The Afghan Disaster: A Self-Inflicted Defeat

“President Biden told the world on Monday, August 16, that he doesn’t regret his decision to withdraw rapidly from Afghanistan, or even the chaotic, incompetent way the withdrawal has been executed. He is determined in retreat, defiant in surrender, and confident in the rightness of consigning the country to jihadist rule.” So did a Wall Street Journal editorial of August 16, 2021 aptly sum up the situation.

With the Taliban’s victorious entry into Kabul in mid-August 2021, the American military intervention in Afghanistan has come full circle. Undertaken to destroy Al Qaeda following its deadly 9/11 attack on American soil, and to remove Afghanistan as a base for global terrorism, it has now, 20 years later, ended up where it began. Instead of building on the significant progress achieved, it is witnessing the triumphant return of those terrorists in a stronger position than ever. President Biden’s assertion that the U.S. “mission” had been accomplished is exposed as the boldface lie it is by the glaring reality of the shameful rout.

Even the most naïve are becoming aware that the U.S. is now in a hostage situation. The thousands of Americans and other Westerners trapped in Taliban-controlled territory, without easy means of extrication, are now pawns of the Taliban. And this does not include the many thousands of Afghans who, having committed to a future with the United States, are now being cruelly discarded.

Washington itself has become hostage to the Taliban and will shortly have a cruel choice to make: The U.S. will either have to accede to Taliban demands for recognition and aid, and disregard its brutal mass violations of human rights, or we will have to resort to force. And one should not confuse the Taliban’s entry into various cities, including the capital Kabul, with the governing of the country and stabilization of the situation. The terrorist movement is unlikely to pacify the country, and fighting will in all likelihood continue. Continued armed resistance to the Taliban has already begun in the northeast of the country around the Panjshir valley, home, earlier, to the Northern Alliance, led then by legendary commander Ahmed Shah Massoud.

It is also not so clear that Biden will actually be able to carry through with his determination to leave no matter what. The mounting tension around Kabul’s airport over the extraction of Americans and allies as well as Afghans who had worked with the U.S. could easily lead to renewed conflict. The recent bombing near Kabul airport is but a foretaste of things to come.

The World Is Watching

The consequences of this American betrayal after 20 years of effort are already beginning to surface. It is not only the gloating of the various terrorist organizations but also the widespread perception that the American defeat in Afghanistan is symptomatic of a much wider American societal breakdown and failing will. Those perceptions by China, Russia, Iran, and other enemies or even friends of the United States were already evident prior to the Afghan fiasco. Putin’s aggressive actions in the Crimea, Ukraine, Georgia, and elsewhere or China’s expansive moves in the South China Sea and elsewhere, Erdogan’s Ottoman-like ambitions and foreign adventures and threats, his hosting and support for Hamas and other terrorists – all these provide clear and abundant evidence.

This latest demonstration of large-scale failure – with billions worth of U.S. military weapons abandoned to enemy hands – is bound to translate into a dangerous increase in the threat environment. Some of that is already coming: China has publicly stated that Washington’s behavior in Afghanistan is likely to be the same with regard to the defense of Taiwan.[1] Terrorist movements in the Middle East have congratulated the Taliban and said that Israel can no longer count on the United States. Various Islamic extremist movements are also taking heart. ISIS, Al Qaeda, and others are looking forward to a major revival of fortunes. America’s enemies could not have planned it better had they been the ones who decided on Washington’s timing: the U.S. administration actually had announced that it wanted to be out of Afghanistan by the anniversary of 9/11!

How Did It Happen?

The American defeat did not have to be. There was no need to withdraw U.S. forces. Biden’s top advisers had strongly advised against it. The President brushed those aside, determined as he was to “get out” – and to do so by a fixed, unmovable date announced publicly in April – no matter what.

To see the magnitude of this self-inflicted defeat one need only contemplate the huge asymmetry: On one side a superpower and other major powers with incredible means and capabilities, and on the other side, a band of ruthless terrorists with, until just a short time ago, very limited means.

How did this catastrophic situation come about? What is, or should be, clear is that we are not facing a genuine “victory” by the Taliban but a failure of will by the United States. Washington, having tired of Afghanistan, has simply abandoned it. 

The disaster we are now witnessing is the direct result of an idée fixe – an obsession implemented without planning or anticipation of possible results – with willful disregard of multiple warnings that something like what happened might occur.

