Night of the Generals -the endless war in Afghanistan

[Stavros]

Earlier this year the President relinquished decision making power on military policy to his Generals, in spite of claiming during the election campaign he knew more about 'Isis' than they did. The decision to increase the US troop presence in Afghanistan, which he claims to have reached reluctantly having stated for years Afghanistan was a waste of time and money, he now presents as one of the sobering realities of sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office, even if he was in fact in an office in one of his golf courses at the time (one of those branded gold courses which so far has charged the President's security detail $60,000 in golf buggy rentals).

The other reason, allegedly, is that he reached this difficult decision after being shown photos of women in short skirts:
To convince Trump that Afghanistan was not lost cause, McMaster showed him 1972 photo of Afghan women in miniskirts.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7907366.html

The Generals at least know what interests their President, and how to attract his attention to a subject which probably does not interest him anyway. It may also be that having failed on health care, presiding over a Navy of ships that get lost in the night, and having become suddenly isolated because of his outrageous reaction to the death and demonstrations in Charlottesville, the President realised he is powerless, and consolidated the decision making powers of the Generals.

Whether or not they recommended the President threaten to shut down Congress is hard to verify, but Generals do not tend to protect democratic institutions when their own are threatened, though the irony is that these Generals may cherish Congress more than the President, in which case it may the President who ends up being 'shut down'.

And because not once, but twice in his Fort Myers speech the President insisted 'We will win' leaving no room for error, in a country where error has been carved into the mountains and sand ever since 1839 when the first Anglo-Afghan War resulted in the humiliating defeat of the British Empire in its attempt to bring Afghanistan firmly under the rule of Queen Victoria rather than the Russians. Two more wars followed in the years up to 1919, two more failures for the British Empire in 'the Great Game' that constantly pitted British against Russian imperial interests.

The Americans actually did better, cultivating good relations with Afghanistan in the 1950s so that by the 1960s substantial aid and US charities were working across Afghanistan, from the Peace Corps to educational charities -you could even argue, but you're not supposed to say it, that the USA was involved in 'nation building' -and with a smile on its face. This relationship deteriorated in the 1970s when the monarchy was overthrown -almost by accident as the young radicals who challenged the King did not expect his government to fall so easily- and the Russians saw their opportunity to replace the British and the Americans in their long-established motivation to 'protect' their southern border.

Since then Afghanistan has been soaked in violence, and the Taliban, born in the madrasas of Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, funded and fueled by the ISI and Saudi Arabia, have been and gone as the government, and seek to reclaim that role from a government even more corrupt than the government of Nigeria, Angola, or in the good old bad old days Syria, Iraq and Libya. It is true that there have been changes in Afghanistan since 2001, but the changes are not effective across the country, least of all in the southern provinces. These days the Taliban are terrorists, and according to the President
“we are not nation-building.… We are killing terrorists,” At the same time, however, Rex Tillerson, and I suppose you could say he was once the top 'General' in Exxon given the company is run like the US military, wants the same Pakistan abused by his President to help get those damn terrorists his President has vowed to kill -to the negotiating table. You could say one is a stick, the other a carrot.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-fg-...822-story.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...otiating-table

But according to the defence secretary of the UK, Michael Fallon, nation-building is the purpose (rumours suggest the UK, if it increases its military presence, may send another 85 to the country...), indeed Fallon said this yesterday-

“In my call with [defence] Secretary [James] Mattis yesterday we agreed that despite the challenges, we have to stay the course in Afghanistan to help build up its fragile democracy and reduce the terrorist threat to the west,” Fallon said.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...michael-fallon

So there you have it -the President says no nation building, the military says otherwise. Which one do you believe? I guess that depends on whom you believe to be Commander-in-Chief.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...-a7906741.html

[filghy2]

So it's Obama's fault that Trump was forced to go back on his pledge to pull out all of the troops, because Obama screwed things up by pulling out most of the troops? hmmm

Given an increase to 12,000 is obviously not going to achieve what 100,000 troops could not do previously, what are odds that the generals will be asking for more troops in a few months time? And how will Trump be able to refuse them given he has vowed to 'win' (whatever that means in Afghanistan)?

I'm sure that "no nation-building" is just a fig leaf to allow him pretend he's not following the same policy as Obama.

