(CN) — The sudden and dramatic collapse of Afghanistan to Taliban control is being seen as NATO's first military defeat and a serious setback in the warming of relations between U.S. President Joe Biden and his European allies, who are worried about seeing another refugee crisis at their borders.
By Tuesday, with the Afghan capital of Kabul under the control of Taliban fighters, European leaders expressed deep frustration with Biden and his decision for a hasty exit from Afghanistan.
Armin Laschet, a conservative German politician expected to take over as chancellor after September federal elections, called the Afghanistan operation a failure and the events in recent days “the biggest debacle that NATO has suffered since its founding.”
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush invoked the mutual defense obligation under Article 5 of the NATO treaty and got Europeans to join the U.S. in battle with the Taliban with the aim of destroying Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. It is the only time that Article 5 has been invoked.
But after the quick rout of the Taliban, Europeans then backed Bush and his cabinet of neoconservatives in their designs to build a new democratic government in Afghanistan, a nation of about 37 million people in faraway Central Asia. They called this nation-building mission the International Security Assistance Force.
On Monday, Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron tried to describe the NATO mission in Afghanistan as simply a fight against terrorism and not about nation-building, but that argument was seen as historical revisionism.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also spoke to her nation on Monday evening about Afghanistan, was more honest about the failure of NATO's mission in Afghanistan and the dangerous future awaiting millions of Afghans under Taliban rule.
“Everything else that has followed [the early destruction of al-Qaida] has not been as successful and has not been achieved in the way that we had planned …you have to set smaller goals, I think, in such missions,” she said.
Merkel called the events in Afghanistan “an extremely bitter development. Bitter, dramatic and terrifying.” Germany lost 59 soldiers in Afghanistan.
Prior to the NATO invasion, the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan was marked by the imposition of sharia law, widespread violence, executions by stoning and the mistreatment of women, who were not allowed to leave their homes. In recent days, the Taliban leadership has vowed that it has changed and become moderate, but already reports of violence and persecution have surfaced as they reinstall their iron rule over Afghanistan.
Meeting with Biden in May, European leaders reportedly advised against a quick withdrawal from Afghanistan but were powerless to reverse his decision. Once the U.S. announced plans to remove its soldiers, NATO allies did the same.
NATO's missteps and its failure to build up an Afghan national army and strong democratic government led to the chaotic and troubling scenes of Afghans desperately seeking to be evacuated from Kabul in the past couple of days. Videos showed Afghans even trying to cling onto a U.S. Air Force airplane that was taking off from the airport in Kabul, reportedly leading to at least two deaths after people fell from the airplane.
Throughout the 20 years of NATO involvement in Afghanistan, the Taliban continued to fight against the NATO presence. More than 164,000 Afghans were killed in the fighting and hundreds of thousands were wounded. Many Afghan civilians were among those killed and injured.
Casualties were high among NATO troops too. About 2,448 U.S. soldiers, 1,144 soldiers from other NATO countries and 3,846 U.S. contractors were killed. Tens of thousands of NATO personnel were wounded. The cost of the Afghan war to the U.S. is estimated at about $2 trillion.