The Ghosts of Algeria Haunt Afghanistan

It has now been over a year since the U.S. military was forced out of Afghanistan and the subsequent Taliban takeover. As someone who can vividly remember both 9/11 and when the Afghanistan War began, to observe how little attention this is getting has felt almost surreal. Part of this is because the media has an invested interest in protecting Biden and does not want to dredge up Afghanistan, especially when it was the Fall of Afghanistan where Biden’s approval ratings tanked. Additionally, almost everyone has been largely silent on the issue, from normiecons to the Dissident Right to Never Trumpers. To put this in context, even in the 1980s there were hit songs explicitly about the Vietnam War – see Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” and R.E.M.’s “Orange Crush” (just to name two). And while the 1996 presidential election was not about the Vietnam War itself, the cultural impact of the war loomed large over the election. It was presented as a battle between pre-1960s America and its standard-bearer, the World War II veteran Bob Dole, and the post-1960s America and its figurehead, the draft dodging, pot smoking Bill Clinton. Judging by the impact of the end of the Afghanistan War and over a year later, I see no way it has created a similar influence like the failure in Vietnam did.

Before I begin with the meat of this essay, let me first state my opinion on the matter. The United States had to withdraw from Afghanistan eventually. Whatever one may think of the initial conflict, it was clear the U.S. had stayed far too long. The legitimate parts of its objectives were over – Osama bin Laden was dead (in Pakistan no less), as were most of the Taliban officials and al-Qaeda members who gave him shelter. The reasons for the American Empire to remain in Afghanistan were no longer legitimate by my estimation – the United States was now there to promote leftist decadence, something that even the staunchest Afghan foes of the Taliban found abhorrent. To some extent, this was always the case. However, much like the American Empire itself, this became more perverse during the Obama years. And, unfortunately, Trump was unable to reverse this.

All that being said, the humiliating American withdrawal was poorly planned, and it will have major repercussions in the Islamic word. Noting the staunch decline of Islamism in the Islamic equivalent of Generation Z, many hoped that this would a sign in the rise of a more moderate form of Islam which would take hold in the region. But with the Taliban successfully demonstrating that Islamism can still be a force to drive what they considered an imperial invader from their land, the future for moderate Islam is highly questionable. There is simply no way to convince Muslims in the region that Allah is not on the side of the Taliban now.

But to my main point, when it comes to the decline of empires, there is always one war that often looms large, and one against a smaller and weaker nation that saps an empire of its strength. This does not happen every time a great empire loses against a smaller nation. The Romans were humiliated by the Germanic tribes at Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, but it still continued as a great empire for centuries. This sort of defeat only sends an empire into free fall after internal rot has long set in, but this moment still matters. Another example of this phenomenon is the French defeat in Alegria. The Algerian War is often called the “French Vietnam” due to some resemblance between the two – not to be confused with another devasting French loss in the First Indochina War. All three wars – Indochina, the Algerian War, and America’s involvement in Vietnam – were fought around the same time, and all three saw a powerful Western nation bested by a poor non-Western nation using guerrilla tactics. In reality, the Algerian War is far more important to the French, as it ended France believing in itself as a great power.

To understand why the Algerian War is so important, one must recognize something about French Algeria – it was not a colony, at least legally speaking. Although it functioned much like a colony and is normally included in the “post-colonial” world, it was technically part of Metropolitan France. This was more than just a legal intricacy, as Algeria was very different than the rest of the French Colonial Empire in Africa. For one, it had been part of France since 1830, whereas most of Africa was not colonized until after 1880. Algeria also had a significant French population. While most of Africa is fairly inhospitable to Whites due to disease (Africans have developed a greater immunity to tropical diseases), Algeria was situated along the Mediterranean coast and enjoyed a fairly similar climate to Spain or the South of France. It was a region that was suited for French colonization, similar to South Africa – being in the far southern part of Africa, South Africa had a more temperate climate, tropical diseases were not a factor.

The French loss of Algeria was a huge psychological blow to France; it was one of France’s prized colonial possessions, a land they had fully expected would be majority ethnic French. All of the French nationals (Pied-Noirs) who had called Algeria home were forced to leave. Of wider significance, the French defeat sent a message to the rest of Africa. If the French will not defend Algeria, no European power will protect their territorial assets. In turn, within seven years after the end of the Algerian War, colonial Africa was gone. More importantly, it changed France itself.

Dissatisfaction with the Algerian War led to the collapse of the Fourth French Republic, and it was the final blow to the old French Right, monarchist and Catholic dominated, which would be replaced with the new French Right, republican and secular. To be sure, the French had already been significantly battered in the World Wars and the loss in the First Indochina War, but the Algerian War further collapsed it. America’s involvement in Vietnam was not like that; Vietnam did not hold a tremendous importance to Americans before the war. It was a conflict the United States was slowly sucked into. Vietnam was also not a long-standing American possession nor one that Americans thought would become majority American one day (in the sense of Heritage America).

The Algerian War may not have been France’s Vietnam, but the Afghanistan War might just be the American Algeria. American elites may not have had dreams of remaking Afghanistan into an American state, but it was intended to be a slice of Western liberalism in Central Asia. But, even more importantly, much as Algeria told the rest of Africa that the West had lost its will, the Afghanistan War has revealed the same for America – even something like 9/11 can happen and the Americans will eventually give up and retreat home. This is not something that a nation can easily recover from, and this is why the Afghanistan War has made Southern Nationalism even more necessary. By breaking from the American Empire, we can also separate from the psychological baggage of the Afghanistan debacle and go our own way. Southern Nationalism gives us a chance to start anew, free from the humiliation of Afghanistan. I think Afghanistan will be weighed by future historians as the decisive moment when the United States sank into irreparable decline.

The United States is a sinking ship now, even more so than it was in 2020, our survival depends upon getting to the life rafts.