The author seems to agree with you re the distinct possibility that decision-makers in the military and political circles were disingenuous. And so we need to look to reasons other than the ones we were given to explain why the US went into Afghanistan. Stranger has suggested a few to get us started.
On another note, some of the writings in this thread sound to me a little like, “we offered these people all the advantages of modern civilization, and the ignorant bastards told us to piss off.” Even the idea of “the nation” is a pretty modern invention, and it comes with a price and a lot of baggage. It all sounds a little like, “We offered those Indians all the advantages of modern civilization, and they told us to piss off. Well, we knew how to deal with that.”
I think one big thing it betrays is the arrogant and paternalistic attitude we had towards Afghan tribal culture. Tribal cultures aren’t just a sign of backwards people that need to be educated out of it. They’re how people keep their families safe in an environment where institutions and bureacracies can’t be relied on.
Us creating a cargo cult of a government, having zero respect for the tribal dynamics that already existed and expecting people to respect the uniforms they were wearing more than tribal bonds was beyond stupid.
I’d add that many of these institutions and bureaucracies are foisted on people, from enclosures to strong states, and it is only with the passage of time we think they are natural and were created in our collective self-interest, rather than the narrow self-interest of a few. Doesn’t make the Taliban the good guys but it does highlight the hubris of those who claim to be acting in the best interests of others they don’t bother to consult
I think some of the references to pre-modern times in Afghanistan kind of miss the mark. The British went into Afghanistan in 1838 because they were attempting to forge closer ties with the Sikh Empire (a Punjabi dominated Empire that was centered around the region of modern-day northern Pakistan), there had been a previous Afghan King who was deposed, and the Sikh Empire was disfavorable towards the new guy. They asked the British to help them put the old guy back on the throne, they agreed and went in with the Sikhs and captured Kabul, and the new King / usurper agreed to abdicate in favor of his predecessor. It should be understood too that this was all occurring as part of the larger “Great Game” between Russia and Britain for influence in Central Asia. Going in and removing the King that the Sikhs did not like, both curried favor with the Sikh Empire (which when its then-ruler eventually died would ultimately be absorbed into the British Raj) and checked perceived Russian intentions to build influence in Afghanistan.
The British went in with a force of 30-40,000, but it should be properly understood what this really means in the context of British Indian Armies. Throughout the period of British control of India, the vast, vast majority of all the fighting and all the soldiers were native Indians. There was a saying about the war between the British and the Mughals in the 18th century that it was “a war fought by Indians, one side fighting for foreign Turks the other side fighting for foreign Englishmen.” [The Mughal dynastic leadership was often referred to by Indians as Turks, although their racial/cultural make up is more complicated.] I only point any of this out so it is understood that the Brits didn’t march tens of thousands of English troops across the Indian subcontinent to invade Afghanistan. Instead, they sent like five regiments and tens of thousands of native forces–the British Indian forces were usually of quite high quality, trained in the sort of infantry combat that the British practice and usually drilled quite well.
The British easily put the previous King back on the throne, but it should be understood–they were sponsoring a client state. They had not sought to occupy or run Afghanistan. They quickly abandoned all their forts outside of Kabul, and most of the troops they brought with them went home. By the time they were later forced out, there was like one Battalion of actual British troops and 5-6,000 Indian forces serving under the British. The perception that this was really comparable to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan or our invasion of Afghanistan is something that bothers me, because it just wasn’t. It was not a large-scale occupation of the country; Britain specifically had not sought to make Afghanistan part of the Raj or even directly subjugate it. It was backing a former King who still had significant autonomy (for example the British proposed several policy changes to him to help him maintain power, and he refused them.) The British ended up getting in to trouble because they cut the bribe money they paid to various tribal chiefs in half, which lead to them flocking to the side of the recently deposed King to get him back on his throne.
While the subsequent military loss was seen as a disaster, it was really nothing comparable to the long scale occupations by the US and USSR. After the loss the British formed a “punitive expedition” right afterward and went back in, and defeated the Afghans decisively to damage their military power, and then left.
The people who like to fictitiously talk about how no one has been able to run Afghanistan in all of its history also tend to ignore the 1880 war between the British and the Afghan kingdom, in which the British decisively won. They secured the right to govern Afghanistan’s foreign policy, but otherwise the King remained in full control of the country. The British were not actively occupying Afghanistan at this time. Then they erroneously misrepresent the war between Britain and Afghanistan in 1919 as a war where the British occupiers were thrown out. This is wrong because the British had not been occupying Afghanistan, they had it in sort of a “vassal state” position, where the King accepted British dominion over Afghan foreign policy but the King had absolute power within Afghanistan itself. The Afghans invaded British India in part to try to secure full independence, but also to contest the Durand Line (the British drawn line between modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan.) The British defeated the Afghan invasion and affirmed the Durand line, but also agreed to grant Afghanistan full independence and control of its own foreign policy. This complicated series of events actually doesn’t really fit the narrative so most people who like to promulgate the idea that Afghanistan is a “graveyard of Empires” don’t address it in detail.
An actual different understanding of Afghanistan is that a Pashtun ruler unified the Pashtun tribes and established the house of Durrani in 1747, and that Afghanistan was ruled continuously by a relatively stable monarchy from 1747 until 1973. That isn’t to say the country was without wars and conflicts, and periods where it was subjugated by British hegemony, but in terms of actually governing the country the Afghan Kings had a pretty stable 226 year history–and before a few decades of war preceding that 226 years, Afghanistan had relatively peacefully been a constituent part of the Persian Safavid Empire for a couple hundred years.
