Amid US exit, chaos abounds in Afghanistan Neutralising Osama was a moral victory for the US but little else seems to have been achieved. It is making the same mistake it did in Iraq—a premature conflict termination Share Via Email | A+A A- It’s a little late in the day for the US to make amends. (Express Illustrations | Amit Bandre) The two-decade war in Afghanistan will be analysed from multiple angles in the years to come and mostly will be classified as a huge strategic failure on the part of the US and its allies. The inability of a superpower to turn things around and erase Afghanistan’s reputed title— ‘Graveyard of Empires’—will probably be seen as a failure of leadership, strategy and international cooperation to bring peace to a stricken land. The US defeat in Vietnam, classified by Richard Nixon as a campaign where strategic objectives were met, and the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan were both events of the Cold War. The adversaries then were clearly ranged against each other in terms of near-conventional conflict situations. The US failure in Afghanistan, however, is a virtual submission to the will of non-state actors who had limited resources to boot. A separate exploration of that domain will be made in due course once clarity on the current military situation is available.