It’s Past Time to Leave Afghanistan
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The reasons for staying in Afghanistan don’t add up. And Joe Biden should have held to Trump’s agreement and pulled our troops out by May 1.
Hawks make both idealist and realist arguments for staying in Afghanistan. On the idealist side, they argue that U.S. forces supporting the Afghan national government are the reason that more girls are attending school in Afghanistan than ever, which will have positive run-on social effects for decades. U.S. troops are the reason that girls in Kabul who don’t wear a burka are not defaced with acid. America is a force for good in the world, and when we retreat, the Taliban will end all this. By committing to an unconditional withdrawal by September 11, the U.S. undercuts its demand for the Taliban to give up more in ongoing peace talks.
On whether the Afghan national government has any functional state capacity for governance beyond what is provided by 3,500 U.S. troops, thousands of NATO troops, and 10,000 or so paid contractors, hawks say little. Long gone are the emotional vows by President Bush or General McChrystal that our security depended on Afghanistan becoming a liberal democracy. The nearly modern city-state around Kabul really is the best that can be achieved in Western eyes. That’s as much as King Amanullah I achieved a century ago.
But the rural and mountain areas still belong to the tribes. And while it is an imposition, the political Islam of the Taliban can adapt itself to a tribal society better than any political paradigm offered by the United States. Perhaps a few centuries of Christian missionary work in Afghanistan, to break up the systems of cousin marriage, as the Church once did in Germania a millennium ago, would do the trick. I doubt that Democrats are as far-sighted and committed as this.
On the other side, hawks sometimes make a case grounded in the geopolitics of Central Asia, one that treats the benefits to Kabul’s residents as ancillary. Sometimes this is found in the need to prevent the Taliban from making Afghanistan a safe haven for terrorists, a noble goal. But just as often, hawks frankly admit that the aims of our presence in Afghanistan are no longer just smashing up al-Qaeda and punishing the Taliban — goals that were arguably achieved 18 years ago. Instead we remain in Afghanistan because Bagram Air Base is good to have. Potential conflicts with Iran, Russia, or China require holding on to this bit of real estate. The cost of doing so is low. Perhaps $20 billion a year. No American troops have died in a year. This argument is more likely to appeal to Cold Warriors who care about China but are otherwise reluctant about nation building.
But, it also doesn’t quite add up. There are many parts of the Afghan countryside where the Taliban acts with impunity even now, and could set up a safe haven for al-Qaeda. (Frankly, if you want the best training al-Qaeda can offer, Idlib province in Syria, filled with former and potential future U.S. clients, is probably a better bet.) Smashing the Taliban’s capacity to host or train terrorists would require something much more dramatic than an ongoing presence in Kabul. It would require something like regime change in Pakistan, the U.S.’s traditional vassal in the region, which sponsors the Taliban, and which hosted Osama bin Laden for years.
The little danger for American troops in Afghanistan, especially the zero deaths over the past year, is partly attributable to the agreement the U.S. signed with the Taliban last year, which promised our withdrawal by May 1 of this year. Biden has already dithered enough to exceed that, and we do not know how the Taliban will respond to us breaking our end of the agreement.
The Afghan government is likely to fall after we leave. Our own agreement to leave, signed last year, anticipates some kind of resettlement in Afghanistan after our withdrawal and even commits the United States to work with “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” which is diplomatic-speak for recognizing the Taliban as a legitimate part of the Afghan government. This recognition can be premised on the U.S. ability to continue monitoring the countryside for terrorist activity by air, as we do in many other countries without permission.
Biden has almost certainly made the situation worse. He could have come into office and said that Trump had tied his hands. This would have had a strong element of truth to it. By hemming and hawing, he allowed many in the foreign policy blob to argue for breaking the agreement and staying in Afghanistan indefinitely for humanitarian reasons. Now he is breaking the U.S. agreement but committing to leave by September 11 anyway. By choosing to break the deal and run, he risks a much more disorderly withdrawal and even a Saigon-style humiliation. The chosen date potentially gives a public-relations win to Islamist terrorists, and to Biden’s critics at home.
Still, the case for demanding “conditions” before withdrawal can similarly grant the initiative to our opponents and rivals. The case for staying is even weaker. The U.S. has more important theaters in which to engage major rivals such as China. We do not have the ability to transform Afghan’s traditional society outside of Kabul, and we do not have the willingness to uproot the Taliban.
So in the end, the case for staying is a case to wait for more mission creep. We will hold on to the asset until it presents more attractive liabilities! We’ve been adding new reasons to stay in Afghanistan for 15 years. It’s past time to stop.
