The first rule of politics is “Don’t
invade Afghanistan”,
–British Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan

“You can rely on America to do the right thing –once it has exhausted
all the alternatives”,
–Winston Churchill

I have recently finished reading two books of direct relevance to post-9/11 Afghanistan. “Cables from Kabul—the inside story of the West’s Afghanistan campaign” has been written by Sherard Cowper-Coles based primarily on his personal experience as the British ambassador to Afghanistan from 2007 to 2009 and then as Britain’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan from February 2009 to September, 2010. The book is a damning criticism of the flawed strategy followed by the US in Afghanistan after overthrowing the Taliban regime in 2001. “The dispensable nation” written by Vali Nasr, an American scholar of high repute, covers a wider canvass as it deals with a set of challenges confronting the US foreign policy. But it also brings out the blunders that the US has committed in handling the Afghanistan situation in the post-9/11 scenario, particularly by neglecting diplomacy and a political settlement in Afghanistan.
By now there is a growing realization, at least among objective scholars of international politics, that the US has pursued a flawed Afghanistan policy in the aftermath of 9/11. To start with, one can question whether the US was justified in attacking the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Of course, one must condemn in the strongest possible terms the terrorist attacks of 9/11. There is also a general agreement that the attacks had been planned by Al Qaeda. However, there is no evidence to prove that that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan at that time had anything to do with those attacks. Its only guilt was to provide sanctuary to Al Qaeda’s leadership and its refusal to expel them from Afghanistan after 9/11. Secondly, the US attack against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in October, 2001 was launched without any UN authorization.
So the decision to attack Afghanistan was that of the US and its allies probably under article 51 of the UN Charter which affirms “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” When historians debate the issue sometime in the future, they would have to examine whether the US attack was justifiable as a legitimate act of self-defence or whether it constituted an act of disproportionate use of force in response to an admittedly monstrous provocation. They would also have to examine whether there were other ways of punishing the perpetrators and sponsors of those terrorist attacks short of an all out war. Even Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles had to admit, “Most tragically, intervening in Afghanistan in such haste in 2001 may not have been necessary.” (p.290, Cables from Kabul)
From the political point of view, the defenders of the US attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 would have to prove conclusively that the results it achieved were worth the huge price in blood and treasure that the US, its allies, and the people of Afghanistan have paid. According to some estimates, the US has spent more than a trillion dollars on the war in Afghanistan besides incurring casualties running into thousands of soldiers and causing enormous loss of human lives and material damage in that country. What does the US have to show for the huge price of its war in Afghanistan? Admittedly the top leadership of Al Qaeda has been eliminated or greatly weakened in areas around Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But Al Qaeda cells have sprouted in other regions of the world. Perhaps a strategy with greater attention to its political elements and less emphasis on the military might have produced better results. After all, political grievances constitute the root cause of international terrorism in the form of Al Qaeda. In view of the unhappy experiences of Britain and the Soviet Union, the US decision to attack Afghanistan also ran in the face of the lessons of history. After all, it was not without reason that Harold Macmillan had counseled against any invasion of Afghanistan.
Even if one takes the position that the US attack on Afghanistan was unavoidable because of the gravity of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Washington should have adopted a well-considered strategy to achieve realistic and clearly stated aims. The initial US aims in Afghanistan were defeat and elimination of Al Qaeda, the imposition of a government of its choice on the Afghan people, and the rebuilding of Afghanistan in accordance with Washington’s preferences and values. While the first objective was within the reach of the American power, the remaining two were far beyond its capabilities as the later events clearly showed.
Under the Bonn Agreement, the US established a government in Kabul which was dominated by the elements of the Northern Alliance, alienating not only the Taliban but also most of the Pashtuns. Ambassador Cowper-Coles points out in his book mentioned abovethat “the Bonn settlement that had followed (the Taliban defeat) had been a victors’ peace from which the vanquished had been excluded; and that the constitution resulting from that settlement could last as long as the West was prepared to stay in Afghanistan to prop up the present disposition.” (p.xxii)Thus, the US became a party to the internal armed conflict in Afghanistan between the Pashtuns and the non-Pashtuns which had been going on since the fall of the Najibullah regime in April, 1992. This blunder on the part of the US fuelled the insurgency in Afghanistan. Further, the Afghan society essentially is extremely conservative and not yet ready to embrace the cultural and social values of the West. Washington’s attempt to impose those values on the Afghan people further strengthened the Taliban-led insurgency. There is no way to quell this insurgency unless the US takes steps to remove the fundamental causes which ignited it in the first place.
Besides aiming too high, the US adopted a flawed strategy to achieve its goals in Afghanistan. Its strategy during the first decade after the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan placed exclusive reliance on military means and gave short shrift to political aspects of the strategy. When that did not produce the desired results, the US government and its military commanders found it convenient to blame Pakistan for their failures instead of facing the reality of a poorly crafted strategy. The reality, however, is that the insurgency in Afghanistan can be overcome primarily through national reconciliation and a political settlement among the various contending Afghan parties and not through military means alone. The resultant settlement must, of course, enjoy the endorsement of Iran’s neighbours, particularly Pakistan and Iran.
It appears that the American policy makers have finally realized the mistakes of too ambitious goals and a flawed strategy to achieve them. Therefore, since 2011 Washington has made some attempts to correct these mistakes by down-scaling its aims in Afghanistan and encouraging the Afghan parties including the Taliban to enter into a dialogue. This course correction was necessitated by the war weariness of the American people, the enormous cost of the military campaign in Afghanistan, American economic problems, and the tenacity of the Taliban-led insurgency. The planned departure of most of the American and other ISAF troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 has lent an element of urgency to the proposed dialogue among the Afghan parties. It remains to be seen whether the short time available before December 2014 will be sufficient to produce the desired political settlement in Afghanistan.

The writer is a retired ambassador and the president of the Lahore Council for World Affairs.

javid.husain@gmail.com