Afghanistan dilemma

Apr 11 2021

A few weeks ago, I wrote about withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan, and as I made clear then, I do not think withdrawing troops by May 1st is a good idea.

(Disclosure, I spent a few years in Afghanistan, in civilian projects, in 2010-12, so I am either biased or informed on this.)

Here is another point of view: Mark Hannah and Adam Weinstein write in The Washington Post If Americans want lasting peace in Afghanistan, we should leave by May 1

They argue that the presence of US troops is a hindrance for a lasting peace, or as they say a durable compromise; I guess that is the more correct way to put it in the context of Afghanistan in 2021.

There is another piece in The New York Times looking at the complex situation at the moment, U.S. Looks to Build on Secret Portions of Taliban Deal to Reduce Violence

And one on the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani Afghan President in ‘Desperate Situation’ as His Power Is Undermined

These pieces highlight the complexity of the whole situation in Afghanistan, and give a good idea of the dilemma the US administration faces.

The deadline is May 1st, that is now under three weeks away. It is probably logistically impossible to withdraw the troops by that deadline, but I guess the Taliban would be happy with a slightly later date as well, as long as the withdrawal was under way.

So, the fact is that there will be US troops in Afghanistan after May 1st, 2021. The question is what happens after. And the troops of other nations are not part of the deal, and they will not be going anywhere, yet.

The Washington Post piece proposes a solution, withdrawing the troops by May 1st, but even the writers call the solution the least bad option.

I agree with the basic idea that the presence of US troops is a problem, some see them as occupiers helping a corrupt government, and every civilian casualty, perceived or real, is another possible recruitment opportunity for the extremists. Then again all foreign troops could be viewed the same way.

It is also true as they write, that the US troop presence distorts the balance of power by helping the Afghan government, and that the Taliban think they can just wait them out. The Taliban fighters have been fighting this war for far longer than the US, and they will not go anywhere; they are after all fighting in their own country.

And I also agree with their point that a forced peace, dictated by outsiders, will not work. It will collapse as soon as foreign troops leave. The only peace that will hold is a peace negotiated in Afghanistan by Afghans.

But as the writers agree, if the troops leave, violence might intensify in the short term, and the Taliban would likely claim victory. Then it would be sanctions relief and promises of aid and other diplomatic tools that would be used to try to get the Taliban to soften its brutal rule.

And if the war continues for a long time or the Taliban rule will be really brutal, some people at some point will start asking why we left, and will start demanding action. We will be back to where we started from.

One of the original reasons for the war was defeating Al Qaeda, but as said in one NY Times piece, according to the deal the Taliban is also supposed to cut ties with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, but the U.S. intelligence community has seen little movement toward that goal.

So, to put it really simplistically; invade Afghanistan to get rid of Al Qaeda; fight a bloody war for 19 years; withdraw the troops; and then go back to square one.

In the WP piece, they also mention a survey that shows that more than 60% of Americans support the terms of the deal, and only 8% oppose them, which on the face of it sounds good. I know that this is about domestic politics and that public opinion has to be taken into account, but looking at this from a different angle, this seems absurd. A survey in America? What about the Afghans, what do they think about the troop withdrawal?

Well, the Americans do say troop withdrawal is the least bad option, and they are looking at this from a more US based perspective as I am; different point of view, different opinions.

There really are no good options here, and the situation is extremely complex, as the NY Times pieces show.

First of all, the current deal was negotiated between the US and the Taliban. The Afghan government was not included in the negotiations, and they were not exactly happy about it.

I do not know what the thinking behind excluding the Afghan government from the negotiations was, but this has been done before, in the peace negotiations in Vietnam, and that did not turn out well in the end.

In addition to the deal between the US and the Taliban, the Afghan government and the Taliban started negotiations last fall, but they have not really made any progress.

There will be multinational talks in Turkey in the next few weeks, and there will be a new US proposal for a temporary government until elections can be held, which could be a very long time since this is Afghanistan.

Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president, also has a counterproposal which calls for a cease-fire, a temporary government and elections.

But the Taliban has never said they would agree to elections, or power sharing, so these proposals may be dead on arrival.

Based on the original US-Taliban deal, negotiations are also ongoing with the focus on ‘violence reduction’, but these talks also do not include the Afghan government.

All this does not really bode well for a negotiated solution, at least in the short term.

And since it is April it is the start of the fighting season, and the Taliban is most likely preparing for its spring offensive. If the US troops stay after May 1st, the Taliban can use that as the pretext to resume the fighting, and if the troops leave, who will be there to stop them once the US support is gone?