[sukumvit boy]

[Stavros]

Another week, and more deaths and injuries from bombs triggered by the Taliban. On the one hand you might sigh and ask 'what has changed?' but on the other hand the attacks follow a visit from 'President-Select' Nikki Haley who claimed during her visit to Kabul just over ten days ago-

that the Trump administration’s policy in Afghanistan is working, saying talks between the government and Taliban extremists, and a peace process, are closer than ever before. She called a weekend trip to Afghanistan by the U.N. Security Council “great” because “we could see dramatic changes in terms of what the U.S. policy has been doing.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.95c5ee4f0805


But the Taliban claimed responsibility for the latest bombing, saying
"The Islamic Emirate has a clear message for Trump and his hand kissers that if you go ahead with a policy of aggression and speak from the barrel of a gun, don't expect Afghans to grow flowers in response," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement, using the term the use to describe themselves.
and
the Taliban have dismissed any suggestion that they have been weakened by the US approach and say they will only agree to talks when international forces leave Afghanistan.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a8181816.html

These two contradictory positions raise the question I raised in my original post -is there a military solution in Afghanistan? What appears to be a robust defence of the US position has been offered by John Hanah in the September 2017 issue of Foreign Policy.
He bases his support for the new administration's policy on a rejection of the policies of GW Bush and Barack Obama that simultaneously committed military action with military withdrawals -he thinks telegraphing timetables is a strategic mistake as it tells the Taliban, wait and then strike again when the Americans leave- but doesn't address the issue from the perspective of US domestic opinion and whether or not the US public wants their troops in Afghanistan with no end in sight at the cost of another trillion $$.

So he argues
1) the US needs to combat the Taliban to prevent the emergence of another 'terrorist' group targeting the USA.
2) the President has lifted restrictions on attacks in Afghanistan, promoting the idea that war works:
During the first six months of his presidency, the amount of U.S. munitions dropped in Afghanistan tripled from the same period in 2016, much of it against Taliban targets. But that was before Trump had settled the all-important question of whether he planned to abandon Afghanistan or stay and fight. Now that he has recommitted America to the war, and U.S. commanders have a clear strategic direction from the new commander in chief, the room for a sustained intensification of U.S. military effort against the Taliban could be substantial.
3) reduce support for Pakistan and you reduce support for the Taliban who, weakened on the battlefield will be more prone to enter meaningful and long-term peace talks ending the war in Afghanistan and giving victory to the USA.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/01/...actually-work/

Here is the problem:
a) Pakistan is not about the reduce its intimate involvement in Afghanistan, because it makes money for the military, because it never backs down where India is also engaged (as it is in Afghanistan), so Pakistan is outraged at the claims made by the President, but that's how it is in Pakistan. There are genuine voices in the country that want the war to end along with Pakistan's involvement, but powerful forces that support the Taliban for financial and ideological reasons.

b) the US backed Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and the UAE in its attempt to crush Qatar last year, one less obvious reason being that Qatar had been mediating between the government in Kabul and the Taliban with more effectiveness than the Saudi's. The close friends and financial backers of the President will have pointed out that they suddenly began condemning the Taliban in 2017 and warned their citizens to stop funding them, but the headline cannot mask the fact that the President's friends are still backing the President's enemies, and to the extent that Saudi funding has been reduced, there has been an increase in the support the Taliban have received from Iran, hence the attempt to isolate Qatar.

Iran shares a border with Afghanistan, and accepted over a million refugees following the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, and has a clear reason to oppose Saudi Arabia there as the latter has funded thousands of Madrasas that teach Wahabi 'Islam' that demonizes the Shi'a Islam of Iran.

Spare a thought for the real people caught up in this proxy war-without-end, and ask if the Taliban can either be beaten on the battlefield, or brought to the negotiating table, as they have been close to in the past in tragic lost opportunities scuppered by ideological attachments. Under its 45th President the US may have decided the only solution is the annihilation of the Taliban on the battlefield, a project that is as doomed as the war in Iraq where the generals seem to have learned so much. What happens when this policy fails and there is no Obama to blame?

But hey the President's non-girlfriend is positive about it-

“The U.S. policy on Afghanistan is working,” Haley said. “We are seeing that we are closer to talks with the Taliban and the peace process than we’ve seen before. ... And I think we really are going to work toward a peace process with the goal being that we do not want Afghanistan to be a safe haven for terrorism anymore.”

Amen to that.

[Stavros]

Steve Coll, whose book Ghost Wars is a rewarding study of Afghanistan and its tortured relations with Pakistan and the USA leading up to 9/11 , has produced a follow-up called Directorate S: The CIA and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is an interesting review in the New York Times linked below.

What is remarkable are the quotes that make you wonder if certain politicians are living in the real world, or at least, have first-hand knowledge of Afghanistan, thus in 2001

President George W. Bush declared it America’s purpose “to lift up the people of Afghanistan.” Bush vowed that American forces would stay until they finished the job

and in 2017

Vice President Mike Pence affirmed that commitment. “We’re here to stay,” he told a gathering of troops, “until freedom wins.”

