US failure in Afghanistan

S P SETH

Now that the US-led Afghan operations are winding down substantially with about 13,000 troops still to remain in a largely advisory and training role, there is no doubt that the west has failed disastrously even after 13 years of high intensity warfare in a country where the enemy was anywhere and everywhere; but with nowhere near the military capability and weaponry wielded and used by the allied forces. It raises an important question, which is:  why is it that the US-led operations in Afghanistan failed so miserably? After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US linked to the al Qaida organization in Afghanistan under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, the US launched the global war on terrorism with Afghanistan as its epicenter where al Qaeda was based under the protection of its Taliban regime. Not surprisingly, with the deployment of massive US military power the al Qaeda in Afghanistan was soon in disarray and retreat, and the Taliban leadership running for cover finally found a home of sorts in Pakistan. The US was able to install Hamid Karzai as the country’s president. The process was given some legitimacy through a constitution and follow up elections that returned Karzai, though the whole process was flawed and rigged by the Karzai administration. And this has continued to this day, though there is now a new president of the country.

From this flowed much of the country’s manifold problems. The new government appointed its own provincial and local administrative agencies and officials. And with so much money available from the central coffers filled by foreign ‘development’ funds, there was lot more scope for corruption at all levels from top to bottom. With new government, new funds and new powers, there was lot of misuse in all sorts of ways to pursue old vendettas against tribal, regional and sectarian enemies, some of them ending up in Guantanamo Bay reported to the Americans by their local enemies as top notch terrorists. The corruption became so rife that some American contractors too became enmeshed, and the projects they and their local collaborators were entrusted with often remained either half-finished or simply vanished along with the funds allocated for them. In other words, it was a free for all and there was nothing much to show by way of real development benefitting the people.

And the beneficiary of this, in a perverse sort of way, were the Taliban not because they were popular, indeed their own administration was pretty horrific, but because the new order—rather disorder—was making them look not so bad. And they started to gain ground in some regions. The counter-insurgency operations against them were designed to achieve three objectives: protecting the population, improving governance and developing the country. In neither of these areas, there was any significant advance, thus facilitating or forcing local elements to either make peace with the Taliban, or be coopted into their game plan. In other words, even though the Taliban might have lain low for a while after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, they were never out. And this was greatly helped when its leadership was able to operate from across the border in Pakistan under the quiet patronage of the Pakistani military intelligence services, ISI.

It would appear, however, that Pakistan was not aware precisely of what was cooking in the al Qaeda pot just across the border in Afghanistan when the 9/11 happened. But after it happened Pakistan was sucked into the US anti-terror campaign, trying to strike a balance between maintaining ties with the Taliban leadership in its backyard and, at the same time, cooperating with the US and ending up as a vast base for US operations. Which brought it into conflict with the tribal leaders and jihadist elements operating from Waziristan. In the midst of all these currents and cross currents of rebel and terrorist activities there emerged the TTP and other associated militant groups lunging into some of the settled areas and almost succeeded in carving out, what looked like, a mini-Islamic state as a base for further incursions against the Pakistani state. Which led the army into large scale military operations successfully launched against these forces.

At the same time, the situation in North Waziristan was becoming increasingly worrisome, engaging the army into large-scale operations against such elements. In other words, Pakistan’s ambiguous, though quietly supportive relationship with the Taliban leadership in Pakistan hemmed it in with some confusion about its medium and long-term strategy. While it went after the TTP, it continued to support some other militant groups with much of the same Islamic agenda as the former. The upshot of it all has been that this has generally aided the Taliban in Afghanistan, with border crossings back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan and its top leadership sheltering in Pakistan. It must be said though that it has done immense harm to Pakistan by turning its body politic and society upside down. At the same time, it harmed the allied forces’ operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan, thus contributing to their failure in Afghanistan.

Another contributing factor for the US and NATO failure has been that many Afghans saw them as a foreign invading force, which Taliban played to the hilt in their propaganda. Adding to this was a lack of knowledge and understanding of the Afghan society by the US and NATO forces with its intricate mix of tribal traditions, sectarian and regional divide and so on. In the absence of such understanding and knowledge it was not surprising that they thought it their mission to impose western values and governance on a society that had its own code of honour, tribal hierarchy and no real tradition of governance from a central power structure, as with Karzai as the country’s president.

Therefore, there was an inbuilt contradiction between the western system the Afghans were offered and their own way of managing their affairs. And their experience of British invasion twice in the 19^th century was enshrined in the Afghan psyche as an example of foreign intervention, which in any case didn’t go well for the British. It should have been a salutary lesson for the US and NATO but they apparently ignored it, as part of their general lack of interest in Afghan history and tradition. And as they exit Afghanistan, keeping a presence of about 13,000 troops down from about 140,000 at the peak of the military operations, the prospects for Afghanistan do not look bright, to put it mildly. 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au