The U.S. can monitor and disrupt terror threats worldwide—including in Afghanistan; efforts to improve Afghan lives failed spectacularly outside Kabul.
GUARANTEED DETERRENCE
Debunking the safe-haven myth in Afghanistan
With the long overdue U.S. departure from Afghanistan finally accomplished, a flawed argument against leaving is being repeated: the Taliban allow safe haven for terrorists to launch attacks against the U.S. [CNN / Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Williams, and Zachary Cohen]
True, between 1996 and 2001, the Taliban provided Al-Qaeda with safe-harbor in effort to get help consolidating control over Afghan territory. Al-Qaeda exploited the Taliban's hospitality to pursue attacks abroad, often without sanction from Taliban leaders. [BBC / Driss El-Bay]
Some Al-Qaeda members reportedly still reside in Afghanistan, but the Taliban have incentive to check terrorist operations. The Taliban's past tolerance for anti-U.S. terrorists cost the movement thousands of causalities and control over Afghanistan for 20 years. Because the Taliban appear to be rational and self-interested, they should avoid repeating their past mistake. [Foreign Affairs / Daniel Byman]
And with the Taliban forming a government that will need things like capital from abroad, it will be easier for the U.S. to deter the movement from turning a blind eye to international terrorism. There is now a "return address" to target the Taliban, and the U.S. can swiftly punish the Taliban for any anti-U.S. operation emanating from there. [Responsible Statecraft / Paul Pillar]
In fact, the danger now is less that that the Taliban will deliberately tolerate terrorism than that their difficulties governing will allow some to operate. This is most obvious with ISIS-K, a chief Taliban rival, and a reason why cooperating on counterterrorism with the Taliban is the best course. [NBC News / Benjamin Friedman]
Even if the Taliban fail in this task, the U.S. remains in a superior position to disrupt and defend against anti-U.S. terrorism without a permanent military presence in Afghanistan. The technological superiority and offensive capacity of the U.S. counterterrorism apparatus—and the will to use it—has essentially made anti-American terrorist "havens" extinct. [DEFP / Daniel Davis]
LIMITED INTERESTS
The civil war in Somalia does not pose an imminent threat to the U.S., yet the U.S. has ramped up drone and air strikes in recent years.
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
U.S. and Afghan armed forces killed Afghans—which turned Afghans against both [New Yorker / Anand Gopal]
Afghanistan has been in a constant state of civil war since the 1970s. Anand Gopal's on-the-ground dispatch for the New Yorker exposes in vivid detail the struggle of Afghans, especially women in the countryside who, above all else, want the fighting to end, even if the Taliban win.
Like many towns in rural Afghanistan, Sangin suffered terribly under Russian occupation, and then the civil war and chaotic rule by mujahideen factions that followed. Under the Taliban, things were slightly better, though forced conscription, poverty, and the of lucrative opium cultivation caused difficulties.
The U.S. invasion generated a degree of hope for some of these Afghans. Yet as Gopal writes, the U.S. occupation brought new troubles, including the return of some kleptocratic warlords who brutalized the population before Taliban rule, now ensconced within the Afghan government with U.S. blessing.
Local elites also exploited U.S. support to have rivals branded as terrorists and attacked or shipped to Guantanamo Bay. Gopal's interviews detail how U.S. and allied Afghan operations produced extensive civilian casualties and destruction, including through some intentional attacks by Afghan forces of late.
Under these various regimes, women's rights in rural areas like Sangin remained nonexistent by western standards. What varied was how much they suffered due to war and corruption.
This all aided Taliban recruitment and built support among exhausted and brutalized people. Since the end of U.S. ground operations in 2014, the Taliban took over significant portions of Helmand Province.
The U.S. spent years trying to nation-build in Afghanistan. In reality, as Gopal writes, Washington blundered repeatedly by picking the wrong allies, exacerbated a civil war at massive cost to Afghans, especially in the countryside, and "effectively created two Afghanistans: one mired in endless conflict, the other prosperous and hopeful."
NATION-BUILDING FAILURE
"The ultimate irony of the war is that we're leaving the country at peace not because we won but because we lost so thoroughly that the side we backed just collapsed." [Ben Friedman / Power Problems]
TRENDING
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