Jul 10th 2021 edition
The longest war
America’s war in Afghanistan is ending in crushing defeat
The consequences of the conflict for Afghans, already catastrophic, are likely to get worse
Jul 10th 2021
“Iwant to talk about happy things, man!” protested President Joe Biden in early July, when reporters asked him about the imminent withdrawal of the last American forces from Afghanistan, expected some time in the next few weeks. No wonder he wants to change the subject: America has been fighting in Afghanistan for 20 years. It has spent more than $2trn on the war. It has lost thousands of its own troops and seen the death of tens of thousands of Afghans—soldiers and civilians alike. Now America is calling an end to the whole sorry adventure, with almost nothing to show for it.
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True, al-Qaeda, which sparked the war by planning the 9/11 attacks from Afghanistan, is no longer much of a force in the country, although it has not been eliminated entirely. But that is about as far as it goes. Other anti-American terror groups, including a branch of Islamic State, continue to operate in Afghanistan. The zealots of the Taliban, who harboured Osama bin Laden and were overthrown by American-backed forces after 9/11, have made a horrifying comeback. They are in complete control of about half the country and threaten to conquer the rest. The democratic, pro-Western government fostered by so much American blood and money is corrupt, widely reviled and in steady retreat.
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In theory, the Taliban and the American-backed government are negotiating a peace accord, whereby the insurgents lay down their arms and participate instead in a redesigned political system. In the best-case scenario, strong American support for the government, both financial and military (in the form of continuing air strikes on the Taliban), coupled with immense pressure on the insurgents’ friends, such as Pakistan, might succeed in producing some form of power-sharing agreement. But even if that were to happen—and the chances are low—it would be a depressing spectacle. The Taliban would insist on moving backwards in the direction of the brutal theocracy they imposed during their previous stint in power, when they confined women to their homes, stopped girls from going to school and meted out harsh punishments for sins such as wearing the wrong clothes or listening to the wrong music.
More likely than any deal, however, is that the Taliban try to use their victories on the battlefield to topple the government by force. They have already overrun much of the countryside, with government units mostly restricted to cities and towns. Demoralised government troops are abandoning their posts. This week over 1,000 of them fled from the north-eastern province of Badakhshan to neighbouring Tajikistan. The Taliban have not yet managed to capture and hold any cities, and may lack the manpower to do so in lots of places at once. They may prefer to throttle the government slowly rather than attack it head on. But the momentum is clearly on their side.
At the very least, the civil war is likely to intensify, as the Taliban press their advantage and the government fights for its life. Other countries—China, India, Iran, Russia and Pakistan—will seek to fill the vacuum left by America. Some will funnel money and weapons to friendly warlords. The result will be yet more bloodshed and destruction, in a country that has suffered constant warfare for more than 40 years. Those who worry about possible reprisals against the locals who worked as translators for the Americans are missing the big picture: America is abandoning an entire country of almost 40m people to a grisly fate.
It did not have to be this way. For the past six years fewer than 10,000 American troops, plus a similar number from other nato countries, have propped up the Afghan army enough to maintain the status quo. American casualties had dropped to almost nothing. The war, which used to rile voters, had become a political irrelevance in America. Since becoming president, Mr Biden has focused, rightly, on the threats posed by China and Russia. But the American deployment in Afghanistan had grown so small that it did not really interfere with that. The new American administration views the long stalemate as proof that there is no point remaining in Afghanistan. But for the Afghans whom it protected from the Taliban, the stalemate was precious.
There will be a long debate about how much the withdrawal saps America’s credibility and prestige. For all its wealth and military might, America failed not only to create a strong, self-sufficient Afghan state, but also to defeat a determined insurgency. What is more, America is no longer prepared to put its weight behind its supposed ally, the Afghan government, to the surprise and dismay of many Afghan officials. Hostile regimes in places like China and Russia will have taken note—as will America’s friends.
That does not make Afghanistan a second Vietnam. For one thing, the Afghan war was never really the Pentagon’s or the nation’s focus. American troops were on the ground far longer in Afghanistan than they were in Vietnam, but far fewer of them died. Other events, from the war in Iraq to the global financial crisis, always seemed more important than what was happening in Kandahar. And American politicians and pundits have agonised over whether to stay or go for so long that, now the withdrawal has finally arrived, it has lost its power to shock. To the extent that outsiders see it as a sign of American weakness, that weakness has been evident for a long time.
