Biden’s Tough Choice in Afghanistan
By Nayyer Ali MD
While the Biden administration has been focused on passing a two-trillion-dollar pandemic relief bill, undoing much of Trump’s executive actions, and getting his cabinet confirmed, a major foreign policy decision is fast approaching. Namely, what to do about Trump’s deal with the Taliban that called for America to fully withdraw all military forces by May 2021. This was a terrible deal that Trump signed purely out of political calculation during an election year, and with no strategic thought behind it. For Biden, he must now decide whether to honor it.
America has had forces in Afghanistan since September 2001, when it sent in Special Forces and airpower to assist the Northern Alliance as they overthrew the Taliban government in Kabul. This was done in response to the 9/11 terror attacks, which were carried out by Al-Qaeda, a jihadist group that the Taliban had granted refuge and a safe base from which to carry out attacks on American targets. In the run up to the war, the US demanded the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden and his group, which the Taliban refused and the consequence was the US intervention.
The Taliban were quickly defeated and scattered, and a US-backed government led by Hamid Karzai came to power in Kabul. A new constitution and a rickety but functional government slowly stood up. American attention rapidly shifted to the attack on Iraq, leaving a minimal US and NATO presence in Afghanistan for the next five years, while the Taliban licked their wounds and regrouped in Pakistan.
In 2006, the Taliban began a new round of insurgency in Afghanistan, retreating to safe havens in Pakistan where they could rest, train, treat the wounded, and organize attacks and receive military supplies. Almost all the fertilizer used by the Taliban in their roadside IED’s was obtained in Pakistan. In response to the rising Taliban activity, President Bush increased the US commitment to Afghanistan, and began a program of creating a real Afghan military that could take on the Taliban. By 2009, the Taliban were quite active and President Obama responded by authorizing a “surge” of American forces to over 100,000 troops, but for less than two years, after which the forces would be withdrawn. This surge knocked the Taliban back, but did not defeat them. In addition, Obama engaged in an extensive drone campaign against Taliban targets in the tribal regions of Pakistan where the central government had no direct control on the ground (FATA). Biden, who was Vice-President at the time, actually opposed the surge, and wanted to keep American commitment at a much lower level.
By 2011, Obama had reduced troops to under 30,000, and further reductions to under 20,000 took place by the time Trump entered the White House. Trump had famously attacked American military deployments abroad, as part of his “America First” outlook. He pressured the military to cut the US footprint, which shrank to less than 10,000. But in his last year in office, he made a deal with the Taliban in which he committed the US to fully withdraw all of its forces by May 2021 if the Taliban agreed to never let Afghanistan be used as a base for terrorism again.
Which brings us to Biden’s current dilemma. Biden too would like to bring the last American troops home. But there is grave concern that the Taliban have no interest in peace or coming to a reasonable settlement with the Afghan government, and instead will take advantage of a US retreat to seize power again. The Afghan government does have an army, but it relies on supplies and cash from the US to keep it in the field, and the availability of training and air support from US forces is critically important to ensuring the Taliban cannot threaten Afghan cities. While American forces have not engaged in active combat with Taliban in years, they provide a critical support element for the Afghan army.
Critics speak about America’s “endless wars”, but this is a false criticism. While small numbers of US forces are deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is nonsense to call what they are doing “war”. The number of US forces that engage in combat is close to none, and casualties are less than 10-20 per year, fewer than the number of servicemen that die each year in traffic or training accidents. The fiscal cost of the US commitment is also trivial, less than 0.25% of GDP.
Congress appointed a bipartisan study group to evaluate Trump’s February 2020 deal and they concluded that Biden should not leave Afghanistan by the May 1 date. Instead, the US should continue its support of the Afghan government until the Taliban sign and adhere to a peace deal that actually ends the Afghan war, and does not merely call for the US to quit.
The Taliban would be a cataclysmic disaster for the people of Afghanistan. When they last ruled Afghanistan they banned girls education, denied women the right to work or travel, blew up cultural sites that were not Islamic, carried out gruesome punishments and public executions, banned kite-flying and music, and basically carried out none of the basic functions of an actual government like public health and education. When the Taliban were overthrown, Afghanistan had no universities, no banks, no cell phones, no newspapers, no functioning airport, no television channels, no immunizations, and no medical schools. It had no real industry and no real economy. Life expectancy was a miserable 45 years. In the 20 years since the US came, almost every metric of life in Afghanistan has improved. It remains one of the poorest countries on the planet, but it has been making gradual progress year by year, with life expectancy over 60 years, and with millions of girls in school who otherwise would be condemned to a life of illiteracy and ignorance.
Pakistan must also make a choice. Pakistan’s army and its government has always had a confused and muddled policy toward Afghanistan. Pakistan saw the post-Taliban government as pro-India, and a security hazard to Pakistan. There was a strong belief that the US presence was temporary, and like the Soviet Union in the 1980’s, would eventually tire and leave, and therefore it was important for Pakistan to keep the Taliban as an option to contest control of Afghanistan. The alternative strategy, which was to accept the new Afghan state, and bind it tightly to Pakistan through economic and trade linkages, was never tried. Now 20 years later, Pakistan may be reconsidering. There are plans to extend a railroad to Afghanistan from the Pakistani rail net as part of CPEC. There are also ideas to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. But these kinds of plans make no sense if Afghanistan is not at peace. Railroads and pipelines are easily damaged or destroyed by insurgents, so building them during war makes no sense. Pakistan should reconsider its tactical support of the Taliban, and encourage a real end to the Afghan civil war.
For the Taliban, they have spent 20 years fighting and losing. They have never been able to seize and hold a single major Afghan town or city. They lack vehicles or artillery or airpower or air defense. They inflict most of their casualties through IED’s, which kill hundreds of Afghan civilians every year. But what choice do they have? What peace deal could they ever live with? If they put down their weapons and tried to form a political party, they would find that almost no Afghans support them. The Taliban have always relied on the rural Pashtun population, which makes up less than 30% of Afghans. The non-Pashtuns (50% of Afghans) and the more educated and literate urban Pashtuns have no desire to live under Taliban dictatorship.
The US has seen several thousand soldiers die in Afghanistan to keep the Taliban out of power. Their deaths would have been in vain if the US allows the Taliban to seize the country. No “endless war” is needed to prevent this. Just a modest but sustained commitment of a few thousand soldiers and a few aircraft. At some point the Taliban will tire of the war and be unable to sustain their insurgency. But that could be another 20 years. The FARC fought an insurgency in Colombia for 40 years before they finally signed a peace deal and agreed to integrate back into Colombia. Hopefully, Afghanistan will not need to keep fighting for 20 more years before something similar happens.
