Both the Iraqi government and the Islamist parties in power have not actually made any statements, either positive or negative, about what is happening in Afghanistan.
What is happening in Kabul (three thousand kilometers from Baghdad) has been seriously reflected on Iraq.
There is a history of repercussions and affinities between the two countries. The anger of the United States after 9/11 sparked an American war that overthrew two governments, the Taliban emirate in Afghanistan in 2001 and Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq in 2003.
When the Americans arrived at the presidential palace in Baghdad with their Afghan-American consultant Zalmay Khalilzad, they applied the same model they had worked on in Afghanistan: the loya jirga, the assembly by which Afghan tribal leaders collectively decided the form of the political system. and how the country was run after the Taliban.
Two types of Taliban
On August 19, I went through 62 Facebook posts and, as always, I found a clear divide among Iraqis on how to interpret what is happening in Afghanistan. Forty-two posts consider it a US plot to embarrass Russia and Iran, in agreement with the Taliban. Fewer than ten consider it a military and political defeat, three of them think that the situation will have repercussions in Iraq. But most of the posts attached images of the great escape and chaos at Kabul airport: “Will this happen to us too?”
According to President Joe Biden, the US military presence in Iraq will be significantly reduced by the end of this year based on what was established in last July’s meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al Kadhimi. The fear is that this withdrawal will happen tragically, as happened in Afghanistan. We in Iraq have two kinds of Taliban: the Islamic State from the West group anxiously awaiting to return to operation, and the pro-Iranian Iraqi militias eager to control what little remains of the official government.
(Translation by Francesco De Lellis)
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