Tim Willasey-Wilsey is a former senior British diplomat and now a Senior Visiting Fellow at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies.
The probability is that United States and British troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan irrespective of Taliban non-compliance with the terms of the Doha agreement of 29th. February and its secret annexes. It is hard to see how 8,600 US and 780 British troops can remain if the agreement breaks down and the country descends into chaos. The chances of the allied presence in the country being reinforced in the event of Taliban non-compliance are negligible. Even if there is no Saigon-style departure it will be an ignominious end for an intervention which was so successful in 2001 and so promising until 2006.
The Taliban and Pakistan have known for years that the West has wanted to leave. President Trump and his chief negotiator Zalmai Khalilzad have had little leverage; and the Taliban will feel under minimal obligation to observe their side of the bargain. Meanwhile Ashraf Ghani is coming under intense Western pressure to release Taliban prisoners.
On 5th March several retired British generals and serving politicians, all with experience in Afghanistan, wrote to the Times (of London) newspaper complaining about “the hasty deal” and suggested that the honour and dedication of fallen British soldiers required that we uphold our commitment to the Afghan people. It then suggested that “an inclusive approach backed by international support and conditions could ensure fundamental freedoms and security”. The sentiments were worthy but the regrettable reality is that NATO countries have lost the political will and public backing to carry on.
The letter was right that there will be real harm caused by the withdrawal. Contrary to popular mythology much has gone right since 2001. There are one and a half million young Afghan graduates, the role of women in society has been transformed, a genuine civil society has grown up, and much of the country’s infrastructure has been improved. These gains will not last long as the Taliban tighten their grip over much of the country. Civil strife will doubtless continue, with pockets of Islamic State providing added instability. There could also be reprisals against the many brave Afghan men and women who supported NATO. Now is the time for the allies to make contingency plans for those most at risk.
There are some hard lessons we need to learn from Afghanistan. The first is that it is easy to get into an overseas operation but extremely hard to get out. In 2001 there was an alignment between the ‘neo-con’ doctrines of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and the ‘liberal interventionist’ views of Tony Blair. This led to a successful invasion of Afghanistan and the expulsion of Al Qaida.
But in 2002 we should have left. As Tony Blair’s press secretary, Alastair Campbell, records in his diaries, ‘The Burden of Power,’ Dick Cheney went to see Tony Blair at No 10 Downing Street in March 2002 “They started on Afghanistan. It was clear the Americans wanted out as soon as possible. If we were still there in a year questions would be asked. The aim was to try and help the Afghans get a proper army and security force. TB was clear we had to be in it for the long term. Cheney felt that building the new regime could be tougher than taking down the old one and that the poppy crop remained a real problem”.
Sad to relate that Cheney has been shown to be right. However to leave in 2002 would have meant adopting a harsh realpolitik approach which Blair (and subsequent British Prime Ministers) would have found deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps, to our credit, we have forgotten our old habit of unsentimental self-interest. But sentiment has its costs.
Secondly we lost track of why we were in Afghanistan. We went there to attack and remove Al Qaida but we ended up fighting the Taliban. The Taliban may have deeply unattractive views but they are not international terrorists. They are Pashtun tribesmen who belong in south and eastern Afghanistan. A deal with them should have been negotiated between 2002 and 2005 when they were weak and had been punished enough for tolerating (often with reluctance) Al Qaida’s use of Afghanistan as a training base. With the UK also taking on the leading anti-narcotics role in the coalition and then responsibility for Helmand we found it impossible to define our role in one succinct paragraph, let alone one sentence.
And thirdly we failed to decide in advance how much Afghanistan mattered to us. After sending in 3,300 troops in 2006 politicians understandably started to worry about the mounting casualties. Although British troop numbers were raised to 9,500, there was political anxiety about losing a helicopter with (say) 40 troops aboard. In the UK case it never happened but France’s commitment was dented by one ambush when they lost 10 soldiers killed and 21 wounded in 2008.
In wars of national survival countries are prepared to take whatever casualties are necessary but discretionary (or non-essential) conflicts are different. The solution is to wage such warfare using Special Forces, aviation and intelligence resources only. Avoid having too many boots on the ground and don’t, under any circumstances, try and hold territory. The names Sangin, Musa Qala, Now Zad and Kajaki will now take their place in British military folklore where huge courage was expended for all too little benefit.
There are many other lessons too. We poured far too much money into Afghanistan and helped corrupt a country which was already awash with the proceeds of opium. By invading Iraq in 2003 we diverted essential skills and attention from Afghanistan. We failed to persuade the Pakistanis of the dangers which support for the Taliban presented to their own future security. We focussed too much energy on improving the Afghan army and not nearly enough on the Afghan police. The list is long.
Above all the British contribution to NATO’s efforts, in spite of being the second largest, fell below the critical mass which would have given us a seat at the strategic top table. In Bob Woodward’s book “Obama’s Wars” there is hardly any mention of the UK during the period when the former president was deciding his future strategy.
The one person who observed the Western performance in Iraq and Afghanistan with great care was Vladimir Putin. Since then he has shown how power can be used to remarkable effect if you know exactly what you are trying to achieve and use highly mobile special forces (and proxies) supported by aviation. Putin is not hampered by humanitarian concerns. After all he will have no legacies to protect in the ruins of Donetsk or Aleppo. But even he has not been able to extract Russia from Syria yet.
We don’t want to emulate Putin’s cynicism but we have to learn the harsh lessons of Afghanistan before we next send troops abroad to fight. In the meantime we shall watch events unfold in Afghanistan with a mixture of guilt and regret that we didn’t do better.
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