The Full Withdrawal of the United States Military Forces from Afghanistan and Power Transformation

Abstract

This thesis analyses the impact of the United States military forces withdrawal from Afghanistan, its impact on Afghanistan, lives of people especially women and of youth. In addition to that, the research focuses on the transformation of power from mainly the U.S. forces and previous Afghan government to the Taliban. Afghanistan is going through almost the same situation it did after the Soviet Union withdrew its forces from the. When the Biden administration announced a full withdrawal of the U.S. military forces from Afghanistan in February 2021, there was a fear among Afghan political leaders and the citizens, especially women. However, no one thought the situation would become this divesting and chaotic in the speed that it did. The thought among people and political leaders was that things will get bad but no one knew the transition would be far from smooth and very dangerous. My research focuses on the main question that is probably in all of our thoughts at this moment: America spent about 20 years in Afghanistan, spent a tremendous amounts of money and according to the U.S. government they did have a strategy to fight the Al-Qaeda and Taliban groups and defeat them. Taliban are obviously not defeated, they are in control of the entire territory of Afghanistan. Why and how after 20 years of hard work, blood of thousands of people Afghanistan is back to square one? What is the longer term impact of the current changes on Afghanistan? What are the potential implications on the international system?