The U.S. has just signed an agreement with the Taliban to leave Afghanistan after almost 20 years.
I have always wondered whether it would have been possible to pursue Al Qaeda in Afghanistan without actually occupying the entire country - and to just leave once we’d sufficiently degraded Al Qaeda.
What do you think?
The Taliban would overthrow the new government within a matter of months. What I’m not totally clear on is whether the Taliban would re-evaluate their relationship with Al Qaeda after that.
I always thought the better strategy would be just to carve the country up - set up garrisons in a few easily-defended urban centers and go all hearts-and-minds while importing luxury goods and setting up (or restoring) universities, so the urbanites get accustomed to not being under Taliban-ish rule and hopefully willing to fight to stay that way, and let the warlords divvy up the countyside as they please because who cares, really? Forget the nation of Afghanistan, have a network of powerful city-states instead.
Deciding what’s best for the Afghans without asking them, that would have gone down well.
A better question is what would have happened had we not invaded Iraq and instead coordinated a response with international partners to put more resources into Afghanistan, and demanded that countries like Saudi Arabia stop funding the spread of radical Islamism?
Well, boo-fucking-hoo, they allowed themselves to be ruled by a government that hosted a group that launched a major terrorist attack on another nation. At least with a series of well-defended city-states, the Afghans who like the idea of modern civilization can move there and try to make lives for themselves, and those who prefer the countryside can move there and take their chances.
nevermind
Not practicable. Afghanistan is only ~25% urban and the vast majority of those live in Kabul - it’s very much the reverse pattern of a modern country like the US. The drop off from Kabul to the next largest city in terms of population is a factor of 10x - ~3,000,000 vs. roughly 390,000. The fifth largest city has ~200,000 people, the 10th largest ~100,0000. They simply wouldn’t be supportable or defensible for very long against a hostile countryside without a truly massive investment. I could easily imagine it being much more expensive in money, lives and material resources to pursue an inevitably very dispersed city-state option in Afghanistan. Even just trying to maintain an “island Kabul” would be hugely difficult - over 800 miles from any major port, the major trade route( 80% of military supply )dependent on the choke hold of Khyber Pass.
Afghanistan is a strategic planner’s geographic nightmare.
Just like Jared’s peace plan. Why bother involving actual Palestinians in the talks?
Just like Iraqis allowed themselves to be ruled by Saddam Hussein (with US support) and North Koreans allowed the Kim dynasty to thrive. Spoiler: most subjects of tyranny don’t have much control over their masters. Did Al-Qaeda train somewhere in Afghanistan? Yes. And the 9/11 attackers (Saudis, Emiratis, Lebanonese, Egyptian - no Afghans or Iraqis) also trained in Germany, Florida, and California, but I didn’t notice US invasions of Hamburg, Miami, or San Diego. Dubya’s gang sure were sloppy.
[1] I seem to recall that US firms were interested in a trans-Afghan pipeline. Any input of “resources” would only further that program.
[2] Demanding anything of the Saudi regime doesn’t seem to work. And radical Islam, besides their internal firewall, is their only cultural export.
USA and the Saudi regime are best-frenemies or at least co-dependent on petroleum, weaponry, and money. Lots and lots of money. Without a Saudi boost for radical Islam, how would the US military-industrial complex justify its budget?
OP didn’t mention any other government, just driving out AQ. So there’s nothing for the Taliban to overthrow in this scenario.
The idea of doing air strikes from outside the country, with no significant presence inside the country, and defeating Al Qaeda, is not realistic. The idea of leaving the Taliban government untouched and degrading AQ is also not realistic.
:smack: I don’t think it’s actually possible to have read the thread title and OP and then write the above post. Maybe give it another go.
The invasion was necessary, and U.S. soldiers should have stayed long enough to stabilize the country and train an Afghan army.
But the emphasis should have been on cooperation with the Afghan people and their culture. Very generous donations could have been made to improve infrastructure, healthcare etc. — the cost would have been a trivial pittance compared with the tremendous military costs incurred.
Instead, the U.S. tried to impose its own cultural ideas on the Afghan people. Policies were judged by whether they were pro-American, not pro-Afghan. Instead of using them to build Afghan prosperity and pride, infrastructure contracts were awarded to American and Gulf cronies of the Bush-Cheney regime. The country was used as a test-bed for military methods, right-wing politics and graft-oriented economics, while the idea of “nation building” was laughed at by U.S. leaders.
ETA: Nevermind. You haven’t posted anything of value in this thread so it isn’t worth responding to.
There’s no measurable win in the OP so it’s hard to say. What does “sufficiently degrading” Al-Qaeda look like, in 2001? It was not an organisation, it was barely an idea, a strategy. Documents from the 2011 raid that killed Osama Bin-Laden showed that AQ’s 2002 numbers were about 170 people.
In 2001 it’d be practically impossible to track them down and destroy them because they pretty much didn’t exist. The War on Terror pretty much had to make an al-Qaeda to fight. The only win that could possibly have been on the table in 2001 was Bin-Laden’s head on a spike.
What will a US “victory” in the MidEast look like? Has a goal been defined, which met, would see a halt in fighting?