The Curtain Falls on Our Misadventure in Afghanistan
How could the world’s most powerful nation lose a war to one that is a tiny fraction of its size both economically and militarily? The answer seems to be by making one mistake after another. While it’s understandable that our nation wanted to seek retribution for the heinous 9/11 attacks carried out by Al Qaeda, the idea of establishing a western style democracy by fiat in a country whose political structure was still locked in the thirteenth century was sheer hubris. Perhaps it was the lure of establishing a friendly ally on Russia’s door-step that made the idea irresistible. Thus, our twenty-year misadventure in Afghanistan was doomed from its inception. It was as if we had learned nothing from our earlier experience in Vietnam.
Following the 9/11 attacks the U.S. Congress in a short resolution declared a “War on Terror.” This was our first mistake born out of a knee-jerk reaction to a tragic event. Was it motivated by a sense of righteous indignation or was it simply to cover over the fact that a month before the Bush administration’s National Security Council had received and ignored an intelligence report that such an event might be forthcoming? In any event, the action was taken so quickly that no one had bothered to define exactly what we were trying to accomplish. Was it the Bush administration’s intention to go to war in every corner of the world where terrorism was employed or simply to hunt down those responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Regardless of what Congress had in mind, that resolution quickly became the basis for George W. Bush and succeeding U.S. presidents to send U.S. military personnel to Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and other conflicts around the world, none of which have had a happy ending.
Our involvement in Afghanistan predated the 9/11 attacks. It began in the late 1980s when the U.S. began supplying Afghans with “Stinger” (hand-held anti-aircraft) missiles to help them fend off efforts by Soviet forces that were trying to maintain control of their country. The Soviet’s own misadventure into Afghanistan not only caused it to incur heavy losses in personnel and equipment, but left Afghanistan in rubble and political disarray, a void which was soon filled by the Taliban, a Fundamentalist Muslim group that offered a home to other militant Muslim groups, including Al Qaeda.
Following 9/11, the Bush administration made a demand that the Taliban turn over Osama bin Laden. At the time, the Taliban had no conflict with the U.S. which had helped the Afghans expel the Soviets. They therefore offered to enter into a peace agreement with the U.S. The Bush administration, however, rejected that offer as it was not inclined to trust the Taliban to take retribution on Al Qaeda which shared the Taliban’s militant Muslim beliefs. Thus began our “forever war” in Afghanistan.
Our invasion of Afghanistan did not begin with a mighty invasion like President George H.W. Bush had mounted in the Gulf War to punish Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait. Rather, we sent teams of CIA agents, armed with suitcases filled with money, to recruit various Afghan warlords to take up arms (supplied by the U.S.) against the Taliban. Thus, from its very outset the mission to eradicate Al Qaeda had morphed into an endeavor to end the Taliban’s control of Afghanistan. In fact, little effort was even made to capture Osama bin Laden who was allowed to escape into neighboring Pakistan. After the Taliban had been routed, the U.S. military was sent in to secure the country and efforts to establish a democratic government began.
Imposing a democratic government on Afghanistan was always a pipe dream. This was an essentially feudal country with a low rate of literacy which today only stands at 55% for men and 30% for women. It was much lower in 2002 when the U.S. began its efforts to establish a democratic government. Understandably, those who achieved office were the very war lords who, with the assistance of the U.S. government, had driven the Taliban out of the towns and cities and back into the hills. Did we really expect this group of tribal leaders who had been bribed into waging war against their fellow countrymen would be suitable leaders for a new democratic government? They were a rather corrupt bunch who were delighted to receive the monies which we showered on them for the purpose of building a western-style democracy with roads, hospitals, schools and an organized military which we equipped with modern weaponry.
Not unsurprisingly the newly created Afghan government never gained popular support and elections suffered from extremely low voter turnout. With the U.S. pouring money into the country, the “elected” officials helped themselves to as much as they could. Accustomed to a political system that left their power relatively unchecked, they saw no reason to start exercising self-restraint. All they had to do was to tell their U.S. overseers what they wanted to hear and there was no one who would contradict their assertions or stand in their way.
It didn’t take long for Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush’s Secretary of Defense, to realize that our situation in Afghanistan was untenable. The Bush administration, not being inclined to admit that its efforts in Afghanistan were unlikely to result in the capture of Osama bin Laden, the eradication of Al Qaeda or the establishment of a viable democracy, decided to change the focus of public attention to Iraq where it would flex its military strength by deposing Saddam Hussein. As it turned out the “freedom-loving Iraqis” didn’t greet our troops as “liberators” and that misadventure kept the U.S. military and the attention of the American public fully occupied for the remainder of the decade.
While our attention was fully focused on Iraq, the Taliban began to reassert itself in Afghanistan. It was a classic example of “While the cat’s away, the mice will play.” It began with a campaign of asymmetric warfare attacking U.S. and Afghan forces with roadside explosives (or IED’s) and sneak attacks followed by quick retreats into the neighboring hills or into safe havens maintained for it by neighboring Pakistan. By the end of the Bush administration, the war in Iraq had quieted and President Obama, wanting to have no association with that misadventure, turned his attention back to the smoldering conflict in Afghanistan.
