How the United States ‘unwon’ the war in Afghanistan and failed a suffering people
The blame game and finger-pointing are just revving up as Afghanistan slides toward a new Taliban plague. Most experts and analysts are dissecting the political and military failures over the past two decades. However, one crucial factor seems to be missing from those assessments.
The U.S. coalition that initially defeated the Taliban never got buy-in from the millions of ordinary Afghans who were supposed to benefit from regime change in Kabul, nor did the ruling class installed by the victors.
Consider the lowest tiers of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a framework used for decades by psychologists to explain human motivations. First come basic requirements: food, water, shelter and so on. Following close behind are safety and security. Therein lies a fundamental failure of the ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, and the Kabul government. Operation Enduring Freedom never gave the remarkably patient and resilient Afghan population any enduring reason to support or even tolerate the foreign military occupation or the government it backed.
The result was failure to lock in a basic need — a safe political, cultural and economic environment in which all Afghans could rebuild their lives and build a future for themselves and their children. The afterglow of a U.S.-led victory didn’t last long. After winning the war, the coalition started to “unwin” it. Inexorably, the benefits of the Taliban’s ouster were overshadowed by growing public impatience, followed by frustration, and eventually resignation.
The Taliban rarely scored a major battlefield victory, but they didn’t have to. After the coalition’s initial successes, military sweeps against insurgents had little lasting effect. As soon as coalition or Afghan forces would sweep an area, they’d usually withdraw, leaving security to inept or corrupt local authorities. Insurgents soon reappeared, torturing or killing local opponents and terrorizing residents with threatening “night letters” or other forms of intimidation.
I had a front-row seat for learning about life in southern Afghanistan in 2011 as editor in chief for an FM station funded by the U.S. Army at Kandahar Airfield. Unlike other military-operated media I had worked with, FM 85 Radio Yowali’s staff of respected local journalists could serve its southern Afghanistan audience with minimal interference. As a result, our newscasts were full of stories about corruption, government malfeasance and even occasional embarrassments for the ISAF. Call-in comments reinforced the obvious: Afghan citizens had no reason to trust, support or even tolerate their government or the coalition.
Planners might have fared better if they had studied the occupations of Germany and Japan after World War II. Those administrations were designed to revive and reform the civil societies of both former enemies. In Germany, the allies held their noses and used former Nazis for a time to help reconstruct that shattered nation’s economic and political systems. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, well versed in Japanese history and culture, imposed democracy while resuscitating the nation’s economy and traditional way of life, including retention of the monarchy. Each population learned to accept and then appreciate the new order and the quality of life it promised. Postwar insurgencies never had a chance.
Afghanistan enjoyed none of that far-sighted wisdom. While the ISAF played battlefield whack-a-mole with insurgents, the Afghan ruling class mouthed all the right slogans as it sucked government coffers dry to build walled villas and personal fortunes.
The Taliban might fall short of reconquering all of Afghanistan, leaving some areas at the mercy of autonomous local governments or unfettered tribal leaders. Every faction will sooner or later claim victory. Meanwhile, the U.S.-led coalition will try to spin its own version of success from the 20-year war it unwon.
That will leave only one group of clear losers: the long-suffering, war-battered and security-starved people of Afghanistan.
Theodore Iliff, an Olathe resident, is a retired journalist whose titles during a 45-year career included CNN executive editor, Voice of America associate director, University of Missouri-Kansas City adjunct professor and media consultant in Iraq and Afghanistan.
