Category: Nation

Twenty years to the day after 9/11 terror attacks, Americans nationwide and the world reflected on the events that forever changed their country.

Twenty years to the day after a pair of hijacked airliners destroyed the World Trade Center towers and another plane punched a gaping hole in the Pentagon and a fourth passenger jet crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers sought to regain control from hijackers, Americans nationwide reflected on the events that forever changed their country. Nearly 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001. The event not only sparked enormously costly and largely unwinnable wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but also spawned a domestic war on terrorism, rewriting the rules on security and surveillance in the U.S., the repercussions of which continue to reverberate.

To commemorate the day, hundreds of people on Saturday gathered in Lower Manhattan at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum on the spot where the World Trade Center’s twin towers once stood. Three presidents — President Biden, former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — and their wives attended. They wore blue ribbons and held their hands over their hearts as a procession marched a flag through the memorial and stood somberly side by side as the names of the dead were read off by family members and stories and remembrances were shared.

The president and first lady also met with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his partner, Diana Taylor, according to the White House. They greeted FBI Director Christopher Wray, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the New York congressional delegation, and many other current and former state and local officials as they arrived at the memorial. Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City at the time of the attacks, also attended the ceremony. At a ceremony at Shanksville, Pa., former President George W. Bush remembered the day that “the world was loud with carnage and sirens. And then silent with voices.”

Bush lamented the current era of political division, seemingly alluding to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. “We have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come, not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within,” Bush said. “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home … [but] they are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them.” Also in Shanksville, where a hijacked plane crashed after passengers fought back, Vice President Harris called the site “hallowed ground.”

United Flight 93 taught us “about the courage of those on board, who gave everything. About the resolve of the first responders, who risked everything. About the resilience of the American people,” she said. Echoing Bush, Harris said that in the days after the attacks, “we were all reminded that unity is possible in America. We were reminded, too, that unity is imperative in America. It is essential to our shared prosperity, our national security, and to our standing in the world.”

At ground zero in New York City, the national anthem was performed in a solemn ceremony, and then, in what has become an annual tradition, a moment of silence was observed at 8:46 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower. The names of the victims were read allowed by family members, who shared anecdotes and remembrances of their loved ones. Another moment of silence was observed at 9:03 a.m., when United Flight 175 hit the south tower, 9:59 a.m., when the south tower collapsed, and 10:28 a.m., when the north tower of the World Trade Center came down. More than 2,600 people were killed in and around the World Trade Center buildings. At the Pentagon, 184 died, and 40 more were killed in Pennsylvania.

Among those who attended the ceremony in Manhattan was Bruce Springsteen, who with an acoustic guitar and harmonica, took the dais to perform “I’ll See You In My Dreams.” The New York Police Department pipes and drums band also played “Hard Times Come Again No More,” a U.S. folk song dating from the 1850s. Biden made no remarks on Saturday in New York, but speaking on Friday, he said that in the days after the attacks in 2001, “we saw heroism everywhere — in places expected and unexpected.”

“We also saw something all too rare: a true sense of national unity,” the president said. A moment of silence was also observed at 9:37 a.m., marking when American Airlines Flight 77 careened into the west face of the Pentagon. A ceremony there was hosted by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley. The Bidens also attended a wreath-laying ceremony at Shanksville, and another later in the day at the Pentagon in northern Virginia. At the Pentagon, linked hand to hand, the Bidens, Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff bowed their heads as they observed a moment of silence.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump released a video message Saturday morning, largely lambasting Biden’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Trump, who visited Shanksville on Friday, visited a police precinct and fire department in New York City on Saturday, and is scheduled to deliver ringside commentary at a boxing match at a casino in Hollywood, Fla. In London, acting ambassador to the United Kingdom Philip Reeker attended a special changing of the guard at Windsor Castle, at which the U.S. national anthem was performed. Reeker said Americans would be “forever grateful” for the “enduring friendship” between the two countries.

The 20th anniversary of the attacks comes just weeks after the chaotic final withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, ending America’s longest war. Following the 2001 attacks, then-President Bush ordered “boots on the ground” in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to root out al-Qaida and hunt for the mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden. The war passed to his successor, Obama. Under Obama’s watch, bin Laden was located in Pakistan and killed in a covert U.S. military operation. But the war dragged on. The Trump White House negotiated directly with the Taliban for a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces, which was completed last month.

However, as U.S. troops were leaving, the Taliban were also gaining the upper hand against American-trained Afghan security forces, resulting in the quick collapse of the Afghan government. Some families of the victims of 9/11 had asked Biden not to attend the 20th anniversary memorial events unless he ordered the declassification of documents they say will show that Saudi Arabian leaders lent material support to bin Laden.

In the last 2 decades, US poured money and resources into protecting the U.S. from another terrorist attack, even as the nature of that threat continuously evolved.

In the fall of 2001, Aaron Zebley was a 31-year-old FBI agent in New York. He had just transferred to a criminal squad after working counterterrorism cases for years. His first day in the new job was Sept. 11. “I was literally cleaning the desk, I was like wiping the desk when Flight 11 hit the north tower, and it shook our building,” he said. “And I was like, what the heck was that? And later that day, I was transferred back to counterterrorism.” It was a natural move for Zebley. He’d spent the previous three years investigating al-Qaida’s bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. And he became a core member of the FBI team leading the investigation into the 9/11 attacks. It quickly became clear that al-Qaida was responsible.

The hijackers had trained at the group’s camps in Afghanistan. They received money and instructions from its leadership. And ultimately, they were sent to the U.S. to carry out al-Qaida’s “planes operation.” President George W Bush gave an address in front of the damaged Pentagon following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack there as Counselor to the President Karen Hughes and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stand by. As the nation mourned the nearly 3,000 people who were killed on 9/11, the George W. Bush administration frantically tried to find its footing and prevent what many feared would be a second wave of attacks. President Bush ordered members of his administration, including top counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, to imagine what the next attack could look like and take steps to prevent it.

“We had so many vulnerabilities in this country,” Clarke said. We had a very long list of things, systems, that were vulnerable because no one in the United States had seriously considered security from terrorist attacks. At the time, officials were worried that al-Qaida could use chemical weapons or radioactive materials, Clarke said, or that the group would target intercity trains or subway systems. “We had a very long list of things, systems, that were vulnerable because no one in the United States had seriously considered security from terrorist attacks,” he said. That, of course, quickly changed. Security became paramount. And over the next two decades, the federal government poured money and resources — some of it, critics say, to no good use — into protecting the U.S. from another terrorist attack, even as the nature of that threat continuously evolved.

