Afghanistan’s History & America’s Options
The prospects for “winning” in Afghanistan have diminished and the US presence may now be counterproductive to American security. The need to review objectives, strategies and tactics is compelling.
The stated objective is to keep Al Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan and setting up sanctuaries in that country. Afghanistan is the easiest Muslim country to kill and capture Al Qaeda members, so the objective should be to attract them to return to Afghanistan.
Summary
The US once supported the mujahedeen, in “Charlie Wilson’s war” against the Soviets. The Soviets supported the central government in Kabul from the Soviet headquarters at Bagram Airbase outside of Kabul. Now the US supports the central government in Kabul from the Bagram airbase fighting against the mujahedeen who have morphed into Taliban.
The US has 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. NATO countries have 30,000. There are 90,000 trained troops in the Afghan National Army. Combined, this totals 220,000 troops. The Taliban have 30,000 fighters and Al Qaeda has, at most, 100 people in Afghanistan.
The Taliban are divided into two broad groups – the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban, some of whom are in Pakistan. The Pakistanis oppose the Pakistani Taliban, but not the Afghan Taliban, who were and are their allies against India. A majority of Pakistanis view America as their enemy.
The Afghan Taliban are not a threat to the United States and Al Qaeda is very unlikely to return to Afghanistan if the US leaves. The primary justification for our military operations in Afghanistan is based on the assumption that fighting the Afghan Taliban is the same as fighting Al Qaeda. This assumption is not valid.
The US military presence in Afghanistan motivates lunatics and extremists to commit terrorist attacks against Americans. Consequently, our presence is counterproductive to American security.
The US should change tactics, reduce the military presence in Afghanistan and fight terrorists in South Asia the same way we fight terrorists in other parts of the world – with intelligence, Special Forces and drones. To explore these assumptions and conclusions, we will first begin with Afghan history.
History
Afghanistan has been engaged in a civil war almost continuously since the Saur Revolution in April 1978. In broad terms, the civil war has been between two groups – the “fundamentalists” and the “traditionalists.” The fundamentalists consist primarily of the rural religious conservatives (by Afghan standards), while the traditionalists are more urban, more secular and more liberal (again, by Afghan standards). The Mujahideen and the Taliban are part of the fundamentalists group. The US has supported both sides in this civil war at different times. Some historical perspective may help in understanding the current situation.
On July 17, 1973, General Mohammad Daoud Khan overthrew the monarchy of Mohammad Zahir Shah, who had served as king for forty years. It was a bloodless coup and Zahir Shah went into exile in Italy. Daoud Khan declared Afghanistan a republic with himself as president. He was a strong advocate of Pashtun irredentism, i.e., the creation of a greater Pashtunistan, which included Pashtun areas of both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
By 1978, the Afghan Communist Party, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, (PDPA) was ten years old. It was split between an extremist group led by Nur Mohammed Taraki and a moderate group led by Babrak Karmal, who was favored by the Soviet leaders. In early 1978, Daoud Khan’s government killed Mohammed Akbar Khaibar, a prominent member of the Communist PDPA. Most party leaders were arrested.
Hafizulla Amin (educated at Columbia University) and members of the military wing of the PDPA staged a successful bloody coup in April 1978, known as the Saur Revolution. (Saur means, “April.”) The head of the PDPA, the extremist, Nur Muhammad Taraki, was released from prison and assumed the position as President of Afghanistan. On April 27, 1978, during the coup, Daoud Khan was executed. Taraki arrested and executed a large number of opponents, which led to strong opposition to his new government.
Taraki requested Soviet help. In a prophetic statement, Alexei Kosygin replied to Taraki, “We believe it would be a fatal mistake to commit ground troops. If our troops went in, the situation in your country would not improve, On the contrary, it would get worse.”
Taraki reportedly made several attempts on the life of Hafizulla Amin. The final attempt backfired and Taraki was executed in September 1979. Amin assumed the presidency. The PDPA attempted to liberalize Afghanistan society, stressing education for both men and women, introducing widespread literacy programs, banning the selling of brides and forced marriages, and raising the minimum age for marriage. These policies were supported by the more liberal urban population, the “traditionalists.” All of these policies were opposed by the more religious rural conservatives, the “fundamentalists.”
