Tag: Afghanistan
The future will be nasty, brutish and long
The collapse of the Afghan security forces is pretty much complete. They opted not to fight, rendering the hundreds of billions that the US has spent on them over almost two decades worthless. “By, with, and through,” the Pentagon’s mantra for how it goes about security assistance, has amounted to naught.
The same cannot be said however of US civilian assistance. While no doubt pundits will be talking for years about how hopeless it was to think that Afghanistan could be made into a thriving democracy, significant social, economic, and political process was made. Until this week, Afghanistan was a relatively open society with lively and partly free media, education not only for men but also for women, vastly improved health conditions, sharply increased per capita income (which has stagnated for the past five years), and a government that owed its existence to not very fair or entirely free elections. Civil society in Afghanistan was robust. The country’s low scores on various governance and economic indices were due largely to the Taliban insurgency and corruption, which had reached dreadful levels.
Can any of the limited progress be preserved in a renewed Taliban regime?
Today’s Taliban are saying that girls and women will be able to go to school and work, which they weren’t permitted to do under the Taliban in the 1990s. The official Taliban line is amnesty for former government officials and troops. Their current hesitation in entering Kabul may cause some to hope that they will be more restrained than last time around.
But there are reports from some provinces that revenge killings and assassinations are already occurring, as are forced marriages. The Taliban have not renounced hudud punishments, which include cutting off hands and feet as well as stoning to death. The Taliban would be foolish to fight their way into Kabul, as that would cause a good deal of destruction and ruin their international bona fides. It will be far better for them to negotiate a handover of power that enables them to claim some sort of legitimacy other than by force of arms. The Taliban have definitely gotten savvier about their image in Western media.
But international attention won’t last, and they know it.
The Taliban are still totalitarians: they do not abide opposition, they do not respect human rights, and they won’t share power for long. If we can anticipate future performance from past behavior, there will be no parliament, only some sort of high council of religious leaders. Accountability and transparency will be minimal. Civil society will be squelched. Free media will be closed. Drug trafficking will be rife. Other economic activity will be marginal. Minorities will not only be discriminated against but abused and murdered.
There has been a good deal of concern about the thousands of Afghans who have worked with the US military, mainly as interpreters. But the numbers of Afghans at risk due to their cooperation with the Americans is much greater than that. It includes a couple of thousand who worked at the Embassy, many more thousands who have worked on US-funded development and governance projects, and still more thousands who took seriously the opportunity to organize civil society organizations to press for various causes that will no longer be permitted under the Taliban. If all of them were to leave Afghanistan, prospects would dim further. Those who stay–either because they can’t get out or because they have the courage not to–aren’t likely to last long.
I could be wrong about all of this. We’ll have to wait and see. But my guess is that the future will be nasty, brutish, and long.
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Stevenson’s army, September 13
-About 8000 US troops are being deployed to help in what the Pentagon refuses to call an evacuation from Afghanistan.
– AEI’s Fred Kagan says Biden could have stopped the Taliban
-In the Atlantic, a retired Army colonel says US training of Afghan forces was flawed.
-Speaker Pelosi says House staff can now earn more than Members.
We’ll have an exercise in week 2 where you get to decide on the jobs and pay for a House office. Here’s more background from CRS.
-The Guardian profiles Biden’s head of legislative liaison.
-Venezuelan government and opposition are talking.
– FP profiles new Chinese ambassador to US, who used to work for UPI.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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It’s all over but the shouting, in Kabul or not
It is hard to keep up with the Taliban advance in Afghanistan, which has now engulfed at least 12 provincial capitals and perhaps two-thirds of the country. The Afghan National Army (ANA) is collapsing in many places. Civilians who can are fleeing to the capital. Civilians who can’t are suffering dreadful Taliban depredations. There will soon be little left of the hard-won progress on women’s rights, relatively free media, improved health care, and property rights. The Taliban will take what they want, destroy the hospitals and clinics, dictate to radio and TV, and drive women into hiding. Their is no sign that their years out of power have moderated their extremist views.
The American withdrawal unquestionably precipitated this debacle. It was poorly executed and far too fast for the limited ANA capabilities. President Biden, who says he doesn’t regret it, will take the rap, but it was President Trump who agreed to it. Taliban promises have proven empty. They have not negotiated seriously with the government delegation in Doha and they have not broken with Al Qaeda. They may still do both, but only if the government forces are able to block their advance. That is unlikely.
It would be wrong however to conclude that everything would have been okay had the Americans stayed. The Taliban were already gaining territory before the American withdrawal. The ANA might well have collapsed, even if more slowly, had American support continued. A longer “decent interval” might have allowed for more negotiation in Doha, but the ultimate outcome would likely not have been a lot better than we are likely to see now.