Because General Petraeus’ troop surge in Iraq had been so successful, President Obama was convinced by his military advisers to duplicate it in Afghanistan. The results were essentially the same. This surge placed 110,000 U.S. and allied military personnel in Afghanistan. The Taliban, which had grown more open in its opposition to U.S. and U.S.-trained Afghan military personnel, responded by retreating back into its hiding places and resuming its asymmetric warfare tactics. The surge in U.S. forces, however, enabled the Taliban to feed upon a much larger choice of targets of opportunity.
As the number of U.S. casualties rose, the U.S. poured even more money into the Afghan government so it could expand its military force and build its infrastructure. The idea of establishing a democratic government in Afghanistan, however, was always a fantasy as the Afghan leaders remained corrupt and did little to win the support of the Afghan people. The corruption not only existed within the higher levels of the government, but also was repeated down the chain of command. Afghan military personnel soon learned that they could raise their own standards of living by assuming multiple identities. Thus, a sizable number of members of the Afghan armed forces were actually fictitious persons claiming paychecks supplied by the U.S. government. This attitude of “take for yourself everything you can get” was indicative of the dearth of nationalistic spirit of the Afghan people and their low level of confidence in their new government. By way of contrast, the Taliban was a far more cohesive group determined to regain its prior control over the country.
President Trump, who advocated an “America First” policy, was never enamored with having U.S. armed forces stationed in war zones all around the world as he felt that every death of a U.S. military personnel was an adverse reflection upon his presidency. It’s not clear whether President Trump’s decision to remove U.S. military personnel from Afghanistan was based upon his general aversion to participating in foreign conflicts or whether he rightly concluded that having U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan would not alter the ultimate outcome. While his decision to pull out of Afghanistan was correct, the manner in which he proceeded was not.
An evacuation from a military conflict in which your enemy remains a viable force requires that you have someone protecting you as you withdraw as assurances of a safe-withdrawal from an enemy that you have been fighting for 20 years provide little comfort. President Trump, however, chose to announce that the U.S. was withdrawing before negotiations in Doha with the Taliban had even begun. This essentially tied the hands of Secretary of State Pompeo in trying to negotiate a favorable settlement agreement. To make matters worse, Trump excluded the Afghan government from those negotiations. Without the Afghans’ participation, the U.S. could not be assured that the Afghan army would protect the withdrawal of U.S. personnel.
Trump undoubtedly thought that the Afghan government’s participation in those talks would be an impediment to reaching an agreement with the Taliban and he was determined to finalize the terms of an agreement before he left office. That would fulfill his pledge to extricate our nation from foreign involvements. To avoid the risk that the withdrawal would become a disaster, he simply chose a withdrawal date after he had left office. Thus, if the withdrawal proved calamitous, he could simply blame his successor for mishandling it.
President Biden chose not to disclaim the Doha agreement as he had long held the view that prolonging the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan would not change its ultimate outcome and would only cost additional U.S. lives and resources. By then the U.S. had already incurred the deaths of more than 6,000 U.S. soldiers and contractors, in addition to another 26,600 wounded, and spent more than $1 trillion in supporting the Afghan government. President Biden, however, did choose to delay the final withdrawal date from May 1st to August 31st to enable the withdrawal to be planned and effected in an orderly manner. Nevertheless, he made three mistakes: (1) he did not immediately begin processing special visa applications of Afghan personnel who had assisted our efforts in Afghanistan; (2) he chose not to commence the withdrawal immediately; and (3) he made the false assumption that the U.S. could rely on the Afghan military to protect its withdrawing personnel.
Biden’s decision not to assign a high priority to processing special visa petitions is somewhat understandable in that he had received assurances that the Afghan army could maintain control of the country for up to two years. More importantly, there remained fierce opposition in our country against accepting refugees from a Muslim country, even refugees who had demonstrated their loyalty to the U.S. by assisting its military and State Department personnel. Overcoming that resistance would require a concerted public relations campaign which could have jeopardized the withdrawal of U.S. personnel.
Biden explained his reasoning for delaying the start of the evacuation process in his first public statement on the subject. He stated that the Afghan government had requested the delay so as not to panic its citizens. In addition, he had received a number of requests from those slated to withdraw that the timetable for their withdrawal be pushed back. While the President did not say it, also on his mind was the possibility of attacks during the evacuation process which historically is a period of great vulnerability. Napoleon is said to have lost more of his forces while retreating from Russia than during his invasion of that country. The longer the period of withdrawal, the greater the opportunity for hostile attacks, not only by the Taliban but also by other extremist groups in Afghanistan. On the other hand, a delay of the evacuation process would require that it be performed both quickly and flawlessly, leaving less chance for overcoming unforeseen obstacles. This was particularly problematic since Biden had unilaterally delayed the final withdrawal date which action could have provided the Taliban with an excuse to disrupt the process. Thus, the decision to delay and compress the evacuation process was one of balancing the conflicting risks.