The response to keeping the U.S. secure takes shape The government built out a massive infrastructure, including creating the Department of Homeland Security, all in the name of protecting against terrorist attacks. The Bush administration also empowered the FBI and its partners at the CIA, National Security Agency and the Pentagon to take the fight to al-Qaida. The military invaded Afghanistan, which had been a haven for the group. The CIA hunted down al-Qaida operatives around the world and tortured many of them in secret prisons. The Bush administration also launched its ill-fated war in Iraq, which unleashed two decades of bloodletting, shook the Middle East and spawned another generation of terrorists.

On the home front, FBI Director Robert Mueller shifted some 2,000 agents to counterterrorism work as he tried to transform the FBI from a crime-fighting first organization into a more intelligence-driven one that prioritized combating terrorism and preventing the next attack. Part of that involved centralizing the bureau’s international terrorism investigations at headquarters and making counterterrorism the FBI’s top priority. Chuck Rosenberg, who served as a top aide to Mueller in those early years, said the changes Mueller imposed amounted to a paradigm shift for the bureau.

“Mueller, God bless him, couldn’t be all that patient about it,” Rosenberg said. “It couldn’t happen at a normal pace of a traditional cultural change. It had to happen yesterday.” It had to happen “yesterday” because al-Qaida was still plotting. Overseas, its operatives carried out horrific bombings in Bali, Madrid, London and elsewhere. In the U.S., al-Qaida operative Richard Reid was arrested in December 2001 after trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with a bomb hidden in his shoe. More plots were foiled in the ensuing years, including one targeting the Brooklyn Bridge. Over time, the FBI and its partners better understood al-Qaida, its hierarchical structure, and how to unravel the various threads of a plot.

That stemmed to large degree, Zebley says, from the U.S. getting better at pulling together various threads of intelligence and by upping the operational tempo. “If you have a little thread that could potentially tell you about a terrorist plot, not only were we much better at integrating the intelligence, but we did it at a pace that was tenfold what we were doing before,” he said. But critics warned that the government’s new anti-terrorism tools were eroding civil liberties, while the American Muslim community felt it was all too often the target of an overzealous FBI.

The digital world helps transform terrorism By the early days of the Obama administration, the U.S. had to a large extent hardened the homeland against 9/11-style plots. But the terrorism landscape was evolving. At that time, Zebley was serving as a senior aide to Mueller. Each morning, he would sit in on the FBI director’s daily threat briefing. “I was thinking about al-Qaida for years leading up until that moment,” he said. “And now I’m sitting in these morning threat briefings and I’m seeing al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa, al-Shabab. … One of my first thoughts was ‘the map looks very different to me now.’ ”

Ultimately, AQAP — al-Qaida’s branch based in Yemen — emerged as a significant threat to the U.S. homeland. That became clear in November 2009 when U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas. A month later, on Christmas Day, a young Nigerian man tried to blow up a passenger jet over Detroit with a bomb hidden in his underwear. It quickly emerged that both men had been in contact with a senior AQAP figure, an American-born Yemeni cleric named Anwar al-Awlaki.

“My sense when I first heard about him was ‘well, he’s some charismatic guy, born in the U.S., fluent English speaker and all that. But how big a threat could he be?” said John Pistole, who served as the No. 2 official at the FBI from 2004 until 2010 when he left to lead the Transportation Security Administration.

“I think I failed to recognize and appreciate his ability to influence others to action.” Awlaki used the internet to spread his calls for violence against America, and his lectures and ideas influenced attacks in several countries. Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011, a move that proved controversial because he was an American citizen. A few years later, a different terrorist group emerged from the cauldron of Syria and Iraq — the Islamic State, or ISIS, a group that would build on Awlaki’s savvy use of the digital world. “When ISIS came onto the scene, particularly that summer of 2014, with the beheadings and the prolific use of social media, it was off the charts,” said Mary McCord, who was a senior national security official at the Justice Department at the time.

Like al-Qaida more than a decade before, ISIS used its stronghold to plan operations abroad, such as the coordinated attacks in 2015 that killed 130 people in Paris. But it also used social media platforms such as Twitter and Telegram to pump out slickly produced propaganda videos. “They deployed technology in a much more sophisticated way than we had seen with most other foreign terrorist organizations,” McCord said. ISIS produced materials featuring idyllic scenes of life in the caliphate to entice people to move there. At the same time, the group pushed out a torrent of videos showing horrendous violence that sought to instill fear in ISIS’ enemies and to inspire the militants’ sympathizers in Europe and the U.S. to conduct attacks where they were. “The threat was much more horizontal. It was harder to corral,” said Chuck Rosenberg, who served as FBI Director James Comey’s chief of staff.

People inspired by ISIS could go from watching the group’s videos to action relatively quickly without setting off alarms. “It was clear too that there were going to be attacks we just couldn’t stop. Things that went from left of boom to right of boom very quickly. People were more discreet, the thing we used to refer to as lone wolves,” Rosenberg said. “A lot of bad things could happen, maybe on a smaller scale, but a lot of bad things could happen more quickly.” Bad things did happenEurope was hit by a series of deadly one-off attacks. In the U.S., a gunman killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in 2016. A year later, a man used a truck to plow through a group of cyclists and pedestrians in Manhattan, killing eight people. Both men had been watching ISIS propaganda.

That the Taliban is back is power in Afghanistan on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 is immensely painful to the United States, NATO, and many Afghans. In 2001, the U.S. overthrew the Taliban regime to defeat al-Qaida, a goal it largely accomplished. But the U.S. also sought to vanquish the Taliban and leave behind a pluralistic, human-rights-respecting, and economically-sustainable Afghan state. It failed in those objectives. There were plenty of mistakes and problems with the international efforts, but most importantly the United States never succeeded in inducing good governance in Afghanistan or persuading Pakistan to stop its multifaceted support for the Taliban. Afghan leaders constantly put their parochial and corrupt self-interests ahead of the national one. The misgovernance rot hollowed out even the Afghan security forces which the U.S. spent 20 years constructing at the cost of some $88 billion. But will the Taliban be able to maintain itself in power? The answer depends on how it handles and prevents armed opposition to its rule and manages the country’s economy and relations with external actors.