The fuller explanation, however, requires an examination of both proximate, or short-term, factors and longer-term, more distant, elements.

Before the Collapse

The events leading to the August 2021 collapse go back to the past couple of years. In reviewing those, some context is in order.

It is often overlooked that, over the years, the United States had achieved a great deal in Afghanistan in many areas. It was able to build a government on a more democratic model (there were six consecutive elections since 2001). Though both the government and the elections were imperfect, they were a distinct improvement over what had existed earlier. Strides were made in providing better access to education for a far greater number of people. Women began to attain positions in many areas of society, whether in journalism, government (there was until now a woman governor) or other fields. There were improvements in the economy as well. In all of these, there was marked amelioration, uneven to be sure, but there. The present author noticed very visible differences during his trips to the country between 2000 and 2007 alone.

Corruption and continued drug production and trafficking persisted, despite attempts to deal with them. It is interesting that, with the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, charges of venality and corruption – not just within the Afghan government but in society as a whole – have resurfaced with a vengeance. Not much is being said about the Taliban’s sources of income or its heavy reliance on drug production and trafficking. Qatar has also been a major financial backer. Moreover, corruption, it should be noted, has rarely been the monopoly of any one group or country. It is alive and well throughout Central and South Asia, and exists even in the United States and the Western world in general. Corruption, while one of many factors in the equation, is not what produced the current disaster.

Deadly Deadlines

The underlying, more immediate, sources of the collapse lie in the attitude emanating from highest levels of the United States government. Four presidents were involved with the fighting in Afghanistan. The last three, starting with Obama, expressed a strong desire to get out of Afghanistan. They not only made their wishes publicly known but actually gave deadlines by which they wanted American troops out. These deadlines were modified and pushed back but, until Biden, not actually carried out.

So, for some 12 years prior to today’s events, the Afghans were already being informed that they would be abandoned. Hearing American presidents announce deadlines for a complete troop withdrawal could not fail to make a deep mark on both Kabul and its Taliban enemies. To the legitimate Afghan government, such talk was damaging to morale, while to the Taliban, it was a source of encouragement. This writer was told on a number of occasions by high-level Pakistanis and others in the region that such indications from Washington were a signal to the terrorists to increase their attacks on American and Allied forces and inflict more casualties so as to prod a more rapid withdrawal.

U.S. weariness with the Afghan war by 2019 led it to begin bypassing the Afghan government to negotiate directly with the Taliban with a view to extricating itself. Washington was thereby strengthening the Taliban’s position while further contributing to Kabul’s demoralization. It was helping to confirm the Taliban’s longstanding assertion that the Kabul government was merely an illegitimate puppet.

This American negotiating approach led to the Trump administration’s signing of the Doha Agreement on February 29, 2020. In essence, that agreement was a pledge of total U.S. troop withdrawal in 14 months in exchange for Taliban promises not to allow the “use of Afghan soil by any group or individual against the security of the United States and its allies.” The Taliban was also required to undertake intra-Afghan talks for peace. In addition, the U.S. acceded to the Taliban’s demand for the release of 5,000 prisoners held by the Afghan government. Washington then pressured Kabul to release those 5,000, who promptly rejoined the fight. While the U.S. pledge of withdrawal was conditioned on the Taliban’s keeping its “promises,” U.S. complicity in demoralizing Kabul and contributing to its delegitimization was a reality. On March 1, the day after the signing of the Doha Agreement, the front page of the pro-Taliban Pakistani paper Rosnama Ummat (Urdu) read: “Congratulations to the world of Islam on American defeat.”[2]

This was followed, just a year later, by President Biden’s announcement of April 2021 declaring that all American forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the 20^th anniversary of 9/11.[3] Had America’s enemies picked the date for the America’s defeat, they could not have picked a better symbol than the terrorist attack on U.S. soil to graphically symbolize the magnitude of this self-generated defeat.

The pullout of American forces proceeded quickly soon thereafter. The result is aptly and succinctly summed up by Rory Stewart, a former British Minister with extensive experience in Afghanistan:

The Afghan forces who had continued to fight very hard through April were suddenly betrayed and deprived of U.S. air support and the U.S. contractors necessary to operate their own helicopters. This loss of capability and, above all, of morale provoked a total collapse of the Afghan military. Within days, the country was in the hands of the Taliban. America’s allies, who were hardly consulted, were humiliated. And millions of Afghans lost their opportunities, their future, their country, and their human rights, overnight.[4]

The Deeper Roots of Failure I: Unwillingness to Remain Involved

The reluctance of the past four American presidents to be involved with Afghanistan goes back much beyond them and is in fact closely related to a broader aspect of U.S. foreign and defense policy. It is the inability, or unwillingness, to pay sustained attention.

