America’s longest war: will we ever learn from our mistakes in Afghanistan?
Years of deception and missed opportunities have only made the plight of Afghans worse today.
While most Americans were focused on traveling to see friends and family over the Independence Day holiday weekend, the Biden Administration’s State Department quietly decided to release part of its “After Action Review on Afghanistan”. In what appears to be a blatant attempt to minimize attention paid to the report given the timing of its release, the U.S. government has once again demonstrated how domestic political considerations are often paramount when crafting narratives around foreign policy decisions. The recent State Department assessment follows another short report from the White House released in early April that drew outrage from Republicans for placing much of the blame for the debacle on President Trump. In response to the State Department report, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, stated: “There’s only one person responsible for the disastrous pullout of Afghanistan — Joe Biden.”
It’s not surprising that American presidents attempt to obfuscate and deflect blame for their errors when things don’t go according to plan, particularly when the consequences are so visible and glaringly obvious as in the case of Afghanistan. However, what is more shameful than this political posturing that we’ve all grown accustomed to is the fact that moments like these are not used to foster an open and honest discussion designed for the American people to better understand how we arrived at such a catastrophe over 20 years. The truth is that no one American presidential administration bears all of the responsibility for the collapse in Afghanistan. Rather, the consequences of the Afghanistan war can be attributed to decisions made across presidential administrations. It may be politically expedient to blame President Biden now, but there were multiple opportunities over multiple administrations to reassess and make policy changes that were not seized upon. This dynamic became more apparent in 2019 when the Washington Post published “The Afghanistan Papers”, which illustrated a pattern of widespread deception.
While of course hindsight is 20/20, it’s difficult to look back at the early moments in the conflict and not wonder how things could have played out differently had American leaders been more cautious and measured in their decision-making, instead of choosing to engage in an overly ambitious strategy of nation-building that was always going to prove to be an incredibly difficult task. In Alissa J. Rubin’s 2021 New York Times article entitled “Did the War in Afghanistan Have to Happen?”, Carter Malkasian, a former senior adviser to General Joseph Dunford, is quoted as saying the following:
“We were hugely overconfident in 2001, and we thought the Taliban had gone away and weren’t going to come back… We also wanted revenge, and so we made a lot of mistakes that we shouldn’t have made.”
Malkasian’s point about the desire for revenge is worth emphasizing here. It is difficult to put into words the atmosphere of extreme fear and anger that existed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Americans were in a state of shock and deep mourning, and demanded that their political leaders respond swiftly. It would have required a very high degree of courage to resist these political forces, something that the vast majority of American officials were not willing to exercise at that time, despite rare calls to do so.
After decades of conflict and the immense toll that it has taken, the people of Afghanistan are sadly still suffering. The Taliban has steadily intensified its repressive policies, particularly against women and girls, with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan recently declaring the actions “gender apartheid”. Even though the Taliban declared a general amnesty upon assuming power in 2021, many Afghans continue to be at risk of reprisal, including former members of the western-backed government that collapsed, as well as journalists, activists, and minorities.
In addition to this, Afghans have also been met with xenophobic attitudes and deportations in multiple countries. The U.S. government created a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program in 2006 to provide a pathway for migration to people who worked with the U.S. government or armed forces in Afghanistan or Iraq. Unfortunately, processing these applications has been very slow with many thousands still stuck in Afghanistan or in limbo in other places such as the United Arab Emirates. Nearly 175,000 Afghans are still waiting for the U.S. government to process their SIV applications for resettlement following the chaotic American evacuation, and as of September 2022, approximately 20% of these applications had been processed. A program allowing private citizens to help sponsor refugees, as well as the work of non-governmental organizations, has had a positive impact, but the scale of the humanitarian crisis is still overwhelming. To make matters worse, the Biden administration has attempted to back out of a court-ordered plan for promptly adjudicating SIV applications.
Congressional legislation is desperately needed to help mitigate this crisis and honor our obligations to the people of Afghanistan. The Afghan Adjustment Act, which would make evacuated Afghans eligible for permanent U.S. residency, still has not been passed even though the legislation has received bipartisan support. Fortunately, the legislation has just been reintroduced in congress. It is imperative that congress move urgently and pass this legislation in order to provide Afghans with a path to long-term stability and a chance to start a new life. This entire situation also highlights the importance of finally finding a way to break congressional gridlock and move towards the long overdue goal of comprehensive immigration reform, something that has been a point of extreme conflict, contributing to the challenges posed by this already complex situation. The Afghan people deserve better and should not be used as a chip in Washington’s political games.
In addition to the legislation discussed here, it’s difficult to say what can be done in the long-term to deal with the Taliban. As much as the desire to isolate and sanction pariah regimes is understandable and appealing, the unfortunate reality is that this course of action rarely leads to desirable results or policy objectives. This has proven to be the case in Afghanistan as well. Adding to this, the overuse of sanctions as a tool of financial coercion may actually be fueling a global trend towards de-dollarization, which is certainly not in the long term strategic interests of the United States. As undesirable as it may be, and in the absence of clear alternatives, diplomatic engagement may be the only feasible path forward to consider for now. This has been argued by the well-known Afghan women’s rights journalist and activist Mahbouba Seraj as well as other scholars who specialize in Afghanistan studies.
It is becoming increasingly clear that despite being the most powerful nation in the world, the U.S. is simply no longer able to impose its will on other nations in the same way that it did in the past. This new reality offers a chance to reflect and rethink our approach to complex international environments, and creates space for new creative approaches to diplomacy and strategic planning. We may not be able to change the mistakes of the past few decades, but we can start to change how we engage with the world moving forward. The sooner our policy leaders reckon with this, the better off we’ll all be.
