Afghanistan War

US soldiers with an Afghan Goat.

It never changes War

A view to kill

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The Afghanistan War is the colloquial name for the military conflict formerly code-named Operation Enduring Freedom^[2] and subsequently referred to by the awkward moniker Operation Freedom's Sentinel^[3] The stated goal of the war (2001-2021) was to dismantle the Islamist Taliban, which ruled much of Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, and by doing so weaken and destroy the Al-Qaeda terrorist group seeking refuge among them. Although the Taliban's military collapsed within three months, the United States and her allies remained embroiled in an ongoing counterinsurgency not only against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, but also against a hodgepodge of other terrorist and insurgent groups including DAESH.^[4]

This conflict, having stretched on for two decades, infamously became the longest war in American history.^[5] Some have attributed this slog to U.S. generals and to U.S. defense-contractors who refused to withdraw long after Osama bin Laden was killed (2011) and the Taliban were overthrown (2001), as through their influence, President Obama broke his promise to withdraw from the region by 2016,^[6] and President Trump did a 180 on his campaign rhetoric, stating that "a hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists — including ISIS and Al Qaeda — would instantly fill".^[7] In other words, just about everybody wanted to end the ground war in Afghanistan, but nobody seemed to know how. However, in April 2021, Joe Biden, the incumbent US president, made a decision that even conservatives almost unanimously agreed with when he announced his decision to pull out ALL US troops^[8] and finally end a war that became a nuisance, despite being so essential back then. And then conservatives suddenly stopped agreeing with Biden when the Taliban inevitably toppled the Afghan government (August 2021), because what's another pile of bodies for the sake of political point-scoring?

The struggle in Afghanistan was part of the Global War on Terror. At least partly - the Taliban may not see it that way.

Background[edit]

The alleged "border", with Pashtun lands in shown in blue.

The Durand line[edit]

Borders based on ethnic or cultural divides don't necessarily mean peace, but cultural ties will trump colonial boundaries every time. This is why it was a problem when the British Empire drew the "Durand line" right through the middle of the Pashtun tribal lands to divide Afghanistan and Pakistan.^[9] This was done to serve colonial interests; the British wanted to keep Afghanistan as a buffer between itself and Russia, but it also didn't want Afghanistan to be large enough to pose a threat by itself.^[10] Hence the divide and conquer. Literally. The Brits spilled an unholy amount of blood and treasure in the region fighting a series of wars to make sure the Afghans stayed subservient.^[11]

Pashtuns, by the way, are a ferociously independent culture which to this day is primarily based on millennia-old tribal traditions. The unwritten Pashtun code of living is referred to as "Pashtunwali", and in short it means that a Pashtun friend will be loyal for life but a Pashtun enemy's grandkids will be coming after your grandkids.^[12] Part of Pashtunwali is the concept of "Nanawatai", which obligates Pashtuns to accept and protect all those who seek their refuge and hospitality no matter what the cost.^[13] It's not too hard to see how that tradition might cause a problem, if, for instance, a globally-wanted terrorist were to request asylum among the Pashtuns.

Fast forward to decolonization, and the Durand line became a flashpoint between the two nations, as Afghanistan unsurprisingly denounced the line, and Pakistan unsurprisingly told them to go fuck off.^[14] This had some even more disastrous consequences below the nation-state level. The Pashtun tribespeople have been effectively ignoring the border ever since its inception, and the rise of the Taliban and its popularity among many Pashtuns have allowed the whole area to become a lawless hub of terrorism, criminality, and good ol' fashioned drug-smuggling.^[15]

Following the outset of the War on Terror, Pakistan attempted to send troops into Waziristan (one of the Pashtun areas on their side of the border), to calm things down. This went about as well as you think it did, and Pakistan was forced to sign an agreement essentially conceding self-rule for the Pashtuns.^[16] The Taliban and Al Qaeda as a result have a nice, safe area in Pakistan to kick back and relax before wandering across the border whenever they feel ready to resume the fight.^[17] This is a big reason why it's been so hard to wipe out the insurgents; they have their own, far superior version of the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Soviet fiasco, American mistakes[edit]

Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office with America's best ever pals.

In 1979, the Soviet Union launched an ill-advised invasion of Afghanistan in order to prop up their brutal puppet dictatorship. Seeing the chance to fuck over the Soviets for cheap, the United States, especially under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, made it a policy to fund and arm Islamist mujahedeen.^[19] During the struggle in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden settled in Pakistan to receive the influx of foreign volunteers to the region, who had been trained and armed by the United States and radicalized by Saudi Arabia.^[18] In this way, bin Laden himself had become the indirect beneficiary of the CIA's games. All told, the CIA spent over $20 goddamn billion to train and arm Afghanis.^[20]

Over 14,000 Soviet troops would die during the period of US aid to the mujahideen.^[21] After the Soviet withdrawal, the Afghan rebels fractured into brutal infighting, leading to the rise of the Taliban.^[22] The Soviet Union's brutal tactics had killed an estimated one million Afghanis, including about 90,000 mujahideen fighters.^[23]

The Taliban[edit]

A Taliban enforcer beats a woman for removing her burqa in public.