There are of course major differences of foreign policy vis a vis different issues and countries. Some regions are traditionally viewed as strategically important and those viewed as marginal. Western Europe is among the first; Afghanistan a prime example of the second. Probably the earliest blip made by Afghanistan on the American radar was in the mid-50s, when the Afghan king was rebuffed by Washington in his attempt to get U.S. assistance as a means of lessening his dependence on the Soviet Union.

The Soviet invasion in December 1979 provoked strong indignation on Washington’s part at this flagrant violation of the borders and sovereignty of a helpless state. Beyond bipartisan words of outrage, however, there was very little in the way of active support for the beleaguered Afghans. It took a good three years for those – in and out of government – arguing for a more forceful American role (this writer, then at the Pentagon, being one of those) to finally obtain a more substantial effort.

The Department of State remained reluctant to provide meaningful assistance, unwilling as it was to “antagonize” or “provoke” the Soviets. There was a simple reason for all of this: The parts of the State Department dealing with the Soviet Union and the Eastern European Communist bloc were far larger and more influential than the smaller section dealing with Afghanistan and South Asia. And although these officials usually denied it, they were more interested in reducing the tension in U.S.-Soviet relations triggered by Moscow’s invasion of Afghanistan and in restoring those relations to a more congenial routine.

Until 1985, the United States maintained a stance of what was euphemistically called “plausible deniability” behind the supposedly “covert” assistance to the Afghan Resistance (the Mujahideen). That stance explained the initial strong reluctance to supplying the Afghans with U.S.-made shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weaponry. Instead, the U.S. provided them with captured Russian weapons, such as SAMs, in the belief that this would be less “provocative” to Moscow.

 American aid to the Afghans throughout this period remained focused on the objective of getting Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. What would happen afterwards – whether Afghanistan would continue to be governed by a Communist regime – was, despite official assertions to the contrary, not considered important. And once Moscow agreed to withdraw, Washington lost interest. Afghanistan once again sank into obscurity – despite attempts and warnings by some in the U.S. and abroad that such abandonment would have dire consequences.

Towers Tumble

The next time the United States paid attention to Afghanistan was also because of unwanted external factors: Al Qaeda’s attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. The reaction was quick in coming. America’s anger was obvious, the determination strong to destroy the terrorist organization. The other objective – to ensure that Afghanistan would not again serve as a base for global terrorism – was also there, but it was, and remained, loosely defined.

The initial U.S. military attack dealt a massive blow to Al Qaeda. The U.S. then settled into a routine with a more vaguely defined approach, in which it was not altogether clear whether Washington wanted to get involved with “nation-building.” Ensuring that the country would not revert to being a base for global terrorism, however, did require the development of a more secure environment, and this unavoidably entailed building institutions and otherwise laying the foundation for a more stable society.   

Decisions and Unintended Consequences

Washington undertook a number of initiatives to establish such institutions, which, while contributing significant improvements, also had unintended consequences that, in some ways, hindered the development of such stability.

Central to these was the decision to favor the establishment of a strong central government that would be able to exert its authority over the entire country. While in theory a good idea, it was – as implemented – in conflict with the traditionally decentralized Afghan patterns of governance. The tribal nature of society, with a variety of local chieftains, or “warlords,” did not lend itself easily to the new model. The attempt to impose a strong central government weakened the local chieftains’ power base without providing those selected for the central government with sufficient sway over the regions. Effective governance requires a certain minimum amount of trust. Local leaders often had it. Officials from the center often did not.

The Afghan military were being trained on the American model, and here again, the frequent absence of locally-based fighters did not produce as strong a force as could have been. The habit of rotating troops also deprived the military from developing sustained familiarity with local conditions and a relationship with the populations they were supposed to protect.

There was, however, an important element in the training of Afghan forces that did have an even more significant impact when the chips were down: the heavy reliance on close U.S. air support and intelligence. With this month’s quick withdrawal of all American troops, these forces were suddenly deprived of that support and became helpless.

