Lessons from U.S. Diplomacy & Military Intervention in Afghanistan

Photo by Al Jazeera English is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Rare is the policy move that both the former and current president can agree on, but ending “forever wars” seems to be one such unicorn. In a recent speech, President Joe Biden stated that with Osama bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda diminished, “It’s time to end the forever war” in Afghanistan.  Likewise, President Donald Trump tweeted in 2019 that he “was elected on getting out of these ridiculous endless wars.” Public opinion stands firmly behind them; two-thirds of American adults support withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Still, liberalism is far from taking root in Afghanistan. While America withdraws its military ground forces, it is bound to leave behind a diplomatic and foreign aid presence. With careful calibration and peripheral military support to the Afghan government,  the chance to seed some form of sustainable non-radicalism in Afghanistan may not have completely slipped by. 

Many Americans may remember President Barack Obama’s 2011 “troop surges,” where the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan peaked at 98,000. This itself was a dramatic increase from when President Obama took office, where the U.S. presence in Afghanistan was 32,000 strong. Before the Biden administration’s withdrawal, only a small counterinsurgency force of around 2,500-3,500 troops remained. Yet the Taliban are stronger than ever. They are possibly even larger than they were in 2018, when the Taliban had between 60,000-80,000 members. Insurgents have already bombed a girl’s school in a historically persecuted minority area, which killed at least 90 people; the Taliban deny responsibility for the attack.  As of publication, the Taliban control 42 percent of Afghanistan's districts compared to the government's 31 percent, a rapid advance that has taken analysts by surprise. 

With the waxing of Taliban power and without the presence of U.S.-NATO forces, the long-term stability of the Afghan state is in dire straits. However, with the terrorist threat to countries outside of the region remaining low, such developments are unlikely to compel foreign interests to stay involved. In the notorious “Graveyard of Empires,” the longest war in American history has come to its end. 

Fighting the Taliban was always going to be more difficult than fighting al-Qaeda. The Durand Line, which demarcates the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, was drawn by a colonial administrator of British India and cuts through the Pashtun homeland. As a result, members of the tribe consider it a soft border and many continue to maintain their ethnic cross-border connections. When U.S. forces invaded in 2001, al-Qaeda leaders fled abroad, where they were able to be precisely targeted and killed. However, the Pashtun Taliban disappeared into the porous areas of “Pashtunistan,” where they surfaced to fight as they pleased, using erratic fighting techniques such as suicide car bombs and IEDs. 

The Taliban knew that it had the advantage of time on its side; while they hid in the aftermath of the 2001 invasion, the U.S. installed a fragile democracy. But U.S. forces would eventually have to leave, after which the Taliban would have free reign to restart their slaughter. The most the U.S.-NATO presence could ever accomplish was to buy time to train Afghan forces to effectively fight the Taliban on their own. However, the Afghan National Army struggles with corruption and recruitment and is currently operating at 50-70 percent of its official maximum capacity.

Unlike al-Qaeda, the Taliban have no hegemonic design in the greater region; they also desperately seek international recognition as a legitimate authority over the Afghan state. So as the al-Qaeda core organization has been greatly diminished as a result of U.S. airstrikes, the Taliban are ascendant. Having effectively run out the clock on the Western powers, it is likely that the Taliban will once again march on Kabul.

Such an outcome was hardly unforeseen. Architects of U.S. policy in Afghanistan in the early 2000s spent their efforts attempting to implement a system of majoritarian democratic rule in a premodern society heavily split among ethnic and regional divides. However, a deeply embedded tribal culture hindered the development of effective formal institutions and governance. Promoting democracy and liberalism is a noble goal, but the difficulties of nation-building in such a rugged terrain distracted from the original goal of counterterrorism and lengthened the Afghanistan entanglement. After overthrowing the Taliban, the U.S.-NATO coalition was correct to stay and ensure the country avoided a power vacuum. Yet, the persistence of the Taliban insurgency and the extent to which they remain powerful are a testament to the fact that initial U.S. policymakers deeply misunderstood the staying power of democracy in Afghanistan. Perhaps if these early architects had chosen a more measured, targeted implementation, then the United States would have more retainable gains to show for twenty years of intervention in Afghanistan. 

One path to such an implementation can be found in a report published in 2007 by the RAND Corporation entitled “Building Moderate Muslim Networks.” This report highlighted the advantage radical Islamists had in building strong networks across like-minded people. Meanwhile, non-radical factions of Muslims in countries like Afghanistan lacked the capacity to build such networks. The report suggested that the United States could act as a catalyst for strengthening these moderate Muslim networks. And admittedly, the United States Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have poured billions of dollars of aid to programs that promote good governance and civil society in Afghanistan. Yet the report contended that the most successful programs were not ones directly administered by U.S. government agencies, but rather ones with reform agendas that originated locally or from the Muslim world, even though their operations were still funded from the U.S. government. It is the spirit of this hands-off approach that should be modeled in any future investments in Afghanistan. It is one where reinforcements of existing non-radical institutions and networks strengthen liberalism—perhaps not all the way to full democracy, but certainly away from the path of the Taliban. 

Native societal elements could also be tapped into. Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, was suppressed under Taliban rule despite its deep roots in Afghanistan. The indigenous elements of Sufism, which has been present in Afghanistan for more than 1,300 years, greatly predates the introduction of the Taliban’s Wahabbi-influenced Deobandi fundamentalism. Sufi brotherhoods played a role in the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union’s invasion. Sufi followers even include some members of the Taliban. The presence of the Sufis as a credible arbiter at the grassroots level could enhance the process of any peace talks between the Taliban and the government. However, due to strong anti-Western sentiment and because it is at the grassroots level, shoring up the support of such local groups should be discreet and hidden. 

After decades of war, the Afghan people are battered and are likely to simply surrender to the Taliban forces without resistance. We will likely never see an Afghanistan without the Taliban presence, which has become interwoven into its society. And although American troops will not be engaging in combat anymore, much work remains. An easy first step would be to expeditiously process visas for the Afghans who served as interpreters for U.S. military and civilian operations and whose families are at mortal risk by their association with the United States. The U.S. military is also seeking to project power through its Middle Eastern bases and aircraft carriers, as well as potentially host a base in a Central Asian country willing to face the ire of a watchful China and Russia. Despite the Taliban surge, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul appears to be determined to remain operational and be able to administer foreign aid.

In a best case scenario, assuming such deterrence combined with a strong showing by the Afghan government can prevent a complete takeover by the Taliban, the Biden administration can learn from the lessons of an ineffectual war in Afghanistan and use diplomatic and humanitarian channels to bolster extant, non-radical elements in Afghanistan. However, even in the case that a centrally functioning government falls in a civil war, there are still forms of innovative nonmilitary assistance programs that the U.S. can fund to help the Afghans protect the gains they have made. In doing so, the United States can both honor the sacrifices of war and build a more secure future for the Afghan people.