{"id":518,"date":"2020-02-23T15:51:17","date_gmt":"2020-02-23T15:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/sipa\/?p=518"},"modified":"2020-02-23T15:51:17","modified_gmt":"2020-02-23T15:51:17","slug":"coming-to-terms-with-the-taliban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/sipa\/2020\/02\/coming-to-terms-with-the-taliban\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming to Terms with the Taliban"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY SEAN STEINBERG<\/h4>\n
\"Lt.

Lt. Col. (ret.) Jason Dempsey (right) says \u201cthe American military and NATO cannot defeat the Taliban militarily\u201d (Photo credit: Matthew Sherman)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Bush administration launched the \u201cGlobal War on Terror\u201d in the aftermath of 9\/11 as an unambiguous moral crusade framed with damning, unequivocal rhetoric.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet today, the United States is negotiating with the Taliban \u2014 the very enemy with which President Bush declared \u201cthere could be no peace\u201d because the Taliban\u2019s brutality, misogyny, and vision of Sharia law supposedly rendered it incompatible with Western values.<\/span><\/p>\n

After nearly two decades of disappointment \u2013 in their Afghan partners, in their commanders, and in the American people \u2013 America\u2019s veterans say they are prepared to accept whatever it takes to end a misguided chapter of U.S. foreign policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Good Intentions<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The outlook was not always bleak. Long before they became cynics by necessity, starry-eyed young recruits like Kyle Staron truly believed that the \u201cGlobal War on Terror\u201d was going to be a \u201cforce for liberalization.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Four years after the worst terrorist attack in American history reaffirmed his lifelong dream of military service, an 18-year-old Staron signed up for ROTC. In 2006, he was commissioned as an officer of the United States Army, just as Rule Johnstone began his undergraduate studies in counterterrorism and national security.<\/span><\/p>\n

Johnstone supplemented his core curriculum with courses in Islamic history and theology in order to understand the roots of what he saw as a \u201cglobalized insurgency.\u201d A few years later, he left law school to become a warrior elite.<\/span><\/p>\n

When his top choices \u2013 the Navy SEALs and Green Berets \u2013 didn\u2019t work out, Johnstone found his place as an Airborne shock trooper. His unit, he says, was to be the first line of defense against Russia \u2013 the same threat that inspired Tom Juric to enlist a generation earlier, back when it was still known as the Soviet Union.<\/span><\/p>\n

But after the Soviet Union collapsed, and Juric suddenly found himself without an evil empire to fight, he spent his 35-year career away from the battlefield, supporting the fight through training, logistics, and mission coordination. He loved the work, but still seems disappointed that he was not able to join in his father\u2019s war fighting legacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

As it was with Juric and \u201canyone else\u201d who serves, Dr. Jason Dempsey says military service was in his blood.<\/span><\/p>\n

A \u201cfamily affair,\u201d he calls it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dempsey didn\u2019t plan to follow in his father\u2019s footsteps for more than a few years, but in the end, the job became a 22-year career spanning multiple deployments to the Middle East, a teaching post at West Point, and a White House fellowship.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Know Thy Enemy<\/b><\/h5>\n

While their mutual employer assigned these men a common nemesis, these Army veterans do not necessarily see eye-to-eye when it comes to the Taliban\u2019s place in Afghanistan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Juric sees little difference between the Taliban and international terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda or ISIS. As far as he\u2019s concerned, \u201cmost of them are nothing but thugs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While most of Staron\u2019s pre-war knowledge of the Taliban came from a magazine article detailing their destruction of ancient Buddhist statues, he acknowledges a distinction that Juric does not.<\/span><\/p>\n

Staron says groups like Al Qaeda have made it perfectly clear that diplomacy will never be an option: \u201cThey want to destroy us, we want to live.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut the Taliban was different,\u201d he says. \u201cPragmatically different.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Taliban did not deploy its acolytes across the globe to strike American skyscrapers with jetliners or bomb European subways. Their threat was rooted in the soil of Afghanistan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Johnstone cites modern insurgency texts and Salafist jihadi history to back up his claim that the Taliban is not a monolith. Its members, he says, are not united by any singular motivation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some want to fight Americans. Some seek economic gain. Others merely want to impress tribal elders.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201creligious jihadi\u201d stuff, he says, is certainly \u201ca part of it, but it\u2019s not a central tenet.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A Misguided and Bungled Strategy<\/b><\/h5>\n

Unfortunately, the brains behind the American operation in Afghanistan saw things differently.<\/span><\/p>\n

A core problem with their strategy, says Dempsey, was that American officials wrote off the Taliban as \u201cas enemies of the state,\u201d rather than stopping to consider that they might be \u201can organic Afghan movement.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Under such a two-dimensional approach, eradication was the only viable solution. But the truth was far more complicated.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a killing problem,\u201d says Dempsey. \u201cIt was a political problem. And we never had the patience or the nuance to go after that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Afghans\u2019 hatred of the Haqqani<\/span> leadership \u2013 which controls an aggressive tribal network associated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda \u2013<\/span> did not necessarily apply to the average Taliban foot soldier.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAfter all,\u201d says Dempsey, that guy is \u201cyour cousin. Your uncle.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sure, he admits that they may be zealots with \u201cbatshit political views\u201d but with their deep communal ties, Dempsey doubts the Taliban could ever be seen as the irredeemable \u201cevil\u201d that American rhetoric portrayed.<\/span><\/p>\n

