The failed understanding of the Afghan reality

The fiasco in Afghanistan is the result of two decades of bad policies and a misreading of the situation in the country.

Carlos Marcelles de la Casa

Afghanistan's national political leaders were never fully cohesive on how best to fight the Taliban. There were tensions between regional power brokers and Kabul, and between different ethnic groups. A national vision of common cohesion was not sufficiently promoted. Moreover, U.S. efforts to identify, even single out, political leaders only succeeded in undermining the independence and legitimacy of the Afghan government. Afghanistan is made up of a complex ethnic reality that the United States and its allies have not been able to grasp (see Map 1).

Map 1: ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Source: Izady, 2017.

In this regard, another U.S. miscalculation has to do with the weakness of regional warlords. Since 2001, it had been assumed that they commanded thousands of armed followers who could be quickly mobilized against the Taliban. Both the US and the Afghan national government believed this to be the case and consequently accommodated them as local leaders, but they were often corrupt and brutal. However, the rapid fall of their strongholds to the Taliban advance, including Sheberghan, which was under the control of war criminal and former vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum, have shown how wrong this assumption was. In fact, the now former President Ghani went so far as to ask these warlords for help, only to discover that they had no men to muster. This makes the sorry state of the Afghan government palpable.

By contrast, the Taliban proved resilient not only as a military and terrorist organization, but also as a political movement. After 2001, the Taliban continued to enjoy popular support in parts of Afghanistan, especially rural areas, and have retained the ability to enlist new generations of youth, partly the result of the lack of opportunities and expectations for improvement among the most disadvantaged strata disenchanted with the U.S. military occupation and the Afghan central government (McMaster, 2021). The coalition, though technologically superior, could never completely eliminate the Taliban presence, even in the cities. They have always had spies, affine or infiltrated militants throughout the geography of the country.

The Taliban proved resilient not only as a military and terrorist organization, but also as a political movement.

For its part, the Afghan government's efforts to reconcile with the Taliban beginning in 2010 crystallized into an implicit acceptance of its political and military importance within Afghanistan. Also, the U.S. decision to formally negotiate with the Taliban in 2018 encouraged some foreign governments to receive Taliban emissaries following the February 2020 Doha agreement. This gave the Taliban both domestic and international political legitimacy, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the Afghan population (Boone, 2021).

The West has misinterpreted their promise of peace and coexistence with the government when they set out to negotiate in Doha with Ghani after reaching an agreement with the Trump administration on the timetable for withdrawal. They never had any intention of reaching an agreement or of changing and dispensing with their most radical ideology, as recent images after the seizure of power attest (torture of NATO collaborators, banning women from working or studying, implementation of Sharia law, brutal repression of pro-Afghan tricolor flag protests, etc). Now, from the Presidential Palace in Kabul, the Taliban do not care that their actions mean losing Western international recognition, since they know, as has already been announced, that other countries will recognize their new state. Particularly noteworthy is the case of China, whose foreign minister met with a Taliban delegation, coming to agree on China's recognition of a future Islamic Emirate (McMaster, 2021).

They never intended to reach an agreement or to change and dispense with their most radical ideology.

Finally, it should be noted that, even with the successes in areas such as institutional quality, political representation, strengthening of the rule of law or public services, the benefits achieved have been exaggerated. There was a conscious effort to work with corrupt senior political, military and police officials who were seen by the population as responsible for abuses of all kinds. This further undermined the public legitimacy of the Afghan government. On the other hand, drug production, especially opium production, has been growing steadily since 2001 (see Figure 1). Also, the slow growth of the Afghan economy has led to an over-reliance on foreign aid, especially U.S. investment, which is expected to disappear after the Taliban takeover.

Graph 1: evolution of hectares dedicated to Opium in Afghanistan 1994-2018). Source: Rowlatt, 2019.

Ultimately, therefore, the White House's decision to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan is not the only explanation for the chaos and despair in Afghanistan today. The real cause of the Taliban's seizure of power lies in two decades of failed policies that failed to create effective political leadership. All as a result of not knowing how to interpret the reality of the country. In this context, the Afghan government's inability and lack of survival instinct to raise a general war cry to the nation against the Taliban besieging it is understandable. The blame for the loss of Afghanistan therefore lies with all those involved in the last twenty years.

Bibliography

Boone, J. (2021). The last days of the ‘New Afghanistan’. Obtenido de Financial Times el 20/08/21: https://www.ft.com/content/4a276093-cf85-4da7-9093-6af6443bb53a

Izady, M. (2017). Infographs, Maps and Statistics Collection. Obtenido de The Gulf/2000 el 23/08/21: project: https://gulf2000.columbia.edu/maps.shtml

McMaster, H. (2021). We All Lost Afghanistan. Obtenido de Foreign Affairs el 20/08/21: https://reader.foreignaffairs.com/2021/08/16/we-all-lost-afghanistan/content.html

Rowlatt, J. (2019). How the US military's opium war in Afghanistan was lost. Obtenido de BBC News el 22/08/21: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-4786144