How I learned to stay calm and love the Taliban

The new administration's strategy in Afghanistan is basically to bomb the Taliban until their will is broken and they come to negotiating table. All of that will require several thousand more US troops and likely years of engagement.

Let me translate that for you: it means that after 16 years of trying to destroy the Taliban, the US now believes that it's not only OK but desirable to negotiate with Taliban, and that after all the lives lost, US would be ok with the Taliban being potentially part of the Afghani government.

That was the part of President Trump's big speech on Afghanistan that I found most disturbing, and as I now see, my fears bore out.  We spent years trying to liberate Afghanistan from an entity that was no better than Al Qaeda, but regional, and which turned Afghanistan into an oppressive quagmire after the Soviet Union left.  We were first against them before we were for them. Being ok with Taliban as part of Afghanistan is completely incompatible with our other stated goals for continuing to stay in Afghanistan: stability, democracy, and security. First off, Taliban is already backed by Russia and Iran.  We are then stating that depending on how negotiations go (and Taliban without a question will want some permanent role in the government - or they will continue to recruit and die trying, because that's what mujahedeen are trained to do), we are ok with Russia and Iran playing a central role in that country. Why don't we just skip the fighting part, engage in direct negotiations with these two states over the future of Aghanistan, and ask them to help us with Taliban in exchange for playing a direct and stabilizing role in the government? That's essentially what's actually happening.

China and India will not be ok with each other or with this turn of events. China is interested in mining opportunities, and Afghanistan's role in the regional network of roads that is part of its geopolitical ambitions. India sees China as a major threat. Having these two states engaged in Afghanistan simultaneously guarantees tensions. Mattis claims that he will put pressure on Pakistan to stop supporting terrorists, such as Taliban and Al Qaeda that are flowing in and out of Afghanistan and finding a safe haven in Pakistan. But at the hearing he himself stated that the Pakistani government is ready to play ball, but the ISI, Pakistan, secretive and scary spy agency, is playing its own game. And ISI cares little about sanctions, and appears out of control significantly more so than the government. To complicate matters, Pakistan is significantly more dependent on China than it is on the United States, which means we must get China on the same page. China may not necessarily want to support a failed states run by terrorist organizations because it threatens regional stability and its own economic ambitions,, but so far, it's been perfectly ok with having Pakistan on the dole as is.  And if China agrees to be helpful, that will likely be in exchange for having us out of Afghanistan as soon as possible.

As for democracy and liberalization, those two concepts are foreign to Afghanistan. It was for a time more liberal under Soviet occupation, but the Soviet occupation would have proved short-lived even without our backing of the mujahedeen, because for a variety of historical and geographic fctors, it's extremely difficult to occupy a country such as Afghanistan, highly tribal, surrounded by mountains, and strongly opposed to foreign occupants. No empire had lasted very long, and neither would have the Soviets. Without substantially changing the culture and mindset of the locals, democracy and liberal values are just not going to stick. Security and stability can only be guaranteed when various types of terrorists, drug lords, and state actors are done fighting it out over this piece of territory and passages to the outside world. THat is the bitter reality Mattis was not acknowledging. If the only goal here is to diminish the influence of Taliban as such, he should have said so. However, implying that Taliban alone is the root of all evil is naive and disingenuous. Multiple terrorist organizations are finding Afghanistan a safe haven, the drugs flowing out of the country are funding international terrorism, not just Taliban, and Iran is using Afghanistan as a drug supply route for its own reasons. Furthermore, Iran is recruiting Afghan children to fight in Syria, further radicalizing the population.    Plus some of the state actors involved believe in maintaining a perpetual state of war for reasons of facilitating arms trade, distracting from their own activity elsewhere, and utilizing it to weaken the United States and other countries they see as opposing their own geopolitical ambitions.

At this rate, it won't take 3000 people and several more years. It will take many tens of thousands of people and decades to achieve even what is stated to be the goal. Taliban is not going anywhere without a bloody fight, and will try to drag as many people with them in the process as possible. And having Taliban as part of the government is implicitly legitimizing them anyway. If US is basically saying that they want Taliban to be viewed as a negotiating partner, they are implicitly undermining whatever limited authority the Afghani government already has. It's big schtick with the population was that it's fighting the Taliban. If it cannot even be seen as strong enough to destroy the Taliban as an entity even with all the US help, then what legitimacy does it have, and how is it preferable to the Taliban that is NOT giving up on its ultimate goal of domination? And the US is also undermining its own moral case for being involved in Afghanistan in the first place, without, by the way, in any way guaranteeing that none of this will eventually come back to bite US in other places around the world.

Measuring Progress in Afghanistan

The bottom line on Afghanistan is this:

President Trump's speech made me somewhat optimistic that the administration has clear goals and is willing to put aside timelines to achieve them.

However, since the speech there's been no public communication at all about what the concrete, measurable goals are, what success looks like more specifically besides "stability with no terrorists", and what are the measurable steps to get there. I'd be ok with no timelines, as long as I knew what exactly we are looking to do, and how, generally speaking, we are planning to get there.

George W. Bush's administration may have been well-meaning when it came to Iraq, but it completely and utterly failed to communicate what it was they were hoping to achieve and how, and not only came out looking like liars, but wasted valuable resources and human lives until they finally came to some sort of conclusion.

I am really concerned that this is where we are headed on Afghanistan with Trump's administration. I am impressed with Mattis' ability to communicate and defend the president's comments and positions, but he is not a policymaker. He is an executive.

I have yet to see the core of the message that is being communicated here.

The Trouble With Afghanistan

I hate to admit it, but Elizabeth Warren actually has a point on her critique of our strategy in Afghanistan:

* there is no timeline
* the drug trade is back up
* there is no support for the government

What she did not mention but I will: there is a group of rogue states operating in Afghanistan in contrast to our own goals. In addition to being in conflict with our own State Department over how to handle Taliban, we also have to contend with growing ISIS presence, with Al Qaeda, with the ISI freelancing, and with these other states (China, Russia, Iran, Pakistani government), all contending for human and natural resources, dominance in the area, and a way to stand up to the United States.

I did not hear a clear strategy or an answer from Secretary Mattis that would have allayed any of these concerns.

Mattis on Afghanistan

Important takeaway from Mattis' testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee:
Pakistani government has promised to crack down on terrorism, whereas ISI (the Pakistani creepy spy agency) appears to be running its own foreign policy.
US will be working diplomatically with China, Russia, Afghani government, India, and other countries to find common ground.