That the Kabul ceremony marking the official closure of Nato’s mission in Afghanistan should have been held in secret speaks volumes for the end-result of America’s 13-year war in that country.

The war cost nearly a trillion dollars and human lives whose number is yet to be assessed. Launching Operation Enduring Freedom on Oct 7, 2001, in the wake of 9/11, former president George Bush Jr. said the aim was to stamp out Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.

He believed he would succeed because America was “supported by the collective will of the world”. Thirteen years later, the bloodshed and destruction dominate far more than Washington’s military successes.

The Taliban have not been beaten, America’s diplomatic somersault adding to their leadership’s morale. Having for years denounced the Taliban using the choicest adjectives, the US entered into ‘secret’ talks with them in Doha without being clear about its goals.

Then, as the end of the drawdown neared, the Pentagon announced it would not target Mullah Omar, the man whose head had a prize, and other Taliban so long as they didn’t pose “a direct threat” to the US.

Take a look: Taliban claim Nato ‘defeat’ in 13-year Afghan war

Now President Ashraf Ghani and his advisers should join heads to wonder whether an attack on Afghan security forces and civilian targets falls within the category of “a direct threat” to the 12,000 troops the Pentagon has left behind.

Speaking at the ceremony held in a gymnasium, Isaf commander Gen John Campbell declared, “We have lifted the Afghan people out of the darkness of despair and given them hope for the future”. The reality is the Afghan people were probably never in greater despair than they are now, and the hope the general talked about appears nowhere on the horizon. Instead, a bigger and more frightening question mark hangs over the country’s future.

Is the ‘system’ America has left behind capable of survival, stamping out militancy and launching Afghanistan’s post-war reconstruction? Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, on whom the Americans relied for 13 years in a vain attempt to give democracy and stability to Afghanistan, was seen as corrupt and inefficient.

He lacked the qualities expected of a wartime leader who could bring his country’s disparate ethnic groups together, effect a grand reconciliation and heal the wounds of war to pave the way for a peaceful post-America Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is just one milestone in America’s foreign misadventures. Despite commanding enormous economic, military and technological power, US actions created chaos in Libya and Iraq, throwing both into anarchy the fundamentalist forces were quick to exploit.

The Taliban also gained from the trust deficit between Pakistan and America. The least Washington can do now is to strike some understanding with Afghanistan’s neighbours, especially Islamabad, to ensure peace and a semblance of political order in a country that has been a war theatre for more than three decades.

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2014