The longest war in American history was initiated and continued on a set of assumptions that were fundamentally untrue. The only way this senseless conflict will end is if the American public understands that the entire justification for the war is deeply flawed.
For the most part, it is true that the joy associated with annual milestones dulls with age. With birthdays, for example, the excitement typically wanes after one reaches the legal age to drink, with the occasional uptick for the decade markers of 30, 40, 50 and so on. However, even as accompanying excitement for birthdays wane, they still present a day wherein friends and family will send their well wishes and are often still a case for a celebratory drink (or several). However, there are annual milestones which should trigger horror, be a cause for anger, and motivate one to drink; not out of celebration but out of a deep lamentation for the circumstance. I am referring to the American War in Afghanistan which “celebrated” its 19th birthday last week on October 7th. Indeed, if the American war on Afghanistan was a person, they would be old enough to qualify as a consenting adult, drive, vote, and perhaps most presciently, serve in the US military. The fact that now, in 2020, there are soldiers serving (fighting and killing) in Afghanistan who were not even alive when the conflict began is a grave indictment of the failure and immorality of the American foreign policy establishment. Since this failure receives little attention from mainstream media or either presidential campaign, it is worth exploring just how catastrophic this failure has been.
The truth that should be screamed into a bullhorn placed several inches from the ears of Pentagon and State department planners is that this entire bloody, pointless, nearly 2 decade long war did not need to happen. The exercise in endless slaughter and inevitably failed mission was all predicated on widely accepted assumptions that have no basis in reality. These assertions that are accepted as fact amongst the American populace and continue US participation of this endless slaughter are:
That the Taliban and Al Qaeda are one in the same.
That the Taliban refused to give up Osama Bin Laden.
That the Taliban have never surrendered.
The American populace is already (understandably) weary of the longest war in American history. However, revealing these prevailing assumptions for the mythologies that they are may be useful to push the casual citizen to action.
Myth 1: The Taliban and Al Qaeda are Interchangeable… right?
Of course, there would be no American war in Afghanistan if there had not been the 9/11 attacks. It was these attacks that brought the wrath of the North American super power to Central Asia. The conventional wisdom goes that the Taliban government was allied with Bin Laden, provided him refuge, and refused to give him up after the attacks. This left the United States no choice but to invade Afghanistan to seek justice for the carnage Al Qaeda had reaped on New York and Washington, DC. However, this is far from accurate.
Look at the Mess We Made
The Taliban had actually enjoyed a neutral, if sometimes tense, relationship with the United States since achieving control over most of Afghanistan in 1996. After the Russians retreated from their 1980’s failed incursion into the country, civil war erupted among the (often previously American supported) factions. It may come to a surprise to many Americans that in the 1990’s, the Taliban was viewed favorably by many Afghans. The Islamists won favor amongst the plurality of the population, for whom the perception that the Islamic fundamentalists concept of law and order would bring an end to the chaos in the war torn country. One can acknowledge the repressive nature of life under the rule of the Taliban while also admitting to another fact. Once in power, they did provide some stability to a nation that had been plagued by violence, rape, and otherwise chaos of the then 16-year-old foreign induced civil war. The Americans also apparently viewed the Taliban as a stabilizing force, with US oil executives from Unocal more than happy to seek deals with the Islamist Government to secure a pipeline through the strategically beneficial region.
Al Qaeda, in contrast to the Taliban, was a non-state actor, not an actual government that held state power. Rather, they were a loose association of several hundred members, led by several very wealthy and privileged men from Egypt and Saudi Arabia; Ayman Al Zawahiri, the surgeon from Egypt, and Osama Bin Laden, the wealthy heir to a Saudi construction magnate. These men had little in common with the poverty stricken orphans of the Soviet War that constituted the majority of the Taliban’s members. The groups spoke different languages and evolved out of very different cultures. Al Qaeda members were of Arab ethnicity and culture, while the Taliban was Pashtun. The Afghan leadership had no ambitions beyond the borders of Afghanistan while Al Qaeda sought global jihad. The common link between the groups existed in the similar (but not the same) fundamentalist interpretations of Islam that both groups embraced. These were the ideas that only propagated in previously cosmopolitan Afghanistan during the 1980’s Soviet invasion. Preceding, and arguably catalyzing the Soviet invasion, the United States plotted to support Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan that would ideally overthrow the secular communist government. This, in the mind of US planners, would induce a Soviet Invasion and give them their own “Vietnam War.” Operation Cyclone involved the CIA arming, training, and funding the most extreme Islamist factions in Afghanistan. This was accompanied by billion dollar propaganda efforts by the Saudis and Americans to spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia. This included publishing and distributing children’s books that preached Jihad and violence toward Soviet soldiers. The combined covert effort by the United States to defeat the Soviets and the war itself, created a generation of young men for whom violence was a way of life. In the hell created by the two superpowers, it is no surprise that those coming of age in this environment might gravitate to fundamentalism. Extreme situations often create extreme behavior. After the Soviets abandoned the war and various warlords battled for power, the Taliban emerged victorious in 1996.
Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, meanwhile, had been exiled from Saudi Arabia and were rendered unwelcome in other Arab states as well. After wearing out his welcome in Sudan in 1996, Bin Laden sought refuge in the newly formed Islamic Republic in Afghanistan. It was not only a fundamentalist view of Islam that created the environment where Al Qaeda would receive refuge. The wealthy Saudi provided financial assistance to the Taliban along with Arab fighters to assist the new government in defeating the remnants of the opposition in the still ongoing civil war. Perhaps the most important factor in the development of the relationship was Pashtun culture. Indeed, the Pashtun code of Pashtunwali demands extreme respect and tolerance for guests. It was this respect and tolerance for their Saudi guest that would bring Uncle Sam’s belligerence to Central Asia.
Myth 2: The Taliban Refused to Give Up Osama Bin Laden
The point that must be dwelled on, is that the Taliban, the government of Afghanistan until 2001, had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks. The 19 hijackers consisted mostly of Saudi Arabians and with some Egyptians, Lebanese, and Ermiratis rounding out the roster. No Afghan citizen took part in the attack. The plot was planned in Germany, the Philippines, and San Diego, all under the nose of governments friendly to the United States. The extremely tenuous argument for why the United States was justified to invade Afghanistan and attack the Taliban rests on the belief that the Taliban had given refuge to Bin Laden and would give him up under no conditions. After all, George Bush did state that the United States would make “No distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” This justification for war, already dubious by the standards of international law, also does not stand up to the facts of the actual situation.
The Worst Guests Ever
Bin Laden and his followers had always had a tenuous relationship with their hosts in Afghanistan. As their Arab guests stepped up their war against the west with attacks on the United States embassies in Africa in 1998, the Taliban recognized their dilemma. That attack was answered by an American cruise missile strike on Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s guests had now brought US military power to their nation and this pattern had to be broken. To this end, Mullah Omar demanded that Bin Laden cease his hostilities against the United States. The Afghan head of state was not a defender of the American experiment nor was he an oracle. He was just a man with common sense. He understood, along with many members of Taliban high command, that drawing the attention of the most powerful military in world history was not in Afghanistan’s best interests.
Even prior to 9/11, it was evidently clear that the Taliban-Bin Laden dynamic was not one of friendship but one of circumstance maintained by cultural expectations and real world pragmatism. As detailed earlier, the Taliban leadership knew that their Arab guests were bringing the wrong kind of attention from the United States to their otherwise far away land. They attempted to placate the superpower, understanding that their own future was at stake should they be unsuccessful in dealing with Bin Laden. The issue was, even before the 9/11 attacks, that Pashtun tradition, which represents a plurality of Afghans, demands that guests be treated with respect. Part of this respect dictates that guests are never given up to enemies. Like all governments, the Taliban had to maintain legitimacy amongst their own populace, and thus giving Bin Laden outright to the Americans would be a crushing blow to their credibility. Mullah Omar’s attitude expressed in the summer of 2001 captured the dilemma that the Taliban found itself in. Regarding Bin Laden and his provocative actions, Omar stated “Osama bin Laden’s presence is like a chicken bone stuck in my throat. I can neither spit him out nor swallow him.” He was lamenting his delicate situation of navigating the road of maintaining credibility while avoiding conflict with the US had to be navigated carefully.
Those Pre-9/11 Days
The aforementioned 1998 African embassy bombings presented an impetus for the Taliban to act to get rid of Bin Laden, and so they brainstormed solutions. Immediately, they acted by barring Bin Laden from making provocative statements to the media threatening the United States. The actions also included offering up a possible option of sending Bin Laden to Chechnya, where the Saudi had been offered refuge. The Taliban also offered to put Bin Laden on trial. In an attempt to please both the United States and their own population, this was to be an affair conducted under Islamic law. According to the Taliban Foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, Afghanistan offered to put Bin Laden on trial for his pre-9/11 crimes in a three nation court overseen by the Organization of the Islamic Conference [OIC]. This offer to place Bin Laden on trial overseen by the 56 nation OIC, along with an offer to give Bin Laden a religious trial were both ignored. Also rejected by the United States was the Taliban’s proposal to turn over Bin Laden to a panel by 3 jurists chosen by the United States, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. The superpower demanded complete submission from their Afghan counterparts, a doomed proposal. Washington would only accept the Taliban directly handing Bin Laden over, an act which would have rendered the Taliban illegitimate in the eyes of their own people.