Amin carried out his own purges of the PDPA. Known by conservative Afghans as the “atheistic infidel,” Amin engaged harsh tactics, including arrests and executions. His opponents made several attempts on his life. His tactics became too severe for his Soviet allies, who had invested heavily in Afghanistan and who concluded Amin was destabilizing the country. On December 24, 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan. On December 27, 1979, the KBG stormed the Presidential Palace and killed Amin, falsely claiming he was an agent of the CIA. The Soviets installed Babrak Karmal as the new head of government.
Karmal, a moderate member of the PDPA, promised an end to executions, democratic elections and protection for individual freedom and personal property. The civil war continued. The US provided financial and military aid to the mujahideen. In 1981 aid through Zia’s Pakistan began to increase due to the efforts of Texas Congressman, Charlie Wilson, and CIA officer Gust Avrakotos, as depicted in the movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War.” However, the first stinger missiles did not arrive until April 1987. That was two months after Gorbachev told the Politburo that the USSR must prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan and just three months before the Soviets publicly announced their decision to withdraw. The Soviet withdrawal was announced on July 20, 1987 and was completed on February 15, 1989.
By this time the Soviets had blamed Karmal for the lack of success. In November 1986, they replaced him with Mohammad Najibullah, who had been the head of the KHAD, the secret police.
Najibullah’s government fell and in March 1992 he resigned. An interim government was formed that promised elections. Najibullah fled to a UN compound. The civil war continued and the country descended into ungoverned chaos. Fighting was almost continuous and included infighting among former allies and various mujahideen groups.
When the Taliban, led by Mullah Mohammad Omar, captured Kabul in 1996, Najibullah was tortured, castrated, and then killed and hung from a traffic light post with his penis cut off and stuffed into his mouth. Girls’ schools were closed. Women were banned from working outside the house. Music, television and sports were banned.
The US supported the rural religious fundamentalists, the mujahedeen, in “Charlie Wilson’s War” against the Soviets. According to Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US, the mujahedeen morphed into the Taliban. Many mujahedeen joined the Taliban. Some Taliban are children of the mujahedeen. As an example, Jalaluddin Haqqani was a senior mujahedeen fighter who received money and arms from the C.I.A in the 1980s. In the 1990s, when the Taliban ran Afghanistan, he was the governor of Paktia Province. His son, Siraj Haqqani, is the strongest Taliban warrior in Afghanistan today and his fighters have posed the biggest threat to American forces. Following 9/11, the US changed sides, fighting against the Taliban, those rural religious fundamentalists, who were supported by the US two decades earlier.
Recent documents revealed that US helicopters have been shot down by heat seeking missiles, possibly provided by the US to the mujahedeen. The missiles have proven to be less accurate than those depicted in Charlie Wilson’s war. The US military had reported that these helicopters were shot down by ground fire.
Ironically, when the US changed sides, supporting the more liberal urban people representing the central government, the Americans adopted Bagram Airbase outside of Kabul as their headquarters. Bagram was used by the Soviets as their headquarters when they supported the central government in Kabul.
Interestingly, before the Soviet withdrawal, Gorbachev tried a surge, based on the advice of military commanders who thought one last push would break the mujahedin. After eight years the Soviets concluded that they could not achieve anything resembling a victory in Afghanistan. After a similar time period, Americans may now be learning the same lesson. George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (Santayana also said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”)
Al Qaeda
Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were forced to leave Sudan in 1996 by the Sudanese government due to conditions attached to American foreign aid. Afghanistan was their choice for relocation, but they lost many of their members because Afghanistan was such an undesirable place to live. Previously, Al Qaeda had played a minor role in supporting the mujahideen against the Soviets. Al Qaeda engaged in three battles, losing the first two but claiming victory in the third, which occurred as the Soviets were retreating from Afghanistan. Al Qaeda’s primary activity in Afghanistan was training terrorists for Pakistan to fight in Kashmir.