Contrast this to the major wars and switching of allegiances and control of the various German princedoms and states, and the various Northern Italian political entities from the 1400s to 1800s, and you could argue those regions were actually more unstable than Afghanistan during a similar span of time, and in fact fighting over those regions actually did cause stability problems for several major European Empires. But no one calls northern Italy and Germany “the Graveyard of Empires.” There was always a weird element of politics involved in calling Afghanistan the Graveyard of Empires, and it was a pretty light on history term.
I saw an interesting article once that had some information from Colombia’s successful (60 year) war against FARC, there was a Colombian general who pointed out the initial focus of that war was very wrong–that FARC was powered by cocaine sales so should be treated like an armed drug cartel. The Colombian military spent decades fighting cocaine production. This tended to punish rural farmers who weren’t necessarily allied with FARC, but who produced cocaine that FARC would pay them for, and that was the only real way they could feed their families. The government burning their fields and the government’s poorly trained soldiers abusing the growers, did nothing but turn more rural people into potential FARC recruits. The government also sponsored violent right wing militias that committed even more abuses on rural Colombians, again, unsurprisingly this just made them more supportive of FARC.
This Colombian general says what ended up winning the conflict for them is they recognized the real issue is the Colombian government simply lacked legitimacy in rural areas. In the early 1990s, the Colombian constitution was reformed and a long period of reform of its government, military and police began. It took a decade for many of those reforms to pay off, but by the early 2000s Colombia had a much more disciplined police and military, who actually followed the rule of law and didn’t abuse their power. Colombia cut support for right wing militias and saw them disband. This improved the quality of life for rural people. Then the government began an aggressive program of economic development in rural Colombia, and since they had reformed government more than 15 years ago, these “reform” dollars weren’t just corrupt boondoggles, they were actually spent correctly.
What happened is those investments in rural infrastructure and the rural economy did more damage to FARC than 50 years of fighting had. They started hemorrhaging members, having as many as 19,000 people in FARC’s last decade of armed conflict desert the group (in spite of the fact FARC’s punishment for desertion was technically death, too many were leaving to enforce it.) FARC was a violent insurgent group that made money from selling coca leaves, compared to an actual non-corrupt government that doesn’t abuse its people and makes real improvements to their quality of life, FARC couldn’t offer much. FARC wasn’t beaten with bullets alone (although we can’t ignore the Colombian military did kill tens of thousands of FARC members over the period of the conflict, and this obviously had some level of effect), what destroyed FARC was the Colombian government being reformed and actually helping the lives of its people in areas that previously had been major support centers for FARC.
Edit: It should go without saying the U.S. was a vigorous supporter, both financially and with occasional military support, of the “War on Drugs” framing of the FARC conflict, and we apparently learned very little from the conflict that we ever attempted to apply to Afghanistan.
And to a much different and lesser degree we see some similar dynamics in America.
I think it’s part of the reason black people, rural conservatives and some immigrant groups are more hesitant about the vaccine. They’ve needed community, family religion etc to rely on when the government turns its back.
If you can’t rely on the police you need to go to the Corleones. And of course I’d rather live in a society where you go to the police, but it’s silly to blame people for using what’s available to them when they have no reason to trust the police. And certainly someone coning from across the sea and telling you to stop relying on the Corleones isn’t a good way of changing that.
The worst of it was that we never even needed to mess with the tribal dynamics. We defeated the taliban in 2001 by fighting alongside an alliance of tribes. We didn’t need to try to for e our way of life on them.
I disagree with your premise. The Afghans lost many thousands of people fighting the Taliban’s way of life. This has condemned women in that region to a life of subjugation.
I mean, does Team Biden really believe this shit? See, I want to lighten the burden of blame, but when they trot out crap like this it just ruins their credibility.
The Taliban’s way of life is militant Islamism and brutal repression. There are still Afghans fighting against that and there likely will be for a long time.
I don’t think the options are liberal democracy or Taliban-style theocracy. I think a stable system based on Afghan societal dynamics that far predate the Taliban was possible and worth fighting for. It wasn’t possible anymore in 2021 with the inept government we created so the right choice was to leave.
Along with UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield bragging about “we have issued a very strongly-worded press statement” to the Taliban - yes, I do wonder what they are thinking.
They have very few options at this point. Strongly worded statements are the best they can do under the circumstance. Their main concern now is making sure the remaining American military and official can get out safely. You don’t jeopardize their safety by antagonizing or threatening those in control.
It is beyond sickening how a lot - maybe all – of the wealthy countries’ embassy staff from Europe and the US just left the Afghans without even telling them they were leaving. The Afghans are stranded. The Taliban have checkpoints and they are not going to let Afghans through. They might not even let foreign nationals through.
That reminds me of those Internet petitions that were making the rounds in the '90s, demanding that the Taliban start respecting women’s rights. Take that, Taliban! Feel the wrath of the mighty e-mail petition!
Not let what happen, Afghanistan be a war-torn tribal mess? How do you imagine we’d do about that? We have a lot of people we pay good money to run the Pentagon who tried to answer that question for 20 years to no avail, and we spent like $1.6 trillion. Maybe you have the answer?
