I can’t help thinking about them. The people I met. People like Sheila, who ran a secret school for girls. And Brad, who lost his best friend and said he would never be the same again. And Kobra, whose father was forced to flee for his life. And Sharifa of course, the MP who lives with the constant threat of death. “I do not think about such things,” she said. “I want to be the future.”

But what is the future now? You may have seen the recent pictures of Bagram, the main American HQ in Afghanistan, or what’s left of it. At one point, the airbase was the Americans’ main command post in the country, but late last week, the US quit the place. Armoured vehicles and weapons have been left behind for the Afghan forces, but that’s it. The Americans have left. For good this time, we’re told.

The problem is what happens next, which is why I’ve been thinking about Sheila and Brad and all the others I met when I spent a week with the US forces in Afghanistan in 2009. At the time, President Obama was trying the opposite of Biden’s withdrawal: the US was sending in thousands of extra soldiers. I remember people telling me at the time, however, that you could send in a million, or two million, or even an endless number, and it still wouldn’t work. But I also remember them warning about the dangers of pulling the troops out too soon.

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And that, essentially, is the paradox of Afghanistan: send in the soldiers and you will not solve the problem but withdraw the soldiers and you also will not solve the problem. I remember speaking to ordinary Afghans as well as parliamentarians and governors, and the impression was always the same: the country is a deeply complex, divided place that has always, and will always, resist any kind of unitary, Western-style solution.

The personal consequences of the Western military presence have also been complicated. Brad Dickneite, for example, was part of the US force, an ordinary soldier in an extraordinary place, and he told me what Afghanistan had done to him. His friend had been killed a month after becoming a father and Brad’s reaction was to make himself as hard as metal. “My wife says I’m the most cold-blooded son of a bitch in the world,” he said. But he also said this: “I’m here so my son doesn’t have to be back here in 20 years.”

At the time, Brad had two weeks left to go and said he was looking forward to seeing his children and having a beer (but not necessarily in that order) and I can understand his eagerness to get home. But I could also see the shoots of hope that the military presence in Afghanistan was encouraging. Kobra Jamal for instance. Kobra’s father was in hiding from the Taliban but Kobra was studying to be an engineer, something that wouldn’t have been possible before the US invasion.

Other women were also hopeful of change. Like Sheila, who secretly educated girls when the Taliban were in charge. I also spoke to the MP Sharifa Zurmati Wardak, who is part of the Afghan team that’s currently trying to negotiate a deal with the Taliban. The danger is that, if the talks fail, and there’s civil war, and the Taliban return, education for girls and women will again become prohibited.

I do not know if Biden thinks a US withdrawal is the answer – it’s hard to think how he could, given intelligence experts are warning there could be civil war within months. It’s also hard to see how change can be achieved for Sheila, and Kobra, and Sharifa – and Brad for that matter – without lasting engagement in Afghanistan that acknowledges what the country is really like.

Andrew Welsh, SNP MSP and MP and a veteran independence campaigner

The former British ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles put it best in his excellent book Cables from Kabul: the West became involved in a multi-dimensional struggle between Islam and sectarianism, tradition and modernism, Sunni and Shia, and until these problems are addressed by a tribal-council-like process engaging all regional players, conflict will continue. But to have any chance of success, it will need sustained and vigorous diplomatic engagement by the US. Sadly, it doesn’t look like we’re going to get it.

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