Trump outlines the foundation of a changed approach in Afghanistan
President Trump’s decision to recommit to Afghanistan was right and important. He explained the stakes of the fight accurately: to prevent al Qaeda and ISIS from regaining the base from which al Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks and from which both would plan and conduct major attacks against the US and its allies in the future. He also described the minimum required outcome: an Afghan state able to secure its own territory with very limited support from the US and other partners. This outcome is essential to American security and it is achievable.
U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with military officers
as he departs after announcing his strategy for the war in Afghanistan
during an address to the nation from Fort Myer, Virginia, U.S., August 21, 2017.
REUTERS / Joshua Roberts
Recent commentary has cast doubt on the feasibility of any kind of success in Afghanistan. The doubts are understandable, but their framing is incorrect. Yes, America has had troops in Afghanistan for 16 years. But it is wrong to suggest the US has been pursuing a single policy or strategy in that time, and equally wrong to suggest that no progress has been made.
American forces and Afghan partners toppled the Taliban quickly in 2001 and chased the remnants of al Qaeda from the country the next year. Continued American involvement prevented al Qaeda from ever re-establishing bases in Afghanistan on a scale remotely like those they had before 9/11 — that is an important accomplishment that is very much at risk now.
The US and the international community focused on helping the Afghans set up a new government and on economic reconstruction between 2002 and 2005 — a small number of American forces continued to operate against al Qaeda attempts to re-enter the country, but not against the Taliban, which was reconstituting in Pakistan. That policy has also had important effects measured in the rapidly-lengthening average lifespans of Afghans, boys and girls going to school, the proliferation of modern communications, access to healthcare, and so on — all at risk, again, if Afghanistan collapses.
The Taliban launched its large-scale insurgency in 2005, steadily expanding its capabilities within Afghanistan over the following few years. But the US and NATO refused to recognize that it now faced an insurgency and instead remained focused on development, counter-terrorism operations, and efforts to build a very small Afghan military and police force on a NATO model.
America’s view of the fight changed dramatically only in 2009 as the result of the McChrystal review, which compelled both the Obama Administration and, more reluctantly, NATO, to accept that a full-blown insurgency was underway, that a counter-insurgency strategy resourced with significant numbers of American and NATO troops was needed, and that the plans for building the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) had to be dramatically expanded and changed.
The ensuing few years saw several hundred thousand Afghans brought into the new security forces and sent to fight the Taliban while American troops and their allies helped clear Taliban strongholds and provided critical enablers (air support, artillery, intelligence collection and analysis, communications, medical services, and so on) to the ANSF.
The new plan for building the ANSF recognized the inevitable trade-off between trying to construct a small, professional force with everything it might need to fight and building a large infantry force that could put a lot of soldiers in the field quickly but relied on American and NATO help for more advanced capabilities. It rightly chose the latter approach, and Afghan troops began to bear the brunt of the actual fighting as American troops drew down starting in 2011.
The decision to focus on getting Afghans into the fight assumed that the US would continue to provide those key enablers for a long time — but President Obama chose not to do so. He largely stripped the ANSF of American enablers when he reduced the American footprint to its current level, forcing the Afghans to fight the Taliban on even terms, which neither they nor the US had expected they would have to do.
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This worries me... I'm finding some pretty good analysis on AEI...
I used to subscribe in order to know what the Bad Guys were up to... now I kinda like what they're posting. Yikes!
I don't have the time to seed it... but here's an excellent article on the successive imperial failures of the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and the US.