Fourteen years ago this week, the United States began “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan, with the purpose of eliminating the threat of al-Qaeda and toppling the Taliban. Yet today, the Taliban are surging across much of the country and al-Qaeda still lingers in the eastern border regions of Afghanistan. Despite the expenditure of more than a trillion U.S. dollars and the loss of more than 2,000 U.S. personnel, it is violent extremism—and not freedom—that endures in Afghanistan.
From a counterinsurgency and counterterrorism standpoint, the situation in Afghanistan is more perilous for both the Afghan and U.S. government than at any time since 2001. Kunduz, the fifth largest city in the country—and a symbolic city for both the Taliban and al-Qaeda—fell to the Taliban last week; that the Afghan National Army (ANA) took most of it back this week doesn’t negate that it fell in the first place. As was the case in Iraq, the decades-long U.S. effort to form an effective national military in Afghanistan has failed, and for the same reasons: providing training and equipment doesn’t do much when the bureaucracy and government is completely corrupt, inept, or both.
Making a bad situation worse is that there are now effectively two iterations of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan; the Islamic State is making a serious push to establish itself as a major extremist player in the country. The Islamic State and its former parent and current rival al-Qaeda both adhere to the ideology of bin Ladenism—the ideology that led to the 9/11 attacks and the resulting Operation Enduring Freedom. History hasn’t so much repeated itself in Afghanistan as much as it hasn’t moved an inch. In 2001, al-Qaeda roamed openly through much of Nangarhar Province, including in the provincial capital of Jalalabad; today the Islamic State enjoys that freedom.
Al-Qaeda also maintains a presence in Nangarhar as well as in neighboring Kunar and Laghman Provinces, as it did in 2001. The Afghan government is more focused on the larger threat of the Taliban than al-Qaeda. It was never very effective against al-Qaeda in the first place, since it never had effective control over the areas in which the terrorist group operated. It was the U.S. military—particularly U.S. Special Forces working in conjunction with the CIA—that kept al-Qaeda from regaining its former strength. The drawdown and closure of many Forward Operating Bases (FOB) hasn’t meant the end of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan, but it certainly has reduced their scope and effectiveness.
Both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State will continue to exploit the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan. The situation is so bad that there are many in the U.S. government and military calling for a reconsideration of the planned withdrawal of nearly all U.S. forces in 2016. Such calls are perhaps understandable, given the natural reluctance to admit that the U.S. has failed to achieve its two main goals in Afghanistan. However, they miss the fact that even with tens of thousands of troops and an almost unbelievable monthly burn rate of $8 billion during the surge of 2010-2011, the situation continued to deteriorate. The notion that maintaining a sizable force on several large bases will instill confidence and competence in the Afghan army ignores 14 years of history in Afghanistan, as well as 10 years in Iraq.
The issues now plaguing Afghanistan—poverty, terrible governance, extremism, armed conflict, and regional meddling—are the same ones from 2001; indeed they are the same ones the Soviets blundered into in 1979. There has been some positive progress in Afghanistan, to be sure—in levels of health, communications, and some infrastructure. But the weight of the negatives has pulled down any sustained progress, and groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are poised to emerge once again from the shadows.
