Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, recently said what many are thinking. He predicted on Monday that the United States will have to return to Afghanistan to deal with a resurgence in terror groups and attacks.
The senator made these predictions while being interviewed by the BBC. He claimed that the situation in Afghanistan would be strikingly similar to the outcomes in Iraq and Syria after the U.S. pulled back in its involvement. The Republican senator also indicated that President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan will enable and empower terror groups in the region. He said that the only way to deal with growing terror threats will be to get reengaged.
“Whether you like Trump or not, whether you believe it’s Trump’s fault or Biden’s fault, here’s where we are at as a world: the Taliban are not reformed, they’re not new. They have a view of the world out of sync with modern times,” Graham said. “They are going to impose a lifestyle on the Afghan people that I think is going to make all of us sick to our stomach.”
Graham went even further in his predictions, “But most importantly, they are going to give safe haven to Al-Qaeda, who has ambitions to drive us out of the Middle East writ large and attack us because of our way of life. We will be going back into Afghanistan as we went back into Iraq and Syria.”
The host of the BBC interview asked Graham again about the idea of the United States getting back involved in Afghanistan. Graham restated his position, “We’ll have to. We’ll have to because the threat will be so large. Why did we go back to Syria and Iraq? Why do we have 5,000 troops in Iraq today? Because of the caliphate rising, projecting force outside of Iraq, killing Americans, killing the French, attacking the British.” Graham said. “So, yes, it will be a cauldron for radical Islamic behavior. You cannot deal with this over the horizon.”
Graham delivered what he believes is the solution. He thinks that the United States should help the resistance in the Panjshir Valley. The senator does not believe that the Taliban will be able to govern Afghanistan because they are hated by the Afghan people.
Graham said, “What’s going to happen over time is you’re going to see the resistance rise, ISIS will come after the Taliban large, and the entire country is going to fracture in the next year creating a perfect storm for Western interests to be attacked. You can do one of two things. You can say that’s no longer my problem and let it build and get hit, or hit them before they hit you.”
On Monday, the Taliban claimed to have defeated the resistance in the Panjshir Valley, the final region in Afghanistan that the Taliban had yet to control. The new Afghanistan government installed men with terrorist ties to top posts. In fact, Afghanistan’s new interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is on the U.S. terror watch list.
But the guerrilla forces in the Panjshir Valley countered the Taliban’s claim of victory and said that the fighting was ongoing and that the Taliban’s claims of victory are false.
The BBC reported that resistance fighters were still present in “all strategic positions” and “continue to fight.” Their leader is calling for a “national uprising” against the Taliban. There is even an audio recording that was posted on social media from Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF). He blamed the international community for legitimizing the Taliban and giving them military and political confidence.
“Wherever you are, inside or outside, I call on you to begin a national uprising for the dignity, freedom and prosperity of our country,” Massoud said.
