Brian M Downing
The war in Afghanistan goes on and warmer weather brings a new Taliban campaign. The Islamist group was driven from most of the country in 2001-02 but found safe haven in Pakistan and reconstituted itself as an insurgency. Irremediable corruption in Afghan government and society has helped them, as has the pervasive presence of foreign troops and contractors.
What are the Taliban’s objectives this year and how will they be countered? What are foreign powers doing? And are American objectives in Afghanistan realistic or should we begin an agonizing reappraisal?
The war since 2014
After the US and ISAF withdrew their combat forces four years ago, the Taliban made significant progress, though not as much as feared in some quarters. Many Afghan army positions fell, as often due to incompetent logistics and leaders as to enemy strength. The Taliban began massing troops and trying to seize large cities, which would make plain their rising power and strengthen their bargaining position in any peace talks. They took Kunduz briefly in 2015 and seemed on the verge of taking Lashkar Gah last spring.
The Taliban strategy was countered by airmobile Afghan special forces and American airpower. Grounds troops on both sides took very high casualties but neither the Kabul government nor the Taliban shura can be relied upon for accurate numbers. Nor have the Taliban been able to counter US airpower. There’s no evidence of more than a handful of Manpad launches in the last decade, with even many of those dubious. Nonetheless, US aircraft routinely use countermeasures on bombing runs.
The Taliban have failed to hold any large city. They no longer mass troops as in previous years. They learned at Kunduz and Lashkar Gah what ISIL learned at Kobane – American airpower devastates troop concentrations.
The present war
The war has otherwise changed in three respects. First, the Taliban have redirected efforts to taking rural districts, which does not require massed troops. This cannot deliver a prized urban center, but it does expand the Taliban’s reach and tax base, and it further reduces Kabul’s presence and credibility.
Second, the Taliban have gathered support from non-Pashtun peoples, especially in the north. It was an overwhelmingly Pashtun movement since its coalescence in the chaos after the Soviet pullout in 1988. Northerners despised them for their ethnic presumptuousness and harsh rule. More recently, however, many non-Pashtuns have aligned with the Taliban, because of shared hostility to Kabul’s corruption and/or recognition that the Taliban have become a major force in the country. Negotiation, after all, was as important as warfare in the Taliban’s rise in the 90s.
Third, the Taliban are getting greater support from abroad. They’ve long received help from the Pakistani military as part of the enduring conflict with India, and now they benefit from the rivalry between the US and Russia. Afghanistan has become a theater of operations in Cold War Two. Russian arms are reaching insurgents, albeit in limited amounts. The same is true of Iranian weapons, which come in from an IRGC base in Zahedan. Neither Moscow nor Tehran wants a Taliban victory, only an American quagmire.
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The war remains stalemated, but with an edge to the Taliban owing to its successes in rural districts, with northern peoples, and in getting additional international support. The position here is that the war is unwinnable and continuing to fight it squanders lives and money with no discernible benefit to US security. After seventeen years of perseverance, withdrawal from Afghanistan would bring no loss in honor or credibility, and it would leave the problem in the laps of the same powers that now enjoy seeing the US in another quagmire.
(See “Leaving Afghanistan – and turning the tables,” Downing Reports 12 Dec 2017)
Copyright 2018 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks to Susan Ganosellis.