The Long War in Afghanistan May Never End - The National Interest

A United Nations report from last year describes the Afghanistan war as an “eroding stalemate” in which the Taliban have not only been able to expand, but also consolidate, the territory they hold.

However, recent developments, including the barbaric attack by the so-called Islamic State on the office of the Save the Children charitable organization in Jalalabad, are reminders of the need to assess the Afghanistan conflict in more than binary terms. The “eroding stalemate” is morphing into an uglier, more complicated conflict, that may soon resemble the Afghan civil war in the 1990s or even the present, intractable war in Syria, due to the absence of a holistic strategy and military escalation by all sides.

In Afghanistan, the Trump administration has notionally embraced the modest aims of its predecessor: the elimination of transnational jihadist threats and weakening of the Taliban enough that it feels compelled to come to the negotiation table. Toward this, the Trump administration has relied on the expanded use of blunt military force, a targeted increase in troops, and various forms of diplomatic pressure on Pakistan, where much of the Afghan Taliban leadership is based.

Regional actors, however, may view America’s intentions less charitably. For some, Trump’s mentioning of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal in his South Asia strategy speech last August, the criticism of China’s Belt and Road Initiative by two U.S. cabinet members, and a more assertive Iran policy suggest that an extended presence in Afghanistan serves other objectives for Washington.

Let us, however, assume that Washington’s aims in Afghanistan are indeed limited to destroying Al Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State and punishing the Taliban so that its best option is to sue for peace. Even with these modest goals in mind, the grim reality may be that the Trump administration is giving America a second chance in Afghanistan it actually doesn’t really have. And as a result of its military-first strategy, in all likelihood, the United States will end up making things worse in Afghanistan, playing a Whac-a-Mole game till it withdraws from Afghanistan precipitously.

America, it must be recognized, is very much part of the self-perpetuating ecosystem of violence in Afghanistan. It rejected peace overtures by individual Taliban leaders in the years that followed the U.S. invasion. It empowered warlords who helped breathe life into the Taliban insurgency by 2006 by targeting Taliban figures who had abandoned militancy. These warlords also abused the local populace, kidnapped young boys, making them into sex slaves, and helped restore a drug trade that the insurgency now thrives off of. - Read More

The Long War in Afghanistan May Never End | The National Interest

The Politics of Washington Have Wrecked Afghanistan's Future | The ...