Don’t Give Up on Afghanistan

By Lisa Curtis

Lisa Curtis is senior research fellow on South Asia in the Asian Studies Center of The Heritage Foundation, focusing on U.S. national security interests and geopolitics in the region. Before joining Heritage, Curtis spent 16 years working for the U.S. government on South Asian issues, including as a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, senior advisor in the State Department, senior analyst at the CIA, and as a diplomat at the U.S. embassies in Islamabad and New Delhi.

By all accounts, the security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated sharply since U.S. and NATO troops ended combat operations in December 2014. The Taliban control more territory now than at any time in the last 14 years, and the group was able to temporarily capture a key Afghan city in the north last October.

Yet some recent developments—including the fracturing of the Taliban, the U.S. decision to extend its troop presence in the country, and a Pakistani push to restart peace talks—could help arrest Afghanistan’s downward spiral.

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