These proposals made by the Taliban have been substantiated by Pakistan CIA station chief Grenier. Cultural misunderstandings between the 2 parties prevented a deal that would have had Bin Laden apprehended prior to 9/11. This was fact was lamented on by CIA station chief Milton Bearden, “We never heard what they were trying to say,” he said pointing to the Americans’ inability to sympathize with the cultural confines within which theTaliban had to function. Bearden proceeded to elaborate about the stubborn and unproductive nature of the US effort, “We had no common language. Ours was, ‘Give up Bin Laden.’ They were saying, ‘Do something to help us give him up.'” How many Americans died on 9/11 because Bin laden remained at large due to US demands for unconditional extradition? Needless to say, these were demands for unconditional extradition that would never be accepted if the roles were reversed, and the Taliban had demanded that a US resident be brought to justice in an Islamic court.
The events that occurred in the months leading up to 9/11 and the month following, highlight the inaccuracy of the assumption of the Taliban-Al Qaeda “alliance.” As Omar stressed over the precarious position the Saudi dissident had put him in, his foreign minister took action. In July of 2001, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil learned of the Al Qaeda 9/11 plot through an Uzbek militant embedded with the group, he attempted to alert the Americans through an envoy in Pakistan. Muttawakil was logically disturbed by the plot and cognizant that such an attack would quickly bring US belligerence to Central Asia. To that end, he attempted to alert not only the United States but also the United Nations officials that had been based on the Afghan capital. Both warnings went ignored. This history remains obscured as these events severely complicate the narrative that the Taliban was complicit in the attacks that occurred less than two months after Muttawakil attempted to alert his American counterparts.
We Don’t Negotiate Under Threat of Violence… But You Should
Mullah Omar and Muttawakil’s nightmare came to fruition after Al Qaeda succeeded in pulling off their attacks on the US on September 11th, 2001. Once again, it would be demanded that the Taliban navigate the difficult road between maintaining legitimacy with their population and sufficiently satisfying the demands of the United States enough to prevent all out invasion. While American officials quickly maneuvered to direct attention to Iraq (which also had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks), they understood that optics required that Afghanistan be first on the list of governments to go after. The country where Bin Laden claimed residence which was governed by the bearded members of an Islamic fundamentalist government was just too obvious an immediate target for a nation gripped by vengeful bloodlust. The Taliban and Al Qaeda were one in the same to most Americans and had to be brought to justice.
Avoiding Peace At All Costs
The manner by which Islamic government responded to the immediate American demand for extradition was decidedly predictable. The Taliban reacted to the American demand for Bin Laden with the obvious request for evidence of his involvement in the attacks. As they had before the 9/11 attacks, they offered to try him in an Islamic court in Afghanistan. As this offer was never agreed to by the United States before 9/11, it was neither agreed to afterward. In a desperate face saving maneuver, the Taliban further conceded that with evidence, they would give up Bin Laden if he could be tried by a third party Muslim state in an Islamic court. George W. Bush promptly rejected the Taliban offer and even reneged on a declaration made by his own Secretary of State on Meet the Press. On the Sunday morning program, Colin Powell indicated to interviewer Tim Russert that the United States would provide evidence of Bin Laden’s guilt. This white paper remains unpublished nearly 20 years later. It’s worth asking how quickly the United States would accede to demands for extradition of a US resident without being presented evidence? Even so, Mullah Omar was working behind the scenes to negotiate some matter to hand over Bin Laden in a manner that would not blatantly violate Pashtun guest rights. He sent his top deputy to meet and discuss the extradition with the CIA station chief, Robert Greinier, in Pakistan twice in September of 2001. Once again, Taliban was endeavoring to negotiate any sort of face saving, not publicized handover the Saudi to a third party nation. The Americans continued to insist on unconditional, public, surrender, and endless war would be the consequence of this position.
This Whole Thing Could Have Been Over by October 2001!
American bombs started falling in Central Asia on October 7, 2001. This was in concert with the CIA armed assistance to the Northern Alliance, a collection of ethnic Tajik and Uzbek warlords who had been engaged in a losing civil war against the Taliban Government. They were hardly champions of freedom, were often as steeped in religious fundamentalism as the Taliban, and every bit as brutal towards women. Understanding that their government and its military stood no chance against the decimating power of the US military, the Taliban loosened their requirements for Bin Laden’s extradition even further. Far from the face saving attempt to honor the Pashtunwali, the Taliban nearly gave Bush the unconditional surrender that he had demanded. They offered to hand Bin Laden over to ANY neutral country with the only condition being that the American ceased the bombing campaign and presented evidence. This was to no avail; the superpower had already committed to a full scale invasion.
