After 20 years of conflict and nation-building efforts, the US is now on its way out of Afghanistan. With the shutting down of the US military base at Bagram, the deal is more or less done. A war that began shortly after the 9/11 attacks on US soil is coming to a close.
While dislodging the Taliban government took no more than just a few weeks, what came after turned out to be far more complex. President Bush had explicitly stated the US would not get involved in nation-building, which is exactly what it got sucked into, followed by its instinct of trying to set up a democratic structure in a country hardly equipped for it. We once again learned that just because a government is democratically elected it does not mean it can operate as a democracy. Read more…