Armed opposition

The most significant threat to the Taliban regime could come from within. The Taliban’s success as an insurgency rested on its ability to remain cohesive despite NATO efforts to fragment the group. But the group’s challenge of maintaining cohesiveness across its many different factions of varied ideological intensity and material interests is tougher now that it is in power. The factions have disparate views about how the new regime should rule across just about all dimensions of governance: inclusiveness, dealing with foreign fighters, the economy, and external relations. Many middle-level battlefield commanders — younger, more plugged into global jihadi networks, and without personal experience of the Taliban’s mismanaged 1990s rule — are more hardline than key older national and provincial leaders.

Besides juggling those different views on policy, the Taliban will also need to ensure that its key commanders and their rank-and-file soldiers retain enough income not to be tempted to split off. Indeed, a key element of the Taliban’s blitzkrieg this summer was its bargaining with local militias and national powerbrokers, promising them that the Taliban would allow them to maintain some access to local economic rents, such as mining in Badakhshan and logging in Kunar.

Possible defections of Taliban factions or foreign fighters in Afghanistan could boost the Taliban’s principal rival, the Islamic State Khorasan (ISK), whom the Taliban has battled for years. The ISK cannot currently bring the Taliban regime down. But it could become an envelope for any future defections. Already, core ISK elements are former Taliban commanders whom the group’s prior leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour (killed by the United States in 2016), expelled because they were too brutal, too sectarian, and too independent. ISK provides several other significant challenges to the Taliban.

In areas that it has ruled in recent years and during its 1990s regime, the Taliban’s principal claim to performance-based (as opposed to ideology-based) legitimacy has been its ability to deliver order and suppress crime and conflict — a brutal order, but a tight and predictable one. If it fails to prevent bloody ISK urban attacks, like the one that killed 13 U.S. service members and over 160 Afghans on August 26, that claim will weaken. Persisting violence would also deter China’s economic investments in Afghanistan, as it did (along with Afghanistan’s corruption) over the past decade. Yet the Taliban wants and needs Chinese money.

Frequently attacking Afghanistan’s Shia Hazara minority, ISK has sought to instigate a Sunni-Shia war in Afghanistan, something Mullah Mansour wanted to avoid. If the Taliban fails to control these attacks, its improved relations with Iran could deteriorate — something all the more likely if the attacks set off runaway sectarian fighting that sucks in Taliban factions. If the Taliban does not prevent the leakage of anti-Shia terrorism into Iran — from Taliban factions, foreign fighters, or ISK — Iran could attempt to activate its Fatimiyoun units in Afghanistan. The Fatimiyoun are Afghan Shia fighters, numbering the tens of thousands, whom Iran trained and deployed to fight in Syria and Libya. Having returned to Afghanistan, they could battle the Taliban’s rule. These future threats are far more potent than the currently small, weak, divided, and encircled anti-Taliban opposition of Ahmad Massoud and Amrullah Saleh in the Panjshir Valley.

Governance

In its shadow governance, the Taliban effectively delivered order and enforcing rules, such as ensuring that teachers showed up to teach when it allowed schools to operate and that government employees did not steal supplies from clinics. The Taliban also got much political capital from delivering swift, not corrupt, and enforced dispute resolution (and from protecting the poppy economy.) And it has excelled in taxing economic activity in Afghanistan, legal and illegal — from NATO supply trucks to government aid programs, drugs, and logging.

But it has no experience with or technocratic capacity for delivering or even just maintaining other existing services such as electricity or water delivery, let alone tackling complex issues like setting macroeconomic policies or addressing droughts. To maintain service delivery and at least stumble through those higher-level policy challenges, it needs technocrats and foreign assistance, both advisory and on the ground, such as in the form of humanitarian NGOs. If its rule centers on purges and revenge, of which distressing reports have emerged, the technocrats will continue to flee. The Taliban can only pressure them so much to work under duress.

Moreover, if the Taliban rules very brutally, international actors will maintain sanctions on the group and perhaps intensify them. Countries and businesses seeking to legally engage with the Taliban’s Afghanistan would be deterred from doing so. Unless humanitarian exceptions from the sanctions are guaranteed, even NGO work could grind to a halt.

The Economy and the region

Currently, the Taliban regime faces the loss of billions of dollars that had been allocated to Afghanistan — from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the U.S., and the European Union — while the country’s central bank reserves held in the U.S. were frozen by the U.S. government. The country’s illegal and informal economies can only offset a part of those losses. The Taliban cannot simply double its poppy economy — the global market is already saturated with opioids, including synthetic ones. Banning poppy cultivation, to deliver on its promise to make Afghanistan drug free, would be enormously explosive socially. Beyond immiserating already desperately poor people hit by COVID-19, drought, and economic contractions in a country where 90% of people live in poverty and 30% are acutely food insecure, such a ban would also eliminate income for Taliban middle-layer commanders and rank-and-file fighters.

Even without a ban, the Taliban will struggle to find jobs for the many now-unemployed soldiers of the Afghan security forces whom the United States paid. Even if half of the nominal force were “ghost soldiers” or are dead and, say, only 150,000 soldiers actually fought, they are now a loose force without income for themselves and their families. They melted before the Taliban; but in time they may resort to banditry or be tempted to join old or new militias, if only to get economic rents.

And preserving the Taliban’s income from trade with Iran, China, and Central Asia, which has brought the group hundreds of millions of dollars in informal taxes, depends on whether the Taliban can accommodate Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow’s principal counterterrorism interests, which they judge far more important than any economic opportunities Afghanistan offers. If terrorism leakages are extensive, only Afghanistan’s trade with Pakistan may survive. Moreover, outside of the West, only China and the Gulf countries have potentially deep aid pockets for anything beyond humanitarian issues. Iran is bankrupt. Pakistan has been providing military and intelligence aid, but its own economy hovers in and out of dire straits.

Pakistan may find its triumphalism over the Taliban’s victory souring quickly. Now in power, the Taliban will be eager to loosen Pakistan’s yoke from its neck and deepen the diversification of its external relations. The Afghan Taliban’s victory may give a boost to Pakistan’s own Taliban militants. Other countries will continue to seek to enlist Pakistan as a broker to moderate the Taliban’s behavior and be dissatisfied when Islamabad doesn’t succeed.

Western engagement

These various challenges ahead do not mean that the West can easily topple the Taliban regime through sanctions or induce it to preserve the political pluralism and human and women’s rights as they existed — at least formally — over the past 20 years. Propped up by illicit and informal economies and taking advantage of deep divisions among international actors, brutal regimes can exist for years even with shattered economies — see North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, or Myanmar. Blanket Western sanctions and isolation will only worsen the terrible suffering of the Afghan people. Instead, the West’s bargaining and engagement with the Taliban should focus on specific demands, such as reducing the most debilitating repression, and center on discreet and specific punishments and inducements for concrete policy actions in what will be a long, complicated, iterative, and turbulent process.