In spite of this conceptual failure, the U.S. appeared to have the Taliban up against the ropes up until its 2003 invasion of Iraq. Then, as the overextended Americans grew distracted from their original mission, their initial gains plateaued, while the Taliban found room to breathe and regroup. Meanwhile, cooperative nation-building efforts with the Afghans came undone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Concerned that the locals would just \u201cslow things down,\u201d Staron says the Americans pushed forward ambitious and expensive civil projects, consulting the Afghans only at the very \u201clast minute.\u201d The Afghans, in turn, grew frustrated at the Americans for treating them as burdens to their own development and security.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, financial exploitation marred the campaign\u2019s credibility with the Afghan people, and did little to convince them that the juvenile central government \u2013 struggling to establish legitimacy in a region accustomed to being run as a fiefdom \u2013 deserved their support.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere were hundreds, if not thousands of Afghans in senior leadership positions who, like many Americans, just saw it as a chance to profit. To literally take bags of gold bars and ship them to Dubai and build vacation homes,\u201d says Dempsey. \u201cMeanwhile, you had a class of young fighters who were legitimately, earnestly trying to make the world a better place.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Granted, the Taliban\u2019s hands were not clean, either, but at least their particular brand of \u201cpious\u201d corruption came with stability, which was in high demand after a bloody and chaotic civil war. Dempsey says that their replacements, on the other hand, didn\u2019t \u201ceven have the veneer of religious justification.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cHearts & Minds\u201d Tradeoff<\/b><\/h5>\n

After American war strategists dusted off the old counterinsurgency doctrine that they had tried so hard to forget after the catastrophic failure of Vietnam, averting civilian casualties was no longer just the \u201cright\u201d thing to do \u2013 it became a strategic imperative. But Johnstone says the Taliban proved to be \u201cincredibly sophisticated\u201d in exploiting this strategy, which the Americans hoped would win local support and undermine the Taliban\u2019s influence in the region.<\/span><\/p>\n

Knowing the Americans were under strict orders not to fire upon unarmed civilians, let alone children, the Taliban recruited kids to pelt Humvee patrols with rocks and distract them from ambushes and RPG strikes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Muzzled out of strategic necessity and political sensitivity, impotent soldiers bristled at their commanders, the media, and the American civilians watching the war play out on CNN. To these troops, they all appeared to value optics, self-righteous judgment, and the lives of foreigners more than those of their own troops. Johnstone says American soldiers came to believe they were nothing more than \u201cpolitical playthings.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe vets that I know, most of them don\u2019t give a <\/span>shit<\/span><\/i> about whether Afghanistan has democracy or not,\u201d he says. \u201cHow is some 19-year-old supposed to give a shit about the Afghans\u2019 future when he\u2019s worried about his own countrymen sending him to prison for trying to save his own life?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Adding to the war\u2019s perceived moral dubiousness was the fact that Americans were stifled from intervening when they witnessed abuses carried out against women and children by locals. Such domestic matters, they were told, were best left to the locals.<\/span><\/p>\n

Calling It Quits<\/b><\/h5>\n

Afghans were dying in droves. The government the Americans helped create was corrupt and ineffective.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the Taliban was not backing down.<\/span><\/p>\n

No matter where you stood \u2013 liberal or conservative, civilian or military \u2013 the mission felt hopeless.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cVeterans I think are fairly diverse in terms of what\u2019s to blame,\u201d says Dempsey, but \u201cI have not seen much debate about whether or not the mission was a failure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s anything that\u2019s been proven conclusively over 18 years, it\u2019s that the American military and NATO cannot defeat the Taliban militarily,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Having accepted the war\u2019s futility, everyone I spoke with says it is time to get out of Afghanistan. All but Juric say they are willing to accept negotiations with the Taliban as a condition to that withdrawal.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can only live through Groundhog Day so many times before you start asking questions,\u201d says Staron. \u201cThe time spent and the lives lost are…\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He pauses.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026They\u2019re not justifications for continuing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What comes next is anyone\u2019s guess: Juric expects to see the Taliban return to its old ways. Others believe the Taliban will be reigned in by the punishment they have endured, and the prospects of international aid and recognition.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t want to win the entire country only to be a pariah state again,\u201d says Dempsey.<\/span><\/p>\n

Little White Lies<\/b><\/h5>\n

Perhaps it is as former U.S.-Afghan policy advisor Richard Biddle says: \u201cThe way the war looks in the foxhole and the way that the war looks in the national capital have to be different.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps war <\/span>does<\/span><\/i> necessitate oversimplification. After all, the true, unvarnished, practical objectives of politics rarely inspire people to risk their lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

In modern warfare, says Biddle, victory and defeat are measured by degree, not totality. So it makes sense that war-waging politicians use words like \u201cevil\u201d and \u201cliberty,\u201d and phrases like \u201cfor the good of all humanity,\u201d to sell their vision, instead of talking about the number of \u201cministries granted to the opposition in a power-sharing deal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It is when fairytale rhetoric begins to inform policy, however, that you have a problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the easiest way to justify killing people,\u201d says Dempsey. \u201cIt\u2019s not the easiest way to work your way out of a war.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The 19 years, $975 billion, and nearly 150 thousand lives lost to this war seem to agree.<\/span>