Some years ago the historian Donald Low wrote in an essay in his book Lion Rampant (1973) about the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 when a shocked British establishment had to ask the question Why are we in India? The answer was distilled into one word: improvement. Much as Capability Brown 'improved' the landscapes of noble England's estates in the early 19th century, so Joseph Chamberlain when Mayor of Birmingham declared in an imperial context: what Uganda needs is what Birmingham has got: an improvement scheme.

Afghanistan is therefore to be improved. It will have (indeed does now have more) schools to educate its children; the national economy may be based on a growing minerals extraction industry -if it ever has the chance to grow with its Chinese, Japanese and Indian capital- and law and order will provide a secure environment in which people can thrive. But not until this improvement scheme is based on reality, and the reality at the moment is that too much of the country is contested between the Taliban, Pakistan and the loose coalition of Afghan politicians and their external backers. The future looks better than it is, but will the key players ever let go of this notoriously lawless country, admit they have failed and let the Afghan people make the best of what they have?

Either way an interesting book I shall look forward to reading -I haven't bought it yet but it is No 3 on the list.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/b...av=bottom-well

[Stavros]

I would not overestimate the announcement from the Pentagon today, because as we have seen over the years, the troops go in, they go out, they go back in, much as in the cartoon in Sukumvit Boy's post above. Moreover, this is what 'Acting Secretary Miller' said, with a statement from an unidentified official that is as clear as mud:

"Miller, who took over as acting secretary on Nov. 9, said the move was made with the full concurrence of military officials in the U.S. Central Command area and at the Pentagon. The decision is in keeping with President Donald J. Trump's promise to get U.S. forces home from the "forever wars."
A senior defense official speaking on background before the announcement said the president has been consistent about withdrawing forces from the countries. One precondition was that U.S. safety and security not be threatened by the actions. The senior defense official said that certain conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan had to be met, but the official declined to enumerate them."
https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News...ecretary-says/

I suspect that this is the President blowing a raspberry at the incoming Biden administration, doing something because it can, not because it is necessary or of any strategic benefit, had he wanted to he could have withdrawn all of the forces, but as with the mooted attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, I think he listened to the Generals.

I don't know if a few thousand fewer troops will make a difference, the interested parties are playing a long game anyway and will be waiiting to see or attempting to influence the new President and his team. As I have suggested before, I think a movement on the economy might make more sense in the post-Covid world, though it relies on the mutual goodwill of Narendra Modi and Iran Khan. As for Directorate S, I didn't buy it, so I haven't read it, yet.

[Stavros]

So it looks like the Generals have left the field for the politicians. Biden's announcement that the US will withdraw its forces from the field in Afghanistan by September 11, appears to be a more practical version of, or the same policy he inherited from Trump, though one notes that the

"Biden administration officials say the United States intends to remain closely involved in the peace process and will continue to provide humanitarian aid and assistance to the Afghan government and security forces, which remain almost totally dependent on foreign support."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...2e8_story.html

An article in today's NYT suggests this policy is a victory for Pakistan, but if anything it places a greater burden on Pakistan than it has had before, though I assume Imran Khan will want a lot of US money to 'take over' responsibiity for the Taliban, who have said for some time (see my post #4 above) they will not negotiate until the US leaves. Now there must be a question what it is that the Talban want as they do not seem inclined to power-sharing with the existing govt. Moreover, Pakistan assuming an important role in, one assumes, controlling or trying to control the Taliban begs the question, will those in the movemet based in Pakistan use their new-found freedom to topple Imran Khan?

For the US I think the main point is that Afghanistan even under a resurgent, and undefeated Taliban, is not going to play host to Islamic terrorists that attack the US as they did when Caiph Omar gave bin Laden a licence to operate in the country. In any case, al-Qaeda and the molecules of Daesh that have survived are still active in Iraq, Syria and incresingly in sub-Saharan Africa, West in Malin, and South-West in Mozambique. I wonder if 'the Generals' see a fractured radical threat needing a more diffused response than the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, something drones and 'special forces' mght be more effective in dealing with.

The roles played now by India, China and Saudi Arabia may determine the future -India will not allow Pakistan to determine Afghanistan's future without being part of the deal, and while Imran Khan mght be amenable to negotiating with Modi, his successor might not. A trialateral agreement by Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to develop the economy sounds logical but may not be achieveable in the near term.

Saudi Arabia may continue to fund the Wahabi madrasas in the region, but is financially overstretched with its futile war in the Yemen, and its investment in tourism in the North-West, while China is in the intriguing position of being sort-of close to Pakistan, partly due to its border spats with India, and partly as it extends its influence to its West as part of its Belt and Road initiative.

