Livin’ in the Middle of Doubt — The Afghanistan War Turns 18
By: Keith R. Higgons
Tags: War, Afghanistan, Taliban, President Trump, Politics

On October 7, 2001, the United States began “Operation Enduring Freedom”, a military invasion into Afghanistan. This war in Afghanistan was prompted by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, led by Al-Queda and its leader Osama Bin Laden, who was believed to be living in Afghanistan. Just shy of 18 years, and having recently past the length of the Vietnam War, it is now America’s longest-running war.

I’m eighteen

I just don’t know what I want

Eighteen

I gotta getaway

I gotta get out of this place

“I’m 18”

- Alice Cooper

As is typical, the human cost of this war is high: about 22,000 American service members or contractors have been killed or wounded and over 111,000 Afghan service members or civilians have been killed.

The financial cost is estimated to be more than $975 billion and counting.

After a peak presence of 100,000 forces in August of 2010, by July of 2016 President Barack Obama had reduced the troop level to 8,400. So, close to the end of his second term, President Obama determined it would be better for his successor to plan the next move.

His successor did just that. By August of 2017, President Trump had re-escalated the war in Afghanistan to 14,000 troops, nearly doubled the troop level.

Negotiations about America’s withdraw from Afghanistan have taken place intermittently since the war began. After almost two decades of failure, the talks began to heat up in late 2018 when the Taliban, the main insurgent group fighting the Afghanistan government, and Americans gathered in Doha, Qatar to discuss the removal of the 14,000 American troops and 17,000 NATA troops from 39 countries.

Conspicuously absent from the negotiating table was the Afghanistan government. The Taliban considers the Afghan government to simply be a “puppet government” of America and has steadfastly refused to negotiate with them until after an agreement is reached with the US. It’s believed that should a peace deal be agreed upon between the Taliban and the United States, the Afghan government and Taliban would then begin “intra-Afghan” negotiations.

There are four issues at hand in the negotiations:

1. The US wants a promise from the Taliban that it will not allow foreign armed groups to use the country as a launchpad for attacks outside of Afghanistan (which led to the Al-Queda led September 11 attacks).

2. The complete withdraw of US and NATO forces.

3. An intra-Afghan dialogue between the Taliban and the Afghan government. 4. A permanent ceasefire.

That last issue appears to be a particularly troublesome issue.

During the same first week of September, when a tentative peace agreement was allegedly reached, Afghan local media was reporting that attacks were continuing in the provinces of Kunduz, Takhar, Badakhshan, Balkh, Farah and Herat. Additionally, the Taliban launched a series of attacks in Kabul that left more than 100 people dead, including one American and one Romanian soldier.

The Taliban, perhaps not uncharacteristically but most certainly irrationally, never said they would forgo attacks during the negotiating process.

Despite a 2016 campaign promise to extricate the US forces entirely from Afghanistan, the exhaustion of American’s around this war and it’s a key provision in the negotiation, President Trump has maintained that some degree of military presence would be needed in Afghanistan. He has put the number of troops to remain even after a successful negotiation around 8,600, about where it was in 2016 just prior to his election.

The war in Afghanistan has also hit a sad benchmark. Aside from the many people dead and injured from this 18-year-old conflict, the troops now being sent to fight there weren’t born when the war began.

Historically, Afghanistan has been embroiled in wars since time has been recorded. From 1978 to today, the country has been involved in six wars. The 1978 communist Saur Revolution which then led to the Soviet-led war that lasted for ten years before the Soviets withdrew their forces. Then three civil wars that preceded the invasion from American led troops in 2001.

Establishing any kind of political structure in a country that is essentially a fiefdom has proven to be as problematic as finding a Red Sox or Yankee fan who can just acknowledge a win rather than gloat about it.

The talks between the US and the Taliban that began about a year ago in Dohar did eventually lead to a delicate peace agreement being “in place” the first week of September. However, on September 7, using Twitter as his official bully pulpit, President Trump announced that the delicate peace agreement was no more and that all negotiations would come to a screeching halt.

The president, angered by the recent bombings, and the Taliban’s unwillingness to commit to a cease-fire, he called off all negotiations with the Taliban. He also canceled a surprise summit to have been held on September 7 & 8 at Camp David in the United States.

This surprise secret negotiation between the US, the Taliban and Afghanistan scheduled to have taken place on September 7 & 8 at the president’s Camp David retreat came as a shock. Considering these negotiations have mostly flown under the radar for the past year, the fanfare of scheduling, and then abruptly canceling, a meeting with an extremist group that is responsible for thousands of American’s death is an unexpected, and wildly dangerous, political move.

However, to understand Trump’s love of the unexpected, you only need to look at his recent spur of the moment meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un; in which President Trump became the first American president to step foot in North Korea.

Many were left wondering why a meeting at Camp David was needed at all if a tentative peace agreement was already in place. That is until you consider President Trump’s penchant for surprises and theatrics.

The potential sensationalism and symbolism around a successful peace accord with Afghanistan and the Taliban days before the September 11 anniversary was most certainly an opportunity that President Trump could not pass: even if the Taliban had not yet confirmed they would’ve attended the meeting at Camp David.

Thinking that the past week’s attacks were a ploy by the Taliban to strengthen their position during negotiations, President Trump promptly canceled the proposed meeting at Camp David. After announcing the cancellation, an irritated and frustrated President Trump tweeted, “How many more decades are they (the Taliban) willing to fight?”

The answer can be found in a 2008 Rolling Stone article by Nir Rosen.

Rosen traveled to Afghanistan to meet with the then surging Taliban. After spending time with the insurgents on his last day in Kabul, Rosen was reminded by a Western aid of the words from a high-ranking Taliban leader. The man explained why the US will never prevail in Afghanistan:

“You Westerners have your watches, but we Taliban have time.”

President Trump has called the Afghanistan War an “aimless boondoggle” and whether his abrupt about-face this weekend will prove to be a permanent stop to negotiations awaits to be seen. Although, current thinking indicates that bringing the Taliban back to the table after the president’s recent Tweeting tantrum could prove troublesome.

President Trump’s outburst is proving to be just as pointless as the war in Afghanistan.

The peace plan that was “in place” on September 5 accomplished very little. It didn’t come close to Trump’s 2016 campaign promise to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. This tentative agreement did nothing more than guarantee a reduction of American forces to about what they were when President Trump took office, 8,600.

Russian author Leo Tolstoy said, “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

President Trump, never known for his patience and facing a challenging upcoming election is running out of time.

The Taliban appear to have plenty of both patience and time.