The US is winding down its involvement in Afghanistan. This month, troop-strength in the country has been reduced to 2500—the lowest level since 2001. All troops are to be out by May, according to the peace treaty signed by the Trump Administration and the Taliban in February of last year.
Now, despite the peace plan, violence is surging. The Taliban reportedly carried-out over 18,000 attacks in 2020. Earlier this month, two female judges, working for the Afghan Supreme Court, were murdered. (The current wave of violence is being blamed on the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters last year—a condition of the Trump Peace deal that prohibited Taliban forces from attacking international forces but left domestic targets up for grabs.)
Last year, the Washington Post conducted dozens of interviews with former servicemen and women who served in Afghanistan, asking them to reflect on their experiences and observations about the war. Some were telling.
- “I think we had the right idea: We would win hearts and minds… [but] they didn’t want to change.”
- “[T]here were so many Afghans who worked with all their hearts to try to accomplish the goals set by America and its allies. Westerners tend to forget no one asked the Afghan people what their goals were.”
- “What we left the Afghan National Army with was ridiculous. They were not trained well. There were not at all equipped to deal with the Taliban.”
- “The Afghan National Army and police sabotaged the war effort. They were abusing the local population.”
- “The vague nature of the conflict, with an indeterminate end-state, has left me with a hollow feeling…Whether the lives of friends lost and dollars spent amounted to anything, I doubt.”
None of this is a criticism of our military, which is repeatedly tasked to do the impossible. The issue here is a lack of understanding of the bigger picture. We didn’t learn our lesson in previous wars, so we received the same lesson again.
References:
Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn, Alex Horton, Meryl Kornfield, and Jenn Abelson, “We Were Right,” Washington Post, 22 December 2019, A22; also available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/veterans-reaction/
Luke Harding, “Two female judges shot dead in Kabul as wave of killings continues,” The Guardian,17 January 2021; retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/17/two-female-judges-shot-dead-in-kabul-as-wave-of-killings-continues
Photo: Associated Press