By Linda ROBINSON
As a journalist, book author, and sometime consultant with regular visits to Afghanistan between 2002 and 2015, I use this distillation of lessons that we might gain from the United States’ longest war.
Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK. The Afghanistan War Commission, developed by Congress, will shortly begin its investigation of U.S. policies in the twenty-year War in Afghanistan. So far this year, most headlines have been created by
a separate Home Foreign Affairs Committee query into the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August
2021. This searing denouement looked like the disorderly end of the Vietnam War, complete with images of desperate Afghans clinging to airplanes lifting off from Kabul Airport as bearded Taliban soldiersseized federal government offices, tanks, and weapons. The disaster continued as the dark curtain of Taliban guideline fell over the South Asian country, reviving the drastic Deobandi Islamic [PDF] practices of the 1990s. Overnight, Afghan women lost the right to work and to appear in public, and those who withstood gotten harsh punishments. The turbaned Taliban leaders ejected women from the federal government and banned ladies from school after 6th grade. Hardship, cravings, and maternal and infant deathhave surged, as countries have actually kept recognition of the Taliban regime, frozen funds, and suspended all but humanitarian help. The Taliban’s latest penalty prohibits Afghan women from UN work, where they are essential to delivery of aid in this conservative, mainly rural nation. As shocking as these current events are, they need to not eclipse the complete mandate of the commission, which is charged with conducting a”extensive review of key decisions associated with U.S. military, intelligence, foreign assistance, and diplomatic involvement in Afghanistan from June 2001 to August 2021.” The preliminary intervention, precipitated by the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, aimed to hound the al-Qaeda
criminals. Gradually it changed into an effort to quell a relentless revolt by building a stable democracy and improving living conditions in among the poorest nations in the world– one that the British had unsuccessfully sought to calm in 2 nineteenth-century wars. Americans are worthy of a full and thoughtful accounting of the$2.3 trillion investment of military and advancement help and the implementation of numerous countless U.S. and union soldiers. Why did the Afghan government and military collapse so quickly? Was the effort misguided from the start, based on problematic assumptions and policy style? What errors were made along the way? What are the applicable lessons for other efforts to support democracy around the globe? As a reporter, book author, and at some point consultant with frequent check outs to Afghanistan in between 2002 and 2015, I use this distillation of lessons that we may gain from the United States’longest war. Nevertheless significant it appeared, the collapse of the Afghan government and military was not surprising. The seeds of defeat were planted long prior to President Joe Biden purchased the withdrawal. His predecessor, Donald Trump, signed an accord with the Taliban in February 2020 that set a 2021 withdrawal date and decoupled the U.S. departure from any arrangement to end the battling amongst Afghans– consequently ceding the primary source of leverage. Afghan spirits plummeted. Settlements to reach a political settlement were never ever the central concern at any point in the war, as ephemeral military targets or “conditions” substituted for hardheaded recognition that there were in
essence two Afghanistans, and that the Taliban always managed most of the rural one(where I spent most of my time ). Compounding this error, the U.S. federal government sought to implement centralized models of governance and military institutions that were improper, imperfectly realized, and pricey to sustain. Lastly, the United States and its allies set aspirational goals for societal transformation that might not be achieved on a reasonably slim assistance base of urbanized, informed Afghans. In sum, the American task was not based in a clear understanding of the truths of Afghanistan. Well-meaning Americans believed that they could persuade, encourage, or force a job that much of the population did not actively embrace or participate in. A chain of discrete policy errors flowed from this standard failure to effectively comprehend the nation. Several fundamental lessons emerge from scrutinizing these mistakes in the design and execution of political, diplomatic, military, and financial policies. Lesson 1. Political disputes normally need worked out settlements rather than simply military options. Attrition techniques and pressure campaigns unlinked to political methods were bound to stop working in a revolt such as the War in Afghanistan, which was essentially a civil war in between the Taliban and their supporters and the rest of the population.
The Taliban were unlikely to be defeated militarily provided their efficiency at low-cost insurgency. They have a base and a constituency: nationalistic, spiritual, and conservative Pashtuns who welcomed the extreme Deobandi school of Islam that had actually spread amongst Pashtuns since the 1970s. Deobandi madrassas continued to indoctrinate young Afghan men to eliminate the infidel Americans. The ongoing U.S. emphasis on attrition warfare and civilian casualties from airstrikes caused massive friction with the Afghan federal government and population
. No clear military advantage was gotten from this method, and policymakers failed to value that these political expenses outweighed any short-lived military gain. Certainly, the U.S. government doubled down on the attrition warfare technique in the final years of the dispute. Civilian casualties from airstrikes increased by 330 percent after 2016. Lesson 2. Settlements to disputes must be worked out from a position of optimum take advantage of. Two wasted chances to reach an agreement stand apart. The U.S. government may have provided talks after ousting the Taliban in October 2001. Undoubtedly, the Taliban used to work out in those early days, but the United States did not welcome them to Bonn, where the Bonn Contract was reached and the brand-new government was formed. In the heat of the post-9/ 11 furor, few U.S. officials were prepared to make a distinction between the al-Qaeda opponents and the Afghan Taliban who swore commitment to bin Ladin however had no designs to assault America. The United States and the worldwide union stayed, and then grew after the Taliban went on the offensive. The 2nd opportunity accompanied the rise of union soldiers in 2011– 13, which accomplished what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Personnel General Joseph Dunford called a “tactical stalemate”. That peak of utilize was not seized to accomplish a settlement, however, and the utilize started to erode as soldiers drew down. The Afghan government’s position gradually deteriorated, and it became
apparent that the army the United States constructed had not become a self-dependent force efficient in protecting the nation in spite of billions of dollars in financial investment. President Trump showed up in workplace determined to go out and set a minimal condition in 2020 in exchange for a U.S. exit pledge: that the Taliban consent to start talks with its Afghan opponents. With the U.S. departure in composing, the Taliban had no reward to work out seriously. Without extensive U.S. and global assistance, the fractured Afghan government, riven by ethnic departments between the Tajik-Uzbek minority and the Pashtun bulk, could not reach a settlement by itself. Lesson 3. Watch out for enforcing political systems that are unsuitable to a nation’s history and political culture; incremental techniques will be required where democratic traditions are weak. In Afghanistan, informal but real power rested with regionally based powerbrokers or warlords, such as Mohammed Qasim Fahim, Gul Agha Sherzai, Atta Mohammed Noor, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ismail Khan, and the Karzai brothers, who held sway over the principal ethnic and tribal factions. Provided their impact, a central form of federal government was not likely to supply stability: every governmental election was a crisis that generated lengthy battles that needed brokered outcomes. The trappings and mechanics of democracy remained in location, however the culture of democracy remained gently implanted. While women did make nominal gains in representation through seats booked in parliament, ministerial positions in the cabinet, and mayoral consultations, these concessions were quickly reversed without wider and much deeper forms of equality taking hold in the society and culture. Civil society progressed in city Afghanistan, however rural Afghanistan stayed similar, as I was frequently reminded by villagers. More robust usage of regional councils and traditional shuras was needed to construct consensus from the ground up and encourage fuller representation with time.
