Why the United States is wrong to up the ante in Afghanistan

In an announcement on 20 August 2017, United States President Donald J. Trump announced a new policy with regards to the presence and activity of the U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan. Under the new policy, troop levels could be increased (levels were not announced because such information is considered strategic and therefore classified) and the forces in the country would be exclusively engaged in training Afghan forces and fighting terrorists. No end-game was announced, so although the President said there would be no “blank cheque”, no-one knows when the U.S. forces will ultimately leave the country and, although the President told the troops he was addressing when announcing the policy that “we will always win”, he did not indicate what would constitute a final victory. The goals he outlined, “obliterating ISIS, crushing Al-Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, and stopping mass terror attacks against America before they emerge” simply cannot be achieved without a permanent military and political presence in the country.

This decision by the United States is a poor one and should not have been announced. The reasons range from the philosophical to the historical to the political to the military. I shall examine a number of them below.

A number of commentators over the years have asked whether the fatalities suffered by coalition forces in Afghanistan “have been in vain”. Most recently, following President Trump’s announcement, U.S. Senator Christopher A. Coons, (Democrat, Delaware) said in a statement: “We need to work to ensure that [the] sacrifices [of the brave women and men who have served in Afghanistan] have not been in vain.”

Completely separate from the military and/or political desirability of achieving some end in Afghanistan, the use of this argument, while pleasing to some family members of those who lost their lives fighting in Afghanistan who don’t want to feel that their offspring, siblings, parents, etc., may have died for a cause that was not worthy of the sacrifice, is a logical fallacy that has nothing to do with the merits of fighting or continuing to fight in Afghanistan (or anywhere else).

Technically, this flaw in reasoning is known as the “sunken cost fallacy” or the “throwing good money after bad” fallacy. Basically, it says that the resources that we have lost in the past in the conduct of a given endeavour justify the continuation of that effort or the commitment of new resources or we would be forced to admit that perhaps we shouldn’t have committed those resources, including human lives, in the past, which would, at the least, be embarrassing.

The argument does not hold true in the business world (where it is also often heard) and it does not hold true in the military/political world. “Perhaps even worse, escalation of commitment to a course of action only because of past investment can block needed change and limit innovation.”

So let’s now proceed to examine the new policy on other grounds.

“Just War” or just war?

It is quite understandable that many people share the opinion that war is always bad and warriors are always evil. After all, wherever warriors appear, death and destruction follow. And when soldiers commit atrocities, which, sad to say, they often do, it appears that no good thing can ever come of war and conflict.

It is therefore a surprise to many that, in fact, a great deal of thought has gone into what constitutes a just war and how should war be conducted to be conducted ethically.

In brief, just war theory historically has stated that for a war to be considered just, the decision to go to war must be taken by a properly constituted authority, such as the state (as opposed to, say, private mercenary armies acting independently), the grounds for war must be just (and the acquisition of natural resources at favourable prices does not constitute just), and the object of war should be the establishment or restoration of peace.

Later refinement of those basic principles added some points:

Wars may be justified in the following situations:

• In self-defense, as long as there is a reasonable possibility of success. [italics mine. DS]

• Preventive war against a tyrant who is about to attack.

• War to punish a guilty enemy.

A war is not legitimate or illegitimate simply based on its original motivation: it must comply with a series of additional requirements:

• It is necessary that the response be commensurate with the evil; use of more violence than is strictly necessary would constitute an unjust war.

• Governing authorities declare war, but their decision is not sufficient cause to begin a war. If the people oppose a war, then it is illegitimate. The people have a right to depose a government that is waging, or is about to wage, an unjust war.

• Once war has begun, there remain moral limits to action. For example, one may not attack innocents or kill hostages.

• It is obligatory to take advantage of all options for dialogue and negotiations before undertaking a war; war is only legitimate as a last resort.

On 11 September, 2001, a group of non-state actors, citizens of Sa’udi Arabia and most of them resident in Germany, launched an attack on the United States, from inside the United States, killing fewer than 3,000 people (most of whom were civilians, 55 military).

