di Ivelina Dimitrova The recent withdrawal of the USA military presence in Afghanistan caused much of a concern both within the country and outside. When the American military forces started the pull-out at the end of July and beginning of August, the Taliban troops rapidly started to gain control on the country. Despite the trillions of dollars spent in the last twenty years for security operations and modernization of Afghanistan by both the USA and NATO a definite victory against the Taliban has never been achieved in these decades. This is partially due to the fact that the Taliban movement -a Pashto one in its essence has always had support and sleeping cells in the Pakistan border region also populated by this ethnicity. The plan for withdrawal of Biden’s administration was not seen in a positive way by many both in Washington and abroad. Actually, due to the fact that a reasonable plan was missing – withdrawal of the army before evacuation of the civilians (included US and EU nationals) left many of them stranded at the airport waiting for airplanes to board on. Military equipment for billions of dollars was left behind and fell in the hands of the Taliban, although this step was quite seen as a part of the American strategy and their agreement with the Taliban. However, the images of people, clashing at the airport in order to board a plane, caused irritation and disapproval worldwide raising questions on why the West spent billions of dollars in a country if so easily it was left again in the hands of the radical Islam. Some politicians within and outside the USA defined this act as “an abdication of American leadership”. The Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell made a comparison between President Trump’s withdrawal of US troops from Syria – a move that at the time gained significant support in Senate and happened smoothly as it didn’t create any additional turmoil neither vacuum to leave space for ISIS. But the juxtaposition between the two events is not quite applicable as the Syrian army, although weakened at that time by the years of internal war, didn’t give up and continued fighting, so was the Syrian society which almost unanimously opposed the ISIS and stayed with the official authorities, and so was the Russian army in Syria which gave a critical air force support. Consequently, the Trump withdrawal, didn’t cause the rise of the radical Islam and was not seen as “abdication of leadership”. Apart from the military support from Moscow and other regional partners which was crucial at the time when Damascus was almost falling in the hands of ISIS, what made a big difference there was the resistance of the population which although ethnically and religiously diverse, and not all supportive of the Assad regime, united in its majority before the threat of radical Islam which was seen as a common enemy and a threat to their future. Not the same happened in Afghanistan, however, and both...