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The last images that you might remember seeing of Kabul are likely to be those of thousands of desperate Afghans, including women and children, gathered at the Kabul Airport, hoping to flee the country. The desperation and the fear of getting left behind was so dire that some of them clung to the airplane with bare hands and lost their lives in the process that was one of the saddest days of my life. It was heartbreaking to see my fellow Afghans lose their lives in a preventable struggle yet again, but what sunk my heart was how hope and optimism had vanished from the faces of the 38 million Afghans at the snap of a finger. Hope is everything it’s what keeps us all going, but the Afghan nation was robbed of hope yet again by the international community.

As someone who grew up in a refugee camp, I can assure you that most of us Afghans don’t want to leave our birthplace. Afghanistan maybe not be the best place to live in, but it is home. It is the one place in the world where an Afghan is not looked down upon and discriminated against. But when the entire world decides to use your home for their proxy wars and meddling, then your home becomes a chessboard game, and your entire nation turns into pawns who are considered collateral damage.

The land that is now Afghanistan has for long tempted foreign powers to dominate, from Darius I of Babylonia and Alexander the Great of Macedonia to Genghis Khan and the British, among others. Some of these actually succeed initially, but you can’t keep Afghans down for too long, as the Russians would tell you.

During the brief periods of history when the world powers weren’t plotting to take over Afghanistan, the country did flourish, and there was real hope for a better future. The more recent example of such an era for many Afghans is the period between the 1930s and mid-1970s. Afghanistan had a stable government under King Zahir Shah. In the early 1950s, Gen. Mohammad Daoud Khan introduced a number of social reforms, some of which would have allowed women to have a broader public presence. The civil liberties offered by the Afghan government at the time were well ahead of its neighboring countries and even the entire region. Kabul was dubbed “the Paris of Central Asia.”

By the early 70s, the world powers thought that they had left Afghanistan in peace for way too long so the British and Americans, along with their allies, decided to play another round of post-colonial war games, The Great Game II.

A lot of people in the West might believe that their governments had nothing to do with the invasion of Afghanistan by the Russians, but the fact is that the United States and Britain, along with others, were actively supporting the insurgent groups in Afghanistan through Pakistan to destabilize the government in Kabul well before the Russian invasion. So, the meddling of Russia, Iran, and China to destabilize the US-backed government in Kabul after 2001 shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Pakistan is the only country that has historically played both sides to utter perfection and has gained tremendously.

Now let’s fast forward to that tragic day of August 16 which I have mentioned at the beginning of this article. As soon as the US exit took place, you saw the U.S. and international media bring on their so-called “experts and analysts” who can’t even pronounce the name of the country properly, but are paid to be the top analysts and experts for these media outlets. You heard all sorts of analysis and blame games. Most pointed their fingers at the former Afghan government run by the oblivious President Ashraf Ghani, and probably rightly so, but what most so-called experts didn’t talk about was that Ashraf Ghani and his army weren’t the only ones to blame. Today, as an Afghan who is watching his homeland descend deeper and deeper into chaos, I want to list some of the major players in the most recent collapse of my nation, Afghanistan.

President Ashraf Ghani

This former Anthropology professor at Johns Hopkins and the economist at the World Bank gave up his U.S. citizenship in 2009 to run for the president’s office in Afghanistan. He came into office in 2014 on the back of an anti-corruption and merit-based reforms platform.

During his two terms, Ghani faced countless challenges from inside and outside his circles. His relationships with the powerful warlords and other national leaders were awfully turbulent and marked with an extreme lack of trust. Ghani lost his support among the ordinary Afghans rapidly, especially after the increasing insurgencies and appointments of meritless individuals to key government posts. For example, his National Security Advisor, Hamdullah Mohib used to be an IT Manager at the American University in Afghanistan. It became obvious that his only criteria for appointing people was their willingness to do as he told them to.

There are no doubts that Ashraf Ghani and his government, along with Abdullah Abdullah, who actively sought to destabilize the government that his alliance controlled half of the key ministries from within are the main culprits here, but they were more.