The last US military planes have left Afghanistan, Commander of US Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie announced Monday, August 30th at the Pentagon. The US departure marks the end of a fraught, chaotic and bloody exit from the United States’ longest war.”I’m here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the end of the military mission to evacuate American citizens, third country nationals, and vulnerable Afghans,” McKenzie told reporters. “The last C-17 lifted off from Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 30th, this afternoon, at 3:29 p.m. East Coast time, and the last manned aircraft is now clearing the airspace above Afghanistan.”

Nearly 20 years after the US invaded Afghanistan to avenge the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and strike at al Qaeda and the Taliban, which hosted Osama bin Laden, another American administration is leaving the country in the control of Taliban militants who still maintain close ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. President Joe Biden said the mission was accomplished years ago, with the killing of Osama bin Laden and the degrading of Al Qaeda. He said he would no longer put American troops in the middle of a civil war.

The US will only engage with the Taliban government if it is in “our vital national interest”, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said. He said Washington will not work with the Taliban “on the basis of trust or faith” but on what it does with respect to its commitments for free travel for Afghans, protecting the rights of different groups including women, and preventing terror groups from gaining a stronghold. “Any legitimacy will have to be earned,” he said. The departure marks the first time in nearly two decades that the US and its allies have not had troops on the ground in Afghanistan and — after $2 trillion in spending and nearly 2,000 US troops killed in action — the pullout raises questions about the utility of a war that saw the service of parents and then their grown children.

With no US diplomats remaining in the country a senior State Department official said that they expected the US Embassy in Kabul to suspend embassy operations upon the end of the military retrograde but said “that doesn’t mean that we are suspending any commitments to American citizens in Afghanistan, to at risk Afghans, to the Afghan people.” Even as Biden pulls the US from the country, Afghanistan looks likely to shadow him politically and engage him militarily — on Monday, White House officials said the President is continuing the hunt for terrorists in the country, telling his military commanders to “stop at nothing” to avenge the deaths of 13 US service members at Kabul airport last week.

Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s The Point with Chris Cillizza. More than 122,000 people have been airlifted from Hamid Karzai International Airport since July, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters, including 5,400 Americans. A senior State Department official said the department believes there are fewer than 250 American citizens currently in Afghanistan who may wish to leave, as US officials stressed a Taliban commitment to let Afghans leave the country after the US and allies’ withdrawal. The State Department official put the number of American citizens who have left the country through evacuation flights or other means closer to 6,000. In the 24 hours leading up to Monday morning, 26 military C-17 aircraft lifted off from Kabul carrying 1,200 evacuees, according to Gen. Hank Taylor, the deputy director of regional operations for the Joint Staff, who spoke alongside Kirby at a Pentagon briefing earlier Monday.

In total, 28 flights departed from Kabul airport in that 24-hour window, Taylor said.

In the same 24-hour period, the US conducted a drone strike that killed multiple civilians, including children, the Kabul airport was targeted by rocket fire, and military officials continued to warn of active, specific threats to the evacuation effort. The “threat stream is still real. It’s still active, and, in many cases, it’s still specific,” Kirby said at the Monday morning briefing when asked if another attack on the airport was still likely. Taylor added that military operations were continuing with a focus on the security of the US troops in Kabul, and the military would have capability to evacuate Afghans until the very end.

“We’re taking it very seriously and we will right up until the end,” Kirby said.

Along with the military exit, the US is pulling out all diplomatic representation, leaving open the question of whether it will formally recognize the Taliban as the rulers of Afghanistan. The formal military and diplomatic “retrograde” is ending even as the US leaves behind Americans, some of whom did not want to leave and others who may have already left, according to State Department officials, as well as vulnerable Afghans who worked for the US military and now face possible Taliban retaliation. That tragically unfinished business will become part of the broader political challenge that Biden faces as he enters the second half of his first year in office.  The airlift, which started as a seemingly haphazard and hastily organized effort, was scarred by the deaths of 13 service members last week and the death sentence hanging over Afghan translators who helped US troops and diplomats but were unable to escape the country. In addition, Biden’s decision to leave will be shadowed by questions about whether and how well the threat of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan has really been addressed.

The President has already committed to prolonging some US engagement with Afghanistan, telling his military commanders that they should “stop at nothing” to make ISIS pay for the service members’ deaths.  I can tell you that the President has made clear to his commanders that they should stop at nothing to make ISIS pay for the deaths of those American service members at the Kabul airport,” Psaki said at a White House press briefing. Former President Donald Trump had  praised withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan, while knocking his successor’s timeline for doing so. Though the former President offered his support of President Joe Biden’s plans to bring home American troops, he urged his successor to draw an end to America’s longest war well before the September 11 deadline that Biden set last week.

Trump said that while leaving Afghanistan is “a wonderful and positive thing to do,” he had set a May 1 withdrawal deadline and added that “we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.” “I wish Joe Biden wouldn’t use September 11 as the date to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, for two reasons. First, we can and should get out earlier. Nineteen years is enough, in fact, far too much and way too long,” Trump said, adding: “September 11 represents a very sad event and period for our Country and should remain a day of reflection and remembrance honoring those great souls we lost.” Trump is the latest former commander in chief to weigh in on Biden’s plan, with both former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama having spoken to Biden ahead of his announcement last week. Obama praised Biden’s decision to end the nearly 20-year war, which has spanned all four administrations.

US forces finally withdrew from Afghanistan on Monday, a day ahead of the deadline set by Joe Biden, bringing to an end a deployment which began in the wake of the September 11 attacks two decades ago. The end of the Western military presence – the UK had already pulled out its remaining troops – also concluded the airborne evacuation effort from Kabul, leaving Afghans wanting to escape the Taliban facing an uncertain future. For the 38 million Afghans that remain in the country, there is significant uncertainty over what kind of rule the Taliban will impose. Will they bring back the harsh rules and punishments that characterised their last spell in charge of the country. Many Afghans look at Taliban rule in rural areas and fear that they have not changed, but that they’ve somehow got even worse.

The Taliban proclaimed “full independence” for Afghanistan after the US withdrawal.