During the period of chaos after the Soviet withdrawal, Pakistan saw an opportunity to extend its influence over Afghanistan. This idea manifested as financial support for the Taliban; in other words, Pakistan hoped to turn the Taliban into a reliable (and safe) proxy by tugging on their purse-strings.^[24] The problem is, Pashtunwali and Islam both came into play, and the Taliban ended up being much less loyal than Pakistan hoped. During this time, the Taliban also committed many acts of mass murder and ethnic cleansing, particularly against Shia and ethnic minorities.^[25]

The Taliban eventually won out over the various other factions in Afghanistan, and they established a brutal theocratic government called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They immediately started engaging in some activities that were quite unpopular in the rest of the world, such as blowing up the Buddhas of Bamyan — 1,400-year-old Buddha statues — on the grounds that they were idols, and stoning adulterous couples.^[26][27] The regime was only ever recognized by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates.^[28] The usual suspects, in other words.

Life under Taliban rule was essentially how one would imagine. The group began a reign of terror over the country, sending their fighters to roam about in swarms to beat women, burn schools, and destroy modern technology.^[29] Much of the Taliban's (and Al-Qaeda's) theology is based on the writings of Sayyid Qutb.^[30] Qutb believed that Islam was a dead religion because a millennia-and-a-half of the Middle East's secular rulers (ranging from the Fatimids to the Ottomans to good ol' Saddam Hussein) had allowed their people to stray too far from the original teachings of Muhammad; only a strict and brutal return to absolutist Islamic fundamentalism could possibly redeem the modern world.^[31] His writings are essentially the psychopath's version of Letters from a Birmingham Jail; replace the love and lofty goals with murderous hateful intent. The Taliban took these lessons to heart: they were strict and very brutal.

9/11[edit]

George W. Bush on Air Force One during September 11^th.

9/11 happened, and Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda was responsible. No, it wasn't an inside job, and no, the Mossad didn't do it either.

The US had known for some time that Bin Laden was based out of Afghanistan, enjoying hospitality and support from his Taliban hosts.^[32] The Taliban condemned the terrorist attack, saying "we want to tell the American children that Afghanistan feels your pain. We hope the courts find justice."^[33] These words, while pretty nice, rang kinda hollow considering that Bin Laden was hanging out in their backyard like a loser unemployed cousin. President Bush didn't buy the bullshit, and he delivered a public ultimatum to the Taliban: hand over Bin Laden and his cronies and close all Al-Qaeda training camps.^[34] The Taliban rejected the demand (remember Nanawatai?), saying they'd rather have a United Nations investigation and comply with those results.^[35] A wave of American airstrikes against Afghani targets convinced the Taliban to offer to hand over Bin Laden to a third-party country for trial and imprisonment, an offer Bush refused.^[36] Unfortunately, the Bush administration didn't have a military plan on how to apprehend Bin Laden; the rejection of the Taliban's offer effectively gave the terrorist a get-out-of-jail free card.^[37]

The war[edit]

US Special Forces on horseback.

US invasion[edit]

The original plan for the invasion called for 60,000 men and six months to prepare; Donald Rumsfeld rejected this plan, saying “I want men on the ground now!”^[38] The US had total air superiority from the beginning, but this advantage was reduced by the fact that the pre-industrial Afghanistan had few roads and no factories to bomb.^[39] The CIA covertly planted special forces units in Afghanistan to aid the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban resistance force.^[40] The US launched Operation Enduring Freedom in October with the backing of Tony Blair of the UK.^[41] They were quickly joined by a wide number of other nations.^[42]

Enduring Freedom was no full-offensive total war. Its strategy instead relied on paramilitary groups of US Special Forces armed with precision weapons who would work in concert with local Afghani freedom fighters, who would be the bulk of the manpower.^[43] There was also a heavy emphasis on airpower, because as the Vietnam War taught everyone, it's totally possible to win a war with aerial bombings alone. The irony here is that this strategy aimed to prevent a Vietnam-style quagmire by limiting the number of US troops on the ground to prevent a surge of anti-Americanism that the Taliban could use as a recruiting tool. It did the opposite, especially at the Battle of Tora Bora as seen below. Still, this indirect form of warfare was at least justified by logistical concerns: Afghanistan is a landlocked country.