I can only speculate on what neighbouring Iran mght do, while Putin must be watching it closely too. The big fear is that the internal problems of Afghanistan spill over into neighbouring states to perpetuate the conflict, albeit without a US (and UK/NATO) presence on the ground. It doesn't mean Nation Buiding has been abandoned, just that this time, someone else must do it, as in, the people of Afghanistan. If they want a state, and one often wonders if they do when the one they have had since 2002 has been so corrupt and incompetent it was the reason why people in towns and villages welcomed the Taliban.

Is it just me, or is the policy Trump proposed 'reckless', when Biden's is 'rational'? McConnell calls Biden's policy 'reckless' but doesnt seem to have a policy of his own. But when it comes to Afghanistan, what does policy matter? The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians began before I was born, and that is a long, a very long time in politics, and I can't say I imagine that conflict or the one in Afghanistan will have been resolved by the time I die.

[Stavros]

I believe I was wrong when I said in an earlier post that the Taliban was founded by refugee students in the Madrasas of Pakistan. A claim in a paper I can't now find on the internet, is that the Taliban was founded in Kandahar, but grew exponentially in Pakistan as more refugees fled there in the 1990s. Also, while Pakistan and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency were crucial to rescuing the Taliban from oblivion after 9/11, there is a claim in the same lost paper, that in recent years, not sure when, the Taliban in Afghanistan has been able to become less dependent on Pakistan, primarily through the success of its criminal activities -kidnapping, extortion, and control of the $80 billion a year opium/heroin trade. Also, where in the past arms were bought from both State and private sectors in Pakistan and India, these days the Russians are believed to be the main suppliers to the Afghan Taliban, presumably not the Pakistan branch -a headache Imran Khan is struggling with. I am also not sure how much Saudi and Gulf money flows into the region these days given its grim if lucrative (for some) past.

It makes a lot of the despair this week sound hollow -ie, neither 'we' nor the Generals defeated the Taliban, and never can. Trump negotiated with the Taliban with no other Afghans present, least of all the Government (!), and has the signed documents that commit the Taliban to keeping foreign fighters -'terrorists' out of the areas under their control, though one notes this week so far I have not heard much from the Commentariat about the Islamic State-Khorasan faction that is probably the most serious threat to the Taliban's commitment, and one that has both Russia and India alarmed -the Russians because IS-K may be infiltrating the 'Stans' that 'enjoy' Russian military protection (like Belarus), the Indians because of the murderous March 2020 attack on a Gurdwara in Kabul.

Fundamentally, the US/NATO policy has failed -in 15 years it now appears the security apparatus NATO was sent in to create and nurture, has melted away in the face of Taliban advances while the President has been for the most part as silent and absent as the UK's Foreign Secretary, in Ashraf Ghani's case, perhaps, working those phones with international bankers to get what remains of his loot out of the country. In 15 years, whatever gains have been made in creating civil society and a functioing government have been undermined by corruption and the loss of faith in government that has enabled the Taliban, abeit in rural areas to find support among the people.

I don't know how this is going to evolve, but it does appear that the US and NATO are not good at State-Building, no matter how much money is thrown at it, quite apart from asking why the 'North Atlantic Treaty Organization' is even involved in Asia. I don't know if Afghanistan under the Taliban will play host to anti-American terrorists, I suspect the real anxieties will concern the abuse of human rights, the narcotics trade, and the relationships that the Taliban has with Pakistan, India, Russia and China. On that basis, I think we can pack away the t-shirt 'Been there, done it, got fucked', and let someone else have a go. It has not been called a 'forever war' without reason.

Two useful discussions here-

https://scholarship.tricolib.brynmaw...le/10066/23692

https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2021/07/op181.pdf

[blackchubby38]

I knew the United States couldn't stay in Afghanistan forever. So when it was announced that the United States was leaving, the one thing I hoped that didn't happen was a fall of Saigon moment. We are getting pretty close to that happening.

But you know what, I can't really put the blame on the United States and/or NATO. The Taliban just wants that country more than the Afghanistan army does.

[filghy2]

I don't know how this is going to evolve, but it does appear that the US and NATO are not good at State-Building, no matter how much money is thrown at it, quite apart from asking why the 'North Atlantic Treaty Organization' is even involved in Asia.

I doubt that it is even possible for outsiders to build or rebuild a nation. It seems to work only when there is sufficient internal commitment and consensus, as in Germany and Japan after WWII. Otherwise it is never self-sustaining, and the only choice is whether to remain indefinitely trying to prop things up or cut your losses and exit.