Colonel Richard Kemp: There couldn’t have been a worse way to withdraw from Afghanistan

Photos: AP Images

Two months ago, retired British Army officer Colonel Richard Kemp, who had commanded the British forces in Afghanistan in 2003, predicted a violent Taliban takeover if President Biden were to stick to his campaign promise and actually pull the several thousand buffering US forces out of the country by his self-imposed deadline. He noted then that “US foes such as China, Russia, and North Korea are circling like vultures, waiting to gain more influence when the US leaves.”

But nothing prepared him for the violent scenes and mass hysteria the world has witnessed over the past two weeks. Now, as the positions he helped secure nearly two decades ago have collapsed, he looks back with no little sense of sorrow for the Afghan people, and more than a little fear of what it means for Western security.

“We’re facing a terrorist threat coming out of Afghanistan that’s even greater than the terrorist threat before 9/11,” Colonel Kemp tells Mishpacha. “Jihadists around the world are cheering. Pakistani president Arif Alvi is celebrating — and he should be, because Pakistan has significantly funded the Taliban while at the same time receiving funds from the US and Britain. In Gaza they’re celebrating. All the global terror infrastructures are being reenergized and reinvigorated, their recruitment boosted and inspired. ISIS and al-Qaeda — which have far from disappeared and were actually fighting alongside the Taliban in recent battles — are now operating even more freely than before 9/11, because they know they no longer need to fear Western intervention. That, unfortunately, is history.”

Colonel Kemp is no armchair doomsday prophet. He’s spent the majority of his 62 years fighting terrorism and insurgency with boots on the ground, commanding British troops on the front lines of some of the world’s toughest hot spots, including Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans, and Northern Ireland. Since his retirement from active military, he provides strategic consultancy services on security, intelligence, counterterrorism and defense, and is a popular media commentator as well.

Now, he says, the entire world has become vastly more dangerous. And that’s because there is a wide net of winners in addition to the Taliban.

“I don’t think any country is celebrating more than Russia and China,” he warns. “They’re ecstatic over what’s happened. Now they’ll see that the US no longer presents a deterrent and that they’ve got pretty much of an open playing field to do whatever they like. And the countries we’d hope to entice into the Western sphere will now say, ‘Why should we? The US isn’t reliable. Russia and China seem to be the more reliable allies.’ And the irony is that that was one of the reasons Biden gave for pulling out in the first place — that he would now be able to focus greater effort on confronting Russia and China — but this is the complete reverse of what he expected and preached.”

In the region, says Kemp, Pakistan, Iran, China, and Russia, all of which supported, funded, and armed the Taliban, will now be cashing in their chips, enriching themselves by plundering Afghanistan’s natural resources and using their newfound leverage there against the West. Furthermore, Taliban victory in Afghanistan will likely increase further instability in Pakistan, which has its own powerful Islamist insurgency, opening the real nightmarish possibility of jihadists gaining control of the country’s nuclear weapons.

With the results on the ground of President Biden’s messy, haphazard, and irresponsible withdrawal, says Kemp, “President Biden humiliated the United States and humiliated the US Army. Military hardware has been blown up and embassy cars, files filled with secret documents, and even national flags burned as the Taliban closed in on Kabul. Choppers have been shuttling fleeing diplomats to the airport in scenes reminiscent of the fall of Saigon in 1975. This is the greatest humiliation for America and the West in many decades, with our governments caught off-guard as the Taliban scythed across Afghanistan.

“People have been talking about impeaching the president, but I don’t believe he should be impeached,” Kemp told Fox News in a clip that went viral. “He’s the commander in chief of the US armed forces, who’s just essentially surrendered to the Taliban. In my opinion — and I don’t say this lightly, and I’ve never said it about any other leader in this position — he should be court-martialed for betraying the US and its armed forces.”