We Don’t Do Diplomacy
This policy of demanding unconditional compliance with the dictates of the United States is the antithesis of diplomacy. What is the essence of diplomatic practice if not a series of negotiations and compromises of interests in the service of avoiding armed conflict? The idea that the Taliban could not be negotiated with is ridiculous on its surface. Defenders of such a policy might suggest that the Taliban’s version of justice is not up to the standards of the United States, thus Bin Laden needed to be tried in an American court. This claim could be countered first by pointing out the American practice of justice has produced the largest prison population on the planet. Also worth recognizing is the fact that US officials have in other circumstances had no issue relying on nations whose justice systems differ quite drastically from that of the United States. During the Cold War, the US was content to hand over lists of alleged US enemies (usually leftists) to the governments of Indonesia, Iraq, and Guatemala, so that they could be brought to “justice” (usually execution). During the Clinton years and early days of the War on Terror, it was not at all uncommon for suspected enemies of the United States to be extraordinarily rendered to countries around the world where they would be subject to detention, interrogation, and often torture. CIA agent, Robert Baer, explained this policy, “If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear — never to see them again — you send them to Egypt.” Indeed, for the US, no minimum standard of conduct exists when it comes to cooperating with foreign governments to pursue alleged enemies. Therefore, it makes little sense as to why the United States would not allow the Taliban to bring Bin Laden to justice in a fashion that was in line with Pashtun culture, while eliminating Bin Laden as a threat. However, in the months after September 11, 2001, American capacity, logic, and reason was jettisoned in favor of bloodlust and militarism.
It was George W. Bush who said “No nation can negotiate with terrorists,” implying that nations should not compromise with groups threatening the use of violence against them. Ironically, this type of compromise under the threat of violence was exactly what Bush was demanding of the Taliban. His demands were that the Afghan government fully concede to US demands, regarding Bin Laden’s extradition or face destruction. We don’t play very well by our own rules.
Myth 3: The Taliban Have Never Surrendered
Perhaps many Americans do not sympathize with the Taliban for their dilemma of attempting to strike a balance between maintaining legitimacy amongst the Pashtun population and avoid complete destruction at the hands of the United States. However, even if one views the Islamic Emirate’s attempt to negotiate as stubborn and accepts that the US invasion of Central Asia was necessary, they should still acknowledge that the war could have been over by the end of 2001. Contrary to common stereotypes, Afghans do not always fight to the last man, but rather often switch sides and declare new allegiances to new power structures as conflicts reveal victors. This is how people who need to live amongst their former rivals have adapted in a country which has been host to civil war and where power has changed hands often. Therefore, it is no surprise that after the US airpower decimated Taliban armaments, and the US backed Northern Alliance had taken Kandahar and Kabul, that the Taliban surrendered. The former government’s highest officials and the rank and file had surrendered to the US backed government of Hamid Karzai in December of 2001. They had retired to their homes and given up their weapons in hope to live out their days in dignity. By early 2002 the surviving members of the misidentified “ally” of Al Qaeda had fled through the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan and escaped into Pakistan. So the war in Afghanistan should have been over, right? A US backed government was in place, the former, allegedly Bin Laden harboring, Taliban had been ousted and pacified, and there was no Al Qaeda left in the country to fight. Unfortunately, the United States had planned for a much longer war on terror, so they were going to fight terrorists even if none were around. Members of the defeated Taliban were denied any mechanism for peace and reconciliation by the United States and would continue to be targeted. When the US military actually arrived in mass in Afghanistan in 2002, there was no one to fight. The US relied on intelligence provided by selectively patronized Afghans to determine who the alleged terrorists or Taliban affiliates were. This resulted in the US military being used by Afghans to settle scores with other Afghans. Political rivals and business competitors of US backed Afghans often were being targeted rather than terrorists. These unfortunate victims often were killed or renditioned to be jailed and tortured at CIA black-sites or the Guantanamo Bay prison. Slowly but surely, the retired Taliban members determined that there was no choice but to return to the battlefield to fight the occupying force.
WHY THE HELL ARE WE STILL THERE?!