The initial ground offensive, however, was a success, and the Taliban's leader Mohammad Omar surrendered the Taliban's primary city of Kandahar in November 2001, formally ending the Taliban's formal rule over Afghanistan.^[44] Around the same time, the US-aligned Northern Alliance captured Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul.^[45]

Bin Laden's great escape[edit]

US airstrike on Tora Bora.

By mid-December of 2001, US-aligned forces and the US Air Force had Osama bin Laden and roughly a thousand Al-Qaeda fighters cornered in their hideout in the Tora Bora mountains.^[47] Al-Qaeda had been forced to rapidly abandon Kabul due to the Taliban's complete failure to defend the city.^[48] After US forces discovered bin Laden's whereabouts, they called in a huge number of airstrikes on the location over the next 56 hours in order to keep him pinned down.^[46]

Unfortunately, the US relied almost entirely on its Afghan allies to control the ground and prevent bin Laden's escape, effectively leaving the ground fight up to people who had no cold-weather or night-vision gear and who had little investment into whether or not bin Laden died.^[49] The Pentagon was reluctant to commit large numbers of US troops to Afghanistan. Other than this, the US had every advantage: Special Forces captured an Al-Qaeda radio, the bombing raids were even more effective than anticipated, and bin Laden himself seemed resigned to defeat.^[50] The Pentagon, however, decided not to risk sending any more US troops to the effort to kill or capture bin Laden, despite the fact that there were US Marines based not far away in Kandahar.^[46] It has been assessed that a block-and-sweep tactic utilizing between 2,000 and 3,000 US troops would likely have worked; this number was readily available among the Marines in Kandahar.^[50] In the end, however, bin Laden was able to escape along with his Al-Qaeda fighters across the border into Pakistan. Bin Laden would not be caught and killed by the US until a full decade later.^[51]

Following this failure, Donald Rumsfeld lied to the public, denying that the US knew for sure that bin Laden was in the area.^[52]

US soldiers in the mountains.

The stalemate[edit]

After Tora Bora, things went downhill. American troops just sorta stood around-withdrawal was too embarrassing but Bush was distracted by Iraq. Since the western backed Kabul government was so inept as to be essentially stillborn and any serious "nation building" required more effort than Bush would ever expend, the Taliban could spend the next few years regrouping until 2006, when they became a powerful insurgency. After the end of George W. Bush's second term as president, Barack Obama inherited the war, and the United States and NATO made a major forward step when American forces killed Osama bin Laden in mid-2011.^[53] If the battle with Al-Qaeda went well the war with the locally entrenched Taliban did not, soon becoming the source of numerous Vietnam allusions.

On December 20, 2010, vice president Joe Biden announced that the United States was "going to be totally out of there, come hell or high water, by 2014."^[54] As is obvious now, he didn't actually mean that. Starting in 2015, troops stationed in Afghanistan will be reduced to around 10,000, and it was expected that only "a small residual force" will remain at the end of Obama's term.^[55] However, thanks to various developments in region, in early 2019, there were 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, some of whom had been born after the beginning of the war.^[56][57]

Deja vu à la Saigon[edit]

However, Donald Trump, in a stopped clock moment, decided to further reduce the number of stationed troops, and by 2021, there were barely 2500 soldiers left in Afghanistan. In 2021 Biden-who was now President-claimed the withdrawal would be completed by September 11 of that year. As American troops left, the Taliban took more territory during a dramatic 2021 offensive. On August 15, 2021, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani booked the soonest flight to Tajikistan hours before the Taliban captured the capital city of Kabul,^[58] indicating an end to the decades-long war, and bringing the country back into a position it was in 20 years ago.

Other fiascos in the region[edit]

• Genghis Khan^[59] stopped by for a brief sojourn at one point (1219). And how did he end up winning against the Afghans, you ask? By mercilessly slaughtering every single individual in cities that refused to surrender.
• Freshly Islamized Arabians made a holy war to convert Afghanistan (7th century CE). It took them over 200 years to finish the job.
• Alexander the Great conquered this region in less than a decade, and there were Greek kingdoms in the region for centuries after Alexander's conquests.

The moral of the story[edit]

Never get involved in a land war in Asia. Also the only country to successfully control Afghanistan is India. India as of late has been bankrolling and carrying out training of the Afghan Army to act as a counter to the Taliban and their ally Pakistan. In reality the current war in Afghanistan is a proxy war between India and Pakistan.^[60]

See also[edit]

• Iraq War
• War on Terror
• Iran-Iraq War
• Vietnam War
• Korean War

External links[edit]

• 5 harsh truths about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington Post
• This is What Winning Looks Like Vice News
• Rethink Afghanistan A group named after the film Rethink Afghanistan.

References[edit]