In response, the United States announced that the attacks had been carried out by a terrorist organization called Al-Qaeda, which had training and operating bases in Afghanistan. The United States formally requested that Afghanistan turn over the leader of Al-Qaeda, the Sa’udi millionaire Osama bin-Laden and other Al-Qaeda members.

At one point, Afghanistan was reported to have said that it was willing to turn him over to a third country if the United States would stop the bombing of Afghanistan that it had started and if the U.S. would provide evidence of his guilt (as is standard in most extradition cases, as it happens). The Afghanis also based their reluctance to turn bin Laden over on their system of common law known as Pashtunwali, which states, among other things, that when someone has been offered hospitality in a home, he also enjoys the protection of the head of the house. In this case, bin Laden was considered as a guest of the ruling Taliban and would not be turned over.

Consequently, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom invaded Afghanistan (later joined by 37 other countries and military alliances) and began a war that still rages today and has claimed in the vicinity of 200,000 persons killed.

In addition, nearly 2300 U.S. military personnel, 453 UK personnel, 158 Canadian, 25 Netherlands and varying numbers of other coalition forces, have also been killed, for a total of 3,407 (and counting), which is more than the casualties on September 11.

If we now look back at the principles of just war, we can ask ourselves, based on what we knew then and what we know now,

1. Was the war declared by a properly constituted authority?

• Yes, all the more so in that the United States had received the backing of the Security Council of the United Nations in 1999 for Afghanistan to surrender bin Laden.

1. Were the grounds for war just?

• That depends on what the grounds for war were. Ostensibly, the object was to capture bin Laden and as many Al-Qaeda members as possible and to deny terrorists the use of Afghanistan as a training and staging area. In that case, I think the case could be made that the war was not just. That merits more detailed discussion.

Unjust assault: Afghanistan 2001

In December 2000, approximately one month after George W. Bush had been elected President of the U.S., I attended the Christmas party for Compuware Europe, the Dutch branch of a U.S. software company that I worked for at the time. In addition to my wife, the other people at my dinner table included the Director of Marketing, her husband, and two other employees and their spouses. The conversation turned at one point to the election, and I offered the opinion that the U.S. in particular, and possibly the rest of NATO, as well, would be at war within one year. When asked why, I said “Republican president, never been in combat”.

W, as he liked to be called, had been in military service of a sort. He had been a pilot in the Texas National Guard. Although that was in the period of the Vietnam War, he managed to not be deployed and, therefore never saw combat. A party that so extols the military virtues, like the Grand Old Party (Republicans), seems to contain a high number of members who are susceptible to the temptations of taking up arms when other alternatives are still available. It therefore seemed to me to be likely that it wouldn’t take much to get W. to order the massive U.S. armed forces into action. And it didn’t.

Simply by virtue of the principles of Just War set out above, a military response to the attacks on the U.S. in 2001 was not warranted.

1. It was not a war of self-defence. The U.S. was not under existential threat by Al-Qaeda, which was too small to constitute such a threat. Afghanistan was not even a party to the dispute. The fact that Afghanistan did not want to hand over bin Laden is insufficient as a .

2. All George W. Bush’s protests to the contrary notwithstanding, it was not clear what would constitute success…it was therefore not possible to determine that there was a reasonable chance of success…this is borne out by the fact that it’s now 16 years later (and counting) and success by any reasonable measurement has yet to be achieved.

3. The steps taken “must be commensurate with the evil” being fought. Initiating a war between states, with a highly disproportionate level of force against a much weaker adversary for a criminal act by a third party can hardly be considered “commensurate” especially in light of the previous point,

4. War should only be considered as a final resort, with non-lethal means, including diplomacy and sanctions, needing to be considered first. In this case, attention to diplomacy and sanctions was hardly given any chance of success.

By all traditional standards, then, we can conclude that the attack on Afghanistan and the subsequent war were not ethical, and therefore should not have taken place.

Once the war started, it must also be conducted ethically, which means treating enemy combatants and civilians ethically. The establishment of the prison in Guantanamo Bay, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, the establishment of black sites around the world, are clear violations of this principle.