Unhappy things
Shocking or not, though, the withdrawal is nonetheless a calamity for the people of Afghanistan. In 2001 many hoped that America might end their 20-year-old civil war and free them from a stifling, doctrinaire theocracy. For a time, it looked as though that might happen. But today the lives of ordinary Afghans are more insecure than ever: civilian casualties were almost 30% higher last year than in 2001, when the American deployment began, according to estimates from the un and academics. The economy is no bigger than it was a decade ago. And the mullahs are not only at the gates of Kabul; their assassins are inside, targeting Shias, secularists, women with important jobs—anyone who offends their blinkered worldview. America was never going to solve all Afghanistan’s problems, but to leave the country back at square one is a sobering failure. ■
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America’s trillion-dollar Afghan fiasco typifies its foreign policy
America leaves Afghanistan on the brink of collapse
United StatesJul 10th 2021 edition
Lexington
America’s trillion-dollar Afghan fiasco typifies its foreign policy
The mission was sustained by mistakes that America seems destined to repeat
Jul 10th 2021
Five years ago the us embassy in Kabul unveiled an $800m refit. With 1,500 desks and 800 beds within its fortress walls, it was a third bigger than America’s next biggest embassy, in Baghdad. Meanwhile Barack Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan, Laurel Miller, had a troubled conscience.
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Her State Department talking-points insisted she should speak of America’s “enduring commitment to Afghanistan”. But Ms Miller reckoned the trillion-dollar American effort was on borrowed time. “The phrase was dishonest enough to make me wince,” she recalls. “I didn’t think the strategic rationale for the mission or political commitment to it would endure.” She avoided the term.
That might have seemed odd in Kabul, in the shadow of America’s concrete citadel. But it was fairly obvious in Washington. Mr Obama, having dispatched 47,000 additional troops to Afghanistan early in his presidency, had lost faith in the mission. A steep reduction in casualties—the year the embassy relaunched saw one combat death—meant Congress and the media largely ignored it. And the foreign-policy establishment had never paid it the attention its claim on American blood and treasure warranted.
Where the wars in Vietnam and (to a lesser degree) Iraq inspired generations of area specialists, America’s small cast of Afghanistan experts has to this day changed little since 2001. Having spent a fair bit of time in the country during the first decade of the American mission, though very little in the second, your columnist is sometimes mistaken for an expert himself. It shows how low the bar to Afghanistan expertise has been set.
This mismatch between America’s vast investment in Afghanistan and the scant attention paid to it in Washington might seem paradoxical. In fact it helps explain how the slow-rolling debacle of America in Afghanistan came to pass.
From the start, the American effort was not merely ill-informed about Afghanistan; it was only partly about Afghanistan. After bombing the Taliban from power, George W. Bush’s administration was advised to reach an accommodation with the group. It posed no direct threat to America. And though unpopular in Kabul, the mullahs represented a large population in southern Afghanistan who found the Taliban’s northern rival—and America’s proxy—repugnant. Yet the administration considered any distinction between terrorists and their abettors incompatible with its expansive vision for the war on terror. It therefore ruled the Taliban irreconcilable. America has spent almost two decades being punished for that mistake.
The insurgency it gave rise to ensured that America’s stabilisation effort was dominated by generals, for whom force is the answer to most setbacks, and local politics a distraction. Yet the insurgency, because based in neighbouring Pakistan, was unbeatable. The result has been waves of terrible violence that have cost tens of thousands of Afghan lives and left many of the country’s people craving order from any hand. This was the circumstance in which the joyless mullahs arose in the 1990s; it is why rural district after district is now falling to them as easily as they did then.
The scholar Robert Kagan has suggested that America’s history of large foreign-policy blunders is connected to its isolationist sentiments. To overcome them, American presidents embrace unrealistically grandiose schemes, he suggests; and at first blush Afghanistan looks like evidence for that. In pursuit of a Utopian ideal—to eradicate terrorism—America sought to produce an unprecedented Afghan state while fighting an unwinnable war.
Yet the war’s context has changed. Public opinion has played little part in it, because for most Americans it has been invisible. In 1968 America had half a million disgruntled conscripts and volunteers in Vietnam. At the height of the Obama surge it had 98,000 professional soldiers in Afghanistan—too few to fill the biggest college football stadiums—and suffered modest casualties. In a country of 330m people—a tiny minority of whom have any connection to the armed forces—the war has scarcely registered.
