A Short History of American Strategic Mistakes in Afghanistan

President Bush announced that major combat operations were complete with the overthrow of the Taliban regime in November 2001. It is astonishing to look back and realize that US forces only amounted to 1,300 boots on the ground at that time. The war was won by the United Islamic Front (UIF) - or Northern Alliance as it is known in the West, who had been fighting the Taliban (or, at times, each other) in a complex decade-long civil war. The Americans provided decisive air power, intelligence and Special Forces but their footprint was small.

How did we get to a point where we need 130,000+ ISAF troops (plus an additional 100,000 defense contractors in the country) to fight a counter insurgency against an enemy whose control of the country has admittedly been growing again but is obviously nowhere near what it was in 2001?


Tora Bora

First, we need to look at Tora Bora and the escape of Bin Laden to Pakistan. The failure to capture him was attributed to an over reliance on afghan troops. From that point on, the Pentagon decided they needed to take things in charge themselves and play a front role in hostilities when their national interests was concerned.

Listen to what General Franks, then Commander of the US Central Command, had to say about the Tora Bora episode.

"Our relationship with the Afghans in the south and east was entirely different at that point in the war [before Tora Bora]," he said, "it's no secret that we had a much more mature relationship with the Northern Alliance fighters." Franks added, "still thinks that the process he followed of helping the anti-Taliban forces around Tora Bora, to make sure it was crystal clear to them that we were not there to conquer their country . . . was absolutely the right thing to do." (Washington Post)

This is from an April 2002 article.

And then this, from the same article

"We [messed] up by not getting into Tora Bora sooner and letting the Afghans do all the work," said a senior official with direct responsibilities in counterterrorism. "Clearly a decision point came when we started bombing Tora Bora and we decided just to bomb, because that's when he escaped. . . . We didn't put U.S. forces on the ground, despite all the brave talk, and that is what we have had to change since then."

The truth is that both approaches are not mutually exclusive and can coexist within the conflict in Afghanistan. Tora Bora should have been branded a "unilateral opportunity" and the US command should have spared no effort in targeting their direct enemy Osama Bin Laden. At the same time, the "swamp draining" activity where you deny a favorable environment to your enemy must be done in support of indigenous forces. Instead, the US armed forces eventually took upon itself almost all security tasks and consequently all nation building since the latter is conditional to the former.


Dismantling of the Northern Alliance

Secondly, at the same time in 2002, and since then during the creation of the interim and then the permanent central government, the UIF was disarmed and dismantled. The natural fighting abilities of the victors of 2001 were effectively phased out (which was not unlike the banning of the Iraqi army in 2003 with its own disastrous consequences).

Why was the UIF dismantled and disarmed?

First, the UIF was a coalition of armed factions separated along ethnic and religious lines that coalesced in 1996 after Kabul fell to the Taliban. To a large degree, they only united to face a greater enemy and it was feared that, after the Taliban was defeated, the UIF would disintegrate into its constituent parts and fighting would erupt in between them as it did in the past.

The second factor in importance was the efforts to create a strong central government that could lawfully wield the country's armed forces. The fear was that Uzbek, Tajiks or Shia Hazara warlords would serve their own interest in a lawless fashion and diminish the unity of the country.

Finally, in the decade long civil war, few if any of those warlords had shining human rights records which made supporting them unpalatable to the Americans and to the UN who sponsored the Afghan government.


Conclusion and Results

These two factors - the US taking on all aspects of security and nation building, and the dismantling of the UIF contributed to the inability and unwillingness of the Afghanis to provide for their own security, organically build their country, and engage the resurgent Taliban as early as 2004. The American boots on the ground rose steadily since the invasion and yet failed to prevent the anti-afghan forces from out pacing them because of weak central governance.

The Americans have the power to capture villages from the Taliban and other anti-afghan forces, but, as soon as they leave, the anti-afghan forces move back in. It has been constantly reported since 2002 that the troop level was insufficient to take on all the tasks of carrying a successful counter insurgency. Although that is the wrong goal, this is what they set themselves up for.

Moreover, american soldiers, their generals and civilian officials, and even the CIA lack the proper knowledge of the workings of Afghan society and the tribal system. Troops may acquire knowledge of one village or area and successfully work with the local leaders but then hand it over after their tour is done only to see their work undone.

Finally, American forces are seen as occupiers and not a single human being on the planet likes to see strangers irreverently stumping on their backyard and making the law.

As I will argue in my next piece, facing the prospect of a yet to be fought out counter-insurgency, the US must transfer rapidly security tasks to the Afghanis and reverse the situation of the last eight years. The Obama plan gets that, but still makes a mistake of emphasizing the ANF (Afghan National Forces which includes police and Army) instead of using the intrinsic tribal political systems of the country. The UIF will have to be revived to some extent and local militias established within the tribal system will have to be incorporated in the greater security apparatus of the country while acknowledging that these efforts must primarily be done within the Pashtun lands who have suffered the greatest from poor governance and poor security.


Note: Some will say that the conflict has changed between then and now: the Americans are very good at ousting governments like they did with the Taliban in 2001 or in Iraq in 2003 and can do it relatively cheaply, but fighting a counter-insurgency is different and demands more boots on the ground. But there are evidence that local militias and local warlords are better at it and offers a better approach, as we shall see in a later article. Moreover, fighting the war of someone else is not in the national security of the US.


Photo Credit: Life.com