As the Trump Administration continues negotiations with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan, currently the longest war in U.S. history, few people in Washington, D.C. will acknowledge the truth: the Taliban is a proxy force for Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two allies of the United States.
Indeed, for nearly two decades, the United States has been fighting militants backed by its own allies. While it has poured money and manpower into Afghanistan, creating a new Afghan government and its security forces, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have been covertly supporting the Taliban and other Islamist militant groups resisting the Afghan government and the U.S.-led military occupation.
In particular, Pakistan’s main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, has been providing aid and assistance to the militants while donors in Saudi Arabia have been sending them money. This situation, in which the United States backs one side and its allies back the other, drives the endless war in Afghanistan. It has led to “17 years of death and misery,” as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described the war earlier this year in an interview on Fox News.
Currently, U.S. officials are trying to persuade the Taliban to enter into direct negotiations with the Afghan government to end the war. Earlier this year, U.S. and Taliban officials agreed to a framework, but since then, there has been no major movement to implement the deal, in part due to ongoing hostilities between the Taliban and the Afghan government.
In Washington, D.C. last month, President Donald Trump shared his own personal view of the war: “If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people,” Trump said.
Trump insists that he prefers negotiations, but nobody appears to be backing down. During Trump’s presidency, U.S. and Afghan forces have been increasing their military operations against the Taliban. At the same time, the Taliban and other militants have continued to resist the Afghan government, relying on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for support.
“If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people.”
And innocent civilians continue to die. On August 7, fourteen people were killed and 145 injured by a Taliban attack in Kabul. In July, the bloodiest month in years, 1,500 civilians were killed or wounded in attacks. So far this year, U.S. and Afghan forces have killed more civilians than the Taliban.
As the war approaches the end of its second decade, U.S. officials show no signs that they are willing to address the fundamental power dynamics that have fueled the war for so long. Even if negotiations succeed, the United States will likely continue battling its own allies for influence in Afghanistan.
Inside Afghanistan, the war is rooted in a longstanding conflict between two factions, the Taliban and a shifting alliance of warlords. During the 1990s, the Taliban and the warlords emerged from the Mujahideen, a network of Islamist militants that had previously been organized by the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia to resist the Soviet occupation of the country.
As Steve Coll describes in his book Ghost Wars, U.S. officials worked closely with the Pakistani and Saudi governments to create the various militant groups that are now competing for control of the country.
“We were criticized by State for supporting the extremists,” former C.I.A. official Bill Murray later recalled, according to a 2009 leaked email. “Our logic was that we had no political goal, just get the Soviets out.”
Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the warlords and the Taliban emerged as rival factions battling for control of the country. Although the warlords were a powerful force, the Taliban controlled most of the country from 1996 to 2001, ruling it with support from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
After 9/11, the tables turned. Blaming the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden (the accused mastermind of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York), the Bush Administration invaded Afghanistan and worked with the warlords to overthrow the ruling Taliban regime. When U.S. officials created a new Afghan government, they brought many of those same warlords into it. Since then, the United States has been defending a warlord-infested Afghan government against the Taliban and other Islamist militant groups supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
This ongoing war has been devastating to the people of Afghanistan. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, the conflict has cost the lives of more than 100,000 Afghans; perhaps as many as 20,000 have been dying every year since 2017, more than any other time since the war began.
Through it all, U.S. officials have been well aware that they have been fighting forces backed by their allies. Although officials in Washington have typically praised the Pakistani and Saudi governments as their partners in the war on terror, numerous U.S. officials have repeatedly confirmed that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are the primary sources of support for the Taliban and other Islamist militant groups in Afghanistan.
In April 2008, Treasury Department official Stuart Levey told Congress that Saudi Arabia “remains the location from which more money is going to Sunni terror groups and the Taliban than from any other place in the world.” The following year, U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke conveyed a similar message to Saudi officials, telling them that “private donations from the Gulf were the chief source of Taliban financing.”
In December 2009, a State Department cable identified Saudi Arabia as “a critical financial support base” for the Taliban and other Islamist militant groups. “Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” the cable noted.
Even President Trump, in the years before the 2016 presidential election, identified Saudi Arabia as a major problem. “Look at Saudi Arabia,” he wrote in his 2011 book, Time to Get Tough, “It is the world's biggest funder of terrorism.”
Meanwhile, during this same period, U.S. officials repeatedly confirmed that Pakistan was providing the Saudi-funded militants with the safe haven they needed to launch attacks inside Afghanistan. In October 2003, career diplomat Peter Tomsen told Congress that the Pakistani government maintained a terrorist infrastructure that “spews out fighters.”
Through it all, U.S. officials have been well aware that they have been fighting forces backed by their allies.
Several years later, U.S. intelligence official Peter Lavoy informed NATO officials that the Pakistani government was allowing the Taliban leadership “to operate unfettered” inside Pakistan. The Inter-Services Intelligence “provides intelligence and financial support to insurgent groups,” enabling them to conduct attacks against the Afghan government and U.S. military forces, Lavoy explained.
Some of the highest-level officials in the Trump Administration have even identified Pakistan as their main challenge in the war. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. diplomat who is now leading the negotiations with the Taliban, told Congress in 2016 that “Pakistani policy is the principal cause of the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.” Pointing to the Pakistani government’s support of the Taliban and other Islamist militant groups, Khalilzad argued that the country should be classified as a state sponsor of terrorism.
As with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan has been identified by Trump himself as a rival. In his major address in 2017 on his plans for the war, Trump bluntly stated that the Pakistani government was supporting the Islamist militants resisting U.S. forces. “We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting,” he said.
Regardless of these factors, Trump has decided to continue the war. Indeed, just like his predecessors in the Bush and Obama Administrations, Trump has directed a war in which he knows that the opposition is backed by U.S. allies. He has, in other words, helped perpetuate the “endless wars” he claims to oppose.
Offering alternatives, a number of Trump’s political challengers, including Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren, have signed a pledge to end “endless wars.” “We’re not going to invest in never-ending wars,” Sanders has stated. Warren has said, “It’s time to bring our troops home from Afghanistan—starting now.”
Other critics argue that the United States should provide the Afghan people with money and resources to help them begin rebuilding their lives and communities. Writing for the Progressive, peace activist Kathy Kelly has repeatedly called on the United States to pay reparations. “Instead of tolerating endless war in Afghanistan, we need to demand that the United States pay reparations for the suffering and destruction it has already caused,” Kelly insists.
But what the Trump Administration has decided to do is intensify the war. By putting more military pressure on the Taliban, the Administration is trying to force Taliban militants to lay down their arms and join the Afghan government. Even as violence has increased, administration officials have remained convinced that they can create some kind of coalition government in which the U.S.-backed warlords and the Taliban leaders supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia work together to rule the country.
Such an outcome is unlikely to bring peace to Afghanistan. Although it could create some kind of temporary truce or long-term stalemate, it would produce a violent and authoritarian regime that would continue to repress the Afghan people. Perhaps the most likely fate of a coalition government in which the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia remain the kingmakers would be a violent collapse into a civil war between the Taliban and the warlords, similar to what happened during the 1990s.
What remains clear is that the Afghan people want an end to the fighting. While outside powers such as the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia have spent decades trying to control the country, the Afghan people have suffered the consequences, making them weary of war and eager for peace.
Some Afghans have begun a peace movement, marching through the country and demanding an end to the war. Others have written about their dreams of peace. Over the past several weeks, provincial leaders and religious scholars have all called for peace, building new momentum for a settlement.
As the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan contends, “Peace remains the best protection for civilians affected by armed conflict.”