How will Biden end the forever war in Afghanistan?
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It is evident from a perusal of official statements made by various authoritative Biden administration officials that the US is anxious to withdraw at least its official military presence in Afghanistan, but is also anxious to ensure that what they talk about as “gains of the last 20 years” are not all lost.
The study group co-chaired by Gen. Dunford, former chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, has recommended that the withdrawal should be conditions based, that the Taliban must live up to their commitment to cut ties with terrorist groups, reduce violence in Afghanistan and engage in meaningful negotiations with the Afghan government and other stakeholders. It says that otherwise, the country would become a base for terrorism within 18 to 36 months. It recommends that the current troop levels should be raised to 4,500 to allow the force to be effective.
The US congress authorized a veto proof defense bill which, with relation to Afghanistan, stipulates that money cannot be spent on drawing down forces in Afghanistan below 2,000 without a full explanation being provided and approved by Congress. Biden has promised to work with Congress and he cannot therefore ignore this limitation.
It is likely that Biden will ultimately approve, after the meeting of the NATO defense ministers later this month, the maintenance of the current official troop level at 2,500 with the focus on counter terrorism and air support for the ANDSF and virtually none for training of ANDSF except perhaps the pilots and the maintenance crews for the new planes and helicopters.
The US had closed five bases and reduced its military presence to fewer than 8,600 military members in Afghanistan by July 2020, fulfilling the initial commitments of the US-Taliban agreement and the then Secretary Defense announced that this would be reduced to 5,000 by November. In fact, the number was reduced further and came closer to the 2,500 that President Trump had directed. The NATO and other allies maintain 8,000 troops and how much this number is reduced will probably be decided at the NATO meeting later this month.
After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the Americans while savoring their victory, left it to a sanctioned Pakistan to cope with the detritus of the war paving the way for the rise of the Taliban and forcing Pakistan to climb on to the Taliban bandwagon.
Najmuddin A. Shaikh
This military presence is backed by civilian contractors on the defense department payroll. These, according to the report of the Lead Inspector General for Operation Freedom’s Sentinel for the third quarter of 2020, comprised approximately 600 DoD civilian employees and 22,562 contractors. Of the contractors, 7,856 are US citizens, 9,639 are other-country nationals, and 5,067 are Afghan nationals. The NATO meeting will probably reveal how much this has been reduced since September.
What will not be touched upon, however, is the CIA created and financed militia forces in Afghanistan for which there is a long history. The CIA support of the Afghan Jihad against the Soviets was routed through the ISI but the CIA cultivated and maintained its own network of the “Afghan Mujahids" of that era as also the many volunteers that were brought to Pakistan to fight the Soviets.
After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the Americans while savoring their victory, left it to a sanctioned Pakistan to cope with the detritus of the war paving the way for the rise of the Taliban and forcing Pakistan to climb on to the Taliban bandwagon.
According to the Norway based Chr. Michelsen Institute: “When al-Qaeda attacked the US mainland in 2001, the CIA already had a long history and a well-established infrastructure in Afghanistan. This enabled the agency to rapidly spring into action after September 11. Operatives equipped with cell phones and large bundles of dollar bills entered the country on a mission to mobilize Afghan militias.”
This study mentions briefly the many changes the CIA had to make while seeking the assistance of the military, but what is important is the Pentagon's bureaucratic wrangling by adopting the practice of lending active-duty members of the Special Forces to the CIA through its so-called Omega Program, and that, as Bob Woodward says in his book on the Obama administration, the CIA had by 2010 “an army of 3,000 Afghans called Counterterrorist Pursuit Teams, institutionalized with the acronym CTPT.”
While this report does not mention the Afghan warlords that the CIA supported, one can assume that they were people like Maulvi Ismail in Herat, Atta Mohammd Noor and Dostum in Balkh and Mazar Sharif, Hazrat Ali and Din Mohammad in Nangarhar-- and numerous others who had created their own fiefdoms to control trade routes, poppy production and trafficking. It would be fair to say perhaps that the CTPT is only a small part of the web of CIA financed and CIA officered or mentored militia forces including the Khost Protection Force (the Paktia/Pakika/Khost heartland of the Haqqani network) the forces called the South and the North etc.
There is a New York Times report of other unofficial militia being created by provincial authorities with the tacit consent of the central government to patrol the highways, manned by unqualified and untrained men lured by the promise of pay that is often unpaid or embezzled by the informal organizers.
One has to wait and see how this web of militia will be disbanded. For the moment, it would seem that even after formal military withdrawal the militias will remain a potent force in Afghanistan.
- Ambassador Najmuddin A. Shaikh is a former foreign secretary of Pakistan, and served as high commissioner to Canada, ambassador to Germany, US and Iran. He is a former member of the board of governors of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad and a founding member of the Karachi Council of Foreign Relations.
