Taliban to lose long war in Afghanistan
History is littered with lost civilizations: the Khmer empire that created Angkor Wat, the Mayans who left behind a magnificent step pyramid at Chichen Itza, the Nabataeans who carved breathtaking Petra out of solid sandstone, the mysterious inhabitants of Eastern Island whose enormous enigmatic head monuments delight and puzzle. To name just a few. They abandoned their great cities and disappeared into the dust. But they built things. The Taliban have built nothing. Their claim to historical notoriety will be the wilful, pious destruction of precious shrines and statuary.
Their rabidly puritanical culture will collapse because it cannot stand in a world of modernity that has encroached even into the isolated crevices and defiles of Afghanistan. Cellphones and satellite dishes have brought the outside inside. Afghans understand what they do not have and what the Taliban aspire to take away. There is nowhere for forced ignorance to hide anymore.
This is the real long war the Taliban are destined to lose.
What they have in their favour, at this moment in time, is that Afghans, however much they may loathe the Taliban — overwhelmingly they do, even in the Pashtun south — they detest their endlessly corrupt and incompetent national government even more, a government that survives only with propping up by the West.
Oh, they’ve indeed embraced bureaucracy — how Canada’s thenBrig.-Gen. David Fraser, commanding officer, described the nationbuilding aspect of the mission to me in 2006 — which is why hardly anything ever gets accomplished as ministry orders and security manifests pass through a multitude of hands, each generously greased, billions of dollars disappearing sideways. That too is Afghan culture, thieving, which is viewed as outwitting.
The vanishing money is a chronic and losing battle fought by donor nations.
The other long war — 16 years and counting, a “forever war” that the sons and daughters of today’s deployed soldiers may still be waging a generation from now — can yet go either way. We don’t even have any idea what “winning” would look like, as the mission keeps changing from White House administration to administration.
President George W. Bush, contrary to pillars of Republicanism, talked about nation-building after the Taliban had been trounced. That’s what sold Canada’s troop commitment (apart from special forces, in the unfussy business of killing) to the public; we were redeveloping, winning over hearts and minds. Except that’s never a good fit for any military — they’re soldiers, not diplomats and not humanitarian aid providers.
But the profile played well to Canadians still in thrall to a Pearsonian peacekeeping ideal: useless when there’s no peace for the blue berets to keep. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau embodies this anachronism.
It was Admiral Mike Mullen, then chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said of Afghanistan in 2008, “we can’t kill our victory.” However seductive the proposition, that’s never been the goal. Bombing the Taliban to the negotiation table has been the goal. With the insurgents — more hardcore militant than ever, merging with the Pakistan-based Haqqani network (the Taliban No. 2, head of military operations, hails from Haqqani) — making significant territorial gains, there’s scarcely any reason to talk peace and reconciliation.
The Taliban have scuttled back to reclaim much of the territory vacated during the post 9/11 coalition military campaign. Crucially, however, they haven’t been able to get a toehold in Kabul. Or Herat. Or Mazar-e Sharif.
In broad strokes, the situation is nevertheless grim. Sangin, the strategic town in Helmand that a hundred British troops died trying to defend during the International Security Assistance Force era, fell to the Taliban in March. Vast swaths of Kandahar province, where 137 Canadian combat deaths were recorded, are now controlled by the insurgents.
According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, “control or influence” of the central government dropped to 65.6 per cent by May 1 from 70.5 per cent a year before. The Taliban “controls, contests or influences” 171 of 400 Afghan districts, mostly in rural areas and superficial in others. They’ve not been able to take and hold provincial capitals.
That’s the big picture and the Taliban take immense sustenance from it, as if their ascendancy is written in the stars. Because Afghanistan is where empires go to die. Except the Taliban are no more indomitable than invading empires, though they certainly are accommodating to vilified fanatical revolutionaries from Al Qaeda to, in its death throes, Daesh.
So this is what the Taliban — via spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid — had to say about President Donald Trump’s oratorical doubling down last week on U.S. recommitment to the wars in Afghanistan:
“Donald Trump is just wasting American soldiers. We know how to defend our country. It will not change anything . . . For generations, we have fought this war. We are not scared. We will continue this war until our last breath. If the U.S. does not pull all its troops out of Afghanistan, we will make this country the 21st century graveyard for the American empire.”
The usual rhetoric, conveniently leaving out the part where the Taliban were routed from Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
“For now,” Mujahid continued, “I can tell you there was nothing new in his speech. It was very unclear.”
On that point, at least, we are agreed.
The finest minds in the Pentagon have not been able to figure out how to take the Taliban off the board for keeps, in what has become America’s longest war, though it would indisputably involve some kind of political reconciliation for the insurgents and right now they’re hardline not-in-the-mood. Yet even a child’s mind could grasp how foolishly — in his palpable reluctance — president Barack Obama waged the war during his two terms in the White House, even with his 2009 troop surge, virtually providing the Taliban with a timeline for troop reduction and eventual withdrawal.
In his speech last week, the otherwise incoherent and quite mad- dened Trump at least got this much right: “I’ve said it many times how counterproductive it is for the United States to announce in advance the dates we intend to begin, or end, military operations. We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities. Conditions on the ground — not arbitrary timetables — will guide our strategy from now on. America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out. I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will.”
The thing is, it does not appear that the generals or the president have a clue about their plans either, beyond the 3,900 troops that will be added to the U.S. existing military presence of 8,500 U.S. service members, about half involved in training and mentoring Afghan defence forces and the other gunning for terrorists.
Trump claimed the American objective in Afghanistan was not nation-building, which comes as jaw-dropping news, given the billions spent on aid to do precisely that.
I don’t know what “principled realism” means. I don’t know what “our commitment is not unlimited” means. I don’t know what “we will not dictate to the Afghan people how to live or how to govern their own complex society” means, unless women are to be driven back into their cloistered homes, away from education, and beaten with a stick, as the Taliban did when they ruled Kabul.
“We are killing terrorists,” Trump said.
Except kill a Taliban fighter and another will replace him, maybe five more.
“We want (Afghanistan) to succeed but we will no longer use American military might to construct democracies in faraway lands or try to rebuild other countries in our own image. Those days are now over.”
Well, not in this America’s image, as she has presented herself over the past eight months or so.
It is indeed a vague strategy, albeit better left in the hands of the generals than this irrational president.
There is one solid bottom line: Eventually, even if decades from now, the U.S. will leave Afghanistan, hopefully better than they found it.
But the Taliban or its descendants and derivatives can wait out even that multi-generational war: They live there.
It’s Afghans who will ultimately have to conquer Afghans.
That’s called civil war, which will draw in regional neighbours and non-regional (China, Russia) interests.
Déjà vu all over again. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.