Afghanistan & Vietnam
A diplomatic veteran of both Vietnam and Afghanistan, I see eerily similar parallels. We can get our people out, but call me nervous.
I’m following developments in Afghanistan with intense interest. The tide of the Taliban’s swift advances brings flashbacks of a similar sweep toward victory by communist Vietnamese forces in the spring of 1975. I have a history with both countries and to say this is “deja vu all over again” is an understatement. As President Biden deploys three thousand troops to help evacuate Americans from the U.S. embassy in Kabul, I pray that we won’t see a replay of our chaotic 1975 Saigon bugout.
I had worked on Afghanistan during three State Department assignments in the 1980s when our mission was to end the Soviet occupation of that country. While rewarding, the work was also exhausting, with 60-plus-hour, sometimes seven-day, work weeks and grueling milair flights from Andrews AFB to Pakistan. Ours was a Faustian bargain with the mujahidin and their Pakistani backers: you bleed the Russians; we’ll supply the wherewithal. We diplomats and spies held a jaundiced eye toward the future. We knew that once the Sovs had gone, the radical Islamist groups would waste little time turning on their more moderate muj allies and take Afghanistan back into the Dark Ages.
And that’s exactly what they did. After a dysfunctional coalition government fell apart in 1996, the radical Islamists, now called the Taliban, seized power. As is well documented, their medieval rule was one of murder, human rights abuses, religious extremism, dictatorship and suppression of women. They also provided safe haven for al-Qaeda and other Islamist militants. Their reign of terror finally came to an end not long after 9/11 when U.S. forces toppled the regime.
As senior country officer for Afghanistan, I assisted in the closure of our Kabul embassy and evacuation of its staff once the Soviets had left. My own assignment to become deputy chief of mission there was canceled as a result and I went on to serve elsewhere.
My involvement with Vietnam was much longer than with Afghanistan, spanning more than a decade with the U.S. government. In college, I had followed Washington’s “Vietnamization” program, basically a fig leaf to enable us to pull out our military forces and save face. And I was fixated on the dramatic denouement of the South Vietnamese regime and our scramble to evacuate embassy staff and others. As a post-Vietnam War Foreign Service officer, the State Department sent me for extended tours of duty to Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, after being trained in the language of each country.
During trips to Ho Chi Minh City, I took time to visit our old embassy building, then vacant and locked (and subsequently torn down). In my mind, I pictured and heard the choppers lifting off from the roof, packed with escapees. My mind’s eye saw the horde of desperate Vietnamese trying to breach the barbed wire festooned compound walls. I envisioned armed Marines almost overwhelmed in defending the mission. And I sensed again the embarrassment and shame we Americans felt about the manner in which our terribly costly involvement - in terms of treasure and lives - came to a close. I fervently hoped we would never put ourselves in such a position again.
I have faith in President Biden and the agencies and the military encharged with evacuating most of the huge staff at the sprawling downtown fortress that is our Kabul embassy. But the parallels with Vietnam are striking. And it makes this ex-fed very anxious.
Since President Biden essentially completed U.S. troop withdrawal by early July, the Taliban have gained control of two-thirds of Afghanistan’s territory. Key cities have fallen like dominoes. With the capture of Ghazni, massed Taliban forces are a mere ninety miles from Kabul. Afghan government forces, which outnumber the Taliban 3-to-1 and are better equipped, are melting away. According to press reports, the CIA is predicting Kabul’s collapse within as few as thirty days.
The rapidity with which the South Vietnamese position collapsed in 1975 was equally as surprising - to both Vietnamese sides as well as to Washington. After the North launched its ground campaign in March 1975, one provincial capital fell after another and well-equipped South Vietnamese troops dropped their weapons and fled. By April 27, communist forces had Saigon surrounded. On April 30, NVA tanks smashed through the wall of the Presidential Palace.
Compare presidential statements in each case:
President Ford, 4/23/1975:
“Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned.”
President Biden, 8/10/2021:
“Afghan leaders have to come together. We lost thousands — lost to death and injury — thousands of American personnel. They’ve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation.”
Senior Afghan officials who feathered their nests long ago are fleeing their country with their families, no doubt with public funds. The Ashraf Ghani government, as with the South Vietnamese regime, is incompetent and corrupt. My bet is that Ghani is dusting off his travel documents and we will see him stateside before Milad un Nabi, the Prophet’s birthday - October 19.
I also see parallels between the Taliban and Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. I had witnessed the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge’s bloody rule - devastation, genocide, a traumatized people. They swept into power with a vengeance, imposing a radical system of communism, killing at will and driving city populations into the countryside. They turned Cambodia into a vast, hellish prison camp. Before being turned out by the Vietnamese army four years later, they had killed some two million of their own countrymen.
We can likely view the Taliban’s previous five years of misrule as a preview of coming attractions. Like the Khmer Rouge, they are nihilistic, radical and ruthless. The end of suffering of the Afghan people appears not to be in sight.
Sure, it is possible the Afghan government will rally and fight back, leading to a stalemate, followed by resumption of serious negotiations. But I’m not putting my money there.
In response to a reporter’s question last month as to whether a Saigon scenario could unfold, President said:
None whatsoever. Zero. What you had is you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our embassy, six, if I’m not mistaken. The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy … of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.
Evacuation planning is done methodically on a contingency basis for all diplomatic posts and is regularly revised. Such planning for posts in danger zones is ongoing and meticulous. The greater or more imminent the danger, the more robust is the planning. This is why I have confidence we won’t see a replay of Saigon ‘75 in Afghanistan.
Nonetheless, I am nervous.
The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.