Former locals decry actions in Afghanistan

Say US lacks heart and created a humanitarian crisis

WARREN -- Two men with local ties are expressing frustration and anger at the way the United States handled the "end" of the war in Afghanistan.

Glenn Luther, of Laurel, Md., and Rokey Suleman, of St. Louis, both formerly of Howland, were in Afghanistan during different points in the history of the war, which began shortly after the attacks in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.

"To pull out and create a humanitarian crisis on this scale lacks heart. We spent 20 years there. Why did so many people have to die if we are just going to give up, hand the keys to the Taliban and say we just don't care, because that is what they're doing. There is no accountability right now," said Luther, who taught photojournalism to Afghan students in 2003.

The U.S. left Afghanistan's Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base's new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans' departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.

The U.S. announced in early July it had vacated its biggest airfield in the country in advance of a final withdrawal the Pentagon said would be completed by the end of August.

Before the Afghan army could take control of the airfield, about an hour's drive from the capital Kabul, it was invaded by a small army of looters who ransacked barrack after barrack and rummaged through giant storage tents before being evicted, according to Afghan military officials.

The Taliban, which quickly began a campaign to bring the country's capital cities under its rule, took over equipment the U.S. left in the country -- guns, ammunition, helicopters and more. An unnamed U.S. defense official on Monday confirmed the Taliban's sudden accumulation of U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment is enormous.

"This is a failure of imposed democracy and false hopes. It is an expected outcome of naivete combined with corruption," states Suleman, who survived a 2014 attack at the Serena Hotel in Kabul while he was working in the country to secure the integrity of Democratic elections. "This is not a military failure. This is a political failure. (President George W.) Bush was naive and took his eye off the prize. (President Barack) Obama was naive and boxed in with an unpopular situation he didn't create but couldn't make better. (President Donald) Trump was naive and didn't care and set the deadline. (President Joe) Biden had enough and ripped the Band-Aid."

Both Suleman and Luther, who is working with U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan's office in hopes of securing passage out of Afghanistan for Afghan journalists and their families, said the U.S. government should have evacuated allies before pulling out troops and announcing an end to the war. Diplomats, interpreters, journalists, advocates for democracy and women's rights, and others who worked with allied American forces are in danger of becoming, or already are, targets of the Taliban, religious extremists.

"It's a failure of our moral obligation to assist those that stood with us. Thousands of Afghans worked alongside us trying to build the structures necessary for democracy to take hold. They did so in the hopes that they were creating a future full of promise for their children and the fear of their lives should the 'experiment in democracy' fail," Suleman states.

"It is those brave people that I am saddened for. The combat had to end eventually and we knew that. We should have worked to evacuate those who stood with us in the fight along with their families. We gave them hope and then extinguished it."

The presence of the U.S., its allies and its programs bolstered the Afghan people seeking democracy, Suleman said.

"People who woke up every day as targets yet kept pushing forward for democracy because the people of the United States were standing next to them. Now they are alone and fearful," he states.

"We didn't lose the war. We lost the potential for peace and democracy. That's different," Suleman states.

Luther said the funding the U.S. supplied to the country was ill-spent, and could have been used better to ensure training, supplies, payroll needs and dietary needs were met for the Afghan soldiers, but instead it was distributed to war lords and other corrupt figures.

"The soldiers just left. And, a lot of them were hungry, a lot of them were underpaid. The government for the last 20 years was never consistent in paying their own troops," Luther said. "We spent trillions there, we could have spent a couple of million to make sure the army was well-fed and paid, but the money went to governors and officials, living large, while the others there live on $3 a day."

Exiting the war may be the right decision, or the wrong decision, but the way it was done is unacceptable, Luther said.

"I think it was the most irresponsible way to leave. So far, I've seen a lack of compassion. I feel like we lost our humanity in leaving the way we did," Luther said. "They say 'This is not abandonment,' but I don't care what they say, this is 100 percent abandonment. This is textbook abandonment."

Luther said he and the Afghan people he knows don't believe any of the Taliban's recent rhetoric, promising women rights and a more moderate government, compared to their strict form of Islamic rule in the late 1990s.

"Nobody believes them. Nobody. Everyone thinks that their words right now are designed to keep the international world at bay. They are spinning the news cycle, they are trying to win the news cycle, by striking this peaceful tone. As soon as they get bored with this tone, they will resume what it is that we all know they are going to do -- kill people."

Once the country becomes less of a spotlight, Luther said he expects the Taliban's actions to speak louder than their words this week.

"They are waiting for journalists to get bored and leave. When there is no one to shine sunshine on what is going on, when no one is there to shed light on what is going on, they are able to get away with whatever they want. And the Taliban are patient," Luther said.

Those conditions are bound to create conditions similar to those that led to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., he said.

"It's a matter of when that happens again, not if," Luther said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

rfox@tribtoday.com