This gave Mr Bush’s successors freedom to try to fix his mistakes. But Mr Obama and Mr Trump doubled down on them, by initially bowing to the generals’ demand for more troops and more fighting. They did so partly for political reasons. Mr Obama had talked up the war’s importance so much on the campaign trail that he felt compelled to give it a fresh push. Mr Trump wanted to make Mr Obama look weak. But it was also, in both cases, for want of a more compelling alternative suggestion.
National-security hawks remained largely opposed to the only conceivable way to end the conflict, negotiations with the Taliban. Few in the foreign-policy intelligentsia, which had come to consider Afghanistan a strategic byway, challenged that view. Mr Obama ended up passing the war on more or less as he had inherited it, with little conviction that it could end well. Mr Trump, to his credit, launched peace talks with the Taliban, but only after signalling his intention to withdraw America’s remaining troops, dooming the talks from the start. This suggested that America no longer cared who controlled Afghanistan—a position that Joe Biden, by proceeding with the withdrawal, has underlined. What a way to spend $2trn.
Back to Gandamak
It might at least be hoped that the lessons of this debacle will be learned. The main one is so obvious: an over-militarised foreign policy that embraces unrealistic objectives is liable to fail. Yet, as Mr Kagan and many others have shown, this appears to be more a feature of American foreign policy than a bug. And indeed the light—almost imperceptible—mark Afghanistan has made on the Washington establishment suggests it may be forgotten especially quickly. Ms Miller predicts that Afghanistan will soon barely be mentioned in America’s foreign-policy circles. Her forecasts have a solid record.■
For more coverage of Joe Biden’s presidency, visit our dedicated hub
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America’s longest war is ending in crushing defeat
America leaves Afghanistan on the brink of collapse
America leaves Afghanistan on the brink of collapse
Afghan troops are tottering as the Taliban come roaring back
Jul 8th 2021
KABUL AND MAZAR-I-SHARIF
Were it not for the Kalashnikov, the photograph would have been unremarkable. The framing is off-centre. The photographer’s shadow can be seen at the bottom. In the background is the western gate of Mazar-i-Sharif, just some 15km from the centre of Afghanistan’s fourth-biggest city. In the middle is a bored-looking man wearing typical local dress and an orange turban. It is the rifle he holds aloft in his right hand that gives him away as a member of the Taliban. That, and the caption that accompanied the picture as it pinged its way through the mobile phones of the city’s residents late last month: the Taliban are at the gates, it warned.
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Panic swiftly swept the city. In the days before, district after district in the surrounding province of Balkh had fallen from government control and into the Taliban’s hands. Swathes of northern Afghanistan have in recent weeks suffered a similar fate. This was all the more alarming given that Balkh has a reputation as a bastion of anti-Taliban resistance. It is a long way from the insurgents’ southern heartlands. The sudden appearance of the gunman seemed an obvious signal that an assault was imminent. “On that day, everything closed and everyone went to their homes,” recalls Amir Mohammadi, an 18-year-old schoolboy in the city.
Less than three months after President Joe Biden declared that the last American troops would be out of Afghanistan by September 11th, the withdrawal is nearly complete. The departure from Bagram air base, an hour’s drive north of the capital, Kabul, in effect marked the end of America’s 20-year war. But that does not mean the end of the war in Afghanistan. If anything, it is only going to get worse.
*This film was first published in July 2020*
America and its nato allies have spent billions of dollars training and equipping Afghan security forces in the hope that they would one day be able to stand alone. Instead, they started buckling even before America left. Many districts are being taken not by force, but are simply handed over. Soldiers and policemen have surrendered in droves, leaving piles of American-purchased arms and ammunition and fleets of vehicles. Even as the last American troops were leaving Bagram over the weekend of July 3rd, more than 1,000 Afghan soldiers were busy fleeing across the border into neighbouring Tajikistan as they sought to escape a Taliban assault. “Everyone is shocked by how fast it’s fallen apart,” says a Western diplomat.