The U.S. and the other members of the coalition later tried to change the objectives of the war, in public if not in their private deliberations, to nation-building to establish a society that would not allow the Al-Qaeda terrorists to return. To date, they have failed. And the reasons why they failed have everything to do with why President Trump should not have announced his most recent upscaling of the conflict, especially when nation-building was explicitly not made part of the equation.

The nature of Afghanistan

Although much has been made of how progressive and Western in outlook Afghanistan was prior to the invasion by the Soviet Union in 1979, that is largely nonsense. It may have been the case in Kabul, or in some neighbourhoods of Kabul, but even today, Kabul does not account for more than 25% of the population. The rest live in rural areas, where bonds of tribal kinship far outweigh the ties to a central nation-state of Afghanistan.

For the largest group in Afghan society, things are done according to the principles of an extra-judicial system known as Pashtunwali, which exists in parallel to the national legal system. Pashtunwali applies to thee Pashtun, approximately 45% of the population, the largest single group. Similar systems apply to the other groups (Tajik (approx. 25%), Uzbek and Hazara (approx. 9% each) and several smaller groups.

The Pashtun are not limited to Afghanistan, however, and in fact, the largest concentration is found in neighbouring Pakistan, where they make up approximately 25% of the population, largely in areas bordering Afghanistan. This is the result of the division of Afghanistan and colonial Indian by the British at the end of the 19th century. It also explains why Afghanistan receives so much support from both fellow Pashtuns in Pakistan and from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

The problem of leadership

Considering the inundation of supporting information provided over the past 16 years, the casual news consumer quite reasonably believes that the political and military equation in Afghanistan is quite simple:

1. There is a central Afghani government, which is pro-Western;

2. There is a pro-Western indigenous population that supports the central government;

3. The population supports the many and various Non-governmental organisations working to (re-)build the country’s infrastructure;

4. There is a coalition of forces working in support of the central government and with the support of the general population.

5. There is an insurgent force of Taliban (augmented by Al-Qaeda and Islamic State/Daesh elements) aiming to overthrow the government and expel the coalition forces.

If that summation bore any relationship to reality, continued military presence and operations in Afghanistan might be defensible. In fact, though, as the slide below shows, it does not.

This slide, produced by the U.S. Army in Afghanistan some years ago, has rightly been criticized as being too complicated to understand. No-one has ever said it’s inaccurate, however. What it shows is an environment that is anything but easy to understand and get a grip on.

All of these factors, however, do not go to the heart of the strategic problem in Afghanistan. And it starts with the Taliban

The Taliban

In the war of positioning that has been waged alongside the combat operations, the Taliban are usually referred to as insurgents. The implication is that they are an outside force attacking the legitimate government. In fact, however, at the time of the coalition invasion in 2001, the Taliban constituted the government of the country. Was it a government supported by the general population? Had it been democratically elected? The short answer is: who cares. A great many of the countries in the region, then and now, are neither democratically elected nor supported by the general population. True, the Taliban government was not recognized as legitimate by the United Nations, but they did have de facto control of the country and did enjoy at least some support. How is this possible?

Quite simply because the country had fallen into a state of lawlessness and violence and, in response to a violent incident of rape and a general disgust among the population, for the state of affairs, and probably with the support of the Pakistan intelligence services, the Taliban were welcomed as a stabilizing force. If they had not hesitated in handing over Osama bin Laden, there is no reason to think that they would not be the government today.

Instead, what we have is a corrupt central government, tribal warlords, something between 350 and 400 separate tribes (including those in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, which, in my view, must be included in any strategic analysis that covers the Pashtun ‘nation’), criminal gangs and various militias.

I have yet to see any convincing analysis that demonstrates whether, and if so, how, the Taliban does not represent the values of the Afghani population. And considering that they, and others like them, have been fighting this same war virtually continuously since the end of the 19th century, they have nothing but time and an abiding hatred of all foreign interlopers

It is therefore highly likely that, regardless of how long the Western coalition stays, and how many roads they build and schools they establish and security forces they train….at the moment the coalition leaves, the Taliban, or the next incarnation representing the same values, will rise to fill the void.

At which point, adding more troops to an operation with no definition of success or victory and no intention of nation-building becomes more than folly…it borders on the criminally negligent.

6 September 2017