Lesson 4. Do not seek to impose improper security institutions, however rather develop on conventional types of defense. A similar error occurred in the security sector. The United States modelled the Afghan military [PDF] by itself, with a central structure , capital-intensive equipment, and airplane that Congress needed to be U.S.-made– despite the fact that Afghans were utilized to Russian-made helicopters and aircrafts that were much easier to keep. Centralized logistics systems were not adjusted to the country’s rugged surface. Large resources were expended in producing a large standing force that required constant recruitment and replenishment due to casualties and desertion. Experiments in producing regional defense forces provided an alternative that might have become the main model for most of the nation’s defenses. These forces were hired with assistance from regional elders and deployed locally, as militias traditionally had been. In spite of successes by the regional forces, the juggernaut of producing a costly, central army continued and, in the end, failed. The lack of assistance to troops in the field was a principal reason for the fast dissolution of the army in 2021. Lesson 5. Do not overstate the rate and depth of societal change that policies can produce within a generation; appropriate and financially sustainable targets are best set by the country. Younger and more city Afghans welcomed the vision of a modern-day, democratic nation, even as social standards remained
comparatively conservative, however 74 percent of Afghanistan’s population is rural– and deeply conservative. Remote areas remained unblemished by a number of the development projects funded by the United States, and many schools and centers became goat sheds for absence of instructors and nurses. Important gains like reduced maternal and infant mortality and expanded access to education were achieved, however they depended on ongoing infusions of outdoors help: 75 percent of the Afghan federal government budget originated from foreign help, and self-sufficiency was a far-off prospect. Sustainable development requires a growing economy to support these financial investments and long lasting, broad-based nationwide support. Ladies are an untapped resource in Afghanistan, but the social and economic foundations for females’s equality stay tenuous in spite of the academic, expert, and business achievements in the past twenty years. The rate of change is generational, and when it comes to Afghanistan a concerted effort to reduce Taliban impact in the next generation will be needed to bring back forward movement. Lesson 6. Do not create policies that need indefinite or irreversible multibillion dollar foreign help commitments, particularly when no vital nationwide interest is at stake. The U.S. public showed incredibly tolerant of the twenty-year expense of$ 2.3 trillion in Afghanistan, however it was unlikely to support such a cost
indefinitely without more progress toward sustainability. The nationwide security reasoning for forever supporting Afghanistan at those levels diminished as the al-Qaeda hazard receded. The subsiding terrorist danger from al-Qaeda and the nonexistent risk from the Taliban should have been factored into planning for an exit at the time of the 2011 rise. Quite honestly, plansfor a continued U.S. military deployment did not line up with U.S. nationwide interests, and the little footprint visualized would have been inadequate to fend off the growing threat from the Taliban as they extended their hold in the countryside from 2013 on. The dangers of keeping a little force in Afghanistan would have progressively grown. Lesson 7. Halting mission creep is never ever simple, but the U.S. Congress ought to be readier to impose conditions and limits on foreign interventions. Congress, with its power of the handbag, is finest placed to end interventions outright, or at a minimum require an overhaul of policy objectives so that they are sensible. The Afghanistan experience highlights the requirement for stabilization and governance policy design based upon the local culture and abilities, with goals that are modest, clear, and finite. Succeeding administrations bought into the military mantra of”conditions-based”withdrawals without recognizing or acknowledging that the conditions sought were not achievable. Year after year, U.S. generals continued to testify with ill-founded optimism to justify requests for multibillion dollar annual infusions of support. Greater rigor must be introduced into the requirements for ending interventions and constant counterterrorism operations, and Congress needs to assert its power to end policies that are not working. A no-holds-barred account of the numerous drawbacks of U.S. policy in the
longest war in American history is important for the historical record and to notify future foreign policy to protect U.S. interests and figure out how finest to help nations in requirement.A frank and full report from the Afghanistan War Commission would consist of various”never once again “resolutions that target these chronic lapses. If sufficiently strong, the report can galvanize more members of Congress to probe claims of nationwide security necessity and imminent progress with greater uncertainty, without fear of being identified weak. A foreign policy that accomplishes verifiable if incremental results, with a prospect of becoming self-sustaining, makes up a desirable middle ground between overreach and isolationism. cfr.org