Figure 1: Abdullah Abdullah, left, and President Ashraf Ghani signing a power-sharing deal in Kabul, Afghanistan.Credit…Afghanistan’s Office of Chief Executive, via Agence France-Presse – Getty Images

Hamid Karzai and Warlords

From left, former President Hamid Karzai, Gulbudin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rasul Sayaf, and Karzai’s former vice president Karim Khalili. Credit: REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

The former Afghan president along with the powerful warlords (former Jihadi leaders) were actively and behind closed doors working tirelessly to weaken the central government, which resulted in the gradual collapse of the Afghan government at different levels. The Afghan politicians never presented a united front against the insurgents and foreign meddling. There are credible reports that various factions of the influential Afghan politicians and warlords were actively promoting the interests of neighboring countries and other nations.

Pakistan

Afghanistan’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, right, welcomes Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Kabul [Pakistan Foreign Office/AFP]

The Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship is way too complex to be discussed and shared in one article or even a book. All you need to know is that Pakistan will do anything it can, including the training and funding of armed insurgents to secure leverage in Afghanistan and be able to pull the strings in Kabul. Pakistan has always feared an independent government who might to cozy up to India hence sandwiching Pakistan in the middle. The contentious Durand Line is a major sticking point as well. The U.S. paid over $20 billion to Pakistan over the last 20 years to help fight terrorism, and years later, Osama bin Laden was found on the doorsteps of a Pakistani Intelligence Services (ISI) base, close to the capital Islamabad.

The biggest failure of the Afghan governments, including Karzai’s and Ghani’s was that they couldn’t unveil the not-so-hidden evil acts of Pakistan to the international community. I am of the belief that the West willingly decided to put up with two-faced Pakistan because they didn’t want to upset a trembling nuclear power in the region who has acted as a balancing force against India which has historically been better aligned with Russia. Either that or Pakistan must have a pee-tape on each of the Western politicians.

I am amazed by how little is mentioned of Pakistan when they played such a pivotal role in bringing the entire international community to their knees and shattering the Afghan nation along with their hopes over and over again.

The United States

President Biden delivering remarks on September 11, 2020, after a disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. Credit: CNBC

The once self-declared saviors of the Afghan people, the United States had no state-building agenda from the get-go. It was an afterthought, at best after they came under tremendous pressure from the international community. I would like to reassure you that the Afghan people are grateful for the generous support of the American taxpayers and the members of the armed forces who lost their lives, but we had hoped that the Americans had held their government more accountable for what they did in Afghanistan.

The latest blunder of the United States was how the peace talks were facilitated with the Taliban. The U.S. Envoy, Zalamy Khalilzad who was widely despised by the Afghans was in a rush to give the U.S. a way out of Afghanistan, at whatever cost possible, so much so that he effectively shut out the entire Afghanistan government and the active civil society from these talks and agreed to terms with the Taliban that no fair-minded Afghan would have even considered.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has stated in a new report that the decisions made by former US President Donald Trump and his successor Joe Biden played a major role in the fall of the Afghan army. The policy blunders committed by the Obama and Bush administrations had already weakened the central governments and sent it to the brink of collapse multiple times over the years.

The Britain and E.U.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, at left, speaking to an aide as President Emmanuel Macron of France, center, speaks with President Biden at a NATO meeting in June.Credit…Pool photo by Brendan Smialowski

For most of their presence in Afghanistan, the international community blindly followed the U.S. and their policy positions. Within the coalition, most of the nations had their own agendas, in particular the British who were a much closer ally of Pakistan and at times acted in ways which greatly damaged the interests of the Afghan people. To me, Britain and the EU were willing accomplices.

Iran, Russia, China, and India

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani during a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council of Heads of State in Bishkek on June 14, 2019. Credit Vyacheslav OseledKo/AFP/Getty Images

As I stated earlier, Afghanistan has been used as a battleground by the global and regional powers to settle scores at the cost of my nation. It is very well-documented. More than 50 years of proxy wars have set back the Afghan nation by multiple decades. We have lost multiple generations to war who haven’t had a chance to pick a book or a pen. Why would anyone be surprised by the fact that Pakistan and other actors find it so easy to brainwash generations of young Afghans who have not had access to education in their entire lives? We have suffered countless rounds of talent drain over the last 50 years, with the last one taking place in August of last year.

To answer my question, while there is a list of actors who have devastated my nation, if I was to pick just one group then that would be the Afghan politicians and so-called leaders who have repeatedly put their personal interests above those of the Afghan nation. I firmly believe that no one regardless of their might and resources, will be able to rebuild the Afghan nation, but the Afghans themselves.