It is a controversial statement for many people to say that NATO and the United States should stay in Afghanistan despite the enormous costs and loss of life that has taken place there since the U.S invaded in 2001 in reaction to 9/11. Many people argued in 2001 and said that the U.S should not have invaded, that there was no need and therefore the U.S should leave Afghanistan as soon as possible, especially with the global economic crisis of 2008 and the aftermath we are all struggling with still today.

However the argument needs to move on from why the U.S and allied forces got involved, that argument is for historians now, and basing arguments of coming out of Afghanistan using that rationale is again not relevant. I personally do not think that America should have invaded Afghanistan, but once they did that question is irrelevant. The fact is that they went in and have now been in for twelve years, and are planning to completely leave the country in 2014, with no proposed military presence to remain.
This is a dangerous game that Obama is playing as withdrawing all U.S troops before the country is stabilised along with announcing the date of the proposed withdrawal allows the Taliban to bide their time and then take charge once again which the Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan Andrei Avertisian said himself that as soon as international forces leave “power will again be seized by the Taliban and other terrorist and extremist groups”. The Afghanistan security forces although well trained are not ready or capable to assume leadership yet. The Karzai government is not yet strong enough to sustain control of the country. 

History should show Obama the danger of his plan after the Soviets left Afghanistan in the 1989 the country became destabilised and was once again a safe haven for terrorist and extremist groups and in 1993 Al-Qaeda launched their first attack on the World Trade Centre. The lesson here is to not turn our backs on Afghanistan as the international community did in 1989.

The dangers of turning our backs could be astronomical as instability in Afghanistan can not only create instability and a terrorist safe haven in their own borders it can create cross border insecurity with Pakistan, a country with vulnerable nuclear weapons, it would completely destabilise Obama’s focused attack on Al-Qaeda from his redefinition of Bush’s war on terror. This is why the U.S need to stay and this is without even looking at the benefit it would have to the Afghanistan population, especially with progress on women’s rights.
If the U.S dos leave in 2014 without somehow stabilising the country within a year, then the whole war has been a waste, lives and trillions of dollars have been squandered for nothing and any progress in people’s rights will be undone and we will have to wait and see the violent consequences this will have for the Middle East, the U.S and the rest of the world.