Making retreat sound good

The United States is getting ready to retreat from Afghanistan. After more than 19 years of war following the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks, Washington has reached an agreement for a seven-day lull in attacks (not a formal ceasefire), after which the Taliban will negotiate a broader peace with Afghanistan government officials supposedly acting in their personal capacities. The US will reduce its presence from 13,000 troops to below 9,000 within months, whether or not the Afghans reach an agreement. Other arrangements remain secret but presumably include some sort of Taliban pledge not to provide safe haven to international terrorists as well as commitments on human rights, though these are likely to be vague, unenforceable, and perhaps worthless.

What this amounts to is US retreat from a theater in which more than about 2500 American military have lost their lives, and something like 10 times that number have been wounded. President Trump will vaunt this as fulfilling his campaign promise to end endless wars, but a substantial number of troops will remain at risk. The Afghanistan government may survive in Kabul, but the Taliban already control about 18% of its districts and contest another 48%:

US withdrawal and refocus on counterterrorism will likely increase those percentages, unless the Afghan security forces demonstrate much greater capability than they have to date.

At this point, there isn’t much of an alternative. The American public, pliable as it is on use of force in a crisis, doesn’t want recommitment to the fight in Afghanistan. President Trump has long been impatient with the war there. The Democrats don’t like it either. It has been clear since last fall’s abortive agreement, which Trump cancelled at the last minute due to renewed violence, that the American envoy, Zal Khalilzad, had no mandate or desire to press the Taliban for more than a decent exit and commitment to staving off Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

The Taliban see them at least in part as rivals for establishing Islamic governance, so there may be some reason to hope that they won’t quickly provide the kind of safe haven that Osama bin Laden enjoyed in the 1990s. Taliban ambitions mainly focus on restoring the Islamic Emirate inside Afghanistan, not projecting power beyond or provoking further intervention. They may even be prepared to fight the more internationally minded jihadis, if only to keep the Americans from renewed activity.

Afghanistan’s President Ghani, however, will have a lot to worry about once the Americans have drawn down. New York and Washington will not be at immediate risk, but Kabul will be. The population there may not want the Taliban to return, but history suggests the government has a hard time defending itself from insurgents in the countryside. Factiousness is endemic in Afghanistan. Ghani is not a man who compromises readily, and he wrote the book on Western-style statebuilding: Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. Protecting the human rights of women, minorities, and Afghans committed to real democracy is going to be a tall order.

This is not the first of Trump’s retreats. He settled for little in the renegotiation of NAFTA, caved on the tariff war with the Chinese, backed off denuclearization of North Korea, all but abandoned the opposition to President Maduro in Venezuela, and floated a peace plan for Israel and Palestine that dropped like a stone. While he remains verbally belligerent to Iran, he thankfully seems to have given up on the drive to war. He has little to nothing to show for his belligerence and bravado on the world stage, where he is regarded more as buffoon than champion, except in Israel and Russia.

Being able to claim that he has ended the long war in Afghanistan will stand Trump in good stead with those who know nothing about Afghanistan during the coming election campaign. The flim-flam man will make a necessary retreat sound good.