The new regime in Afghanistan faces pressure to respect human rights and provide safe passage for those who wish to escape its rule following the passage of a UN Security Council resolution. The council adopted a resolution in New York – with Russia and China abstaining rather than wielding their vetoes – in what the UK hopes is a step towards a unified international response. But the resolution effectively acknowledges that it is now up to the Taliban to decide whether people can leave Afghanistan. The UK’s ambassador to the UN, Dame Barbara Woodward, stressed that “a co-ordinated approach will be vital to counter any extremist threat emanating from Afghanistan”. The humanitarian situation also needs to be urgently addressed – with complete access for UN agencies and aid organizations – and the progress made on human rights in the 20 years since the US-led coalition became involved in Afghanistan must also be protected, she said.

“Today’s resolution is an important step towards a unified international response to the situation in Afghanistan,” Dame Barbara said. “We will continue to build on this to ensure the council holds the Taliban accountable on its commitments. The Taliban will be judged by the international community on the basis of their actions on the ground, not their words.”

The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that followed the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. The group was rooted in rural areas of Kandahar province, in the country’s ethnic-Pashtun heartland in the south.

It was surprising, because until taking up arms just a year before, many of the fighters had been little more than religious pupils. Their very name meant “students.” The Taliban, they called themselves. A quarter-century later, after outlasting an international military coalition in a war that cost tens of thousands of lives, the onetime students are now rulers of the land. Again. Here is a look at the origin of the Taliban; how they managed to take over Afghanistan not once, but twice; what they did when they first took control — and what that might reveal about their plans for this time.

When did the Taliban first emerge?

The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that followed the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. The group was rooted in rural areas of Kandahar province, in the country’s ethnic-Pashtun heartland in the south. The Soviet Union had invaded in 1979 to prop up the Communist government in Afghanistan, and eventually met the fate of big powers past and present that have tried to impose their will on the country: It was driven out.The Soviets were defeated by Islamic fighters known as the mujahedeen, a patchwork of insurgent factions supported by a U.S. government only too happy to wage a proxy war against its Cold War rival. But the joy over that victory was short-lived, as the various factions fell out and began fighting for control. The country fell into warlordism, and a brutal civil war. Against this backdrop, the Taliban, with their promise to put Islamic values first and to battle the corruption that drove the warlords’ fighting, quickly attracted a following. Over months of intense fighting, they took over most of the country.

How did the Taliban rule?

In 1996, the Taliban declared an Islamic Emirate, imposing a harsh interpretation of the Quran and enforcing it with brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions. And they strictly curtailed the role of women, keeping them out of schools. They also made clear that rival religious practices would not be tolerated: In early 2001, the Taliban destroyed towering statues known as the Great Buddhas of Bamiyan, objects of awe around the globe. The Taliban considered them blasphemous, and boasted that their destruction was holy. “It is easier to destroy than to build,” observed the militants’ minister of information and culture. There was a framework of a modern government, including ministries and a bureaucracy. But at the street level, it was religious edict, and the whim of individual commanders, that dictated everyday life for Afghans. They did not control the entire country, however. The north, where many of the mujahedeen commanders had taken up occupancy, remained a bastion of resistance.

What does Taliban rule mean for women?

The Taliban were founded in an ideology dictating that women should play only the most circumscribed roles in society. The last time they ruled, they barred women and girls from taking most jobs or even going to school. And women caught outside the home with their faces uncovered risked severe punishment. Unmarried women and men seen together also faced punishment. After the Taliban government was toppled by an American-led coalition, women made many gains in Afghanistan. But two decades later, as the U.S. negotiated a troop withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, many Afghan women feared that all of that ground would be lost. And as the militants take power, there have been ample signs that those fears are well-grounded.

In just one example, Taliban fighters entered a bank in Kandahar during fighting in July and ordered nine women working there to leave and said that male relatives should take their place, Reuters reported. And in the northern city of Kunduz this month, the city’s new Taliban rulers ordered women who had worked for the government to leave their jobs and never return. “It’s really strange to not be allowed to get to work, but now this is what it is,” one of the bank workers in Kandahar said.

Why did the U.S. invade Afghanistan?

When they were in power, the Taliban made Afghanistan a safe harbor for Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabia-born former mujahedeen fighter, while he built up a terrorist group with global designs: al-Qaida. On Sept. 11, 2001, the group struck a blow that rattled the world, toppling the World Trade Center towers in New York and damaging the Pentagon in Washington. Thousands were killed. President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban hand over al-Qaida and bin Laden. When the Taliban balked, the United States invaded. Unleashing a heavy airstrike campaign, and joined by former mujahedeen groups within the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance coalition, the U.S. and its allies soon toppled the Taliban government. Most of the al-Qaida and Taliban officials who survived fled to Pakistan. Twenty years later, some of those same Taliban officials were among the delegation that struck a deal for the United States to leave Afghanistan, and they will number among the country’s new rulers.

What happened to the Taliban after their 2001 defeat?

With the shelter and assistance of Pakistan’s military — the same force receiving heavy financial aid from the United States to help hunt down al-Qaida — the Taliban reformed as a guerrilla insurgency. The U.S. began pouring resources into a new war in Iraq, and American officials told the world that Afghanistan was well on its way to becoming a Western-style democracy with modern institutions. But many Afghans were coming to feel that those foreign institutions were just another way for corrupt leaders to steal money. In the countryside, the Taliban began gaining ground, and support, particularly in rural areas. Their numbers grew — some fighters were intimidated into joining, others happy to volunteer, almost all of them better paid than local policemen. And the group found a rich recruiting vein among the Afghan diaspora in Pakistan, from families who had fled previous violence as refugees and were brought up in religious schools.

“Six years after being driven from power, the Taliban are demonstrating a resilience and a ferocity that are raising alarm,” The Times reported in 2008, noting that “a relatively ragtag insurgency has managed to keep the world’s most powerful armies at bay.” The Taliban weathered the storm when President Barack Obama vastly expanded the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, up to around 100,000 troops in 2010. And when the Americans began drawing down a few years later, the insurgents began gaining ground again. It was a campaign of persistence, with the Taliban betting that the United States would lose patience and leave.

They were right. More than 2,400 American lives later, $2 trillion later, tens of thousands of Afghan civilian and security forces deaths later, President Donald Trump made a deal with the Taliban and declared that American forces would leave Afghanistan by mid-2021. President Joe Biden endorsed the approach, and presided over an uncompromising troop withdrawal even as the Taliban began gobbling up whole districts, and then cities. This week, just nine days after the Taliban seized their first provincial capital, the insurgents walked into the capital, Kabul. Taliban rule of Afghanistan has resumed.

What will the Taliban do next?

