
As we plunge headlong into the next decade with thousands of men still stuck in the infinite abyss in the desert that is Afghanistan, it’s worth wondering why we even bother.
At the outset, one can claim pretty fairly that invading the country to find and kill Osama bin Laden was an agreeable measure. In fact it’s totally arguable that the last time a soldier “fought for our freedom” at all was that initial invasion of Afghanistan. However, through general ineptitude, bureaucratic incompetence, Pakistan’s ridiculous notions of statecraft, and a citizenry that has never once dating back to Alexander the damn Great embraced a foreign power meddling in its affairs, Afghanistan was never really winnable.
For 17 years, we’ve had thousands of servicemen and hundreds thousands of civilians die and for what exactly? Is Afghanistan any more secure and safe now then it was in 2000? Is Afghanistan any more prosperous then it was in 2000, or is it even on the right track? More perhaps most pressingly, can you even consider it an actual nation? The answers are of course a resounding NOPE.
In regards to security, the Taliban and al-Qaeda and their various affiliates still control the South almost entirely. The Afghani military is virtually useless when it comes to projecting power outside of the major northern cities, and there aren’t anywhere near enough US/NATO/whatever forces to do anything but patrol the aforementioned major northern cities and keep the Taliban in the South. Our august president’s plan to send an indeterminate number of troops there will have very little impact here unless he is looking to increase from our current 8,400 deployed to something like 150,000–200,000. Re-taking and stabilizing the south is simply impossible without great numbers. And though the president can act somewhat unilaterally in the number of soldiers being deployed, public support is a currency just like money. The United States has largely run dry of that when it comes to massive deployments in the Middle East. It would also fly in the face of every thing he’s said so far in regards to “America First.”
As for prosperity, it’s a landlocked area whose most lucrative export is the decidedly not-legal opium, with a distant second going to pomegranates. In regards to the opium, it’s certainly one of the many reasons why the South fell back to the Taliban. It’s simple, really. The opium fields made southern farmers a living. The United States burned or plowed over a lot of the fields. This left the populace unhappy which made them not exactly upset to see whatever warlord re-take the area.
The opportunities for economic diversity are extremely slim, given the abundant lack of any sort of natural resources and trading routes. Afghanistan has *always* had this problem. The only reason it was ever notable was for the Khyber Pass and its existence under the British Empire as a frequently tumultuous colony, mostly in place to keep Russia out of the Gulf.
Nationalism has a pretty bad ring to it in the 21st century and for pretty good reasons. With it, for whatever reason, seems to come racism, xenophobia, closed markets, and a bunch of other unsavory topics that aren’t typically marks of progress. However, in order to be worth even the morsel of attention that we typically prescribe to Afghanistan, it needs to at least be a nation-state. The people need to identify themselves as Afghans and they need to *want* it. Nationalism of old, that which gave birth to ancient empires like Greece and Rome and more modern republics like Germany and Italy is what there would need to be evidence of in Afghanistan and there just doesn’t seem to be that.
For a millennia, the Afghani people have lived under warlords in tribal communities. This is what they know. This is what they’ve always known. There are well over a dozen major ethnic groups in Afghanistan. All identify as such, and they all live in pretty well-defined areas. This is largely what prohibits any sort of real “nation-building” given it prohibits there ever being a nation to build.
Our dear leader mentioned honoring the troops that died there, implying that it would be a disgrace to leave their deaths meaningless and we have to chase at least some sort of ill-defined objective in order to make the deaths of those in that country over the last two decades “worth it.” Is sending more Americans to their death -and make no mistake there will be more dying- in any way honoring anything? Chasing deaths and bad money with more deaths and more money is the worst case scenario, and one that we will be living.
I don’t know what the solution is. The president was correct in saying that is cutting bait would create a sure power vacuum. What’s most likely going to happen, at least if we don’t intend to be there in perpetuity for the rest of time, is that some vague final objective will be in place. Perhaps it will be “liberating” the south or maybe it will getting the Afghan army “ready.” But, once whatever criteria they come up with is met, that’s when we leave, and in the wake of our departure Afghanistan will resemble Vietnam circa 1975.
Afghanistan holds the reputation as being the siren song of empires, where the strength of the British, Russian, and Greeks were drawn in only to die in the wastes. I don’t think that Afghanistan itself is what will cause America’s final bell to toll, but an endless occupation of a country that doesn’t want us there is never going to end well.