So, leave and most likely repeat history; repeat what happened in Vietnam, and repeat what happened when the Soviets withdrew troops and support in the early nineties from the Afghan government, a brutal civil war and then the Taliban.

One of the NY Times pieces highlights this with a quote from a senior Afghan security official.

“Militarily, we don’t have much hope,” he said. “If we don’t get something, the Taliban are going to march. It’s going to be a severe battle.”

The other option is to stay, and commit to an ongoing war. And with the Taliban militarily strong and ready to fight, it will be a bloody future for everyone involved.

As said before, no good options.

Basically my take on this, my least bad option, is “Yes and No”; we should leave, but we should not leave Afghanistan unprotected.

During the past 19 years, probably every trick in the book has been tried and none of them have worked, so more of the same will not solve the problems.

One basic issue here is that for us in the West, the timescale is wrong. We come from First World countries where basically everything works, and where problems can be fixed quickly. Afghanistan does not work that way, it is a developing country with decades of war behind it; time for progress should not be counted in months or years, but in decades and generations.

If we really want to help Afghanistan and end the war one day, we should manage a paradigm shift; we should commit to a very long multinational development project, with a serious security component.

We have now been in Afghanistan for one generation, and though a lot of mistakes have been made, we have also learned a lot, and have helped the country develop thus far.

This is of course going to cost a lot, but building on what has been achieved, even if it is not much, will still be more cost effective, than letting the country go through yet another destructive civil war, and then start to rebuild again at some point in the future.

The country will not see peace in the near future, and there will be setbacks for sure, but from the Afghan, and the humanitarian, point of view, this is the least bad option.

The logical home for this kind of long term development and security project is naturally the United Nations. Individual countries can support the project and do a lot of the work, but the UN should be in charge. This is exactly the kind of project we have the UN for, so why not use it.

Transforming the war effort into a UN security and development project will not be easy, far from it, but it is certainly worth a try, and we do owe it to both the Afghans and to the troops who fought in the war. We should not just shrug and walk away, after all, we did help with the destruction of the country for ten years when the Soviets were there, and then for another 19 years after 9/11.

I am, of course, assuming two things; first that we think that continuing the war as before does not work, and second that leaving Afghanistan and its people to suffer yet another war resulting in thousands of dead and wounded, millions of refugees, a destroyed country, and possibly another brutal Taliban rule, is not an acceptable end result.

Leaving Afghanistan?

Mar 28th 2021

The US signed a deal with the Taliban on Feb 29th, 2020, which says, among other things, that the US should withdraw all military troops from Afghanistan by May 1st, 2021.

So, should you honor the deal and pack up your gear and go, or should you stay, and keep some troops in the country?

(Disclosure, I spent a few years in Afghanistan, in civilian projects, in 2010-12, so I am either biased or informed on this.)

Yes, it is nearly 20 years since Oct 7, 2001, when the Afghanistan invasion began.

Yes, the war has cost about $2 trillion, depending on how you count. A lot of money regardless of how you count.

Yes, there have been about 2,400 US casualties and over 20,000 US wounded. (And more than 1,000 coalition fatalities.)

Yes, Osama bin Laden was killed nearly ten years ago.

Yes, there is a Western aligned government in Afghanistan.

Yes, a lot of money has been spent in aid and development, and some of the money has just disappeared.

All good reasons to declare “Mission Accomplished” and go home, and let the Afghans take it from here.

But, the last time the West was involved in Afghanistan was during the Soviet occupation of the country in 1979-89. When the Soviets withdrew their troops, and the Soviet Union collapsed a few years after, the west kind of lost interest in Afghanistan, and after a brutal civil war the Taliban eventually emerged as the victor. And they were not exactly benevolent rulers.

Are we willing to let the Taliban repeat history and erase 19 years of development in the country, not to mention the casualties and the wounded? Maybe they will act differently this time, but I for one would not bet on that.

And Osama bin Laden is dead, and Al-Qaeda is diminished, but it is not dead, and its ideology is still spreading. Do we want to give it another chance to thrive, or do we want to keep squeezing its ability to operate?

If you take a longer view on this, why on earth would you leave now? The US financed the development of the Helmand Valley in the 1950’s and 60’s, and the dams built then still provide irrigation to the area. And through the 1980’s the US, among other countries, assisted the Mujahideen in fighting the Soviets.

So, why leave now in 2021, after 19+ years of active war, when you have been in the country already in the 1950’s? Why not stay this time, and finish the job, and try to not repeat the mistakes of the past?

I am under no illusion that peace will come quickly, it will be a generational project, and will require a firm commitment to stay in the country until the project is finished. And that means both effective military and civilian presence; both security and development.

