At this week’s debate, Warren explained that the United States should only have withdrawn its troops from northern Syria “through a negotiated solution.” But speaking about Afghanistan last month in Houston, she rejected that very same principle. ABC’s David Muir asked whether she would “bring the [American] troops home starting right now with no deal with the Taliban.” Warren replied, “Yes.”

In Houston, Warren’s rivals also refused to condition America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan on a negotiated deal. When Muir asked Buttigieg whether he would stick to his pledge to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in his first year despite warnings from top American commanders, Buttigieg ducked the question and insisted that “we have got to put an end to endless war.” Turning to Biden, Muir cited “concerns about any possible vacuum being created in Afghanistan.” But Biden brushed them off, declaring, “We don’t need those troops there. I would bring them home.”

What makes these statements so remarkable is that experts warn that if the United States withdraws its troops from Afghanistan in the absence of a peace agreement, Afghanistan will suffer a fate remarkably similar to what is happening in northern Syria. In this week’s debate, Warren denounced Trump for having “created a bigger-than-ever humanitarian crisis.” But earlier this month, the International Crisis Group warned that, if American troops unilaterally leave Afghanistan, “Afghans could pay a heavy price” as that country’s war “would likely intensify and become more chaotic.” A Rand Corporation report in January predicted that following a unilateral American withdrawal, “civilian deaths will spike, and refugee flows will increase significantly,” and that “the major advances that Afghans have achieved in democracy, press freedom, human rights, women’s emancipation, literacy, longevity, and living standards will be rolled back.” In September, nine former American diplomats with experience in Afghanistan pleaded, “A major withdrawal of US forces should follow, not come in advance of [a] real peace agreement,” or else the United States might “betray all those who have believed our promises or stepped forward with our encouragement to promote democracy and human rights.”

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Afghans themselves have offered equally ominous warnings. In February, two Afghan women—Mariam Safi, who runs the Organization for Policy Research and Development Studies in Kabul, and Muqaddesa Yourish, a commissioner on Afghanistan’s Independent Administrative Reform and Civil Service Commission—predicted that “a hasty American withdrawal will jeopardize for Afghans the future of hard-won gains such as constitutional rights, freedoms of citizens and democratic institutions.” In March, Palwasha Hassan, the executive director of the Afghan Women’s Educational Center, urged “a responsible withdrawal that is not at the expense of women’s rights.” And in July, Akram Gizabi, a leader of Afghanistan’s Hazaras, a Shia minority, noted that his people had suffered under the Taliban in “brutal, vicious and unimaginable ways” and that “women and Hazaras [had] thrived after the Taliban.” Now, Gizabi said, Taliban victims “watch with amazement that the United States is busy finding the fastest way out of Afghanistan, while leaving the Afghans to the wolves.”