Afghanistan Papers and unlearned lessons from Vietnam
https://arab.news/v42a5
Despite the nearly unanimous view of most American political and military leaders that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, President Donald Trump declared on Nov. 28 during his first visit to the war-ravaged country that US forces would stay until total victory, or in case a peace deal is made with the Taliban.
The talk of victory may have been necessitated by political compulsions as he was speaking at Bagram, America’s biggest military airbase in Afghanistan, during his Thanksgiving visit to raise the morale of his troops, but it was wide off the mark considering the ground situation with Taliban fighters steadily capturing territory since losing power in late 2001. This was one more instance of a US leader trying to raise false hopes about victory even though this couldn’t be achieved in 18 years of war with much bigger manpower and resources than presently available.
All this looks familiar in view of the revelations made in the over 2,000 pages of the Afghanistan Papers recently released by the Washington Post after a three-year court battle. The papers expose instances of senior US government functionaries deliberately misleading Americans about the progress of America’s longest ongoing war by providing wrong information. Figures of battlefield successes were manipulated and a feel-good atmosphere created to claim that progress was being made to win the war. Though the US military managed to keep its human losses low by restricting ground operations and relying more on airstrikes, the number of Afghan civilians killed in the conflict was high and the cost of the war crossed 1 trillion dollars.
While the Pentagon Papers had exposed the lies told by the US government about the lost Vietnam war, the Afghanistan Papers have revealed the extent of the fabricated reports that aimed at portraying the unwinnable Afghan war as a success.
Rahimullah Yusufzai
There could not have been a better time for the release of the Afghanistan Papers as the US seems to have finally abandoned the pursuit of a military solution by accepting the Taliban's demand for direct peace talks. This could have been done earlier and lives could have been saved and costs curtailed. A peace deal looks increasingly likely now that the Taliban-US talks have resumed after a three-month break due to Trump’s abrupt decision on Sept. 8 to end the process. A deal would pave the way for US troops’ withdrawal in return for Taliban guarantees to deny the use of Afghanistan’s soil to elements hostile to Washington and its allies, and lead to intra-Afghan peace meetings and possibly a ceasefire.
However, this won’t necessarily end the US involvement in Afghanistan as Washington would be keen to sustain the Afghan government in power, keep the Taliban under check, and prevent Al-Qaeda from regaining ground and Daesh from benefiting from any chaotic situation in the post-withdrawal period.
Trump is no different than former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama in terms of military strategy in Afghanistan as all three ordered a surge in troops in the hope of halting the Taliban momentum and breaking the battlefield stalemate. In August 2017, he sent another 3,900 soldiers to Afghanistan after announcing his military-focused strategy for South Asia. It didn’t work as was the case earlier with the gradual increase of US troops ordered by Bush and the subsequent 30,000 deployed by Obama.
Almost all 17 commanders of US forces in Afghanistan since the October 2001 invasion presented a rosy picture of the security situation and claimed progress in accomplishing the mission. They also sought more troops to finish the job, but the mission was doomed to fail.
Unlike the Americans, the lightly armed Taliban fighters adjusted their tactics after concluding that they would continue to suffer heavy casualties in open battle with the US-led NATO forces that were far more resourceful and had the added advantage of unchallenged airpower. Resorting to guerrilla warfare and using suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the Taliban made the war costly in terms of human and material losses for both the foreign and Afghan forces.
It took the US officials years to concede that there was a stalemate in the Afghan conflict. They knew Afghanistan had become a quagmire for the US but were loath to admit it. By bringing back hated Afghan warlords to power and taking sides in a conflict that also had an ethnic background, the US made enemies. The rising collateral damage due to inaccurate airstrikes and night-time raids, imprisonment of innocent people and failure to push the Afghan government to fight corruption and improve governance caused resentment among the Afghans and worked in the Taliban's favor.
While the Pentagon Papers had exposed the lies told by the US government about the lost Vietnam war, the Afghanistan Papers have revealed the extent of the fabricated reports that aimed at portraying the unwinnable Afghan war as a success. Nothing was learnt from the Vietnam War and it remains to be seen if the bad experiences in the Afghan war would serve as a lesson. The most important lesson for the US for losing wars should be to avoid invading other countries as invaders are universally hated and resisted.