On paper, the Afghan army and police are more numerous and better equipped than their opponents. In reality they often yield to much smaller forces. Plummeting morale is a big reason. Troops complain of being abandoned by their commanders and of going without pay, food or ammunition. The American withdrawal has curtailed nato air support, which the Afghan forces had come to rely on. Their own fledgling air force is a poor substitute.
A running tally by the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a think-tank in Washington, estimates the Taliban control close to half the country’s 400-odd districts (see map). The government in Kabul strongly denies this and says any retreats have been temporary and will be reversed. Some districts have been retaken, or have changed hands several times. Many are remote and have little government presence or strategic importance. But the cascade of victories has given the Taliban momentum. Diplomats worry it will continue.
The Taliban have also made a slick propaganda push emphasising their seemingly relentless advance and showing that those who surrender are being treated well. Many Afghans are fed up with a corrupt and remote government that provides little benefit to citizens. They may not like the Taliban’s strictures, but they are not too keen on the current set-up either.
The feared push into Mazar-i-Sharif has so far not materialised. The army quickly released its own social-media pictures to show it had full control of the western gate. The city has begun to calm itself, but the government’s writ extends only a few miles outside it. Thousands of people from the countryside have poured into the city seeking refuge from the Taliban.
Murtaza Sultani, a 22-year-old driver from a nearby district, says his village fell in mid-June without a shot being fired. He left because the Taliban were seeking volunteers to join them. “Even if they don’t kill us, they restrict people and it’s no way to live,” he says. With no work, he passes the time in the courtyard of Mazar-i-Sharif’s majestic blue mosque: “I don’t have money to leave and the borders are closed.”
Leaving is a preoccupation for many. At the passport office in Kabul, thousands of Afghans are waiting in queues, sometimes for days, to acquire travel documents, either for immediate use or just in case. Many Afghans know from bitter experience what it means to be a refugee; they are not taking the choice lightly. Yet the sight of the near-unchecked Taliban advance is helping them make the decision.
“I want to go to Tehran,” says Jamaluddin Behboudi, a 34-year-old house painter squatting outside the passport office with his children. Iran, along with Pakistan, Turkey and Central Asia, is a popular choice for escape. But the pandemic has made travel difficult for everyone. In Mazar-i-Sharif itself, the deteriorating security situation has caused many countries, including Iran, to close their consulates.
As the outlook for the army and for civilians looks increasingly desperate, so do the measures proposed by the government. Ashraf Ghani, the president, is trying to mobilise militias to shore up the flimsy army. He has turned for help to figures such as Atta Mohammad Noor, who rose to power as an anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban commander and is now a potentate and businessman in Balkh province. “No matter what, we will defend our cities and the dignity of our people,” says Mr Noor in his gilded reception hall in Mazar-i-Sharif.
Such a mobilisation would be a temporary measure to give the army breathing space and allow it to regroup, he says. The new forces would co-ordinate with government troops. But the prospect of unleashing warlords’ private armies fills many Afghans with dread, reminding them of the anarchy of the 1990s. Such militias, raised along ethnic lines, tended to turn on each other and the general population.
Matiullah Tarakhel, a soldier from the eastern province of Laghman, thinks the creation of militias is a power grab. “We have had experience of this,” he says as he queues for a passport for his sick father. “People have enemies. Maybe these militia men will want to kill their opponents, but they will say it was the Taliban.”
With America gone and Afghan forces melting away, the Taliban fancy their prospects. They show little sign of engaging in serious negotiations with Mr Ghani’s administration. Yet they control no major towns or cities. Sewing up the countryside puts pressure on the urban centres, but the Taliban may be in no hurry to force the issue. They generally lack heavy weapons. They may also lack the numbers to take a city against sustained resistance. On July 7th they failed to capture Qala-e-Naw, a small town. Besides, controlling a city would bring fresh headaches. They are not good at providing government services.
Seizing Kabul by force is “not Taliban policy”, Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman, told the bbc on July 5th. Their best course may be to tighten the screws and wait for the government to buckle. American predictions of its fate are getting gloomier. Intelligence agencies think Mr Ghani’s government could collapse within six months, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Amir Mohammadi, the teenager in Mazar-i-Sharif, says many of his contemporaries fear the future is bleak. “It looks like it’s going to get worse,” he says. “It’s better to leave.” That is much the same sentiment as in Washington.■
For more coverage of Joe Biden’s presidency, visit our dedicated hub
A version of this article was published online on July 7th 2021
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