New U.S. general takes lead in Afghan conflict
Army Lt. Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller faces a stark central question as he becomes the United States’ newest commander in Afghanistan this weekend: With local forces struggling and questions swirling about President Donald Trump’s support for the war, how long will America persist?
Miller, a respected veteran of some of the U.S. military’s most secretive combat units, takes the reins at a time of intense skepticism about what can be accomplished in a 17-year-old war. His mission to bring the United States’ longest war to a close is made more difficult by political upheaval in Kabul and Trump’s ambivalence about costly foreign wars.
Miller will be the first commander whose mission is as much diplomatic as military, as the Taliban’s resilience fuels a new drive to secure a peace deal allowing for a dignified U.S. drawdown.
“Throughout the ups and downs of this conflict, it’s become evident that the United States is not going to defeat the Taliban insurgency, even though it can prevent a Taliban victory,” said Laurel Miller, a former senior official who is now at the Rand Corp.
The 57-year-old general steps out of the shadowy Special Operations world Sunday to take over from Gen. John Nicholson Jr.
Miller’s most recent assignment was as the commander of Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees elite forces that include SEAL Team 6, Delta Force and the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment. He has deep experience in Afghanistan, including a stint heading Special Operations forces there from 2013-14.
“The more I stay there, sometimes the more difficult it becomes to understand,” he said of Afghanistan and its protracted conflict during his confirmation hearing this year. “I think I recognize what I do not understand at this stage of my career.”
The arc of Miller’s career reflects the evolution of U.S. Special Operations over the past quarter-century. His actions as a Delta Force captain are described in the book Black Hawk Down, which details the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia that killed 18 U.S. service members and included the shooting down of two Army helicopters. He was wounded in Somalia and Iraq.
The war in Afghanistan is at a delicate point. The Taliban still controls about 14 percent of the country’s 407 districts and contests an additional 30 percent after nearly 17 years of war, according to a recent report from a government watchdog.
The fragility of the Afghan government’s grip was highlighted most recently by a powerful militant assault on Ghazni, a provincial capital, that took U.S. and Afghan reinforcements to shake loose.
Unlike earlier years when U.S. troops spearheaded combat operations, the role of U.S. ground forces is now primarily aimed at enabling local troops, making their performance a central metric for U.S. success. The Afghan army continues to struggle with desertions and high casualties and, without help from a small cadre of elite forces, has difficulty mounting major offensives.
Miller has said the strategy Trump adopted a year ago, which provided for a modest increase in troop levels and greater leeway for U.S. forces to conduct air attacks, appears to be working. But he has avoided the kind of pronouncements about military progress other generals have made that have failed to stand up over time.
Speaking in June, Miller told lawmakers that he would not talk about turning points “unless there is one” and that he could not guarantee “a timeline or an end date” to the war.
A military official familiar with Miller’s thinking said that while the general supports the administration’s overall strategy, he is open to making changes within it. He said Miller plans to spend more than a week meeting with coalition troops deployed across the country.