Operating from Afghanistan, Al Qaeda directed the 9/11 attacks on the US. Osama bin Laden gave three reasons for this attack. The first, he said, was the continued existence of the Americans Air Force base in Saudi Arabia. It was created to support the first Gulf War, but not closed at the end of that war. The base was near Islam’s two holiest sites – Mecca and Medina. (This base was removed after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.) Second were the injustices against Palestinians carried out by Israel supported by US. He also included the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel supported by the American 6th fleet. The third reason given was American support of corrupt Arab monarchs who, he said, embezzle wealth from the people.
October 7, 2001, in response to 9/11, the US military along with the British launched “Operation Enduring Freedom,” an invasion of Afghanistan. On November 13, 2001, the Taliban fighters abandoned Kabul and on December 7, 2001, the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar fell. Seventeen months after the invasion, on March 20, 2003, the US, along with three other countries, invaded Iraq in “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
As the US reduced forces in Afghanistan, the Americans assigned several Afghan tribal leaders with the task of killing or capturing Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar. The leaders were given suitcases filled with cash for this assignment. Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar both escaped. The tribal leaders kept the cash.
Lawrence Wright (“Looming Tower”), a leading expert on Al Qaeda, said that 80% percent of Al Qaeda had been killed or captured. At that point in time, the US redeployed military assets from Afghanistan to the Iraqi theater. In a news conference, President Bush stated, “It is not all that important that we capture Osama bin Laden.” The redeployment of military assets to Iraq prevented the US from killing or capturing Osama bin Laden and allowed most of the remaining Al Qaeda (50 to 100 people) to move across the border into Pakistan.
Lawrence Wright suggested that if we had completed the effort against Al Qaeda, there would not have been a Global War on Terror. The redeployment allowed Al Qaeda to survive and the invasion of Iraq resulted in significant gains for Al Qaeda in both funding and recruiting. Al Qaeda became a well-funded, multi-national organization carrying out attacks in Spain, England and Indonesia.
The invasion of Iraq also provided some obvious, but unintended, benefits for Iran. It removed Iran’s worst enemy, Saddam Hussein, and converted Shiite-dominated Iraq into Iran’s closest ally. It also motivated Iran and North Korea, the other two countries in the “Axis of Evil,” to restart their nuclear programs to help protect themselves from invasion.
The leaders of Al Qaeda are now in Pakistan and these leaders are not likely to return to Afghanistan. It is easier for the US to capture and kill them in Afghanistan. They are safer in Pakistan. The Afghans do not want Al Qaeda because they attract foreign military force. Al Qaeda does not want to leave Pakistan because living conditions for Al Qaeda members are much better in Pakistan, including food, water, electricity, banking, communications, etc.
The Taliban
The Taliban in Pakistan are divided into two large groups and many sub-groups within the larger groups. Mostly in Waziristan, the two large tribes are the Mehsuds and the Wazirs. Mehsuds consider Wazirs slow-witted, mercantile and untrustworthy. Wazirs consider Mehsuds as vagabonds and cattle rustlers.
The Pakistani Taliban are led by the Mehsuds. Compared to the Wazirs, they have very little interest in Afghanistan. The Mehsuds have carried out 300 suicide attacks in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was, allegedly, one of their victims. Faisal Shahzad, the New York Time Square terrorist, was allegedly trained by the Pakistani Taliban, although the Pakistani Taliban have disavowed any connection. The Pakistani military has focused their attacks on the Pakistani Taliban, not the Afghan Taliban. On rare occasions, and only due to US pressure, have they focused on the Afghan Taliban. Historically, the Pakistanis viewed the Afghan Taliban as their allies against India in the Kashmiri conflict. Recent polls show that a majority of Pakistanis view America as their enemy.
The Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, comprising approximately 42 percent of the country’s population. Most of the Taliban in Afghanistan are Pashtuns. Pashtuns make up only 5% of the Afghan National Army (ANA). Only about 20% of the ANA speak Pashtun. Hamid Karzai is a Pashtun.