What are we likely to see now? The Taliban will want to secure as much of the country as they can. The only big question is whether they will try to take Kabul by force. They could conceivably conclude it would be better not to do that, in hope of capturing some international aid, or avoiding international opprobrium, in the aftermath. But if they spare Kabul, they will still want President Ghani out and some sort of transitional regime friendly to their cause installed. There is no hope that the negotiations in Doha can produce better results than the military situation on the ground, which is catastrophic from Ghani’s perspective.
Western countries are busy threatening the Taliban with isolation if they continue the offensive. That is pointless. The Taliban don’t care about isolation from the West, which they assume will not provide assistance in the aftermath. The countries whose attitudes will count for the Taliban are the neighboring powers, especially Pakistan, Iran, China, and Russia. Pakistan in particular has a lot of clout, because it provides the Taliban with safe haven, but Chinese or Russian aid might carry some weight as well. It will be interesting to see if the Taliban avoid atrocities against the (Shia) Hazaras, in order not to provoke Iran. It will also be interesting to see if the Taliban continue to maintain friendly relations with Al Qaeda and even allow it to use Afghanistan again as a platform for international terror.
President Ghani is calling on civilians to arm and resist the Taliban, including the warlords whom he has rightly tried to marginalize in recent years. Even if he did not try to summon support, the prospect of insurgency against Taliban rule is real. That will make their behavior in victory more abusive, not less. They will want to squelch any armed resistance as quickly and decisively as possible. No one should doubt their level of brutality.
It’s all over but the shouting, in Kabul or not.
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Stevenson’s army, August 12
– Belarus rejected US proposed ambassador.
– China punished Lithuania over Taiwan.
– FP assesses problems in Afghanistan’s forces.
– FWIW: Here’s the Trump-Taliban peace agreement.
-CBO says debt limit likely to be reached in Oct or Nov
– Data for redistricting to be released today.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, August 11
– Lured by the prospect of an August recess, the Senate approved the infrastructure package and, after only 14 hours of votes, and 47 amendments, approved the budget resolution intended to pave the way for a filibuster-proof reconciliation bill.
-WaPo reports an intelligence assessment says Kabul could be overrun in 6-12 months. The reporters give no hints of their sources, but I would note that Senators got a secret briefing on Afghanistan on Monday.
– Politico reports that the administration has made a major effort to fill Senior Executive Service positions across government.
– Meanwhile, Senator Cruz [R-TX] still blocks many State Dept nominations because of his opposition to the administration’s NordStream2 policy. [Here’s a CRS report from June, shortly before the Biden-Merkel deal on the project.]
– Nobody blocked former SAIS Prof Mara Karlin, who was confirmed yesterday.
– Biden’s promised “Summit of Democracies” is now set for December.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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The wagons had better be circled
Even a quick glance at a map tells the story:
The Taliban, already strong among the Pashtuns in the east and south, are encircling the country in the mostly non-Pashtun north and west, capturing a string of provincial capitals and other population centers. They will eventually want to close in on Kabul.
What could stop the Taliban advance? Three things, in combination:
- US air power
- Diplomatic pressure
- Consolidation of the Afghan security forces
The first two are happening. The US appears to be upping its air strikes and is trying to convince the Taliban it will be a pariah if wins the country by force. Pakistan is key in the international arena, as it provides the Taliban with safe haven. But there is little sign of the third: the Afghan Armed Forces (AAF) are giving in to the Taliban in many places without a fight.
It is hard to imagine they would do that in Kabul. But holding Kabul and surrounding areas will be little comfort if the rest of the country falls. Already many civilians are fleeing from the countryside toward the capital, worsening conditions there and making relief both vital and difficult.
President Ghani may still be able however to hold on, at least for a while. A lot of Afghans don’t want the Taliban back. There is little pressure in Washington so far to cut off the funding that goes mainly to the AAF, though that specter could still emerge. Withdrawal of Soviet troops and then cut-off of Soviet aid to Afghanistan in 1992 precipitated the fall of the Communist government there, just as an agreement to withdraw troops and reduction of American aid to South Vietnam contributed to the collapse of its army and goverrnment in 1975. With the American and NATO troop withdrawal virtually complete, Ghani will be watching the American budget process attentively.
In the meanwhile, he can do little more than withdraw his security forces from contested areas and try to hold only a relatively few vital population centers. At some point, a mutually hurting stalemate could create conditions for a negotiated outcome, but the Taliban role in that outcome will be enlarged by its growing control of territory.
Around 2015 I rejected an offer to join a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan. It didn’t take clairvoyance to know that the cause there was already lost. The question now is not whether it can be won, but how many more people will suffer and how much more damage will be done before the political outcome is clear. A great deal depends on deliberations among the Taliban about how much further they want to fight, but the omens are not good. The wagons had better be circled.
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