The basic Taliban mindset is best summed up by the expression attributed to a captured Taliban fighter: “You have the watches. We have the time.” If the Taliban know that the troops will leave one day, they will just wait for that day, they will have no need to make, or keep, deals with the government.

Their thinking is, rightly: “We Afghans fought the Soviets for ten years, the warlords for another ten, and the Americans and other infidels for twenty, what is another year or two in a struggle this long?” They have no reason to change, they will just wait for their day to arrive.

But, if they are faced with a practically permanent military presence and continuing development work, which means changing society, they will have to start adapting to a new reality. Some of them surely will not change and will continue the fight, but some will eventually accept the new reality and work with the government. It will take time, maybe a generation, and there will be casualties, and as always, it will cost a lot of money. But the alternative is risking all the development done since 2002, and wasting the lost lives and the treasure.

An Afghan boy or a girl born in 1995, would have been seven years old in 2002 when the Taliban was driven from power. If they were lucky, they would have gone to school and then to university, and would now probably have their first job in whatever field they studied. And, if they had not already, they would be looking to get married and starting a family. And they would obviously want to raise their family in a society at peace, and give their children a future without war.

Are we really willing to risk that?

Are we willing to risk another Taliban government?

And are we really willing to abandon the Afghans who fought with us, again?

ps. The New York Times Mar 30th 2021; The Taliban Think They Have Already Won, Peace Deal or Not

Afghanistan Papers The Washington Post

Mar 26th 2021

The Afghanistan Papers were published on Dec 9th, 2019, just when the Covid 19 pandemic was starting. The war in Afghanistan, the longest US war, did not go away, the pandemic (and for the US, the election) just demanded all our attention.

Now that the deadline of May 1st for US troop withdrawal from the country is fast approaching, and the politicians are once again debating: should we leave or should we stay, it is good to visit these documents and articles again to get some background for the debates.

(Disclosure, I spent a few years in Afghanistan, in civilian projects, in 2010-12, so I am either biased or informed on this.)

The war has not gone according to plan, then again wars rarely do; it was not short and decisive, and the troops did not come home for Christmas. It took nearly ten years to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden, whose capture, along with defeating Al-Qaeda, was one of the reasons for the invasion. And the war is still going on.

So, the US government tried to figure out what went wrong. The Washington Post:

“As part of a government project to understand what went wrong, a federal agency interviewed more than 400 people who had a direct role in the conflict. In those interviews, generals, ambassadors, diplomats and other insiders offered firsthand accounts of the mistakes that have prolonged the war.
… more than 2,000 pages of “Lessons Learned” interviews conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction
… reveal there was no consensus on the war’s objectives, let alone how to end the conflict.”

These interviews and documents do not paint a pretty picture of the war effort, and reveal, among other things that, the US, and the West in general did not, and most likely still do not, understand Afghanistan. It is an underdeveloped war ravaged multi-ethnic Muslim country, with basically a tribal society. And this war was not the first war in the country during the recent past. (I’ll write more about this in a separate piece.)

Also, the counter-insurgency lessons learned in Vietnam and other places, were lost from the institutional memory of the US military structure, and had to be learned again, with blood.

How can you fight a counter-insurgency war in Vietnam, then fight with the insurgents against the Soviets in, of all places, Afghanistan, and then forget all the lessons learned? The collapse of the Soviet Union and the re-balancing of the US military for the new world order probably played a part, but it seems that the military organisation / bureaucracy is really efficient at losing institutional memory. There have to be many counter-insurgency and lessons-learned manuals in the US military, did no-one read them, or are they gathering dust on some shelf, and didn’t anyone read Sun Tzu’s Art of War?

And, what is glaringly obvious is that the military is an efficient, but a really blunt tool which should be used only with great care and forethought. It is really good for certain tasks, and totally counter-productive for some.

And then there is, of course, Opium, with a capital O. I will write a lot more on this , but just a basic point here; the West was focused on eradication, when poppy farming was a lifeline for impoverished farmers. To put it bluntly, eradicating a poor farmer’s cash crop does not make you his friend.

Here are links to six pieces that highlight the findings in the investigation. The Afghanistan Papers page has links to many interviews, a lot more data, and you can browse the documents by category, but you might as well start by reading these.

Spin - At war with the truth

Strategy - Stranded without a strategy

Nation-building - Built to fail

Corruption - Consumed by corruption

Security - Unguarded nation

Opium - Overwhelmed by opium

And last but not least, the Veterans. Reaction to The Afghanistan Papers from those who experienced the war on the ground.
We Were Right