The mistakes of 2001 and 2002 reverberate into the present. The war that could have easily been avoided or at worst ended by December of 2001 persists nearly 20 years later. Despite this war being a losing effort for the United States by nearly any metric, and costing thousands of American and exponentially more Afghan lives, the United States still occupies Central Asia. So, why is this? This is up for debate and subject to speculation. The reason could be any number of easily diffused excuses. Maybe it is the geopolitical significance, the Central Asian nation’s proximity to geopolitical rivals China and Russia, that maintains the United States’ presence. Perhaps it is a deeply flawed sunken cost fallacy, the idea that because so much money and so many US soldiers have already been sacrificed in Afghanistan, that the US should continue the doomed effort. This would be effective in ensuring that more will die for inexplicable reasons. Or maybe the US military is still in Afghanistan because of the old 1990s dream of building a pipeline through the nation that would bypass both Iran and China. This would be in line with the long list of military excursions that the United States has done in the interests of private industry.
Every so often, war proponents will point to the fact that the Taliban were notorious for their subjugation of women. However, to assume the United States has ever been a supporter of women’s rights in Afghanistan would require an explanation for its past behavior. If women’s rights were a priority, why did the US support Islamic jihadists in the 1980s as they battled against the very progressive communist government of Afghanistan? In the 2001 intrusion into the nation, why did the United States support the Northern Alliance, a loose collection of warlords whose subjugation of women was well known? Why is it that even with 100,000 troops in the nation ten years ago, the United States could not alter the treatment of women in the Central Asian countryside. And of course, why should anyone take the United States seriously about their deep concerns for women while Saudi Arabia, who executes women for sorcery, remains one of the United States’ closest allies? Seems likely that the concern for women was never genuine.
Perhaps the United States remains in Afghanistan due to the alleged trillion dollars worth of minerals that lay beneath the nation. General David Petreaus and President Trump certainly seemed keen to exploit these resources. While such a reasoning is blatantly imperialistic, it might be refreshing if the US government admitted to its own cravenness.
Could the disproven “Safe Haven” myth be the reason the United States still occupies the Central Asian steppe? This is the idea that somehow if the US ever leaves Afghanistan, that it will become a haven for terrorists. This requires ignoring the fact that the Taliban have more incentive than anyone to restrict terror activities against the United States so as to avoid a repeat of the attacks that brought the US to central Asia in the first place. It also ignores the fact that the United States has created huge strongholds for Al Qaeda linked terrorists in its wars in Syria, Libya, and Yemen that have created failed states wherein jihadism has flourished. Most of the surviving Al Qaeda members of the early US engagement in Afghanistan in 2001 had fled to Pakistan, making the US ally a far more deserving candidate for the “safe haven” title than Afghanistan. The myth also rests on the idea that because some Al Qaeda were in Afghanistan before 9/11 that should the US leave, naturally they would return to plan more attacks on the US. This of course also ignores that the Al Qaeda attacks were planned in Germany, Spain, Malaysia, and San Diego. If there is a place where alleged “terrorists” do exist, one would assume Afghanistan would be most ideal. After all, it is as far away from the United States as possible with no ability to access any US targets… except of course those soldiers who remain senselessly in Afghanistan. The safe haven myth also assumes that US military presence prevents terrorism when in reality it is far more likely to cause it. The perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks were motivated in large part due to US military presence in Saudi Arabia and US armed assistance to Israel in their repression of Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon. The Afghanistan War itself has provoked acts and attempted acts of terror on US targets as well, with the Boston Marathon bombers, the Orlando nightclub shooter, and the attempted Times Square bomber all citing the Afghanistan war as at least partially motivating their belligerence towards Americans. The logical solution to the revelation that terrorists are motivated to harm Americans due to American military actions, is not “let’s continue to give them more motivation to attack us.”
Whatever the reason for the continued US presence in Central Asia, it is important to recognize the absurdity of the current situation. On its surface, this is ridiculous. The nation in the middle of North America is attempting to control affairs that are literally on the other side of the planet. When the USSR attempted to have influence in the Caribbean in the 1960’s, the world nearly went to nuclear war as a consequence. To add to the insanity, we are now in a situation where American soldiers who were born after the war started in 2001 are going to be killing Afghans who have lived their whole lives under US occupation. There are currently cases where the children of Afghanistan war veterans are now serving in the same war that their fathers did. At a certain point it becomes easy to become cynical and believe this war will never end. After all, if last year’s revelations of decades of dishonesty documented in the Afghanistan Papers did not bring this war to an immediate end, it is unclear what will. Whether due to the fabricated claims of Russian bounties on American soldiers or the Taliban’s words of support for Donald J. Trump, it seems the political establishment of the United States remains recalcitrant with regards to ending its longest war. With totally ineffective leadership, the path to withdraw from America’s longest war is through more Americans understanding the true unnecessary nature of the conflict.