The Deeper Roots of Failure II: Foreign Meddling

Yet the centralized government model and the dependence of the Afghan military on American support, as important as they may have been, were not the critical components of the ultimate failure. There are two key contributors to that: 1) the not-made-in-Afghanistan nature of the conflict, and 2) the style of U.S. foreign policy as applied to Afghanistan.

In April 2000, this author wrote that Afghanistan, not significant on its own, “owes its importance to its location at the confluence of major routes. A boundary between land power and sea power, it is the meeting point between opposing forces larger than itself….Alexander the Great used it as a path to conquest. So did the Moghuls. An object of competition between the British and Russian empires in the 19^th century, Afghanistan became a source of controversy between the American and Soviet superpowers in the 20^th. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has become an important potential opening to the sea for the landlocked new states of Central Asia. The presence of large oil and gas deposits in that area has attracted countries and multinational corporations. Russia and China, not to mention Pakistan and India, are deeply involved in trying to shape the future of what may be the world’s most unchangeable people…. Afghanistan is a major strategic pivot: what happens there affects the rest of the world.”[5]

From its founding in 1947, Pakistan was already deeply involved in Afghanistan. Aside from a British-drawn boundary that has remained in dispute ever since, Pakistan’s government has viewed Afghanistan as providing “strategic depth” in its ongoing conflict with India. Islamabad’s fear of India’s possible use of Afghanistan to attack it on two fronts has been given as a justification for its deep interest in having a dominant influence in Kabul.

Already during the Soviet-Afghan war of 1979 to 1989, Pakistan was supporting extremist Afghan factions. The Afghans are by-in-large not extremists, so those “leaders” were essentially leaders without followers. Islamabad directed American aid primarily to those leaders, and Afghans, living as they were in abject poverty, joined. Washington, then as now, chose to look the other way. Viewing Pakistan as an ally, the U.S. decided to trust that, as the local power, Islamabad knew best. These fundamentalists, nevertheless, remained marginal within the larger picture.

Pakistan, like many other states, had taken note of the U.S. loss of interest in Afghanistan soon after the Soviet withdrawal, and simply did not believe that Washington would behave any differently in the post-9/11 environment. Already in 2002, this author wrote:

Certainly, many in the region believe the United States will not remain engaged in Afghanistan for the long haul. As one diplomat put it, “Once the Americans believe they are finished with al Qaeda, the media will leave; and once that happens, the U.S. government will lose interest.” Such views are reinforced by a broader questioning of American seriousness in the pursuit of the war on terror. Writing during the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, a retired Pakistani general, former head of military intelligence (ISI) and currently Pakistan’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, described Washington as acting in anger. And, he said, when America is angry, others should be ready to duck. But the anger will pass, and then everyone can continue as before.[6]

Creating the Taliban

The 2021 unfolding scenario reinforces that perception. And this time it isn’t just the withdrawal. Indeed, it is the total disregard for all others involved, including America’s European allies, that is rankling. In multiple conversations with senior Pakistani officials in the early 2000s (whether military, military intelligence [ISI], or Foreign Office), this author pointedly questioned Islamabad’s support for extremist Afghan elements from as far back as Soviet days. The answer always was: “We are doing better than you Americans! You go in and out of crises, and then leave the pieces for us to pick up.”

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2008 to 2011, recently wrote on this subject that “Pakistan’s military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf…was instrumental in helping the Taliban attack foreign forces in Afghanistan to expedite their departure.”[7] Mr. Haqqani, now director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute, also admits that such Pakistani actions were motivated by a combination of a belief the U.S. would once again leave Afghanistan and by Islamabad’s “insecurities about India.” He also asserts that by 2006, when “American officials” became aware of Pakistan’s “double game” – on the one hand pretending to support American objectives while on the other undermining them to speed up the expected U.S. withdrawal – they unsuccessfully attempted to end such duplicity and Pakistan’s support for the Taliban.

From this author’s observations, based on direct involvement and knowledge, the general attitude of the U.S. government was to pretend that such nefarious Pakistani activities did not really exist or didn’t matter. Given the pre-existing U.S. track record of abandonment, there is also valid reason to believe that any American effort – had there been one – to stop Pakistan’s support for the Taliban would have had limited success. With all of the above, what largely remains unsaid is that Pakistan (more specifically the Military Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI]) actually created the Taliban, building on its earlier support for extremist Afghan elements. Pakistani agents were known to be among the Taliban fighters.

It is also worth remembering that when U.S. Special Forces killed Bin Laden, he was residing right outside Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, protected by the Pakistan military.