Taliban leaders have so far seemed to avoid inflammatory rhetoric, and have called on commanders to rule fairly and avoid reprisals and abuse. They have issued assurances that people will be safe. The early days of Taliban control have, in fact, seemed restrained in some places. But enough reports of brutality and intimidation have surfaced to send waves of refugees to Kabul ahead of the group’s advance. And now, the capital’s airport has become a scene of desperation and chaos, as thousands of Afghans try to flee the country at any cost. In Kunduz, the first major provincial capital to fall to the Taliban, residents were unconvinced by promises of peace from their new rulers.“I am afraid, because I do not know what will happen and what they will do,” one resident said. “We have to smile at them, because we are scared, but deeply we are unhappy.”

The final collapse of the 20-year western mission to Afghanistan took only a single day as Taliban gunmen entered the capital, Kabul, on Sunday, August 15^th while President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, and the US and other coalition countries abandoned their embassies in panic.

As the Taliban took control of the city and installed themselves in the presidential palace, thousands of Afghans and foreign nationals surged on to the tarmac at Kabul airport seeking a place on a flight out of the country. Meanwhile, Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban leader freed from a Pakistani jail at the request of the US less than three years ago, has emerged as an undisputed victor of the 20-year war.

The Taliban have showed off containers full of weapons and military hardware seized from the Afghan military as American forces withdraw from the country and the militants march across the country. District after district has fallen to the Taliban. The militants have seized 120 districts since May 1, according to an ongoing assessment by the Long War Journal. The map is a moving patchwork, but at last count the Taliban controlled 193 districts and contested 130, while 75 were under the control of the government or are undetermined, according to the publication, which reports on the global war on terror and is a project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank.

Questions will be asked as to how the whole country has in effect been overrun in a matter of weeks when the Taliban have 80,000 troops in comparison with a nominal 300,699 serving the Afghan government. It is a tale of two armies, Patrick Wintour writes, one poorly equipped but highly motivated ideologically, and the other nominally well equipped, but dependent on NATO support, poorly led and riddled with corruption.

Thousands of Afghans rushed into Kabul’s main airport Monday, some so desperate to escape the Taliban that they held onto a military jet as it took off and plunged to their deaths. At least seven people died in the chaos, U.S. officials said, as America’s longest war ended with its enemy the victor.

The crowds came while the Taliban enforced their rule over the capital of 5 million people after a lightning advance across the country that took just over a week to dethrone the country’s Western-backed government. There were no major reports of abuses or fighting, but many residents stayed home and remained fearful after the insurgents’ takeover saw prisons emptied and armories looted.

Congressional outcry over the Biden’s administration’s handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s takeover of the country has been swift.  Criticism of the administration was bipartisan: Republicans were scathing about the White House’s actions, and Democrats, while acknowledging that President Biden was carrying out the policies of his predecessor, criticized the haphazard manner of the U.S. withdrawal.

A resolute U.S. President Joe Biden said he stood “squarely behind” his decision to withdraw American forces and acknowledged the “gut-wrenching” images unfolding in Kabul. Biden said he faced a choice between honoring a previously negotiated withdrawal agreement or sending thousands more troops back to begin a third decade of war.

“After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces,” Biden said in a televised address from the White House. The president said American troops should not be fighting and dying in a war “that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.” He warned the Taliban not to interfere with the evacuation efforts.

Across Afghanistan, the International Committee of the Red Cross said thousands had been wounded in the fighting. Security forces and politicians handed over their provinces and bases without a fight, likely believing the two-decade Western experiment to remake Afghanistan would not survival the resurgent Taliban. The last American troops had planned to withdraw at the end of the month.

“The world is following events in Afghanistan with a heavy heart and deep disquiet about what lies ahead,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

A defiant President Joe Biden rejected blame for chaotic scenes of Afghans clinging to U.S. military planes in Kabul in a desperate bid to flee their home country after the Taliban’s easy victory over an Afghan military that America and NATO allies had spent two decades trying to build.

At the White House, Biden called the anguish of trapped Afghan civilians “gut-wrenching” and conceded the Taliban had achieved a much faster takeover of the country than his administration had expected. The U.S. rushed in troops to protect its own evacuating diplomats and others at the Kabul airport.

But the president expressed no second thoughts about his decision to stick by the U.S. commitment, formulated during the Trump administration, to end America’s longest war, no matter what.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani slipped out of his country Sunday in the same way he had led it in recent years — a lonely and isolated figure. Ghani quietly left the sprawling presidential palace with a small coterie of confidants — and didn’t even tell other political leaders who had been negotiating a peaceful transition of power with the Taliban that he was heading for the exit.

Abdullah Abdullah, his long-time rival who had twice buried his animosity to partner with Ghani in government, said that “God will hold him accountable” for abandoning the capital.

Ghani’s destination was not immediately known. In a social media post from an unknown location, he wrote that he left to save lives. “If I had stayed, countless of my countrymen would be martyred and Kabul would face destruction and turn into ruins that could result to a human catastrophe for its six million residents” Ghani wrote.

A bipartisan group of senators, led by Democratic Sens. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, have called on the Biden administration to take swift action to protect endangered Afghan women.

“We strongly urge you to create a humanitarian parole category specifically for women leaders, activists, human rights defenders, judges, parliamentarians, journalists, and members of the Female Tactical Platoon of the Afghan Special Security Forces and to streamline the paperwork process to facilitate referrals to allow for fast, humane, and efficient relocation to the United States,” the 47 senators said in a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

Sen. Shaheen, a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, said in a statement the images of Afghan civilians at the airport pleading to be evacuated are “seared into our minds. Dire conditions on the ground persist today and without swift, decisive action from the administration, Afghan civilians will suffer or die at the hands of the Taliban,” she continued.

She called for an immediate expansion of the refugee program for Afghan women seeking asylum. “A failure to act now will seal their fate, and the generation of girls who grew up with freedoms, education and dreams of building their country’s future will die with them.”

President Joe Biden has decided to formally conclude the US combat mission in Iraq by the end of the year, another step toward winding down the two prolonged military engagements that began in the years following the September 11 terror attacks. Biden told reporters in the Oval Office alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi that the US mission in Iraq will shift.  “I think things are going well. Our role in Iraq will be … to be available to continue to train, to assist, to help, and to deal with ISIS — as it arrives. But we’re not going to be, by the end of the year, in a combat mission,” the President later said.

