The takeover by Taliban forces of Afghanistan this week, 20 years after the US entered the country with the intention of eradicating jihadist terrorism there, is sending shockwaves around the world, including to Israel and the Middle East.
One of the obvious messages of the fall of Kabul, the Afghan capital, is that a vacuum created in the Middle East and elsewhere is not filled by moderate elements despite the hopes and intentions of the US and Western powers.
The swift and unilateral withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan was doomed to fail from the point of view of the non-jihadi moderate forces. The only group large enough and organized enough to take over was the Taliban so it should come as no surprise that this is exactly what happened. The Afghan forces, trained at great expense by the US, failed to even put up a fight and Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani fled to safety leaving behind a people whose fate is anything but safe.
Sadly, although US President Joe Biden declared with confidence, “There’s going to be no circumstance where you’ll see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan,” the chaotic and heartbreaking scenes from Kabul’s airport as people struggled to leave the country before the Taliban captured the capital were eerily reminiscent of the fall of Saigon.
Israel has twice carried out unilateral military withdrawals from territory it controlled, first from Lebanon in 2000 and then from the Gaza Strip in 2005. In both cases, the results were not what Israel had hoped for. The pullbacks created a vacuum which was filled by terrorist organizations – Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border and Hamas on the southern border. Today, these terrorist groups operate what are in effect armies.
The two cases are connected. Terrorist entities and Israel’s enemies watched the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and saw, from their point of view, that terrorism works. It is no coincidence that the Second Intifada took place just after terrorist organizations witnessed the Israeli unilateral pullback from the southern Lebanon security zone. Similarly, as soon as Israel uprooted the Jewish communities of Gush Katif in Gaza and removed all Israeli military forces and presence from the Gaza Strip, this was perceived by the more radical terrorist organizations as a victory. Hamas was able to oust the Palestinian Authority in elections the following year and then violently complete its takeover of the Gaza Strip.
Israel has suffered the results in the thousands of rockets that have been fired on the country from Gaza since then – escalating on several occasions, most recently in May, into mini-wars.
The images of Hamas members in Gaza celebrating the Taliban capture of Kabul should serve as a sobering reminder that from Hamas’s viewpoint this was another victory by Islamic forces intent on setting up a caliphate abiding by Sharia laws – a concept Hamas also supports.
Hezbollah, although Shia and not Sunni like Afghanistan, is also learning from the Taliban example following the US withdrawal. Israel fought the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and the northern border has recently heated up with rockets fired on Israel from southern Lebanon this month. More significantly, Iran, the sponsor of terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere, is watching closely.
For Israel, the main message of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is the reminder that the Jewish state ultimately can only rely on itself. Although Israel’s interests and those of the US usually align and the two countries are veteran and strong allies, when push comes to shove Israel has its own special needs which it must protect. No foreign or international peacekeeping force can ever be relied on to protect the State of Israel the way the IDF can.
As former Israeli diplomat Arthur Lenk tweeted this week, “The USA is our closest ally. They have been there for Israel time and again over the years. But the horrific events in Afghanistan must be a hard, scary lesson about changing interests and cold, hard calculations. Dangerously, in 2021, self-reliance is more important than ever.”
This is an important lesson: In the end, Israel can only rely on itself.