EXPERIENCE (founderscode.com)]

13. https://www.foxnews.com/us/gop-house-report-finds-800-americans-rescued-afghanistan-us-withdrawal

14. https://www.foxnews.com/us/gop-house-report-finds-800-americans-rescued-afghanistan-us-withdrawal

15. https://www.foxnews.com/us/gop-house-report-finds-800-americans-rescued-afghanistan-us-withdrawal

16. Edwin Mora. ――Green Beret: Afghanistan Mission Suffers from ‗Moral Cowardice,‘ ‗Lack of Strategy.‖ Breitbart. May 11, 2016

[Note: This analysis was created by a former Retired DEA Supervisory Special Agent John Seaman with over 30 years’ experience conducting complex conspiracy investigations. Seaman is the co-author of an article Taliban Include Heroin Kingpins in Leadership - by Gretchen Peters and John Seaman - SpyTalk and author of Ideology and Political Correctness Trump Reality and reference in article The secret story of how America lost the drug war with the Taliban - POLITICOPOLITICO]