What can I say about the war in Afghanistan that has not already been said? This is a war that started when I was only three years old, and everything I will say in this post has likely already been said in those past 20 years. Kandahar has seemingly fallen to the Taliban, and the writing is on the wall: America’s long war in Afghanistan is finally coming to an end.
Though Trump got the ball rolling, Biden made sure to continue in his predecessor’s footsteps. He could have changed course when he first came into office, but once it was clear that Biden was set on pulling out, the Taliban began its current offensive three months ago in May. The U.S. media have prophesized that this may be the beginning of a civil war, but this is a terrible framing of the current fighting. The U.S. invasion was an intervention on the side of the Northern Alliance, a group of former-Mujahideen who had managed to hold out against the Taliban. That civil war continued, but with U.S. involvement. Neither Trump, nor Biden, started some sort of new civil war.
This video from July 20th perfectly encapsulates the current situation for the Afghan government.
As rockets fall around him, Ashraf Ghani, the President of Afghanistan, remains calm. However, those around him are visibly tense and afraid. One man even gets up, unsure of what to do. During all of this, Ghani does not even shrug when the first rocket lands. He may know his fate, but he shows strength regardless, while the morale of those around him plummets.
The Taliban have captured city after city in the last week and are on their way to Kabul. They, like everyone else, know that the war is over. The Russians and Chinese are bracing for a complete Taliban victory, making geopolitical strides in Central Asia. Tensions are mounting on the border with Iran, as soldiers and civilians alike flee the country. The Pakistani military and intelligence services are also likely awaiting their pyrrhic victory.
Directly supporting the Taliban in the 1990s, Pakistan wished to gain a strong foothold in Central Asia, while simultaneously thwarting India’s efforts of economic and political integration. The Taliban’s leadership had formed in refugee camps in Pakistan along the Afghan border, using them as springboards to eventually gain power. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the U.S. demanded that Pakistan cut its ties with the Taliban, but this has been a well-known farce for some time. The Pakistani Intelligence apparatus, the ISI, held on to its contacts within the Taliban, but at great cost. The war quickly spilled over the border, leading to severe domestic and international consequences.
But where did it all go wrong? Was the war unwinnable from the start? Afghanistan is, after all, known as the “graveyard of empires,” which has been repeated ad nauseam since before the war even began. I do not truly believe that the war was inherently unwinnable, much like I do not believe that the Iraq war was inherently unwinnable. The U.S. theoretically could have made real positive changes in both countries and prevented violent insurgencies from forming. However, the overall economic and human cost of this reality would have prevented the wars from occurring in the first place. The U.S. was never willing to do more than barely achieving its short-term strategic goals, which were toppling the al-Qaida-supporting Taliban government in Afghanistan and dismantling Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime in Iraq. With arrogance and utter hubris, the Bush administration truly believed that it could invade two countries “on the cheap,” as Dick Cheney infamously said. Perhaps coming off the high of a U.S. global hegemony in a post-Soviet world, America waged two losing wars in the name of freedom and democracy.
Though the Bush administration saw success in the first five years of the war, the Taliban began to resurge in 2006. By the mid-2010s they had retaken solid chunks of the countryside, and were slaughtering government soldiers in record numbers. Using Pakistan as a safe haven and logistical hub, the Taliban slowly bled the the Afghan government of men and material. Obama’s troop surge failed, and it was clear in 2014 that things were not going well. That same year, ISIS captured a third of Iraqi territory in a massive Summer offensive, forcing the U.S. to recommit troops. Successive generals tried and failed to subdue to the insurgency, but it rendered pointless given Pakistan’s clandestine support for the Taliban.
I remember it being said many times that the war in Afghanistan “had no end in sight,” but I somewhat reject this. The end was always in sight. The generals growing fat in Washington have consistently lied to the public, saying that the war was going well and, importantly, was winnable, given enough time. This was proven by the Washington Post in 2019. Three consecutive administrations lied about the progress and achievements of the war, to a public that continued to grow weary of this foreign entanglement. Many of the American soldiers who fought in Afghanistan have come to the same conclusion as well.
Though the Soviet-backed government managed to hold out for a few years after the withdrawal of the Red Army, the Mujahideen eventually managed to topple it in 1992. It seems unlikely the current government will even last that long. The main difference between these two scenarios is the fact that the Mujahideen were never really united in their struggle against the Soviet-backed government. In comparison, the Taliban is a relatively centralized military force with a combat-hardened leadership. The Mujahideen were constantly fighting each other, making it difficult to coordinate a country-wide final offensive. In contrast, the Taliban’s leadership have clearly shown that they are fully capable of launching an offensive that stretches across all of Afghanistan. Some are saying that the government will not even last 90 days.
It saddens me to think that so many Afghans, Iraqis, and young Americans died due to an administration’s foolishness and bad intentions. The Taliban are rotten, but unfortunately, many in the Afghan government are also rotten. It is unclear how the situation will fully play out, but one thing is for certain: The Afghan government’s days are numbered.
Sources:
https://www.dw.com/en/afghanistan-taliban-offensive-iran/a-58846254
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/