Washington Think Tanks Debate US Withdrawal from Afghanistan
By Elaine Pasquini
As Washington came to grips with the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan the capital city’s vibrant think tanks went into high gear last week to unravel America’s withdrawal from its 20-year occupation of the country.
In an appearance at the Atlantic Council on August 23, General (ret.) David H. Petraeus, who oversaw US operations in Afghanistan, contended that President Biden’s actions have “damaged our alliances, emboldened our adversaries and increased the risk to our security. It has flouted 20 years of work and sacrifice.”
While some US officials have said the Afghan army didn’t fight, Petraeus pushed back, noting that Afghans have been fighting and dying for their country since 2014 when the US transitioned frontline security by and large to them. “They would fight if they knew someone had their back and for quite a while, we had their back,” the general said, pointing out that the Afghans suffered some 66,000 casualties – just roughly 27 times American losses.
Petraeus posited that it might be wise for the US to reoccupy its $750 million embassy “to retain a footprint at the embassy in this new reality… and figure out how we influence the new government.”
David Kilcullen, senior counterinsurgency advisor to General Petraeus in Iraq and former chief strategist at the US State Department in the counterterrorism bureau, criticized the Biden administration for its Afghanistan policy and the withdrawal of US troops from the country.
“For NATO and European allies, this is seen as a US-inflicted humiliation on our allies,” he said on a Middle East Institute program August 23. “The whole thing is unnecessary. We didn’t need to leave in the first place …and the way we have done it has turned it into a massive humanitarian disaster and humiliation.”
“For 20 years, the ragtag little Taliban have stuck at it, persisted, fought, trusted in the will of God and the ultimate weakness of the infidel, and they have been proven right. They have defeated the greatest superpower on the planet.”
“It is a bipartisan screw-up and arguably that makes it worse than if it was just one party because it shows that as a republic, as a nation, we really don’t have a clue,” he continued, “…and our allies and adversaries alike have figured that out in the last week, if they didn’t know it already.”
Kilcullen pointed out that the Taliban was not in control of the entire country. Ahmad Massoud, son of the late mujahedeen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, is leading a resistance in the Panjshir Valley 70 miles north of Kabul. Large parts of the country are already rising up against the Taliban as evidenced by the urban uprisings in Jalalabad, Asadabad, Khost, Kandahar and Kabul, he reported.
General H.R. (ret.) McMaster was apoplectic on President Biden’s handling of Afghanistan. “To set the record straight, what we have heard from the administration are just falsehoods based on maybe wishful thinking, self-delusion, or just trying to mitigate the disaster associated with the American people recognizing how poorly this has been executed,” he stated during a Hudson Institute program August 24. “The Taliban didn’t defeat us; we defeated ourselves.”
President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was “the result of not only ignorance, but arrogance, combined with weakness and the belief that whatever one decides in their Washington bubble…will determine the outcome,” he said. Among European and NATO allies “there is a sense of outrage, but mainly betrayal, and we have lost a lot of credibility internationally.”
With respect to the regional consequences of the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, McMaster noted that “There may be a major ripple effect and that is going to hit Pakistan first, but will reverberate across the region.”
In his opinion, the US should support the opposition to the Taliban gathering in the Panjshir Valley led by Ahmad Massoud.
While going forward McMaster recommended isolating the Taliban, Petraeus suggested a different approach.
“If there are areas where we can work together, then we have to do that,” he said. “We have worked together historically with plenty of regimes that we have deplored…but that does not mean that you don’t try…to find some mode of operating with them.”
Speaking at a Wilson Center program August 26, former Pakistani ambassador to the United States and the United Nations Maleeha Lodhi said, while Pakistan continues diplomatic engagement with the Taliban, “Pakistan is in no mood to rush to recognition…because like everyone else Pakistan wants to see whether the Taliban will make good on the promises that they have made. Pakistan has played an active behind the scenes role…requested by the United States to nudge the Taliban towards an inclusive government.”
The extended troika, comprised of China, Russia, the United States and Pakistan, Lodhi pointed out, is a useful vehicle to exert joint pressure. “I think it is important for the international community to remain united so that collective pressure can be mounted on the Taliban.”
Other than Afghanistan itself, “Pakistan has the most to gain from peace and the most to fear if Afghanistan descends into another round of civil war, protracted fighting or instability,” she stated. “Pakistan wants to be in lockstep with the international community on these issues of recognition and dealing with the Taliban and ensuring that they stick to their promises.”
Husain Haqqani, the Hudson Institute’s director for South and Central Asia and former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, noted, “Foreign policy is always more complicated than being a simple choice between whom to bomb and whom to take out to lunch. This precipitate withdrawal has had consequences that we will be mitigating over a longer time.”
(Elaine Pasquini is a freelance journalist. Her reports appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.Ink.)
