Escaping the empires’ graveyard

Now that the United States' destructive 20-year war in Afghanistan has ended, Afghans tremble at the last laugh of the Taliban. The world waits for the country's plunge back into the darkness of the Middle Ages under the rule of extreme religious zealots. Many observers were shocked to see this outcome emerge from the deadly, two-decade nation-building effort of the United States. But this terrible fate was obvious to many, including me.

After receiving my East Pakistan runner-up trophy in the All-Pakistan Television General Knowledge Quiz competition at a national celebration event in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, I had the opportunity to visit several cities of Pakistan as a guest, sponsored by the government. My itinerary included Peshawar, the Khyber Pass, Jamrud Fort, and Landi Kotal—areas which are all inhabited by the ethnic Pashtun. That same culture constitutes the dominant majority of neighbouring Afghanistan. 

At the end of a festival in Peshawar, I saw Pashtun children jumping on trucks and ox carts with guns hanging from their shoulders and belts of ammunition across their chests. While I was travelling through the Khyber Pass, I noticed children armed with rifles herding sheep in meadows. They appeared from and disappeared into caves and the many mountain passes that dot the sprawling landscape of the Hindukush mountain range. In the bazaar at Landi Kotal, guns were openly made and sold. Even to my young, non-military eyes, this did not seem like the place for any outsider to wage a war.

Afghanistan is known as the "Empires' Graveyard," perhaps because in its more recent history, after earlier conquests by the Achaemenid Persian, Greek Seleucid, Indian Maurya, and Turkic Timurid empires, Afghans have shown stubborn resistance to attempts by external forces and their proxies—the Safavid, Russian and British empires, and now the United States—to rule their land. Afghanistan is at the crossroads of famed conquerors, and is a roundabout of ancient Silk Road trade routes for commerce and conquest. Its inhabitants include conservative and independent-minded warrior tribes living in a hostile geography—a lethal recipe for waging guerrilla warfare. It is not surprising when external attempts to transform the country's population in any fashion prove futile. It took more than 200 years to convert Afghans to Islam. 

America's Afghan war was initiated by the heinous 9/11 attacks perpetrated by al Qaida terrorists. On September 11, 2001, suicide bombers commandeered four commercial airplanes and used them as deadly projectiles, destroying the iconic Twin Towers in Manhattan, and damaging the Pentagon in Virginia. Al Qaida was sheltered by Afghanistan's Taliban government, who refused to hand over the 9/11 attack's masterminds to the United States. President George W Bush declared war on October 7, 2001. The Taliban, together with al Qaida, ran for their lives, leaving Afghanistan and taking refuge in Pakistan.

After a quick military victory, the United States started a nation-building programme in Afghanistan with a huge occupying force. The Taliban simultaneously waged a protracted guerrilla campaign from its sanctuaries inside Pakistan. With active American involvement, a democratic constitution was installed guaranteeing universal human rights for men and women. Billions of US dollars were spent to build infrastructure, schools, colleges, and hospitals, in addition to a massive Afghan army and police force. Two elected Afghan governments—the first headed by Hamid Karzai and the second by Ashraf Ghani—governed. The Taliban insurgency continued, becoming increasingly intense. The United States, with the token help of NATO forces, did the heavy lifting. Afghan government forces also fought, but rarely as an independent entity, as we have seen.

The United States paid a hefty price for trying to rebuild Afghanistan in the image of Western norm and polity, and the effort ends in resounding debacle. The 20-year project failed after spending over USD 2 trillion, sacrificing the lives of over 2,400 American service members, and bringing back more than 20,000 injured. Eight hundred thousand military personnel completed a tour of duty in the battlefields of Afghanistan.

The devastation for Afghan citizens has been similar. Half-a-million Afghans, mostly civilians, were killed or injured by American fire. Two million Afghans were forced to flee to neighbouring countries as refugees.

For all of this, "Operation Enduring Freedom" wrested power away from the Taliban for 20 years, only to give it back.

Both US President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump played a vital role in negotiating the final settlement with the Taliban. Trump concluded the Doha Agreement with the Taliban, agreeing to withdraw troops in exchange for a pledge to prevent al-Qaida from operating in Afghan regions controlled by the Taliban. The agreement was negotiated without Ashraf Ghani's administration, striking a devastating blow to the elected government's legitimacy, and granting de facto legitimacy to the Taliban. And Biden's rapid withdrawal has caused immense suffering to friends of the United States. It did not go as planned.

Given the history, geography, ethnicity, and culture of Afghanistan, the United States' plan was probably doomed from the start. A unitary central government in Afghanistan is probably not a viable solution, and the Taliban government is destined to fall apart if it tries to put such a system into place. The Taliban's extreme Sunni Islam grip will not be able to resist the centrifugal force of various freedom-minded ethnicities that make up the rest of Afghanistan. The Mujahideen governments in the 1990s learned this lesson the hard way. Various ethnic players within those failed governments shared politico-religious understandings from the teachings of Sunni Islamic theologists. But when they took power after defeating the atheist USSR and its proxies, their religious glue fell apart under the tremendous pressure of anti-central tribal forces. A loose confederation of autonomous states of various ethnic groups could be a better choice. We will see.

At the end of the day, did the United States learn anything? I hope so. America should better evaluate the risks, rewards, and costs—blood, money, resources—before embarking on another nation-building adventure. It should look to lessons from the collapse of older empires stretched thin due to unnecessary wars. Perhaps in the future, it should focus on using surgical military operations to capture the perpetrators of attacks on its soil—with less blood of its brave soldiers spilled and less of its children's money spent. And the United States should redouble its efforts to keep better, sharper watch for future attacks by deranged monsters.

Dr Mostofa Sarwar is professor emeritus at the University of New Orleans, dean and former vice-chancellor of Delgado Community College, and commissioner of the governing board of Regional Transit Authority of New Orleans.