“We support strengthening Iraq’s democracy and we’re anxious to make sure the election goes forward in October,” Biden added alongside the politically embattled prime minister. “And we’re also committed to our security cooperation, our shared fight against ISIS. It’s critical for the stability of the region and our counter-terrorism cooperation will continue, even as we shift to this new phase we’re going to be talking about.” Unlike Biden’s decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan, the end of the combat mission comes at Iraq’s urging. The country is caught in a balancing act between anti-American factions in the country, Iranian-backed militias and the stabilizing presence of the American military.

It will also not result in the withdrawal of US troops from the country, as has happened in Afghanistan. There are currently 2,500 US troops in Iraq, and officials declined to say how that number would change following Monday’s announcement. The US and Iraq are expected to announce the US mission will fully shift to an advisory role by year’s end — meaning some of the changes to the current levels could come on paper only. Still, the two decisions are the best illustrations of Biden’s effort to shift American foreign policy away from decisions made nearly two decades ago. Instead, he wants to focus on threats from China, where a top American diplomat traveled this week for a tense set of meetings.

American troops and their coalition allies first invaded Iraq in 2003 on the premise the government led by Saddam Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction. The weapons were never found. Biden voted to authorize force against Iraq as a senator, and even joined then-President George W. Bush in the White House East Room when he signed the resolution. He later criticized how the Bush administration handled the war. Then-President Barack Obama announced a withdrawal of troops from the country in 2011. But they returned in 2014 to help combat Islamic State terrorists. Biden was largely responsible for the Iraq portfolio as vice president, traveling to the country at multiple points and engaging its various political factions.

His own son Beau served as a reservist in the country before his death from brain cancer in 2015. Biden has said he suspects that exposure to toxins produced in military waste burn bits led to his son’s condition. Ahead of the first meeting between the two leaders, their governments held technical talks on Thursday and Friday as part of the strategic dialogue between the two countries. As part of Monday’s meeting, Biden will stress continued diplomatic and humanitarian support for Iraq, including a plan to provide the country 500,000 doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.

The shift away from the combat mission is not a major adjustment for the US presence in the region, which already focuses much of its effort on advising and assisting the Iraqi military.  In recent months, US troops in Iraq have been targeted by Iranian drone strikes, prompting back-and-forth retaliatory action. The tensions were dramatically escalated when then-President Donald Trump ordered a strike killing QasemSoleimani, Iran’s top commander, during a visit to a Baghdad airport. While not marking a significant change in troop levels, the symbolic shift away from Iraq is still a notable one for the President. In defending his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, Biden has repeatedly said it is time to focus on threats from today and not from 20 years ago.

Like in Afghanistan, the results of the 18-year US presence in Iraq are mixed. “Nobody is going to declare ‘mission accomplished,'” a senior administration official said, a reference to the enormous banner unfurled behind Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier when he declared combat operations in Iraq over three months after US troops first entered the country. “The goal is the enduring defeat of ISIS,” the official said. “We recognize you have to keep pressure on these networks as they seek to reconstitute, but the role for US forces and coalition forces can very much recede, you know, deep into the background where we are training, advising, sharing intelligence, helping with logistics.”

For the US president, the announcement marks the end of another war that began under former President George W Bush. This year he said US troops would leave Afghanistan.  Speaking at the White House, Biden told his Iraqi counterpart “our counter-terrorism co-operation will continue even as we shift to this new phase.”  Kadhimi responded: “Today our relationship is stronger than ever. Our co-operation is for the economy, the environment, health, education, culture and more.” He has insisted no foreign combat troops are needed in Iraq.

US-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to overthrow President Saddam Hussein and eliminate weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist. Then President George W Bush promised a “free and peaceful Iraq”, but it was engulfed by a bloody sectarian insurgency. US combat troops eventually withdrew in 2011. However, they returned at the request of the Iraqi government three years later, when IS militants overran large parts of the country.

The United States could complete its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan within days, CNN quoting US officials reported last week.  “This makes the current week a critical one for President Joe Biden’s campaign to end America’s longest war even as US military officials warn the country could devolve into civil war,” CNN wrote. A defense official insisted to CNN that the number of US troops in Afghanistan for embassy protection and airport security would not exceed 650 for now. “This week could be a critical week in the withdrawal and end of the retrograde process,” he said. As many as 1,000 US troops could remain in the country after the formal withdrawal to assist in securing the US Embassy in Kabul and the city’s airport, a senior administration official told CNN, and it is now unclear how long North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops will remain.

A formal conclusion this week to the US military withdrawal, or retrograde, would mark an astonishingly quick end to a process that Biden initiated in April when he ordered the military to leave by September 11. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the US withdrawal will not necessarily mean the end of NATO’s Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan, despite NATO’s decision in April to start and complete its own troop drawdown within a few months. “It is my understanding with the completion of the retrograde of US forces, retrograde, withdrawal, of US forces from Afghanistan, with accepting, of course, whatever is left behind to protect our diplomatic presence, that that does not necessarily mean the end of Resolute Support,” Kirby told reporters on Tuesday.

US officials say there were some 2,500 US troops in Afghanistan, plus hundreds of additional special forces who are not publicly acknowledged when Biden made his decision in April to withdraw them. This comes in the middle of a surge in violence as the Taliban has increased its activities since the start of the US-led forces pull out on May 1.
As the Taliban have taken control of several districts across the country, US intelligence assessments have suggested the country’s civilian government could fall to the militant group within months of US forces withdrawing.

Meanwhile, a top US general, Austin Miller has warned hat the worsening violence could lead to civil war, CNN reported citing news reports. Gen. Austin S. Miller said the rapid loss of districts around the country to the Taliban — several with significant strategic value — is worrisome. He also cautioned that the militias deployed to help the beleaguered national security forces could lead the country into civil war. “A civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized if this continues on the trajectory it’s on right now, that should be of concern to the world,” he said. Biden acknowledged the growing challenges last Friday during a visit from President Ashraf Ghani, noting the “senseless violence” and saying, “It’s going to be very difficult,” but he is not rethinking his plans to withdraw US troops, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday

As deadly clashes in Afghanistan continue to intensify, hundreds of more civilians have taken up arms against the Taliban in support of the government forces in several Afghan provinces. People in over ten Afghan districts have taken up arms against the Taliban in just a week following the back-to-back fall of dozens of districts to the group. In meetings at the White House last week with President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah — the Afghan official tasked with making peace with the Taliban, President Joe Biden said the U.S. was committed to humanitarian and security assistance to Afghanistan, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said. But the president also said that keeping U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan defied a peace deal the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban and that wasn’t a risk he was prepared to take.