Biden’s conclusion that the U.S. could rely on the Afghan army to provide cover for the evacuation, while understandable, was more dubious. The Afghan army had been reported to have 300,000 servicemen which was estimated to be ample to secure the government’s control of a large portion of the country for up to two years. As we have learned, that figure was exaggerated as many members of the Afghan army were fictitious persons. This was essentially a failure of intelligence as the personnel stationed in Afghanistan should have been aware that the size of the Afghan army was inflated. A far more important intelligence failure was that no one seemed to realize that members of the Afghan army had been making their own deals with the local Taliban militias while the U.S. was excluding their leaders from Secretary Pompeo’s negotiations with Taliban. This is the only plausible explanation for why the Taliban was able to seize control over the entire country in a mere nine days.
The New York Times reported that by July the U.S. intelligence agencies were beginning to paint an increasingly grim picture of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, warning of a rapid collapse of the Afghan military. While these reports proved accurate, they were not timely as key decisions had been made earlier. The result was that the Biden administration was caught off guard by the speed of the Taliban’s takeover of the country including its capital, Kabul. Within hours of the fall of Kabul, thousands of Afghans converged upon the Kabul airport seeking refuge and flights out of the country.
In response, the Biden administration greatly accelerated its efforts, deploying several thousand additional service personnel to Afghanistan to bring order to a chaotic situation. That included clearing the crowds from the airstrips at the airport so that flight operations could be conducted. The administration also made arrangements for dozens of U.S. military transports to fly there to pick up those seeking to leave. In addition, it also sought and received the assistance of a dozen U.S. airlines to participate in the evacuation. Part of the problem was simply contacting U.S. personnel, as well as those Afghans who had been assisting the U.S. efforts, to make arrangements to get them to the Kabul airport. The administration set up special phone banks and communications centers to make sure every American and allied family in Afghanistan was contacted. It also sought and received some help from the Taliban to enable those in outlying areas to proceed to the Kabul airport.
As of August 26th over 104,000 individuals (including 5,000 Americans) had been safely evacuated with 21,600 in a single 24-hour period. While the rate of departures is likely to slow in the final days of the evacuation as support personnel are withdrawn, it appears that over 150,000 people (including three babies born on U.S. air transport planes) will have been flown to safety by the August 31st deadline. Prior to August 26th no U.S. personnel had died in the process although a few Afghans had died in the first few days of the evacuation while trying to cling to departing aircraft as they took off. However, on the 26th a terrorist attack (not perpetrated by the Taliban) took place at the Kabul airport killing 13 U.S. military personnel and wounding 15 others. Deaths and injuries among Afghans were at least 10 times those numbers.
While President Biden set August 31st as the final withdrawal date, there is reason to believe that the evacuation process will continue thereafter. The Afghan economy is largely dependent upon foreign aid and trade from western nations and without that support the country’s economy will quickly grind to a halt. The Taliban seems to realize this and is making gestures that its new regime will differ significantly from its previous one. It has requested that U.S. State Department personnel remain in the country and stated that those who wish to leave the country may do so, a promise that is in conflict with its having closed most of the country’s border crossings. The Taliban also has to deal with a number of antagonistic extremist groups, like ISIS-K which has claimed responsibility for the airport bombing. It is also likely to need help in suppressing their activities. For these reasons, there is some basis for optimism that there will continue to be a level of cooperation between the U.S. and the Taliban.
Many have characterized the Afghanistan evacuation as a “disaster”, however, it is only a disaster in the sense that, with better information, it might have been conducted more efficiently and completely. It was always inevitable that there would be some U.S. personnel and scores of Afghans and their respective families who would be left in Afghanistan after the August 31st deadline. In fact, some Americans stationed in Afghanistan have elected not to return to the U.S. Compared to our evacuation from Vietnam which is an often-cited metric, this evacuation is shaping up to be a relative success as 155 evacuees died in the Vietnam evacuation when their C-5 Galaxy crashed after leaving the Saigon Airport. In addition, it took years for those left behind in Vietnam to eventually leave.
While it is always comforting to be able to assign blame to others for our failures, it is more important to draw lessons from them as we learn little from our successes and much more from our failures. What then are the lessons from America’s misadventure in Afghanistan? My list includes the following:
· Wars are easy to start and not so easy to end with the result that Congress should not cede its power to declare war to the Executive Branch.
· Military might is a very blunt instrument for solving foreign policy issues and frequently only exacerbates the problem. Our over-reliance upon military action is likely a by-product of our pouring too much of our nation’s resources into our military.
· There is little that can be achieved by intervening in a civil war in another country. While we may be able to temporarily impose our will upon other nations, their internal conflicts must ultimately be resolved by their own citizens.
· While inviting our allies to join us in our foreign adventures may limit our exposure in those situations, it places a responsibility on us to see that our allies are brought in on our decision-making process and given an opportunity to extricate themselves before we abandon our efforts.
Because this misadventure duplicates many of the same mistakes that were made in Vietnam there is little reason to conclude that they will not again be repeated.