PHOTO COURTESY: JANE MINGAY
In a six-part story titled “The Afghanistan Papers” (styled after the Vietnam Era “Pentagon Papers”), The Washington Post investigative journalist, Craig Whitlock, published the main points of the SIGAR reports on December 9, 2019. The original papers consist of 2,000 or so pages of unpublished notes based upon interviews of some 400 insiders with a direct role in the war, “from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials”, in order to examine the root failures of the longest armed conflict in US history. There are candid admissions and unrestrained criticism.
Gen Douglas Lute, a three star army general handling the Afghan War under the Bush and Obama administrations, is quoted as saying, “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan… We didn’t know what we were doing… We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.” The price, as quoted, was steep with almost 157,000 deaths including 43,074 Afghan civilians and 64,124 Afghan security forces. US casualties included over 2,300 dead and around 20,589 wounded in action besides the terrible toll it has taken in the form of mental distress and suicides, etc among the returnees. Details of this were incidentally covered in my piece published on December 9, 2019 in this space as “US Military in Crisis — Suicide, Sexual Assault and Substance Abuse”. SIGAR estimates the cost of war incurred by the Departments of Defense, State and USAID since 2001 is around $978 billion, excluding the CIA and the Department of Veterans Affair (Medicare) expenditure.
A quote by former US diplomat James Dobbins is instructive. “We don’t invade poor countries to make them rich. We don’t invade authoritarian countries to make them democratic. We invade violent countries to make them peaceful and we clearly failed in Afghanistan.”
In geo-strategy, wars have defined political aims, objectives and clear military goals. The US — the largest military machine of our time — failed this fundamental. From an initial objective “to retaliate against al Qaeda and prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks”, it vacillated towards nation building, turning Afghanistan into a democracy, transforming Afghan culture, elevating women’s rights and reshaping the “regional balance of power among Pakistan, India, Iran and Russia.” There was confusion if al Qaeda was the enemy or the Taliban; if Pakistan was a friend or a foe. There was and still is persistent ambiguity about Daesh and other foreign jihadists, the Orbaki militias and warlords on the CIA’s payroll outside the Afghan government’s purview.
During the “nation building” under president Bush, the US allocated more than $133 billion — greater than the post-WWII Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Western Europe, as adjusted in today’s dollar terms. Resultantly, Afghanistan was flooded with far more aid than it could absorb, leading to rampant corruption. Blamed on the US Congress, this mad rush to spend helped slide the Afghan government under Karzai into kleptocracy by 2006. Mass corruption involving “judges and police chiefs and bureaucrats extorting bribes” soured common Afghans on democracy and turned them towards the Taliban to enforce order.
Raising of the Afghan National Army and the police to this day remains a pipe-dream with incompetent and unmotivated recruits, higher rates of desertion and a predator officer cadre, pocketing salaries of the “ghost soldiers”, besides cuts in the soldiers’ salaries. One-third of the police recruits were drug addicts or Taliban insiders, selling official property including gasoline.
The US spent about nine billion dollars to fight the opium problem during the past 18 years. Ironically, Afghanistan produced 82% of the global opium in 2018 alone. When the British paid the poppy farmers to destroy their crops, there grew more poppy the next season. And when the US destroyed poppy fields without compensation, infuriated farmers flocked to the Taliban.
The westernised national leadership was terrified to “tip-toe out of Afghanistan in the coming few years” leaving Nato to hold the country for them when there was a surge in Taliban attacks in 2006. Gen Petraeus, the ambitious commander of the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, was grilled in March 2011 by skeptical lawmakers whether the US strategy was working. Gen Michael Flynn, a retired three-star, told SIGAR during a 2015 interview in frustration, “From the ambassadors down to the low level, [they all say] we are doing a great job… Really? So if we are doing such a great job, why does it feel like we are losing?” Insiders reported in 2014, that “truth was rarely welcome” by the military in Kabul.
To conceptualise the major conclusions of the Afghanistan Papers, most participants attributed the continuing Afghan fiasco to a lack of continuing “strategic direction” from the political masters and a “strategy” from the military command including an operational strategy. The shifting aims and objectives of the war inhibited a professional military from pursuing coherent goals and a clear plan. The Papers identify a lack of understanding of the Afghan state and society and the overall environment for various erroneous decisions. The circular problem of poppy production kept the Taliban war economy alive and kicking. The Papers criticise the shortsightedness of not pursuing a negotiated settlement with the Taliban earlier on… that ironically, Pakistan was emphasising on all along. The endemic corruption ushered in by the aid dollars and the vested interests of expat Afghan, US officials and Washington Beltway contractors added to the impasse.
There is the typical finger-pointing at Pakistan for not “doing more” and providing “safe haven” to the Taliban besides the escape argument that the US military was restrained to conduct “hot pursuit operations” inside Pakistan. Details next week.
What the Papers fail to acknowledge is the Taliban motivation, inspiration and fighting ability that was pivotal in denying victory to the strongest military machine on earth. The power of a just cause and willingness to offer the supreme sacrifice for the defence of their faith and country are likewise not cited. Militarily, the US never had a clear “war termination strategy” to end the conflict. At the end of the day, this trumpeted fact-finding exercise too is laced with the innate hubris of the US, who is known to come to the right options after trying all the wrong ones.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 17th, 2019.
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