August 23 , 2019
Trump and the Taliban
In a couple of weeks, it will be 18 years since 9/11. Babies born in that year will be eligible for military service. Did any American or Afghani or Pakistani back on that day imagine the US would still be militarily involved in Afghanistan 18 years later? This forever war will have to end someday but that day still seems rather far off.
The primary reason for this is that the Taliban still hope to regain control of Afghanistan. The United States no longer has the will to attempt to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield. Since 2011 the strategy has been to keep the Taliban at bay and hope the Afghan government can eventually be strong enough to stand on its own.
Into this mix now comes President Donald Trump. His foreign policy has always been very confused but he does seem to think that withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan and the Middle East is a good idea. As such he has been actively pursuing some sort of a peace deal with the Taliban. His lead negotiator, ZalmayKhalilzad, has been actively meeting with the Taliban for months. So far there have been some claims of progress. The Taliban seem to think that Trump wants to be out at any cost. What the Taliban are hoping for is that the United States simply withdraws it forces entirely and leaves the Afghan government basically defenseless. In exchange for this withdrawal, they are offering a guarantee that no foreign terrorist groups will be allowed into Afghanistan under their watch.
Trump seems to think this is going to help his chances of reelection. Actually, it would make no difference. The war in Afghanistan does not really register with the American voter anymore. This is because the United States is not taking any real casualties. There is an occasional death of a soldier, but this is very rare. The cost of the war is also pretty small. It is still $30 billion or more per year, but that is a tiny, tiny fraction of the American economy. There really is no political pressure to withdraw from Afghanistan.
In addition, the United States has paid a very high price to set up the current Afghan nation and government. About a trillion dollars has been spent, and several thousand soldiers have been killed or wounded. To let the Taliban win at this point, would flush all that down the drain. In addition, it would devastate the lives of tens of millions of Afghanis. The vast majority of people in Afghanistan do not want to live under Taliban rule. They just want peace, and the chance to get on with their lives. Afghanistan now has a free press, elections, telephones, schools for girls, universities, public health measures, the ability to travel, hospitals, and at least some chance for development. To consign the people of Afghanistan to life under the medieval Taliban would be to utterly betray them.
The war with the Taliban will not end until the Taliban are willing to live in peace with the rest of the people of Afghanistan. A real peace will require the Taliban to negotiate with the Kabul government. The Taliban must agree to a cease-fire and to participate in a peaceful manner with Afghanistan’s political process. If they truly have the support of the Afghan people, then they can win elections. But this will require them to show how they can solve the real problems Afghanistan faces.
It would be a giant mistake for Trump to surrender. The United States does not need to fight the Taliban directly. But American airpower, intelligence, logistics, and supplies and equipment give the Afghan government the necessary help to keep the Taliban out of power. Keeping the 10,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan is a small price to pay to ensure the survival of the Afghan government.
Pakistan could play a more constructive role. Pakistan has been supporting the Taliban since 1994. It did this out of naked self-interest. Pakistan has always wanted a proxy to exert influence in Afghanistan. After 9/11, the Pakistani military assumed that the US would come and then depart fairly quickly. Therefore, it was important to keep the Taliban alive. However, Pakistan’s strategy failed because the US never left. Instead, Pakistan has been supporting an insurgency in Afghanistan that created tremendous blowback in Pakistan. The Pakistani Taliban, an outgrowth of the Afghan Taliban, set off a reign of terror in Pakistan for years, including the massacre of scores of schoolchildren in one infamous incident. Thousands of Pakistanis died. Pakistan should never have supported the Taliban after 9/11. It should have accepted the new Afghan government and pushed for a close economic and political relationship that would’ve given Pakistan tremendous influence in Afghanistan, and limited India. This would have been a better strategy.
At the end of the day, the Taliban will not make a reasonable deal. And Trump cannot sign a deal that the Afghan government will not accept. As such, the present negotiations will go nowhere. The war will continue.
