West Point graduate who fled Afghanistan reflects on one-year anniversary of US withdrawal

Twelve months ago, Naqib Mirzada was working as an intelligence officer in the Afghan Special Forces tracking the Taliban’s movements throughout Afghanistan and relaying the information to Afghan agencies and U.S. forces. 

As the one-year anniversary of the complete U.S. withdrawal approaches, he provides insight into how Afghanistan fell so quickly, what direction he sees the country headed as terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS-K return and why the withdrawal rolled back years of progress.  

Mirzada's final assignment was to oversee the US/NATO military and embassy withdrawal from the country, marking an end of the 20-year war.  

When Kabul fell on Aug. 15, he took his parents, three sisters and wife to Hamid Karzai International Airport to flee the country, fearing reprisal from the Taliban for his service in the Afghan forces. Three days later, they boarded a flight to Qatar and from there to Washington D.C., New Mexico, and Texas before arriving in Southern California. 

More than a year later, the Mirzadas have applied for asylum and are working with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, which helps provide legal services, including asylum and refugee status, to more than 100,000 people living across Los Angeles each year.  

Operations in Afghanistan three years before the American withdrawal

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"In 2019, we were basically in a surge of clearing operations across Afghanistan. We were able to liberate districts that were held by the Taliban, so to us that was a really good sign that we actually are receiving good air support from the U.S.," Mirzada said.

As Afghan security forces continued to liberate districts under Taliban control, the finalized Doha agreement drastically changed the rules of engagement. 

The 2020 deal put forth by former President Donald Trump promised U.S. forces would completely withdraw from the region by May 2021 and agreed to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for the release of up to 1,000 prisoners "of the other side," according to the agreement text released by the State Department. 

"The day the deal was signed, the next day, we were told that there are completely different rules of engagement in terms of how much the U.S. can get involved. And things that got affected, one, we were not supposed to go on missions anymore, like Afghan Special Forces. We could not actively go looking for national targets," Mirzada said. 

He added that the U.S. and Afghan security forces could only act on the defensive, not the offensive. 

Mirzada said he thought the new rules were "completely unrealistic" and were only emboldening the Taliban and "demoralizing" Afghan forces. 

He recalled an example from Kandahar province. U.S. aircraft spotted Taliban militants on a mountain that overlooked highways and roads, planning to ambush an Afghan convoy, according to intelligence reports referenced by Mirzada. Prior to the Doha agreement, Mirzada said they would have conducted an airstrike and taken out the militants. However, he said U.S. forces told them due to the new rules of engagement, they could not conduct an airstrike unless the convoy came under fire from the militants directly. 

The same rule applied to Taliban militants hiding in buildings, Mirzada said. 

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"The Taliban changed their tactics. They learned if they were in a building, they would not get airstriked. They began forcing civilians to leave their houses around the bases, so they can use those as fighting positions. From there, everything just got worse over time." 

As Afghan forces continued to come up with new plans of action post-Doha agreement, the Taliban continued to rapidly take over district after district and waged a massive information warfare campaign, appearing on social media and local TV telling members of the Afghan government they were in their last days of power and that Afghan forces were committing acts of violence and were against peace in the region, Mirzada said. 

"We were fighting. We could see disappointing [things] happening in the news, but we were not stopping. And even when the president of Afghanistan decided to leave on Aug. 15, in other places we still had Afghan security forces fighting." 

The 2017 West Point graduate said in the months leading up to the fall of Kabul, Afghan security forces lost 7,400 soldiers. Mirzada said one of the most frustrating and disappointing things for him was hearing reports in the media that suggested they simply laid down their arms and ran. 

"I lost so many friends. I have a scar on my face that’s from a childhood friend that we grew up together, and he got killed in action in Ghazni. I had a friend that I used to play soccer with. He got killed in Faryab. Every time I see my wedding videotape I see my friends that got killed in action. So everything I see, everywhere I turn my face, I see losses and sacrifice. It really is unfair to say we lost everything just because Afghan security forces didn’t fight."

On July 30, 2022, the U.S. conducted a counterterrorism operation in Kabul, Afghanistan killing al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. 

Under the Doha agreement, the Taliban pledged not to allow a safe haven for members of al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups who threatened the United States and its allies.

Mirzada said al-Qaeda and the Taliban’s presence in the region is dangerous to current and future generations of Afghans. 

He added that the "most dangerous thing" is the insurgency group "social engineering" the next generation. Young children are being taken from one province and relocated to another to be educated at a madrasa, a reference to a religious school or institution that teaches a strict interpretation of the Qur'an, according to Mirzada. 

"It’s almost even more dangerous than having a nuclear bomb. Now you have a generation that is armed with ideology," he said. "That’s going to be very hard to defeat. Brainwashing and radicalization are real." 

As the one-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan approaches, Mirzada wants people to know the world has a "shared responsibility" to fight the war on terror. 

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"The Afghanistan catastrophe is a shared responsibility. And I think the minimum we can do is not forget. I have a strong belief in the connection we’ve built, like human connections with U.S. veterans, that we serve together. We cannot compromise on the universal values of human rights. We cannot compromise to expect terrorists to run a country and expect them to behave," he said. 

In 2022, 12 months after the Taliban re-took control of Afghanistan, the country turned the clock of progress back by several decades. Afghan girls are banned from receiving a secondary education, only being allowed to attend school up to the 6th grade and women are required to wear head-to-toe clothing in public and be escorted by a male relative. 

Roughly 25 million Afghans are living in poverty, according to a report from the United Nations. 

Mirzada said the reversal of progress is heartbreaking to see, but he wants people to know that many Afghans still believe in "the cause." 

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"The cause was to have an Afghanistan that is a place safe for women, for all other parts of the society. For minorities, for Hazara, Tajik, Shia. For all Afghans." The reasons why we fought for the country should not be forgotten, he said.