By Yigal Carmon and Tufail Ahmad*

The fall of the democratically elected government in Afghanistan is an American betrayal of democracy. The fall did not begin yesterday – it began with the Doha agreement signed in February 2020. The U.S. and other Western powers were pretending hard to push forward a non-option in Kabul, a power-sharing agreement between the Taliban and the democratically elected government of President Ashraf Ghani. This option never existed.

Subsequently, as per the Doha pact, even on occasions in which the democratic government was allowed to participate in the intra-Afghan talks, the Taliban demanded that Afghan government officials would merely be one part of many prominent Afghans who formed the Afghan delegation. The U.S. abided by it, acting as if there had never been elections in Afghanistan.

For Biden, who had expressed clear support for democracies, to allow Zalmay Khalilzad to remain in his position, despite having negotiated the pro-Taliban deal in Doha, was seen by the Taliban as an American surrender – one of the landmark victories before the final victory in seizing Kabul. As the Taliban were galloping toward Kabul, President Biden said that Afghan leaders "have got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation" – speaking as if the fighting in Afghanistan was merely between two sections of Afghans, not a fight between democratic tenets and jihadi terrorism.[21] The Taliban spokesman spoke more clearly: "The obligation of jihad remains and shall continue to remain until the 'word of Allah' reigns supreme [and] an Islamic government is established."[22]

* Yigal Carmon is President of MEMRI; Tufail Ahmad is Senior Fellow for the MEMRI Islamism and Counter-Radicalization Initiative.