Book review | ‘The Fall of Kabul: Despatches from Chaos’ unravels what went wrong in Afghanistan

The Fall of Kabul: Despatches from Chaos is a testimony to critical days in the contemporary history of Afghans. It presents an authentic, eyewitness account of the unfolding transition from the President Ashraf Ghani-led government to the establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The author, Nayanima Basu, then working as a journalist for The Print, arrived in Kabul on August 8 and returned by the Indian Air Force C-17 Globemaster on August 17, spending nine nights and ten days in Afghanistan.

During this period, the Ghani regime quickly collapsed, like a house of cards. After the last Soviet soldier had withdrawn from Afghanistan, President Najibullah’s government lasted three years. The present Russian Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, when asked years ago about how long the Afghan government would last if the US forces withdrew, recalled that in 1989 the Afghan government beat the combined forces of the Mujahideen and the Pakistan Army outside Jalalabad. He then said that the US-supported government would certainly not last three years, not even three months, three weeks, or three days, perhaps three hours. As it happened, the Taliban occupied the Arg Palace (the Afghan President’s office) while the US forces were still in Afghanistan.

The dysfunction of the Afghan government before its collapse is hard to imagine. Two days before the Taliban entered Kabul, an Afghan public servant was able to realistically see that the Taliban were unstoppable (p. 74). Yet, a day after that, just hours before he decamped, Ashraf Ghani made a bravado-filled speech, promising to remobilise the Afghan national security forces (p.84).

As the Taliban fighters drew close to Kabul, Ashraf Ghani appointed a new chief of the Afghan Army, General Haibatullah Alizai, who devised a paper plan to flush out the Taliban from the country within three days to a week. The former President, Hamid Karzai, tweeted the creation of a coordination council, presumably to engage the Taliban in some negotiation, comprising the Chief Executive and Chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, Abdullah Abdullah, and the chief of the Hizb-é-Islami, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

The most gripping portion of the book is Nayanima Basu’s narrative of events at the Kabul International Airport on August 16, the day after the Taliban takeover, which is entitled “Will I Die Tonight?” It describes her ordeal awaiting an Air India flight, which never arrived.

The Taliban units deployed to take control of the airport were out of their depth. To stop the crowds, the Taliban started indiscriminate shooting. Then, as if from nowhere, a Kabulliwallah-type figure, “a man dressed in the traditional Kandahar-style Pashtun dress” (p.121) appeared and took the author to safety.

It is interesting to learn that two Indian magical names that opened many doors and brought smiles to many Afghan faces are Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone (in the 1990s, it was ‘Amitabh Bachchan Khan’ after the popularity of the movie ‘Khuda Gawah’ that was shot in Afghanistan).

It was on the same day that the world saw television images of young Afghan men climbing under the fuselage of a US Air Force C-17 and then dropping on the tarmac as the flight took off. Technicians found mangled human remains in the C-17 wheel well and landing gear when the plane landed at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

Nayanima Basu’s narration contains nuggets about Afghanistan’s recent history. In a well-considered chapter comprising the epilogue, she recounts some of the reasons for the US defeat and quotes the former head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, stating in September 2023 that “the war was lost” in the broadest sense (p.181). She recalls the speech of President Obama following the death of Osama bin Laden, virtually declaring the US victory and calling for a political settlement of the war in Afghanistan (p. 186). Indeed, Obama had conveyed to the Afghan leadership that the Taliban was no longer a US responsibility. He had already announced a US “exit strategy” from Afghanistan in 2009 and had been exploring ways to extricate the US forces from there since then.

Some US analysts have been spreading the myth that the American ideals of liberty, equality, democracy, and the rule of law are at odds with Afghan sensibilities. The US project failed because the Americans dictated how the Afghans should achieve these ideals, emphasising the process and not the outcome.

The elections in Afghanistan were decided, as an advisor to the late US Special Envoy, Richard Holbrooke, told the reviewer, not by how Afghans voted but by how their votes were counted. The political dispensation in Afghanistan during the two decades of US and International Security Assistance Force presence was not in the hands of Afghans.

The Afghan government finally folded up because of its incapacity, its foisted leadership, American ineptitude, and the sanctuary, sustenance, and support given to the Taliban by Pakistan.

As the Afghan poet, diplomat, and collaborator of Commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, Massoud Khalili, said, the United States was busy battling the smoke in Afghanistan, not the fire in Pakistan.

Nayanima Basu paints a bleak picture of the future of Afghanistan. She writes that the US withdrawal has created a “geostrategic nightmare” (p. 141), with Afghans left to stew in their misery. The opponents of the Taliban are weak, dispersed, and divided. Defiance by the National Resistance Front is sporadic.

The Islamic Emirate governs by “decrees” and “ministerial directives” (p. 149), not based on any constitution. It has reversed many of the achievements of the past 20 years, especially in human rights and gender equality. The Afghan people face economic hardship, displacement, and endemic poverty.

This is a must-read book for anyone curious about what went wrong in Afghanistan.

Jayant Prasad is a former Indian diplomat who served as India’s ambassador to many countries including Afghanistan (2008 – 2010). The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.