Tragedies of the Afghan war

The US attack on Afghanistan in 2001 was conceived and executed without deep analysis of the objectives of the war and ways for a safe exit. Previously classified memos dubbed the "Afghanistan Papers" containing 2,000 pages of interviews with senior US officials and others directly involved in the war effort have now revealed how public perceptions on the war were constructed and fed to the American people in a bid to hide the dark side of this misadventure.

According to statistics put out by several reports, the protracted war has taken huge toll on human lives, both military personnel and civilians, while continuing to dry up the American Treasury. Going by US Defense Department statistics, more than 2,300 US troops have died in the conflict while 20,589 returned home wounded. The war continues to take lives of civilians apart from frequent tragic killings of Afghan security personnel.

Meanwhile, about a trillion dollars have been spent despite the fact that the US had to spend far more on military operations in Afghanistan than it did on reconstruction, humanitarian aid, economic assistance and training of Afghan security forces (capacitybuilding exercises) and was still unable to find military solutions to the Afghan predicament.

Interventions can be successful in hypothetical cases where the polarization between the ruler (the government) and the ruled (masses) is more or less complete and the ousted regime's ability to secure mass support and challenge the intervener is close to non-existent. However, defeating the Taliban on Afghan soil was a difficult proposition considering the ethnic divisions and entrenched religious values in the society.

The insurgent group continued to derive support from the Pashtuns - the majority ethnic community in the country - and its radical religious prescriptions, although conflicted with modern norms of human rights, were far from alienating the society - deeply rooted in religious values - at large. Even while many people still wanted to be rid of a radical religious regime, fighting insurgencies on the ground was compounded by complexities of asymmetric warfare where the distinction between an insurgent and civilian was blurred. On several occasions, the commanders and troops on ground were puzzled as to their strategies when the enemy many times appeared to be amorphous.

Many in the American military establishment have acknowledged that the US turned down an early opportunity to engage the Taliban in talks and install a multi-ethnic government soon after their ouster from power. Many also believed that then-president George W Bush weakened the Afghan campaign by opening another theater of war - Iraq. The US had to divert its military focus away from Afghanistan, which contributed to the ability of the Taliban to regroup and bounce back from the fringes.

Also read: Afghanistan Papers an reminder of Vietnam

The Americans' hubris and belief in the superiority of their military capabilities blinded them to the complexities of asymmetric warfare in a different and complex cultural and geographical situation. Support from Tajik and Uzbek warlords was not sufficient to defeat the Taliban, who hailed from and lived with the masses from the predominant ethnic communi

eerie ty - the Pashtuns.

However, what is missing from the documents is that the botched war efforts were also part of the American drive to defend and promote its interests in the Central Asian region using Afghanistan as bridge, the geopolitical importance of which was recognized in reports of independent agencies and by the US Congress throughout 1990s. The US was on the lookout for an overarching threat based on which it could validate its military actions, form alliances and fulfill its strategic objectives by taking advantage of its superior military force. Hence the desire to have a foothold in

Afghanistan dumped logic and ground realities as well as superseding international norms. The move to uproot al-Qaeda quickly turned into a move to change the regime and then into a drive to obliterate the Taliban.

Folly of pre-emptive strikes

The US resorted to pre-emptive strikes against the Taliban regime, bypassing all the legitimate methods to capture the individuals who masterminded the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York and the Pentagon. Pre-emptive attacks can be self-serving and actions against groups undermine territorial integrity of states within which such groups operate. Military operations against such groups foreclose the policing and extradition options on which international law is based.

There was not even anyone to decide if there was sufficient evidence of state involvement in harboring perpetrators of the terrorist act and, more important, the question remained unanswered as to whether the Taliban had the ability to deliver the mastermind of 9/11 to the US. If the enemy is no longer an opposing state and its people but a regime or leadership, then bombs will not hit the "enemy" but innocent civilians. Deaths of civilians continued to erode support for the American mission.

Weak Afghan state

Difficult terrain, porous boundaries, and difficulty in understanding native peoples' languages and cultural dissimilarities have impeded the American fight against the Taliban. In a conventional war the opponent has a regular army, but there is no identifiable enemy of such a kind in asymmetric warfare. They mingle with civilians and they can even enter the territory of some other states from where they can wage war.