The “Good” Taliban

The ISI’s backing and promotion of extremist elements was not limited to Afghanistan. Within Pakistan as well its officials encouraged similar elements. The rationale for that, this author believes, was their interest in promoting and strengthening Inter-Services Intelligence and the military as a whole as the indispensable bulwark against fundamentalism, the last line of defense for Pakistan’s stability and “democracy.” Bolstering Pakistani extremists, the ISI felt, would make their ‘threat’ to the Pakistani state more credible. That would in turn enhance the ISI’s power. That this backfired badly is now abundantly evident by the spread of extremism within Pakistan. Indeed, the government has had to cope with a Pakistani Taliban insurgency and acts of terrorism against various targets within Pakistan, among them Chinese working on Pakistani development projects or anyone deemed to flout their extremist version of Islam. As one keen observer has noted:

In the past two decades, the Taliban have gone from being a proxy of Islamabad to a threat. When Washington toppled the Taliban in late 2001, Pakistan saw it as a major foreign-policy loss, even though it cooperated with the U.S. Islamabad continued to view the Afghan jihadist movement as an ally even in 2007-14, when it faced a major insurgency on its own soil from the Pakistani Taliban rebels. For more than a decade the “good vs. bad Taliban” narrative dominated the national conversation, distinguishing between those who fought in Afghanistan and those who sought to topple the Pakistani state.[8]

 The situation has become so serious that “the Pakistani elite now fears its erstwhile proxies because their own country has been deeply penetrated by the Taliban ideology.” That penetration extends to the government, the military, and society at large. The ISI, it turns out, created a monster that has now come to haunt it. The Taliban’s threat is not just to Afghanistan but to the whole region and beyond.

The American “Style” of Foreign Policy

There is what we might call a “style” of American foreign policy, and it is that style which in the final analysis lies at the root of this major catastrophe. Various actions and policies flowed almost naturally from such a style, and while some did hinder rather than help, none were significant enough to bring about failure in Afghanistan.

The foreign policy modus operandi has an apparent inability to deal with threats to national security until they reach the crisis point. Or, to put it somewhat differently, threats to national security are sometimes not recognized as threats until they reach a particularly acute state, and then the almost instinctive reaction is to use force to “solve” the problem. Now, in politics, and specifically in foreign affairs, problems are rarely if ever solved. The best one can hope for is to “manage” things – that is, to keep the problem at hand under control and handled in such a manner that it can be tolerated.

The American approach to the use of force is that one should apply sufficient force so as to overcome whatever opposition exists. In the case of Afghanistan, there was little desire even at the outset to remain for any length of time. And when the realization that things were not going to be “solved” so quickly set in, there was little inclination to carefully define a long-term plan of action. Whatever planning occurred was, as is often the case, incremental.

Things went beyond lack of adequate planning. This author, thinking, prior to 9/11, that there was a way to manage the situation efficiently through negotiation and coordination with the various surrounding states and beyond, undertook a major project to define and develop such a strategy. He failed completely to convince the U.S. government to adopt it – despite the acquiescence of all the relevant actors.

The manner of training Afghan forces, the insistence on building a strong central government, and general disregard for Afghan traditions of locally managing society, all stemmed from this approach. But, as mentioned, none of these were responsible for the defeat.

When confronted with the continued absence of the quick success it imagined, the United States began to yearn for an exit. The continued lack of understanding for the strategic significance of Afghanistan and the absence of any real interest in it all played a role.

Risk aversion by government bureaucrats and political appointees played a part as well. There was little inclination to confront Pakistan with its sabotage of American objectives. It seems even that these same officials chose not to be fully aware of it. Things could have been different. Washington could have persisted and developed better ways to continue toward a well-managed outcome. Many countries other than the U.S. benefited from the American presence there, and will now also suffer from the newly restored vacuum and chaos.

 That it took as long as it did for Washington to actually exit has more to do with inertia and routine than with anything else. The rout, when it came, was fully self-inflicted.

Dr. Krakowski is President and CEO of EDK Consulting. He is a former aide to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense and former professor of International Relations and Law. He has advised the U.S. Under Secretary and the Deputy Secretary of Defense on strategy for the War on Terror. Dr. Krakowski has contributed chapters in books and written extensively in periodicals. He has been a frequent guest on national radio and television programs. He holds a PhD and MPhil from Columbia University in New York, and an MA from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC.