Lessons From Afghanista

 

Published in ' Afghanistan: Way Forward', a book published by Consortium of South Asian Think Tanks (COSATT) and Political Dialogue Asia Programme, Konrad Adenauer
Stiftung (KAS)

https://www.cosatt.org/uploads/news/file/AFGHANISTAN%20THE%20WAY%20FORWARD_compressed_20221010071030.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0WaN_WfK_na1ZARsDVT1wOTE8eCN3CpXJa8B6Z_ciY6WxAYO_8ldgpTE0

Yuba Nath Lamsal

United States pulled out its last contingent of troops from Afghanistan on August 30, 2021, ending the two decade-long what Washington called the war on terror. Analysts and historians often like to draw parallels between America’s war in Afghanistan and Vietnam in terms of the protracted nature and the eventual outcome. Unlike other wars, the United States returned from Vietnam and Afghanistan in disgrace paving the way for its nemeses to come to power.  In Vietnam, Washington fought hard to prevent communists seizing power but after 20 years of the hard fight the United States had to withdraw from Vietnam setting a stage for the same Vietcong communists to take control of Vietnam.  Afghanistan is also the repetition of Vietnam like syndrome as America’s troops withdrawal brought Taliban against which the US and NATO troops fought for two decades into the saddle of power in Kabul.

The United States declared war on terror in furious response to the terrorist attack in New York and Washington killing 2977 and wounding about 6000 mostly civilians holding Al Qaeda terrorist outfit and its mastermind Osama bin Laden responsible. Exactly two weeks after the September 11 terrorist attack, on October 7, 2001America like a wounded tiger, started pounding with bombs in Afghanistan formally beginning the war codenamed as ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ to break the bones of Al Qaeda terrorists including bin Laden.

Some people also likened the September 11 attack with the Japan’s December 7, 1941 Kamikaze attack on Pearl Harbour. But September 11 attack was more shocking to Americans than the one in the Pearl Harbour because ‘Pearl Harbour was 2500 miles away from the continental US in what was then not a state but the Territory of Hawaii’[i] and the September 11 attack was at the heart of America’s government and economy.

The Congress, US parliament, passed a law authorising the war against the Al Qaeda and countries that supported the terrorist network. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), too, joined the bandwagon of US global war on terror. The United Nations Security Council not only condemned the terrorist attack in the United States but also called upon all countries in the world to join hands in bringing all responsible for the terrorist attacks to justice. Ultimately, the war turned out to be a humanity’s war against the perpetrators of terrorist attacks and their network worldwide. Even countries like Iran, Russia and China expressed solidarity with the United States.[ii] 

Initially, US president George W Bush anticipated that the mission in Afghanistan would be accomplished in a couple of years but ultimately US was stuck so badly that it turned out to be US history’s one of the longest and most devastating wars. Started merely targeting the Al Qaeda, the war finally came to be war against Afghanistan and its civilization from which it became difficult to come out with grace and had to find a face saving device to ward off humiliation in the eyes of the world. Four presidents—Bush, Barrack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden— had to be preoccupied in Afghanistan war and America’s huge precious resources in trillions of dollars were drained which otherwise could have been used for the bettering the battered economy.

Graveyard of Empires

Historically, Afghanistan has earned the reputation or notoriety as a graveyard of empires. Afghanistan historically was unconquerable country and one who enters with enmity is destined to be defeated.[iii] From Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan, from Babar to British, Russians and lately the Americans, external invaders have met with fierce resistance, a strong tribal culture of Afghanistan, and they were ultimately defeated. Invaders including British and Russians suffered humiliation at the hands of Afghans, which is attributed to the lack of their understanding of Afghan tribal culture, its geographic complexity and strong Afghan nationalism. Aware of this and also learning lesson from the Vietnam fiasco, the Bush administration had initially applied some diplomatic manoeuvrings and pressure tactics on Taliban through different channels including Pakistan to hand over bin Laden and his associates to the United States. The Taliban had also initially condemned the September 11 attacks and declared that those responsible for September 11 attacks must be brought to justice.[iv] However, the United States was not satisfied with it and wanted more pound of flesh from the Taliban. George W Bush, who had recently been elected to White House on his hawkish plank, was seeking to demonstrate tougher posture with Al Qaeda and Taliban to give the message to voters back home that America under Republicans is safe. President Bush wanted to accomplish his mission and get out from Afghanistan at the earliest stating the limited objective of Afghanistan mission as being ‘to disrupt al Qaeda’s use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime[v]’. Although the US action crippled the Al Qaeda’s ability to strike the United States again it took eleven years to kill bin Laden and the spectre of Taliban continued to rule the roost which prolonged the US presence in Afghanistan for two decades until August 2021.

Convergence of Interests

Bin Laden’s sanctuary in Afghanistan goes back to mid-1980s during the Soviet occupation as he landed with a charity mission to support Afghan refugees in Pakistan and later founded Al Qaeda with the objective of launching global jihad against ‘infidels’.[vi] He recruited, trained and encouraged Afghan and foreign mujahedeen to fight against Soviets. The United States had a little interest in Afghanistan until 1970s but suddenly jumped up after Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1989. It was the height of the Cold when two super powers—United States and Soviet Union— vied to enlarge their influence across the world and contain one another in places of vital strategic interest. Soviet presence in Afghanistan was considered a geopolitical threat to US interest in South Asia, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, while Pakistan considers Afghanistan as its backyard or sphere of influence and did not want military presence of its arch rival India’s ally Soviet Union next to its border. Soviet Union and India were Cold War era allies and India had recognized the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan while the rest of the world had condemned. The Al Qaeda took the invasion in Afghanistan as an aggression against the Islam. This is how triangular interests of US, Pakistan and Al Qaeda converged. Washington and Islamabad collaborated in Afghanistan while the Al Qaeda’s resistance against Soviet invasion gave an extra bonus to America. In course of action in Afghanistan, Pakistan and America came closer with bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and together they succeeded in evicting Soviet troops from Afghanistan. The years following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the world saw a number of events in the international arena that marked a far-reaching geopolitical shift.  After the disintegration of Soviet Union, the United Stated emerged as a sole super power with none to challenge Washington’s prowess. The United States lost its interest in Afghanistan and left Afghanistan creating power vacuum from which Taliban came in. The oil-rich Persian Gulf became more important for the United States than Afghanistan and thus focussed more on Iraq war making Saudi Arabia a base for military action against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq that turned bin Laden, a Saudi national, and the Al Qaeda against America. Al Qaeda took military action in the Middle East as an outright aggression and declared jihad against America. The terrorist attack in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001 was its aftereffect.

The United States entered into Afghanistan war in 2001 in vengeance purportedly to destroy the network of Al Qaeda and its Taliban ally and also to establish a stable democratic regime which would ensure that Afghanistan will not be a safe haven for terrorists in future. Since nation building was not an agenda in the beginning, Washington anticipated to complete its mission within a couple of years. But America got badly mired in a quagmire of protracted war in Afghanistan and became difficult to come out.

US targeted Taliban simply because it provided shelter to Osama bin Laden, who lived in a camp in Tora Bora mountainous area of Afghanistan. However, Taliban claim that America attacked them for the mistake committed by others.  In fact, Taliban was domestic Islamic extremist group and had no ambition beyond Afghan border nor had it any intention of antagonizing the United States. Taliban fought against United States only in Afghanistan that too because they were attacked. Al Qaeda and Taliban also did not have cosy relations as Taliban was not happy with Al Qaeda owing to its terrorist activities particularly targeting the United States. Taliban chief Mullah Omar once in a face to face meeting with bin Laden and also through messengers told Al Qaeda not to engage in terrorist activities in Afghanistan and also not to carry out activities harming the United States. However, bin Laden ignored the Taliban’s request and continued terrorist activities against the United States. Carter Malkasian writes in his book ‘The American War in Afghanistan A History’ that Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, foreign minister under Taliban government in 2001, said Taliban sympathized with bin Laden and the Arabs but questioned his attacks on other countries from Afghan soil.[vii] Taliban chief Mullah Omar often proposed to Pakistani officials and others to surrender bin Laden to a third country but he changed mind as other Taliban scholars and leaders were opposed saying surrendering the guest to enemies is against the Islamic and Pasthunwali culture.[viii]  

Strategic Blunders

Soviet Union was America’s principal geopolitical and ideological rival during the Cold War. Washington’s core interest outside the Western Hemisphere was Europe, South East Asia and the Middle East. America’s main concern in Europe was to check Moscow’s aggressive muscle flexing in Eastern Europe and not to allow it to cross the red line further towards Western Europe, while rapid spread of communism in South East Asia mainly in countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and China and North Korea was yet another America’s big geopolitical challenge.  US’ primary concern in the Middle East and Persian Gulf was due to oil and its strategic location. The core strategic goal of the United States worldwide was to contain Soviet Union and check the advancement of communism. The strategic significance that Afghanistan possessed during the Cold War, due to its proximity with the Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf and border with Soviet Union was the primary interest of both US and Soviet Union. Washington considered south-western frontier with predominantly Muslim dominated areas of Soviet Union as one key fault line that can be useful to penetrate into Soviet Russia, for which Afghanistan could be a great pivot.

When Moscow sent its troops and completely brought Afghanistan under its sphere of influence 1979, the United States suddenly came out of strategic slumber and together with Pakistan backed Afghan Mujahedeen warriors with arms and ammunitions to eject Soviet Union from Afghanistan. But after the disintegration of Soviet Union, this strategic worth of Afghanistan diminished and the US also lost its interest in Afghanistan. Washington then completely washed off its hands not only from Afghanistan but from South Asia as a whole which created a power vacuum in Afghanistan ultimately setting the stage for Taliban in Kabul. The dramatic rise of Taliban in religio-politics interrupted the power equilibrium and disrupted political stability, social cohesion and religious and cultural harmony not only in Afghanistan but in the region thereby creating a chaotic society which turned out to be a fertile ground for terrorism.

With the Taliban toppled in Kabul and pushed to hinterlands following the aerial bombings by US and NATO forces and ground assault from the Northern Alliance fighters, the United Nations hosted an international conference in Bonn of Germany in December 2001 to find a political settlement of Afghan crisis and work out a framework of future governance in Afghanistan. The Bonn Conference, participated in by major international powers including US, Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan and representatives of Northern Alliance which was composed of different minority ethnic groups and warlords chose Hamid Karzai as a future leader to head the post-Taliban interim administration of Afghanistan until the election was held and the elected government was formed. The Bonn Conference ignored the ethnic make-up and Afghan national sentiment as the Taliban were excluded in the Afghanistan’s political process and the interim government, which was viewed by the dominant Pashtun ethnic community to have orchestrated by foreigners and outsiders and was dubbed as yet another aggression to Afghanistan’s internal affairs. Pashtun ethnic group constitutes over 42 per cent of Afghanistan’s population and Pashtuns call themselves as the sons of soil while other ethnic groups as outsiders. The Northern Alliance is a ragtag coalition of different minority ethnic groups (Tajik 27%, Uzbek 9% and Hazaras 3%) and warlords, which did not represent the overall Afghan national sentiment. Afghanistan’s nationalism is Pashtun nationalism which Taliban represent.  Exclusion of Taliban in the Bonn Conference and Afghanistan’s future governance was a strategic blunder on the part of the United States and the international community.

Soon after September 11 terrorist attacks on Washington, Virginia and New York, the United States started pounding Kabul and other Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan with bombs and missiles. In fact, Taliban were not perpetrators of terrorist attacks in the US. The September 11 terrorist attacks were designed and executed by Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his followers hiding in Afghanistan, who were not Afghans but Arabs. The September 11 terrorist incidents had been caused mainly by the “broader events in the Middle East, such as the policies of the government of Saudi Arabia and the presence of the United States in the Arabian Peninsula”. [ix] Taliban were against the attacks in the US and Taliban chief Mullah Omar had time and again asked bin Laden not to use Afghan territory for terrorist activities against the US. However, the United States targeted the Taliban as the primary enemy and the US goal faltered.

Afghanistan is a country with complex geography and bitter ethnic divide. More than that is the geopolitics and its curse. Afghanistan is the massif of Hindukush and Himalayan mountain ranges with difficult geographic terrain. Afghanistan’s geopolitical pivot drew major powers like Russia and Britain in the past but both powers were defeated due to their lack of understanding of Afghanistan’s tribal sentiment and complex geography. Well cognizant of this fact, Americans wanted the least involvement in Afghanistan’s future political course and exit as early as possible.  However, it got so badly stuck there and could not come out of the quagmire as it had initially thought. In the first place, the US strategy failed to achieve its goal of flushing out Al Qaeda from Afghanistan. Although Taliban were pushed out of Kabul, the US had no clearly defined exit strategy. The US politicians and military strategists entered Afghanistan without thinking how and when they will leave Afghanistan. Coming to Obama administration in 2009, the US, contrary to its earlier stance, got bogged down in Afghanistan’s ‘nation-building’ project which not only bled America’s precious resources but further discredited the US presence in Afghanistan. The burgeoning friction with Afghanistan government dominated by warlords only gave benefit to the Taliban. At times, situation reached a point when Americans had to be confused as to who was friend and who was enemy in Afghanistan. The warlords who amassed money and revenue by ‘illicit means, such as drug trafficking and collecting bribes’ made corruption a defining feature of the new afghan government.[x] As a result, Taliban won greater sympathy of Afghans mainly Pashtuns as a better alternative to the US-backed Afghan government and attracted young Pashtuns to join the insurgency. The security forces Americans created and trained to defend Afghanistan was so inept and incompetent that matched nowhere to a relatively smaller size of Taliban force. Taliban were confident of their victory believing that both ‘God and time were on their side’ as they were fighting for liberation and for religion against ‘infidel invaders’. Taliban used to say ‘Americans have watch whereas Taliban have time’, which gave fundamentalists strength to sustain fight.[xi] But the US soldiers were fighting on foreign land against the battle-hardened and ideologically indoctrinated enemies that had lowered American soldiers’ morale.

Propaganda machine

The Bush administration right at the time of announcing war in Afghanistan in 2001 had promised to avoid Vietnam like disaster and planned for an early exit once its two core objectives—smashing Al Qaeda network and defeat Taliban—were met. However, the war was getting nowhere and public opinion in America too was slowly turning against the war. Despite the fact that some positive developments took place in some sectors, the rampant corruption, sense of insecurity, illicit drug trafficking and violence dwarfed the positive achievements. However, propaganda machine ran amok claiming everything was going goody downplaying all negative things. Finally, the US generals, security experts and even politicians realized that Afghanistan war was a waste of resources and a losing project and they sought a face-saving device to come out of Afghanistan seeking to focus on other strategically more important fronts. It was eventually realized that the entire strategy went fundamentally wrong right from the beginning as the dominant stakeholder and political force in Afghanistan was excluded in the political process and political stability was not possible without the engagement and involvement of Taliban. President Obama, although half-hearted, initiated attempts for political process with Taliban in 2010. But it didn’t make much headway as US kept on insisting that Taliban break ties with Al Qaeda and renounce violence, while Taliban demanded release of its key leaders. In response, US released five Taliban leaders from Guantanamo prison to initiate dialogue and political process but this process derailed as Hamid Karzai government scuttled the process.  However, Ashraf Ghani after being elected as Afghanistan president in 2014, promised to recognize Taliban as political force and offered to hold unconditional peace talks. But Taliban turned the tables stating that they would negotiate only with Americans upon complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan.[xii] Finally high level talks with Taliban were held in Qatar in 2018 in which both sides agreed a compromise that included withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan and Taliban breaking relations with Al Qaeda. Accordingly, a final deal was signed by both parties in February 2020 agreeing to end the long-running war.   

Soon after NATO troops withdral, Afghanistan once again went to the hands of Taliban as the elected Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani could no longer hold on power despite the creation of security forces including the Afghan National Army, police and intelligence agencies with the size of almost 300 thousand personnel. Taliban having less than 75,000 fighters, a fraction of what government security forces comprised, took over. President Ghani fled Afghanistan one gloomy afternoon even without informing his aides and security people. The President’s chief of staff knew his boss’s fleeing Afghanistan only after the helicopter he boarded took off.[xiii]  This marks the disgraceful end of two-decade long Afghanistan war setting a stage for Taliban to take charge of Kabul.

On the surface, the situation in Afghanistan appears to be stable but deep down in the heart of Afghan nation, complex problems still abound. The international community has not recognized the Taliban regime while their past atrocities and hobnobbing with the terrorist groups continue to haunt. Afghanistan is politically ungovernable, financially in a mess, and socially chaotic. A new round of conflict is likely to flare up among different ethnic groups if the ethnic divide was not addressed in the governance from which external powers may try to extract geopolitical advantage. One key lesson learnt from Afghanistan is that solution imposed from outside is always short-lived. The home-made solution involving all stakeholders alone brings about lasting peace, stability and development. Instead of seeking Afghanistan’s solution in Washington, London, Beijing, Moscow, Islamabad, New Delhi and Brussels, it has to found in the soil of Afghanistan from among the Afghans themselves.

 Endnotes:

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[i] Richard Halloran, Asia 2002 Yearbook, Far Eastern Economic Review

[ii] Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers, A Secret History of the War, Simon  and Shuster

[iii] Barnett R. Rubin, Afghanistan: What Everybody Needs To Know

[iv] Carter Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan A History, Oxford University

[v] Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers, A Secret History of the War, Simon  and Shuster

[vi] IBID

[vii] Carter Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan A History, Oxford University

[viii] IBID

[ix] Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers, A Secret History of the War, Simon  and Shuster

[x] IBID, page 123

[xi] Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau, ‘ YOU Have The Watches, WE HAVE THE TIME’ Newsweek, October 10, 2011

[xii] Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers, A Secret History of the War, Simon  and Shuster

[xiii] Brian Brivati, Losing Afghanistan: the Fall of Kabul and the End of Western Intervention