“Given the timeline set by the prior administration, that if we did not withdraw our troops, U.S. men and women would be facing fire from on the ground and that was not something as the commander in chief, that he felt was acceptable,” Psaki said. Washington signed a peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020. It laid out the promise of a U.S. withdrawal and commitments by the Taliban to ensure Afghanistan does not harbor militants that can attack the United States. The details of those commitments have never been made public.

Biden has announced a series of measures to provide assistance to the South Asian country amid troop withdrawal, including donating three million doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine to the people of Afghanistan through the COVAX facility. Additionally, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is also supporting Afghan efforts to respond to the critical shortfalls in oxygen and medical ventilation support by providing emergency and structural assistance.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden spent his first trip overseas highlighting a sharp break from his disruptive predecessor, selling that the United States was once more a reliable ally with a steady hand at the wheel. European allies welcomed the pitch — and even a longtime foe acknowledged it. But while Biden returned Wednesday night to Washington after a week across the Atlantic that was a mix of messaging and deliverables, questions remained as to whether those allies would trust that Biden truly represents a long-lasting reset or whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would curb his nation’s misbehaviors.

Biden’s mantra, which he uttered in Geneva and Brussels and on the craggy coast of Cornwall, England, was that “America was back.” It was Putin, of all people, on the trip’s final moments, who may have best defined Biden’s initial voyage overseas. “President Biden is an experienced statesman,” Putin told reporters. “He is very different from President Trump.” But the summit with Putin in Geneva, which shadowed the entire trip and brought it to its close, also underscored the fragility of Biden’s declarations that the global order had returned.

Though both men declared the talks constructive, Putin’s rhetoric did not change, as he refused to accept any responsibility for his nation’s election interference, cyberhacking or crackdown on domestic political opponents. At the summit’s conclusion Biden acknowledged that he could not be confident that Putin would change his behavior even with newly threatened consequences. Biden’s multilateral summits with fellow democracies — the Group of Seven wealthy nations and NATO — were largely punctuated by sighs of relief from European leaders who had been rattled by President Donald Trump over four years. Yet there were still closed-door disagreement on just how the Western powers should deal with Russia or Biden’s declaration that an economic competition with China would define the 21st century.

“Everyone at the table understood and understands both the seriousness and the challenges that we’re up against, and the responsibility of our proud democracies to step up and deliver for the rest of the world,” Biden said Sunday in England. As vice president and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden had trotted the globe for more than four decades before he stepped off Air Force One and onto foreign soil for the first time as commander in chief. His initial stop, after a speech to thank U.S. troops stationed in England, was for a gathering with the other G-7 leaders.

The leaders staked their claim to bringing the world out of the coronavirus pandemic and crisis, pledging more than 1 billion coronavirus vaccine doses to poorer nations, vowing to help developing countries grow while fighting climate change and backing a minimum tax on multinational firms. At the group’s first face-to-face meeting in two years because of the pandemic, the leaders dangled promises of support for global health, green energy, infrastructure and education — all to demonstrate that international cooperation is back after the upheavals caused by the pandemic and Trump’s unpredictability. There were concerns, though, that not enough was done to combat climate change and that 1 billion doses were not nearly sufficient to meet the stated goal of ending the COVID-19 pandemic globally by the end of 2022.

The seven nations met in Cornwall and largely adhered to Biden’s hope that they rally together to declare they would be a better friend to poorer nations than authoritarian rivals such as China. A massive infrastructure plan for the developing world, meant to compete with Beijing’s efforts, was commissioned, and China was called out for human rights abuses, prompting an angry response from the Asian power. But even then, there were strains, with Germany, Italy and the representatives for the European Union reluctant to call out China, a valuable trading partner, too harshly. And there a wariness in some European capitals that it was Biden, rather than Trump, who was the aberration to American foreign policy and that the United States could soon fall back into a transactional, largely inward-looking approach.

After Cornwall, the scene shifted to Brussels where many of the same faces met for a gathering at NATO. Biden used the moment to highlight the renewed U.S. commitment to the 30-country alliance that was formed as a bulwark to Moscow’s aggression but frequently maligned by his predecessor. He also underscored the U.S. commitment to Article 5 of the alliance charter, which spells out that an attack — including, as of this summit, some cyberattacks — on any member is an assault on all and is to be met with a collective response. Trump had refused to commit to the pact and had threatened to pull the U.S. out of the alliance. “Article 5 we take as a sacred obligation,” said Biden. “I want NATO to know America is there.”

When Air Force One touched back down in Washington, Biden again faced an uncertain future for his legislative agenda, the clock ticking on a deadline to land a bipartisan infrastructure deal as the president was confronted with growing intransigence from Republicans and mounting impatience from fellow Democrats. But Biden and his aides believe he accomplished what he set out to do in Europe. The most tactile of politicians, Biden reveled in the face-to-face diplomacy, having grown frustrated with trying to negotiate with world leaders over Zoom. Even amid some disagreements, he was greeted warmly by most of his peers, other presidents and prime ministers eager to exchange awkward elbow bumps and adopt his “build back better” catchphrase.

At the end of each day, Biden would huddle with aides, including Secretary of State Tony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, eagerly going over a play-by-play of the day’s meetings and preparing for the next. Aides padded his schedule with some down time to pace the 78-year-old president, though there were still a few missteps, including some verbal flubs and when he simply neglected to announce a Boeing-Airbus deal in front of the European Council. His summit with Putin, coming three years after Trump sided with the Russian leader over U.S. intelligence agencies when those two men met in Helsinki, loomed over the trip, with the cable networks giving it Super Bowl levels of hype. Aides wanted to confront Putin early in the presidency, with some hope of reining in Moscow and reaching some stability so the administration could more squarely focus on China.

There were no fireworks in their summit near the Swiss Alps, and the nations agreed to return ambassadors to each other’s capitals and took some small steps toward strategic stability. But while Biden was able to deliver stern warnings to Putin behind closed doors, he also extracted few promises. In the Russian president’s post-summit remarks, he engaged in classic Putin misdirection and what-about-ism to undermine any of the United States’ moral high ground. In his own Geneva news conference, Biden stood against a postcard-perfect backdrop of a tree-lined lake, taking off his suit jacket as the sun beat down from behind, so bright that reporters had trouble looking directly at the president.

Once more, Biden declared that America was back, but he also soberly made clear that it was impossible to immediately know if any progress with Russia had, in fact, been made. “What will change their behavior is if the rest of world reacts to them and it diminishes their standing in the world,” Biden said. “I’m not confident of anything; I’m just stating a fact.”

(Madhani reported from Geneva.)