The Afghan Taliban are little threat to the US. Their objective is to control and govern Afghanistan. (Al Qaeda, on the other hand, is a Jihadist organization whose objective is to create a new Islamic caliphate that will rule the Muslim world and beyond.) The Taliban simply want the US to leave Afghanistan. They dislike Al Qaeda referring to the Arabs as “camels,” a derisive term. They are joined together by a common enemy, the United States.
Risks to American Security
The primary risk of a terrorist attack against the US comes from extremists and lunatics. A large American military presence in Muslim countries fuels anti-Americanism, promotes the growth in the number of terrorists and fosters increased funding for Islamists and Jihadists. Every terrorist attack by Muslims has been motivated by Western military presence in Muslim countries.
- New York City & Pentagon, Sep 11, 2001: Motivated by US maintaining a military base near Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
- Bali bombings, October 12, 2002: Motivated by US war on terror and Australia’s role in liberating East Timor.
- Madrid train bombings, March 11, 2004: Motivated by Spain’s participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
- London bombings, July 7, 2005: Motivated by British support of US in Iraq and war on terror against Muslims’
- Others motivated by the US fighting Muslims:
Richard Reid (shoe bomber), December 22, 2001
Farouk Abdul Mutallab (underwire bomber), December 25, 2009
Nadal Hassan (Ft. Hood murderer), November 5, 2009
Faisal Shazad (Times Square bomber), May 3, 2010
Faisal Shazad told authorities, “I am part of the answer to the U. S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people.”
Without that motivation, the risks of terrorist attacks are significantly reduced. (See “What Terrorists Want” by Louise Richardson.) Remaining in Afghanistan increases the risk of a terrorist attack against the US, both from foreign terrorists and from domestic terrorists.
In the future, Drones (unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs) may become the weapon of choice for terrorists. Two-thirds of the military drones are manufactured outside the US. Drones are relatively easy to make and can easily enter Mexico. They need only clear a 20-foot fence to attack the US.
Mathematical Challenges
The NATO forces have a significant mathematical advantage over the Taliban. The US has 100,000 troops in Afghanistan plus a similar number of contractors. NATO countries have 30,000 there. There are 90,000 to 120,000 trained troops in the Afghan National Army. Combined, this totals a minimum of 220,000 troops, mostly well trained and well equipped. The Taliban have 25,000 to 30,000 fighters, who are less well trained, less well equipped and often illiterate. Despite and seven to one troop advantage, NATO has not prevailed.
From a financial perspective, the security objectives in Afghanistan are virtually a mathematical impossibility. Afghanistan has a GDP of $24 billion. Afghanistan, which has only a 30% literacy rate, has a weak, corrupt central government that cannot assume responsibility for security in the foreseeable future. The US is unable to provide security with a budget of $100 billion and a seven to one advantage over the Taliban in military troops. Ultimately, to maintain security at a fraction of the $24 billion GDP, the Afghans will have to find a different solution. This could take generations to achieve.
Afghanistan will change when Afghans want change badly enough to change, not because Americans want them to change.
Conclusion
The rationale for the US remaining in Afghanistan may seem compelling, at least, politically. The US has considerable sunk costs in lives and resources in the Afghan conflict. Withdrawal could damage America’s global image. The Taliban would claim to have driven out the Americans, just like they drove out the Soviets. The Administration would be accused of cowardice.
Because the assumptions were wrong and the objectives unachievable, the American public will eventually turn against the US involvement in Afghanistan. At that time, politicians will support withdrawal to get elected. But, there are alternatives to withdrawal and they are available now.
In his Washington Post column August 31, 2009 titled “Time to Get Out of Afghanistan,” conservative Republican George Will stated, “forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.”
Jack Devine, former CIA deputy director and chief of the CIA Afghan Task Force, made a similar case in the July 29, 2010 Wall Street Journal.
The need to revise our military strategy in Afghanistan should be clear. The Afghan conflict costs American lives and money, and it motivates lunatics and extremists to commit terrorist acts against Americans.
The death of Osama bin Laden provides the US with an opportunity to change strategies and tactics and fight terrorists in South Asia the same way we fight terrorists in other parts of the world – with intelligence, Special Forces and drones. This will mean a reduction in the US military presence in Afghanistan, which should help reduce the risk of terrorist attacks against the United States.
