Staff Sgt. Adam Mancini, U.S. Army
Six months into his presidency, President Trump has yet to provide a plan for the war in Afghanistan. On June 14, the White House announced that it would grant Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the authority to determine troops levels in the country, which will almost certainly result in the troop escalation that the Pentagon chief has been calling for since taking office.
And while the American people have steadily grown more opposed to the war, there is little debate outside Washington about America’s continued involvement in Afghanistan.
A few discomfiting facts put this failed effort into context:
- The sixteen-year war is the longest in American history.
- The United States has spent more in Afghanistan in inflation-adjusted dollars than on the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild Western Europe after World War II.
- The Taliban control more territory than at any point since 2001, with some intelligence estimates saying the group controls 90 percent of the countryside.
- The U.S. has invested nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars and lost 2,400 American soldiers.
One would be hard-pressed to say the United States is any closer to “winning” the Afghan war than in 2001. While American aid has been critical in improving the country’s health and education infrastructures and has helped build a robust Afghan media, given the level of investment, the return has been very low.
“When we invaded,” says Douglas Wissing, a journalist who has written two books on Afghanistan, “[the nation] was at the bottom of every human development industry. Sixteen years later, they’re still at the bottom of virtually every human development category. Most of that money was wasted.”
What is the President’s plan to win this war? From what we know so far, it’s nothing more than a small-scale re-escalation—likely between 3,000 and 5,000 troops with a request for a similar number from NATO allies and an indefinite U.S. commitment of more than $20 billion per year. That will do little to break what the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, has called a “stalemate” or pressure the Taliban to come to the negotiating table.
But the war isn’t at a stalemate. The truth is the Taliban are winning and they continue to receive significant support from Pakistan and other regional actors. According to Michael Kugelman, a South Asia scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, “The Taliban leadership has safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, and insurgencies never die so long as they enjoy cross-border sanctuaries.”
The war isn’t at a stalemate. The truth is the Taliban are winning and they continue to receive significant support from Pakistan and other regional actors.
Similarly, General Nicholson told Congress in February that it is “very difficult to succeed on the battlefield when your enemy enjoys external support and safe haven.” Additionally, the Taliban receive intermittent support from Iran and, in a bizarre turn of history, the U.S. military has asserted that Moscow is now actually aiding the Taliban.
The Taliban also remains effective because it receives substantial indirect support from the United States. As Peter Beinart writes in the Atlantic, “The Taliban’s second-biggest source of revenue, after the opium trade, is the American taxpayer, who sends billions in arms and supplies to the Afghan military, much of which ends up in the Taliban’s hands.”
During the last sixteen years, the United States has spent billions to develop the Afghan army’s capabilities, operating under the assumption that the American goal of defeating the Taliban is shared by the Afghan army and its leaders. But former coalition commander and ambassador to Afghanistan John Eikenberry has argued that this is a fantasy, as some Afghan army commanders “are ensuring the welfare of [their] family and supporters, staying aligned with political patrons, and avoiding combat so as to preserve [their] unit, which is a source of revenue.”
Corruption is one of the biggest governance problems in Afghanistan and it creates immense security challenges. “We hear story after story of commanders who steal the fuel, sell it to the Taliban, who take the weapons we—you—pay for and sell it to the Taliban,” says John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan. “The irony of it is, the terrorists are at the end of our supply chain.”
On its face, the notion that a few additional thousand troops would change the facts on the ground is absurd; it will be nothing more than a continuation of the ineffectual status quo. Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 23, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats said as much: “The intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners.”
Today, there are approximately 13,000 coalition troops in Afghanistan. Back in 2011, the Taliban only controlled seven percent of the country and the U.S./NATO force numbered close to 140,000. Today, the Taliban’s position is markedly stronger. Given their resilience and expanding territorial control, a small-scale troop escalation will do nothing to beat back the Taliban or persuade the group to come to the negotiating table, particularly as one of its preconditions for negotiations is a full withdrawal of international forces.
What can the United States do? For many analysts and observers, the answer has been obvious for years.
Stability in Afghanistan is a pipe dream unless Islamabad ends its support for militant groups. With President Trump enhancing ties with Saudi Arabia, he should work with Riyadh—which has significant leverage over Pakistan—and other allies to pressure Islamabad to cease its support for the Taliban, using both carrots and sticks.
On June 6, the Afghan government hosted the first meeting of the Kabul Process to build a regional consensus for peacemaking with the Taliban. Representatives from Iran, Pakistan, China, and India participated. The United States should use this process to emphasize that a stable Afghanistan is a prerequisite for a stable region.
Afghanistan faces a host of economic, political, and governance challenges that will continue to hamper the county’s development. These challenges only bolster the Taliban, which exploits the failures of the Western-backed government in Kabul to recruit for their cause. Absent a regional diplomatic framework, it will be nearly impossible to address these challenges, weaken the Taliban’s tightening grip and set Afghanistan on a path to prosperity and peace.
Perhaps it simply is too difficult for the White House, foreign policy establishment, and many Americans to accept that the United States has lost a war. But re-escalating in Afghanistan is a fool’s errand.
Ultimately, the only path to a stable Afghanistan is through diplomacy, which will undoubtedly be a steep uphill climb and may not work. If the last sixteen years should have taught policymakers anything, however, it’s that there is no military solution. That war has been lost.
Adam Gallagher is an independent writer and analyst focusing on U.S. foreign policy and politics. He is a contributor at The Hill and his work has appeared in The American Prospect, The Huffington Post, The National Interest, The Diplomat, International Policy Digest and for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, among other outlets. Previously, he was an analyst at a defense consultancy monitoring local and international media reporting on Afghanistan. He has been an officially accredited election observer in Tunisia (2014) and Myanmar (2015). Follow him on Twitter @aegallagher10.